The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Hrm. Quick overview of this lovely trilogy..

And if you've not read any of these, this probably won't make any sense. So. Sorry. In advance.

Book one -

Men definitely hate women in this one - A LOT, Nazis and big corporations are the roots of all evil - OF COURSE, who needs big boobs anyway (or I mean boobs at all), or condoms for that matter, or to be faithful to one's spouse.., and all those names..good grief. My review of this one is here.

Book two -

The giant blond dude from Rocky IV/man who feels no pain from the Brosnan (slash fake) Bond movies makes an appearance and boy is he pissed, Lisbeth is actually in this one - like she does stuff and everything (I mean everything), again with the names...holy crap....but this one by far my favorite of the three.

Book three -

Lisbeth is in the hospital and now she's pissed, duct tape cures all ills (my husband slash life partner could've told them that!), hot Amazon women are attracted to middle-aged, over-weight men, Lisbeth is still in the hospital.., ack, those names! I wanted to ram my head into the wall they were so confusing, Salander is still in the hospital..., stalkers are always skinny nerdy men, Swede's like to use the word whore a lot, giant blond freak makes an appearance at the beginning and the exact end of the book - in between I completely forgot about him, wha? Salander finally leaves the hospital?? Just in time to save the day? Not really, and the mysterious sister? She never shows...ah, come on!!

A really funny take on this series is in The New Yorker. I laughed myself silly it was so. spot. on.

3 stars

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

This may date me a bit, but this book reminds me of an old classic (and I use classic loosely here) from the 80's, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure with Keanu Reeves (I swear he deserved an Academy Award for this one, for his hair alone) and some other "dude" whom no one can remember (and do we really want to).

Anyway, those two go back in time in a phone booth time machine....(good grief, was it really this dumb) to ace a book report, you know, because they're the get good grades type of students, obviously, and end up bringing back famous people from history. One was Abe Lincoln, looking remarkably like the real thing by the way, his voice was like..a grumbling, deep canyon of manliness, if that makes any sense. That's the voice that kept playing though my head during the diary portions of this book. "Let us have faith that right makes right..." or "A house divided against itself can not stand," and lest we forget "I want to kill vampires until every ounce of blood is drained from their bodies.." Er, yeah..some of the greatest lines in history were uttered by this man. I guess.

This book will make a fine companion to the biography of Mary Todd Lincoln I'm reading in June for book club. Hopefully Mary kicks some serious vampire booty too. And she'll do it all while hand sewing a handkerchief. Of course.

3 stars

The Spirit of Sweetgrass by Nicole Seitz

There's something to be said about a well cast first sentence on page one of a novel - This is what I remember about that night - my last night alive.

Was the main character, 78 year old Essi Mae already dead then and telling her story from the grave? Why did she die? Who was she? I wondered all these things like a fish wonders what that worm dancing in the riffles would taste like. I was hooked. By that first sentence and the warm tones of that cover.


Essie Mae Jenkins is a sweetgrass basket maker who sells her finished products from a roadside stand on a tiny anonymous highway along the coastal islands of South Carolina. From there she sews her baskets, weaving in some of the sweetgrass and Gullah culture, and a little voodoo magic for good measure, all in the presence of her dead husband, Daddy Jim.

Like the vanishing sandy beach ecosystems that sustain that billowing native grass, so is the talent of making these unique baskets. Essie Mae wants to pass it on like it was passed on to her. But nature's forces are working against her, not unlike the forces of prosperity are working against the disappearing sweetgrass. Like all of us as we age, Essie Mae feels like she's slowly disappearing from the landscape as well.

Well-written in great Southern voice, The Spirit of Sweetgrass hits on many levels. It brings into sharp focus the fears that we all worry about as we age - of being forgotten and replaced. I wondered what I would leave behind for my family, suddenly wanting to take up a new skill or perfect the two or three that I have! And, I thought of what's been left for me in previous generations and I became both happy and melancholy at the same time. Memories, love, cherished mementos, and most importantly a knowledge of things particular to my family and friends always bring in torrents of emotion. We all wish for this, in any culture and time.

I enjoyed reading about other lifestyles and customs unfamiliar with my own. Now, if I could just get my hands on one of those baskets!

3 stars

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Lately my tastes have been straying away from young adult fiction, mainly YA fiction that's geared more towards adults than kids (which I think ruins it most of the time), but this movie looks pretty good, see here, so I decided to listen to the book first before I take my kids in February.

My review will be short.
It was okay.
But as a side note, I probably shouldn't have listened to it, as I was not a fan of the reader. His voices seemed too cartoonish, like they were straight off of Sesame Street, and kept reminding me this book was for kids (you know like Trix), and I think I'd have liked it better if I'd have just read it and invented my own voices in my head. I plan on reading the rest of the series eventually and see if my little theory holds true.

Kudos to Riordan for keeping the content in this one for young adults. Imagine a young adult book that is actually for young adults! Perish the thought!

As for content, just think Harry Potter/Greek mythology, but I like mythology (I am a huge Clash of the Titans fan after all), and even though it's not half as good as Harry Potter as far as predictability and character development goes, I will give it full marks for excitement. It was good fun. Any kid would like this book. And the movie looks even better. Maybe we'll even see it on the first weekend. For me that's really saying something.
3 stars.

The Rose of York - Love and War by Sandra Worth

The more I read about the early monarchs, the more I'm convinced - a lot of them were loony birds. They were paranoid (probably because most of their extended families wanted them dead), often delusional, unable to form stable relationships after being raised by multiple people in multiple places usually amongst a war for dominance, forcing them to grow up too fast. I wonder, can they be blamed for their erratic behavior after such odd and bizarre upbringings?

Richard the III is no different from these. I've seen how he's depicted in Shakespeare's plays. His hump, his paranoid and murdering behaviors are legendary. Author Sandra Worth's depiction here argues that may not be true about him. Was Shakespeare's view skewed by the reigning, rival Tudors? He may have been handsome. A shy product of his violent environment. In love with a beautiful woman as depicted on the cover of her book, Love and War.

I'm a big fan of John Waterhouse paintings. A lot of authors use them for covers. In fact when I notice a Waterhouse on the front, I have a hard time resisting a book's contents, regardless of how good it may or may not be (the one below was on Mistress Shakespeare.)

His paintings of mainly women are so lovely and filled with emotion. He had a way with catching just the right expression, the slope of a shoulder, how their hands lay atop each other. And I've always wondered who the woman was he painted the most. Her face and red hair. Her absolutely flawless pink skin. Talk about giving me a complex!

While I thought the cover of this one beautiful, I had a hard time stomaching it as Richard III sitting there with his lovely Anne Warwick, the woman it took him nearly a decade to marry amidst the war between the Roses. I thought more of this knightly clad hero as his earlier ancestor, a younger John of Gaunt and his mistress and eventually third wife, the beautiful Katrine - who also had red hair. Worth's take on Richard and Anne is obviously modeled after their lives, and from a favorite book of mine by Anya Seton entitled Katherine, about their courtship and later marriage.

In truth, Love and War, is much more about the history of the epic battle between York and Lancaster than it is about Richard and Anne. And I liked that because I'm a big English history buff. But the love stories themselves seemed more like filler than anything, definitely running second to the battles and treason that took place during the time period. Maybe that story line evolves more in the second and third books in the series.

So don't be fooled by the cover! If you want a fantastic love story amidst war and strife, read Katherine. If you want to learn about the history of the War of the Roses, read this one, the first in The Rose of York trilogy.

And most importantly, wear sun screen so you'll have beautiful skin like the ladies in these pictures!

We can dream anyway...
3 stars

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

What? A memoir written by our dearly departed Jane Austen has been found? Whew, now all our questions will be answered, like: What was up with Tom Lefroy anyway, was he maybe batting for another team? Who inspired that droll Mr. Collins Endless Summer sort of sex appeal? Did her home fires ever burn wildly for a special someone named Fitzwilliam? We're saved!

Alas, no..not exactly.

But for the most part, this was an okay attempt. Not very original, but isn't it a pretty cover? This is not the first to tackle the long lost correspondence of the famous author, Jane Austen Ruined My Life is one I've read recently, and I'm certain it won't be the last. I find the concept very interesting. The letters that still exist are amazing! Loved the book by Penelope Hughes-Hallett. Imagine what we could gain from such a find? Besides glory, wealth beyond your wildest dreams, unfound fame, etc.

Written more in novel than diary form, in Lost Memoirs we learn what happened to Jane during the lost years while she lived in Bath with her family, and an occasional memory from earlier on. A time when she supposedly was reworking what was to become Sense and Sensibility.

And there's a man in her life, a Mr. Ashford, who instead of, according to historians, being the poor curate from Lyme and dying like he's supposed to, we'll...he made a miraculous recovery. And guess what, not only are he and Edward Ferris almost identical twins, but he's the one that encouraged her to start writing again! The parallels between what James has made of Austen's life and that particular novel are almost one in the same. Not very original, right down to people's names, incidents, phrases from her novels, etc. Which I can understand her borrowing, with the - did Jane Austen write what she knew kind of questions, but it was a little much for me by the end.

The writing is good though, and I'll still admit, birthday cakey fun. Did I mention the pretty cover? I love Jane Austen's story. Reading this did not hurt my infatuation with the woman's life. I want to know more about her, and Syrie James obviously knows her stuff, and like her book on Charlotte Bronte, included some Austen extras in the back. My problem is I'm now not sure what is fact or what is fiction. I want the mashed potatoes and gravy, I want the filling peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread, because sometimes too much birthday cake just makes me break out, and hungry again in an hour.

But you know what, I still almost always inevitably eat it.

Always.

3 stars

Everything Austen Reading Challenge

The Lost Symbol

by Dan Brown

Robert Langdon is asked by a friend to come to Washington, D.C. to deliver a lecture at the U.S. Capitol Building. Once he arrives, Robert realizes things aren't as they should be and he is once again dragged into a race against the clock to solve a puzzle that is life or death.

I did enjoy this book but not as much as the other two Robert Langdon novels. I found this one to be a little strange. The other two have their odd moments as well but I was able to get past them. This one was harder to get past. It has a lot to do with the Masons and a field of science called noetics and I had a hard time grasping either one. They are both filled with some very odd things and although Brown does his best to explain them they still came across as very bizarre for me.

Although I had a hard time with some of the context of the book I still enjoyed it and it was a page turner with only the middle of the book being a little slow. Brown definitely does his research and I enjoyed learning new information about a city I have visited. I liked that I could actually picture where he was and what he was looking at. Something I couldn't do in the other novels. I just wish he would have involved the city more like he did in the previous two novels.

All in all, it was a pretty entertaining book.

3 stars

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James

“Would you love me?” asked Jane Eyre at one point in her famous novel. “I am poor and little and plain.”

I quote that line a lot, but it’s not hard to imagine Charlotte Bronte saying the same thing about herself. She was never considered very attractive, and until Jane Eyre was published and became a huge success, her life didn’t account for much in the world. Words like, harsh and cruel, might be used to describe her life, with complete happiness arriving almost too late for her to truly enjoy it. Would we have had her great novels had her genius not been finely tuned by her grief and despair, if her life had been common and usual? Thankfully, the Bronte’s were far from usual in that sense. Their sorrow was our gain.

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte is a noble concept, for it ventures that Charlotte may have kept a diary of her thoughts; an account of her life, beginning long before Jane Eyre was published, but after her time in Brussels, until her death. We learn of her four marriage proposals, the last of which from a Mr. Arthur Nicholls, a poor curate who worked for her father for 8 years. A man so shy she never knew he was in love with her. Can you imagine if such a diary as this still existed? We are lucky enough to have her biography written by her close friend, Elizabeth Gaskell not long after her death, and we have her poetry and correspondence. It is through the latter that we know how she felt about Jane Austen and her novels:

What sees keenly, speaks softly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study, but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through…this Miss Austen ignores…if this is heresy – I can’t help it.
12 april 1850 to William Williams

But a diary, that would be something. James does a good job of including the known facts of the Bronte’s life. She leaves none of the dreaded details out here, and we all know how sad those details were, but at the same time she speculates that there was happiness in that household, as there only could have been between three kindred sisters who loved their wayward brother and their partially blind father.

My only complaints about this book would be that she borrowed lines from the Bronte’s novels, probably using them to mimic styles and patterns of speech familiar with Charlotte and her sisters. (For me, this is a common issue I have with books of this type. It feels like cheating.) Also, the whole Pride and Prejudice feel of the storyline. In the end, knowing her particular thoughts on Austen, I wondered if Charlotte Bronte was rolling over in her grave.

But that aside, my favorite part by far was the inclusion in the Appendix of some of Charlotte’s correspondence, a real treat to read, and some selected poetry by the Bronte sisters. Emily’s especially, were brilliant, passionate, and fascinating. How could anyone doubt she ever wrote one of my all time favorite novels, Wuthering Heights.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion –
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning with to hasten,
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

and -

“O mortal! mortal! let them die;
Let time and tears destroy,
That we may overflow the sky
With universal Joy!

“Let grief distract the sufferer’r breast,
And night obscure his way;
They hasten him to endless rest,
And everlasting day.

“To thee the world is like a tomb,
A desert’s lakes shore’
To us, in unimagined bloom,
To brightens more and more!

“And, could we lift the veil, and give
One brief glimpse to thine eye,
Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live,
Because they live to die.”

Reading those words alone made this book worth the reading.
3 stars.

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

By Julie Powell

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously is like a very, very rich dessert.

What, you didn’t think I could review a book about cooking without resorting to a lame food simile, did you?

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously is Julie Powell’s account of her attempt to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. As I said before, it's like a very, very rich dessert — a dessert I wouldn’t normally order, but I got it for free¹ so I dove in with enthusiasm. And it tasted pretty good.

But even as I ate it, I felt vaguely guilty. Being a supremely rich dessert, it had no nutritional value; it was mainly fluff, really.² And as I scarfed it down, the richness started to get to me, and each bite got just a little harder to swallow. This didn’t keep me from finishing the dessert, naturally, but when I finally did polish it off, I was left with a mild feeling of queasiness.^{3, 4}

I have the feeling that this was supposed to be a gourmet dessert. You know, the kind they talk about on Top Chef, the kind with complexity and nuances and layers. Whatever. When foodies start talking like that, all I hear is Swedish chef-style “Bork! Bork! Bork!”-ing. Frankly, all those subtle nuances go right over my head (or over my tastebuds).⁵

All of which is rather ironic, since I just used a simile to describe my impressions of the book. Bah.⁶

Similes aside, Julie and Julia rests firmly in the category of “guilty pleasures.” Powell’s madcap culinary adventure is often funny, and equally mouth-watering and repellant. (brains, anyone?) It wanders much too often away from the food, which is where the book is at its best, and it's way too long, but it was generally fun to read. It didn’t change my life. I didn’t learn any life lessons. I’m okay with that. Every now and then, a little indulgence is a good thing.

Readers should note, however, that Powell curses a lot and holds some moral views that really bugged me

Footnotes for the symbolically challenged:

¹ I actually won it in a GoodReads drawing!

² This book is a fun read, but lacks real substance.

³ Powell speaks very frankly about herself and her friends and family, which makes for some juicy reading but left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, like maybe I have no business knowing this much about people I don’t really know (I call it the “TMI Syndrome,” but I think this is becoming an increasingly rare condition in this day of tell-all blogs and reality TV exhibitionism).

⁴ Plus Powell is awfully annoying sometimes.

⁵ I am fairly certain that Powell was trying to write a book with deep meaning, weaving Julia Child and cooking with the events of her own life to make very astute observations about life, but I didn’t feel like taking the time to figure any of that out. For crying out loud, Julie Powell, you’re a self-proclaimed “government drone,” not Shakespeare!

⁶ Hence the footnotes, to atone for my hyprocisy.

Mr Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange

Oh, know. Oh, know. Oh, know.

After reading this book, I've discovered a little known fact that I never wanted to know, gasp: Mr. Darcy was one boring dude.

Kill me now.

Unfortunately, this harsh reality makes perfect sense, I mean, look how Austen portrays him in Pride and Prejudice? He rarely speaks unless spoken too, he's horribly shy amongst strangers, and nobody interesting, except Bingley of course, can stand to be around him he's so haughty and full of himself.

I thought the concept of Mr. Darcy having a diary had great potential. What little tidbits would we find out about, I wondered. Like, what was he doing before he met Elizabeth, how exactly did he fall in love with her, what were his experiences with his sister and Bingley, etc. Exciting stuff, right? Well, no. In truth, I found him completely uninteresting and dull for about the first half of the book, and then when he drove Bingley from Jane Bennet, I thought him just plain mean. When he does begin to see Elizabeth in a different light I of course, liked it better. A few more details here and there helped it become interesting enough by the end, but by then I was almost mad.

Is that the author's fault? Is it even possible to make the true Mr. Darcy of Austen's novel the dashing romantic hero of almost every females dreams? Do we have the mini-series to thank for our obsession? Many,many years ago, long before 1995, I did my senior thesis on Jane Austen, and more specifically, Pride and Prejudice and Emma. I read both books and remember thinking them okay, not my favorite novels at the time - I was very young, but I don't remember thinking one way or the other about Darcy. In fact, I probably thought very little about him at all. Because that's how he's written. Elizabeth is the hero of Pride and Prejudice. It is she we come to love and admire first and foremost.

And then along came the mini-series and Colin Firth. Ah....sigh. That changed everything didn't it. Now we've come to expect more from the man than what was really there. We invent truth were none exists. We invent, feelings and emotion expressed. We invent the feelings we saw on Colin Firth's face when he looked at Elizabeth, the dimple in her chin, the curve of her shape. In essence, we brought the book to life perfectly. But real life is never perfect. Expectations are never met, there is always let down. Rarely are men capable of jumping on the same romantic plane as women, because seriously we as a sex always expect too much, don't we?

That was my main problem with this book. Like all my relationships I probably expected too much. I'm afraid Mr. Darcy I might have to break up with you after all these years.

Sigh...
Just kidding.
3 stars.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse, cleavage-showing and nicely-tanned ,waitress extraordinaire, lives a boring life...for the most part. Aside from her unique gift of being able to read minds, her life borders on the uninteresting and bland, until a sexy vampire named Bill wanders into the bar looking for some bottled synthetic blood.

You see in Louisiana, vampires are "out of the coffin" so to speak. She's intrigued. Who wouldn't be by a walking cold corpse I say. But she likes him instantly because his mind is as quiet as...well, death.

Upon his arrival, bad things start to happen. Big, ugly, bloody murders. People seem to be dying left and right. Could it be Bill? Sookie wonders, or the new trio of vampire nesters that have deposited themselves in the town, much to the locals dismay. Or maybe it's someone else entirely like her mysterious boss who currently has the hots for her as well. When her wayward brother is suspected, Sookie means to solve these murders on her own, with or without her dead-slash-suspect boyfriend.

I hoped she hadn't dropped her health insurance in these harsh economic times.

I thought the plot would be simple enough. Big strong male rescues female. Again. But it turned out slightly different than I thought it would. Overall I guess, this book was entertaining enough to fall into my quick-read category. I like stories that take place in the South. Stories with an atmosphere so thick I can hear that Southern twanginess in my mind when I read the dialogue.

While I would say, "Sookie" (think cookie), vampire Bill would say, "Soo-kay," with long drawn out, silky syllables that come out so smoothly, you're not sure if he said sex or Sookie.

I found this cover interesting, I might even call it cute. Innocent. Almost cartoonish, perhaps for a younger audience, but the only thing innocent about this book is.....hmm, I can't think of anything. Whole lots of blood oozing, blood sucking, death, burned-up stinky bodies, and sexiness all rolled into a big pot of shrimp gumbo. So if you like ah, shrimp gumbo then by all means, eat. 3 stars

On Writing by Stephen King

Sometime in 1983, 84’ maybe, in a darkened musty theater that smelled of stale pop corn and spearmint gum, I saw the movie Cujo, a cinematic tale of a rabid, gigantic dog that terrorized a family trapped in a car. Only two things stand out in my memory of that event long ago: my first R-rated movie wasn’t all it was cracked up to be (Did all that blood really look like strawberry jam?), and sometime before the end I became monstrously ill in the barely lit girls bathroom located in the bowels of that old theater.

I ask myself now, was I sickened by the lack of Oscar-worthy performances, excluding the dog - he was an excellent actor, or was it just bad luck to catch an untimely flu when undoubtedly boys must’ve been present? I can’t remember much about the story so the latter must’ve been the case. Stephen King can’t remember it either, not the story itself, but writing it. A whole novel writing process, forgotten, obliterated in a drug-induced haze. Amazing. That’s just one of the little tid-bits King reveals in his memoir, a book I thought because of its title would be about writing, but is really a peek into the mind of a great story teller. And, did I mention, I don’t remember reading one of his thirty-plus books.

Pause...

So, why did I read this one? Good question. I guess he's always been such an opinionated old fart that I wanted to learn more about him, and even though I’ve never been much interested in any of his novels, there is no doubt this man’s imagination is off the charts. I’ve always thought him a down-to-earth sort of writer, not afraid to get his hands dirty. I can tell that just by looking at his picture. He looks like a man who has never had an easy time of it, his face weathered and beaten by the gale force wind of life. Even with his monumental success, there’s nothing snooty about him. A straight shooter, if you will. For the good, and bad.

Two parts auto-biography, one part writing advice, On Writing is an honest look into who Stephen King is, as if he were conversing with you from an easy chair in his study; his voice raspy and deep from years of smoking; his eyes a bit dimmer from that accident that almost claimed his life while he finished this book. He rambles like a cantankerous old man whose life experience he believes begs him worthy to offer advice, whether you want to hear it or not. This memoir, like that type of conservation is really just a collection of random informal thoughts collected on paper, sometimes in chronological order, sometimes not.

I’ve always thought Stephen King didn’t care if anyone liked him, or his books. I don’t think that now. Perhaps he, like everyone else, does need vindication after all. 3 stars

The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts

by Lilian Jackson Braun

This is one of the many "Cat Who" books starring Jim Qwilleran, a newspaper reporter who lives in a small town with his two siamese cats.

In this installment Qwilleran receives a late night phone call from Iris Cobb, the curator of the local historical museum who lives in the home attached to the museum . She tells Qwill for the past few weeks she has been hearing eerie noises and thinks there are ghosts in the museum and her home. She seems so frightened that night that Qwill offers to come out to her home and take her to a friend's house. Qwill races to her home and finds it with every light off and Iris lying dead on the kitchen floor.

Qwill offers to move into the museum home while they look for a replacement for Iris. While there he is determined to find out what happened to Iris. Was she really frightened to death by ghosts?

I enjoyed this book. I love mysteries and it was a quick read that I found entertaining.

3 stars

Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson

Nothing satisfies a sweet tooth like a Goldy Schulz novel. She’s a crime fighter armed with killer blueberry-cream pie, chocolate glaze to die for, and vanilla buttercream frosting that will soften even the most hardened criminal.

Fatally Flaky is number 15 in this series about the in’s and out’s of catering in the murder capital of the United States: Aspen Meadow, Colorado, and boy, does our highly caffeinated Goldy have her hands full! Apparently Aspen Meadow is a bit like the Hellmouth in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but instead of supernatural activity being at its center, murderous behavior seems to gravitate to this location. What a real estate market they must have!

This time around, instead of a string of dark and stormy nights, it’s been a long, rainy summer for Goldy Schulz. Doc Finn, a local beloved physician and dear friend of her godfather, has just been murdered. With a string of wedding receptions to cater, including one with Bridezilla herself, Goldy has never been busier. She doesn’t have time to solve this mystery, but when you’re the wife of the chief investigator of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department, and your godfather’s somehow gotten himself mixed up in the mess (much to his peril), what’s a blond, curly-headed sleuth to do?

Break out the recipe book of course, and cook. As always, we are treated to a slew of straight from Martha Stewart’s vaulted library recipes, all made with unsalted butter, sea salt and “best-quality” ingredients. One of which I tried and will include at the end of this review. Apparently caterers eat very well.

Having now read all 15 of these culinary mysteries, I generally rate each by two standards: how believable was the story and did any of the recipes look interesting. This one was not my favorite of the series, but was just interesting enough to finish. The plot line was predictable, but well written. There are very few surprises in this one. I knew well in advance what was going to happen. Perhaps Davidson tried to stir things up by introducing a main character in Goldy’s life that I think would’ve been mentioned by now, like in book 2, and some of the characters names? Billie Attenborough? Doesn’t really roll off the tongue does it. I think she ran out of good names by book 6.

Aside from that, as always, there’s a great cast of returning characters. Her sixteen-year-old lanky son Arch is learning to drive, and her swimmingly handsome, vegetarian assistant Julian is back from college again. Goldy’s good friend and sisterly ex-wife to the Jerk, Marla, as usual has all the best lines, but I would’ve liked it better if Goldy’s husband Tom, a character I enjoy immensely, was more involved in the story line.

Now, on to the superbly named recipes. Hmm. Usually there are at least one or two, maybe more that I would actually make, but this time most were too…how can I put this…off-the-charts hard. Who would really make these recipes? Enough with the nuts and bits of candied fruit! Seriously, they’re only good together at Christmas time. We know you like them. Time to add other ingredients to your cakes, cookies, and breads.

I did try the Fatally Flaky Ice Cream Cookies. See my slummed up version below, sans the sea salt, pure vanilla, best quality cocoa and real vanilla ice cream, and of course, unsalted butter. (My butter is plenty salted thank you very much!) These little chocolate numbers were tricky and not much to look at, but pretty dang good. Beware if you use the recipes in these books. Be prepared to have bits of oats and brown sugar fall out from the pages if you choose to reread it again. Unfortunately, I probably won’t have that problem with this one. 3 stars.

Fatally Flaky Cookies – The Peasant Version
½ cup unsalted butter

¾ brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

1 ½ cup quick-cooking oats

1 tablespoon flour

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Melt butter in a pan over low heat. Add sugar. Stir until mixture bubbles, about 3-5 minutes. Remove from heat and let it cool while you mix the other ingredients.

In large bowl, combine cocoa, oats, flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl beat together the egg and vanilla. Add to oat mixture and then add the cooled butter mixture. Stir well.

Using a 1-tablespoon ice-cream scoop, measure out the batter onto cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes or until cookies are completely cooked. Allow to cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, then carefully transfer to cooling racks.

Layer with ice cream or vanilla frosting. Makes about a dozen sandwiched cookies.

I Am a Mother

By Jane Clayson Johnson

One day, I received a phone call from a friend I hadn’t seen in quite some time. This friend spent a few minutes telling me about her exciting career, then asked me the dreaded question: “So, what have you been up to?”

Frantically, I tried to think of something to tell her. Should I tell her about my potty-training woes? Our recent afternoon at the park? My daughter’s triumphs at Kindergarten? “Well,” I said lamely, “I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

There was a long pause. “Aren’t you lucky!” my friend finally said brightly.

The conversation pretty much died at that point, but it illustrates my point: mothers, especially full-time moms, don’t get the respect they deserve. To be honest, most days, I don’t even respect the job myself. It’s hard for me to find fulfillment in the endless rounds of diapers, tantrums and cleaning.

Jane Clayson Johnson is the former co-host of The Early Show on CBS. At ABC News, she covered national and international stories for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and Good Morning America. She gave it all up to be a full-time mother. She wrote I Am a Mother to encourage mothers to be proud of their role, to stand up and say, with dignity, “I am a mother!”

Johnson uses numerous inspirational scriptures, quotes and stories as well as her own experiences to laud the importance of mothers. These serve as a great pep talk, but since I already know how important mothers are (thank you very much!), I found the most wisdom in a chapter titled “Walking in Each Other’s Shoes.” In that chapter, Johnson encourages women not to judge one another; an important reminder, I think, as battles rage over working vs. staying at home and breastfed vs. bottle-fed and the number of children to have. Sometimes we women are our own worst enemies, and it shouldn’t be that way.

I think it will be a long time before the world respects moms the same way it reveres doctors and lawyers and actors, but perhaps Johnson’s suggestion is a good place to start: stand up proudly and announce to the world that I am a mother! Maybe if we learn to respect ourselves, others will start to respect us, too. 3 stars

DISCLAIMER: Most everyone I know loves this book and gives it five stars. The only reason I didn’t is because I am a crusty, cynical, evil woman and I don’t enjoy inspirational books as much as most people.

The Host: A Novel

By Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer and I, we have a complicated relationship. The minute I pick up one of her books, I simply cannot put it down. The kids fry their brains on TV and subsist on cold cereal. The husband, dismayed, comes home to hastily thrown-together dinners of boxed mac-and-cheese and tortilla chips. The housework is neglected to an embarrassing extent.

It is only after I finish the books and emerge from the Meyer’s hormone-fueled fantasy worlds that I regain the capacity for rational thought. It is only then that the flaws in her books start to nag at me, and I start to feel ever-so-slightly sheepish for having been so obsessed. Apparently, reading a Stephenie Meyer book is like a drug trip for me…not that I’ve ever been on one.

That pretty much describes my experience with The Host, Meyer’s book about an alien parasite. Wanderer is that parasite, and she has been placed in the body of one of the few remaining uninfested humans in hopes that Wanderer might be able to winnow from her host’s mind the secret of the rebels’ hideout. Instead, Wanderer finds herself becoming enthralled by her host Melanie’s memories of love and humanity, and before she knows it, Wanderer is on her way to join the humans.

Now for the flaws, as I see them. Meyer’s descriptions can be quite repetitive; for example, every time Wanderer/Melanie touches their true love Jared, she is on fire, or enflamed, or engulfed in heat, you get the idea (kind of like pale/alabaster/white in Twilight). The book keeps telling us that Wanderer is a strong character, but her actions and thoughts seldom came across as strong to me. Then, too, by tackling alien parasites, Meyer is inviting comparisons to some classics. Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters and Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (yes, I know, not technically parasites, but close enough) come to mind. In their company, The Host, unfortunately, comes across as kind of cheesy.

And thus my quandary: so it’s not great literature, but getting swept up in a book is something special. Don’t we all read to recapture that thrill we had when we first read Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings or [insert favorite book here]? And so I’ll compromise, giving The Host a solid three stars.

I only wish that I could put my finger on what exactly makes Meyer’s books so readable. If I could, I’d be writing my own books and rolling around in money at this very minute.

The Friday Night Knitting Club

By Kate Jacobs

Not unlike the Shop around the Corner in the movie You’ve Got Mail, only with yarn instead of books, Walker and Daughter is a cute, little knitting shop hidden in the deep recess’s of New York City’s Upper West Side, run by single mom Georgia and her twelve-year-old daughter Dakota. It’s a place where a potential sale is never denied, where the door is never fully shut until well after closing time and the last straggler has had a moment to muse and ponder over the choice of wool or cotton. A place where not just stray pieces of yarn gather, but friends; women with virtually nothing in common but one general purpose: to knit together something in their lives.

Georgia and her precocious daughter are not alone in their efforts. There’s her mentor and stand-in mother, Anita, a well-established-in-life sort of friend; Peri, a pre-law student with a penchant for knitting handbags; Lucie, a tv producer who’s lost her way; Darwin, an annoying graduate student; and Georgia’s old high school friend Cat, a Pamela Anderson sort of socialite on the verge of divorce. Like a knitted scarf wrapped tightly around your neck on a blustery day, so it is with these women in a time of crisis. The yarn is what holds it together and keeps out the cold.

The Friday Night Knitting Club is Steel Magnolias with but a different disease and location; How to Tie an American Quilt with yarn instead of fabric blocks; the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but without the rebuilding of a mother-daughter relationship and the cool chant. I liked all of these books, FNKC included, which follow a central theme: make the most of one’s life while you have it and a sisterhood can conquer all.

Aside from the constant use. of. sentence. fragments. and occasionally getting bogged down in the minutiae of the character’s past lives, overall I felt the story moved along these points well-enough. The author milks to the last drop every emotional moment she can, and I felt literally sucked dry at times, almost forced against my will to feel more sentimental towards the characters, even though sometimes I didn’t want too. Sometimes these characters just weren’t likeable, but hey, they’re New Yorkers! What did I expect! *cough*

Did I take something from this book? Sure, be grateful for the friends you have, and take up a skill that uses your fingers, and most of all, be sure to shave your legs and change your underwear everyday. You never know what will happen, for good, and bad. 3 Stars

The Sugar Queen

By Sarah Addison Allen

Let’s see…a story about a young single woman who hoards sweets and trashy romance novels in a cache hidden in her closet. Hmm...I’m on board! I’ll take chocolate and passion on the page over my problems any time. And so we have Josey Cirrini, the twenty-seven-year-old heroine of The Sugar Queen. She’s an almost over-the-hill Southern belle without a life or a date, no privacy from a domineering mother, and now has the town harlot camping out and black-mailing her in her bedroom closet. What’s a girl to do?

Eat, of course. “Packaged snacks, rows of sweets, towers of colas.” And continue to pine over the tall blond mailman who delivers her mail faithfully to her door every day.

Her life was supposed to be simple and uneventful, and she was happy that way, with her chocolate, with her creme-filled cookies, or so she thought. This mysterious woman in her closet, this Della Lee, turns Josey’s “simple” life upside-down, by making her step out of her comfort zone and discover who she really is, whether she wants to or not.

If you’re looking for a fluffy, light read this book’s for you. The author injected a wit and magical realism that set it apart from a typical romance, and the ending though somewhat unrealistic, even in romance terms, was still satisfying.

So, as far as this type of novel goes, this one is in league with many, many others, in that, we suspect love will conquer all. But isn’t that the point? I devoured this story as easily as a warm chocolate chip cookie (I totally craved one while reading this book!), and with almost as much satisfaction, not feeling too full but still hungry for more in the end. Overall, an enjoyable read. 3 Stars