I Am a Pole (and so can you!)

I Am a Pole by Stephen Colbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stephen Colbert cracks me up!

I bought copies of this book for my husband and my brother, thinking it would be more like Colbert's previous book I Am America (and so can you!). I didn't realize it was written as a picture book. While the cadence of the language lends itself to reading the book aloud, I don't think I'll be reading it to any preschoolers any time soon, though, thanks to the (really funny) page about the pole dancer. However, my mother, my husband, my eleven-year-old stepson, and I all laughed out loud while reading it to ourselves, which I see as a great sign of widespread appeal.

The story is of a pole trying to find its calling in life. It tries out many careers before settling on the patriotic one of displaying the American flag.

View all my reviews

More Tinkering

Please stand by...I'm doing some more fiddling and now need to get re-sized versions of a few of my gadgets.  Turns out they don't all auto-adjust their widths.  Good to know!

Any suggestions for what should go where, or does this work?  Please leave your helpful ideas in the comments below!  Thanks!

Spackled and Spooked

Spackled and Spooked by Jennie Bentley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'd have given this one 4 stars except that I again figured out who'd done it, why, and how, pretty much from the very beginning. Ditto with the other "big secret" in the story. I'm not usually that great at figuring out mystery novels, and I like it that way, so knowing all along was annoying. However, I still really enjoyed the characters and the story--watching them figure it out, that is.

This time, Avery Baker and her boyfriend Derek Ellis have purchased a vacant house to renovate and sell. It's been empty for about seventeen years, since Brian Murphy killed his wife and in-laws and then himself. Gossip says it's haunted, which Avery & Derek think is nonsense until they hear footsteps walking down the hallway with no one in sight. Then Derek discovers a human bone in the crawlspace, and suddenly there is a whole new murder for Chief Wayne to investigate, this one more recent. When the cadaver dog makes for the next door neighbor's house, the situation goes from bad to worse.

Engaging, believable characters make up for the lack of suspense, I think. It's a perfect cozy mystery: light and fun. A good beach read. Or couch read, in the event that your beach-going plans fall through. Bring on #3! (This was #2 in the Do-It-Yourself Mystery series.)

For readers' advisors: character and story doorways, no sex, and very little swearing.

View all my reviews

Voter Motivation

I saw this posted on Facebook today.  Moral of the story?  Don't mess with libraries or librarians!  Sharing information is more than just our profession--it's our calling.

This just makes me so happy.  Finally an example of the Good Guys beating the Tea Party.  Ahhhhh....

Playing around

I'm on vacation this week and so am playing around.  Yes, I should be organizing the office & the garage.  And doing yard work.  But it's rainy at the moment, and I've not mustered the willpower yet.  So I'm playing on my computer, tinkering with the design of my blog.  What do you think?  Better?  Worse?  I also liked the design in the "Simple" template section that had sort of a circular pattern in a darker (blue) color than the header.  But I chose this one because of the bookshelves, which seemed appropriate, and I could get the header to be a periwinkle color, which also seemed appropriate.  Can't quite get the same shade for the footers, but I'm still working on that.  Anyway--what are your thoughts?  (And please be kind!)  ☺ Thanks!

Fatal Fixer-Upper

Fatal Fixer-Upper by Jennie Bentley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Avery Baker barely remembers her Great-Aunt Inga, but when she gets a puzzling hand-written request from the elderly woman asking Avery to visit soon, it's time for a road trip from New York City to small-town Maine...especially after Avery catches her boyfriend/boss cheating on her with the receptionist. Unfortunately, upon arrival in Waterfield, she discovers Aunt Inga has died and left her everything--primarily a large Victorian house badly in need of repair. And that is how she comes to meet Derek Ellis, the handsome local renovation specialist. Before long, they're duking it out over kitchen countertops and cabinets. But Avery isn't the only one with an interest in Aunt Inga's old house, and someone is determined to either scare her away or kill her. The trick is to figure out who and why before he succeeds.

My mom recommended this series to me a few months ago, but it wasn't until I was working on a readers' advisory presentation on mysteries that I decided to go ahead and try it out. (All in the name of research, of course!) I still have trouble believing Avery would have dated Philippe (her over-the-top "French" boss) for more than one date, much less four months. He made me want to gag. But Bentley more than makes up for this flaw in the story by slowly, gradually, carefully building the relationship between Avery and Derek. There were no "eyes heating" or "air crackling with electricity" moments, unless you count their arguments over home design. It was a refreshing change of pace!

I also enjoyed the secondary characters, such as Kate, the local B&B owner, and her boyfriend Wayne, the chief of police. They were smart and funny people, and even if Avery is the series "sleuth," I appreciated that Wayne wasn't portrayed as a half-witted buffoon.

Although I figured out the bad guy almost from the very beginning, I didn't guess all the details, and the story still kept me hooked until the very end. Kept me up past my bedtime, in fact, until I finished it.

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways, no sex, and only a few swear words.

View all my reviews

The Shape of Desire

The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've been struggling with how to rate this one. Sharon Shinn is one of my favorite fantasy writers. And yet...meh. This one didn't do it for me. Too much angst. I kept forgetting the main character was supposed to be in her thirties. She behaved much of the time like she was 19--come to think of it, she reminded me of Bella from Twilight. I didn't exactly dislike her; I just wished she'd grow a spine and not waste so much of her time moping over her boyfriend. And there didn't seem to be a solid foundation for a 15-year-long relationship, which is unusual for a Sharon Shinn novel.

I thought the premise of the story had potential: the difficulties of being in love with a shapeshifter who was increasingly not in human form. How do you balance your life to hide his secret? But why did Maria feel compelled to make up SO many lies? She lied to practically everyone about practically everything, and for no really good reason. I never understood why she couldn't just tell people she had a boyfriend named Dante who traveled a lot? Why did she try to hide his existence? When she did need to lie to protect him, why didn't she stick to as much of the truth as she could? That would have made her life--and everyone else's--so much better and less complicated. Instead, she lied constantly, even to Dante eventually. It's not a recipe for healthy, successful relationships, and it's utterly unnecessary. I can understand being apprehensive about broaching a difficult topic with your partner, but if after 15 years together you can't trust him enough to be sure he didn't murder people in parks, then maybe you should not be sleeping with him like a rabid, horny teenager!

I had such a hard time getting through this. It did eventually get a little exciting toward the end. If it hadn't been written by Shinn, I'd have given up and quit reading it after the first couple of chapters, though.

*sigh* OK, Ms. Shinn, enough with the contemporary paranormal stuff. Please go back to writing another Twelve Houses novel or something!

For readers' advisors: tons of swearing and sex. I'm struggling with appeal doorways because the book wasn't very appealing to me, but technically I'd say the doorways are character and story.

View all my reviews