Category Archives: Books

Jan29

Naked Guy

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Last year when doing research on Quartzsite after I’d left, I saw a few references to a nudist who ran a bookstore. After thinking, oh, I missed that, I didn’t give it much thought.

When I met Iggy on Facebook and we compared our 2015 Quartzsite and RTR experiences, he asked if I’d been to the bookstore with the naked guy. When I said I hadn’t, he told me that during his visit, the owner wore nothing but a sock (and he wasn’t talking about on the guy’s foot). Iggy said the guy sometimes wore a jacket if the temperature dropped.

The naked guy in the bookstore became a joke between us (along with the English dish called spotted dick, but that’s a whole other story). Once I got to Quartzsite, I kept saying I was going to go to the bookstore and see the naked guy, but I kept leaving town before I made it out that way. Finally on the last Saturday of the RTR, I paid my visit.

The name of the store is Reader’s Oasis Books,IMG_4459 and it’s located at 690 East Main Street in Quartzsite. The naked guy is owner Paul Winer.

I did see Paul when I walked into the shop. He was wearing big glasses, a jacket, and a black…what to call it? Thong? Pouch? Penis sheath? Banana hammock? What I’m trying to say is that his penis and testicles were covered, but not much else was. When he turned around (yes, I looked), I saw his butt cheeks and a strip of cloth running up his butt crack. (Wedgie city!) It really wasn’t all that shocking. However, I was expecting to see a naked guy there. I’m sure it would have been more shocking had I stumbled across a nearly naked man in a bookstore.

The bookstore is incredible! It is big and stuffed full of books and handwritten signs and pictures and shiny rocks and memorabilia. There is a lot to see in that store. The selection is broad, from 3 for $1 romance novels to military history to old-school children’s books to cookbooks to books on religion to books pertaining specifically to the Southwest. The bookmark I ended up buying (featuring a photo of Paul with his thumb up and sporting a big beard and shades; wearing multiple turquoise necklaces, a straw hat, and a bit of cloth over his privates) boasts over 180,000 titles, and I believe it.

One unusual thing I noticed (in addition to the nearly naked proprietor) was that the majority of the books in the place are tightly wrapped in plastic. Why? One person (unaffiliated with the bookstore) I talked to thought maybe it was to keep dust out of the books. Personally, I’d be hesitant to buy a used book I couldn’t check for mold, water damage, or loose binding.

I also noticed that Paul seems to play up the wackiness of a naked guy in a bookstore. There were photos of him throughout the store, many featuring different penis coverings. I guess if there’s a naked guy in a bookstore anyway, it’s a good way to draw people in. If you’ve got a naked guy around, you might as well flaunt him.

It’s easy to laugh at a naked guy selling books, but in the photos of him scattered through the store, Paul looks like a happy man. If his dream was to be a nudist in the desert and sell books, he’s quite a success. There aren’t too many places where a man can wear a thong in January and not (literally) freeze his balls off. As a nudist in Quartzsite, Paul pretty much has it made.

I didn’t buy any books at Reader’s Oasis. I had plenty of books in the van, and I’m being careful about the money I’m spending. But I did buy two Reader’s Oasis bookmarks. One is for me so I can hang it in the big collage in my van. The other is for Iggy because I knew he wouldn’t buy one for himself.

I took the photo in this post.

Jan12

Book Review: The Urban Homestead

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[amazon template=image&asin=1934170100]Today I will share with you a review I wrote for a feminist review website in 2009. The book in question is called The Urban Homestead and was written by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen.

Subtitled “Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City,” this volume in the Process Self-Reliance Series bills itself as “a project and resource book, complete with step-by-step illustrations and instructions to get you started homesteading right now.” It really delivers, both to absolute beginners and to folks who have already ventured into the world of urban homesteading.

The authors start with growing food. Chapter One offers guidance on the four general strategies for growing food in an urban setting, followed by directions for making seed balls. This chapter gives basic yet useful information about permaculture, then goes into helpful detail about the seven guiding principles of successful urban farming.

Chapter Two gives step-by-step instructions for five projects the authors deem essential for growing food, including starting a compost pile, composting with worms, mulching, building a raised bed, and building self-watering containers. The second half of the chapter includes guidelines for a variety of undertakings, including staring seeds, transplanting, making fertilizer tea, container gardening, installing drip irrigation, controlling insect and animal pests, and rotating crops. The directions are comprehensive; it is not assumed that the reader already has a lot of gardening knowledge and experience, which is beneficial to both novices and folks needing a refresher course.

Urban foraging is the topic of chapter three, and everything from eating acorns to dumpster diving is covered. Six things to know about eating wild are explained in the feral edibles section, along with a list of “some of the most liked, most widespread edible weeds in the continental U.S.” There are also sections on invasive edibles, fruit foraging, and reviving day-old bread.

Chapter Four focuses on keeping livestock in the city. It includes ample advice about chickens, including where to get them, what to feed them, and how to house them. Other livestock considered include ducks, rabbits, pigeons, quail, and bees.

“Revolutionary Home Economics” is an extensive chapter dealing with the “indoor arts.” The first part of the chapter is about food. There are instructions about preserving food through canning, pickling, and drying, as well as by other means. There are also directions for making yogurt, ricotta cheese, and butter. The second half of the chapter is all about cleaning and includes formulas for making DIY cleaning supplies using baking soda, distilled white vinegar, and liquid castile soap. There’s also a short section on dealing with household pests. The chapter ends with valuable tips on what to look for and what choices to make if choosing a new urban homestead.

Chapter Six is about water and power for the homestead and includes information about conserving and harvesting rainwater. There are several projects pertaining to greywater, including running a greywater source directly outside and making a greywater wetland. Topics in the energy section include using insulation and solar heat to increase energy efficiency, alternatives to gas-heated showers, solar cookers, and wind and solar power.

The last chapter, “Transportation,” is rather short. It touches on walking but basically emphasizes cycling. The book ends with a comprehensive resource list, including websites, books, and magazines. Disappointingly, there is no index.

The Urban Homestead is a fantastic introduction to living off the land, even when there’s not much land available. It’s not meant to be read once, cover to cover. It’s meant to be kept on hand as a resource, a book to refer to again and again in the garden, in the kitchen, in the workroom. There’s a lifetime of information packed in to these 308 pages, and the time to start using that information is now.

 

Dec25

Xmas Book Reviews

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christianity, jesus, mariaIn celebration of the virgin birth, I am giving my readers a collection of reviews of Xmas related books today.

The Twelve Terrors of Christmas by John Updike with illustrations by Edward Gorey

I really enjoyed this sort of anti-Christmas book. It points out how weird the Christmas holiday really is. Isn’t the idea of Santa going down the chimney really strange?

Scared of Santa: Scenes of Terror in Toyland by Denise Joyce and Nancy Watkins

How this book got published, I will never know.

It is full of hundreds of photos of kids sitting on Santa’s lap, crying, screaming, trying to escape. Yep, the whole theme of this book is getting a laugh out of the misery of little children.

Don’t get me wrong, twenty-five or thirty photos of kids having negative reactions to Santa Claus might have been funny. However, hundreds and hundreds of the same kinds of pictures quickly becomes totally boring. Yawn!

The captions are even worse than the photos. I’m sure the caption writers were trying to be clever, but most of what they came up with is just plain dumb.

I can’t imagine who would buy this book. (I borrowed the copy I read from my public library, and I’m a bit miffed that my tax dollars were spent on this dreck.) Will families buy this book and look at it lovingly every year until it becomes part of their family tradition? Yikes!

[amazon template=image&asin=1846471737] Merry Christmas Ernest and Celestine by Gabrielle Vincent

My sibling gave me this book. I love it because the (adult male) bear and the (little girl) mouse who live together go dumpster diving to get the supplies they need for a Christmas party. This book shows kids a non-typical family and that it’s ok to get what one needs out of other people’s trash. Hasn’t the Christian right banned this book yet?

The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Holidays by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht

This book is hilarious. It gives all sorts of simple step by step instructions for surviving whatever catastrophe may befall your holiday season. I love this whole series.

Hilary Knight’s The Twelve Days of Christmas by Hilary Knight

This is another Christmas book from my childhood.

It’s the traditional “The Twelve Days of Christmas Song” paired up with lovely pictures. An anthropomorphic bear giving the presents to his bear lady love. (I just found out a female bear is called a sow, just like a pig. A male is a boar.) It’s the super cute illustrations that make this book worth reading.

My very favorite part is the supporting character raccoon cat (ha!) burglar trying to open a tightly closed trash can.

The Twelve Days of Christmas in California by Laura Rader

The emphasis of this book is on California, not on Christmas. I think even a family who doesn’t celebrate Xmas (but does like California) could like this book.

There are three components of this book.

#1 Bright color illustrations showing the California themed things (4 hummingbirds, 6 otters smiling, 12 redwoods swaying) that the California cousin gives to her young relative from out of state. The illustrations are nice.

#2 The basic story of “On the first day of Christmas…On the second day of Christmas…”, etc. This short version of the story is in bold print and would be appropriate for young children (toddlers) who can’t sit through a long, involved story.

#3 The longer, involved story, told through letters written by the visiting cousin to his parents back home. These letters include lots of additional information about whatever California-related thing the kid received from the cousin that particular day. These letters are appropriately read to or by an older kid who can sit through the longer story.

The book contains a LOT of facts about California. A kid in elementary school could use this book at any time of year to do a report on the Golden State.

One thing I didn’t like about this book was “Cali” the “talking” California valley quail (the California state bird). The book did NOT need the gimmick of a talking quail.

One thing I did like about the book is that except for the talking quail and the small redwood tree she comes in, the cousin doesn’t actually give any physical items. Most 12 Days of Christmas stories are overrun with the consumerism of a dozen pear trees and a score of gold rings.

Cajun Night Before Christmas by Howard Jacobs, illustrated by James Rice  [amazon template=image&asin=0882899406]

My sister and I had a copy of this book when we were little. I don’t know where it came from.

My cousin Denise’s husband Mark could do the accent for reading this book, as could my dad. I don’t think I could do it so well, but I haven’t tried for years.

This is the classic Christmas story told with a Cajun twist and illustrated beautifully. No Cajun household is complete without a copy.

The picture of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/maria-mery-sant-51524/. The other images are Amazon affiliate links. If you click on any of those images, you’ll go right to Amazon. Anything you click on and then buy will earn me a small advertising fee.

 
Dec10

Marijuana as “Active Placebo”

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[amazon template=image&asin=0375760393]I recently read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. In this book, Pollan examines the relationship between plants and people, not only how people shape plants, but how plants shape people. I found the book fascinating. Pollan presents ideas (about plants and about humanity) I had never before considered.

In examining the relationships between plants and people, Pollan considers the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato.

One of the ideas in the chapter on cannabis struck me to the extent that I wanted to write it down, contemplate it further, and share it.

“…Andrew Weil describes marijuana as an ‘active placebo.’ He contends that cannabis does not itself create but merely triggers the mental state we identify as ‘being high.’ The very same mental state, minus the ‘physiological noise’ of the drug itself can be triggered in other ways, such as meditation or breathing exercises. Weil believes it is an error of modern materialist thinking to believe…that the ‘high’ smokers experience is somehow a product of the plant itself (or TCH), rather than a creation of the mind…”

Nov18

November’s Book Review: Living Oprah

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[amazon template=image&asin=B011MEZ2ZA]This month I am sharing a review of the book Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Live as TV’s Most Influential Guru Advises by Robyn Okrant. I read this memoir at the end of August/beginning of September 2015 and wrote the review shortly after finishing the book.

I bought this book for $1 at the Dollar Tree. Score!

I don’t remember hearing about Robyn Okrant’s life experiment in 2008 when she was actually living Oprah. In fact, I don’t recall having ever heard about Okrant’s experiment or the book she wrote about it. So I came to this memoir with no preconceived notions. (That happens so seldom, but I love it when it does.)

So for any other latecomers to this book, the premise is that for an entire calendar year, whatever Oprah said her audience needed to do (via her television show, O magazine, or the official Oprah website), Okrant did. When Oprah said every woman needs a crisp white shirt, dark jeans, and leopard print shoes, Okrant bought those articles of clothing and wore them (as shown on the photo on the book jacket). Okrant turned to Oprah resources for makeup tips and recipes. Okrant decluttered and decorated her home according to the word of Oprah. When Oprah said, “Watch this movie” or “Read this book,” Okrant did it.

Okrant kept meticulous records of the time and money she spent living Oprah. (Her monthly spread sheet information is included in the book.) All told, Okrant spent just shy of 1,203 hours and $4,782 living Oprah in 2008.

(When Okrant started her project, she was blogging about it. The book deal came later.)

Overall, liked this book very much. I found the whole “walk[ing] the walk of the Queen of Talk” premise fascinating. I’ve never been a huge Oprah fan, although of course, I am aware of the phenomenon that is Oprah. If I ever sat down and watched an entire episode of her show, it was in the last century. I have read a few (thrift store purchased) issues of O magazine (but Oprah’s favorite things are all out of my price range). I was really interested to find out what sorts of things Oprah might tell people (women, mostly) they should do.

The part of Okrant’s writing here I liked the least was her super corny joking and the way she usually felt the need to point out she had just made a corny joke, which came across to me as a written version of her elbow jabbing me in the ribs, letting me know I should be laughing. Thankfully, as the book progressed, there was less of this sort of joking and less of Okrant’s (written) elbow in my ribs. By the end of the book, I had laughed spontaneously and out loud at several truly funny cracks Okrant made (one of which was referring to Oprah as her own personal Chicken Little).

I first started liking Okrant (as a writer and a person) when she got real about her scoliosis. In my eyes, this personal sharing (in a highly personal book) made Okrant seem like not some whiny, busy, “broke” grad student I couldn’t relate to, but a like a real person.

The parts of this book I liked the best were the times Okrant critiqued the dissonance between the messages Oprah gave her audience. Why does Oprah sign the Best Life Challenge contract, then let herself be shown on TV a few days later eating a decadent ice cream treat? Why does Oprah tell her audience it’s what’s inside that counts, then tells them they need to buy specific clothes and have those clothes tailored to fit perfectly? Yes, I loved the critiques and analysis, and Okrant was up for the task.

I am envious of Okrant for picking a topic that was certainly hot at the time, figuring out a project she could carry out related to the topic, writing herself a blog on the topic, then getting a book deal out of the experiment. Good for her! I wish I could pull of something like that.

I would like to read more books by Robyn Okrant. Another memoir (maybe about her life with scoliosis) would be fine, but I’d dig some nonfiction. More analysis, more critique, please Ms. Okrant.

Nov1

Here’s a Book Review: The Biggest Bear

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[amazon template=image&asin=0395150248]Today’s review is of The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward. I wrote this review in August 2015. The Lady of the House saw it in a thrift store and picked it up for me. She picked it up at first because she thought a book about a bear would be cool. After looking at the last page, she read the whole thing, and sent it to me, even though the story is all kinds of fucked up.

This has got to be the saddest children’s book I’ve ever encountered.

Little Johnny Orchard carries a big gun. He is “humiliated” because while other barns nearby have bear skins nailed to them to dry, his family’s barn has never had a bear skin hanging on it. One day Johnny goes into the woods to shoot a bear and comes out with a (live) bear cub.

Where is the cub’s mother? That issues is never addressed in the book, but I suspect she’s nailed up to somebody’s barn. If mamma bear had been there, I bet she’d have fucked up that little shit Johnny.

Of course, the bear eats everything it can get its paws on. (And you thought giving a mouse a cookie or a pig a pancake caused trouble.) The bear wreaks havoc and grows huge.

After leading the bear far away on three occasions, only to have it return within days each time, Johnny and his father decide the boy will shoot the bear. (Ok, this impending shooting is not spelled out, but anybody over the age of six is probably going to look at the illustrations of a sad boy with a gun and figure it out.)

What passes for a happy ending still seems pretty sad to me, but I guess it’s better than having your best friend shoot you because the neighbors think you’re a nuisance.

I guess this book is what passed for children’s entertainment in the early 1950s. No wonder my parents’ generation is so messed up.

Unless you are from a bear hunting family, don’t read this to your kid unless you want to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Oct17

Monthly Book Review: The Horse Whisperer

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I’ve decided to post a book review each month for as long as I have interesting reviews to share. This month’s book is The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. I wrote this review in November of 2014. Warning: This review contains many spoilers. I think it’s ok to share spoilers, because who hasn’t read this book or seen the movie? Are there others blooming later than I did?

[amazon template=image&asin=0345528603]

Where do I begin with this book?

First of all, I have to say that I really didn’t know much about this book when I started reading it. I somehow managed to miss most of the hype about it during the last century when it was on the bestseller list and then made into a movie. It’s about horses right? And maybe Robert Redford is in the movie? And remember, there was a time before this book when there were no whisperers? No horse whisperers, dog whisperers, or baby whisperers. Well, sure, there were probably folks whispering to horses, dogs, babies, and who knows what else (tree whisperers? pigeon whisperers?), but no one called them whisperers. So, thank you Nicholas Evans for adding a word/concept to the English language.

Secondly, (and rather importantly) I could barely put this book down. I tore through it in about 24 hours. (I did other things in addition to reading this book.) The writing is easily read and the story and characters grabbed me. I really wanted to know what happened next, even closer to the end where the cheese factor increased considerably.

All that said, I found most of this book either predictable or improbable.

Predictable: The author described snow, young teenagers on horseback, and an 18-wheeler, and I knew right away that something terrible was going to happen.

Predictable: Rich, white, cosmopolitan, intellectual married woman from the city goes out West and finds herself, peace of mind and true love. She also reconnects with her daughter.

Predictable: The above mentioned woman finds herself, peace of mind and  true love thanks to a handsome, gentle, rugged, smart Western man. (This man is the horse whisperer of the title. It seems he whispers to more than just horses.)

Predictable: The sex with the man from the West is incredible. (A word about sex. There are a few sex scenes in this book. They are fairly hot, but it seems that when Evans wrote this book, he knew no words, neither slang nor medical, for either male of female genitals.)

Predictable: After the man sets everything right for the woman, a baby seals the deal, and the woman basks in the warm, mentally healthy glow of motherhood.

Predictable: The Western man (is he a Jesus figure?) saves the horse too.

Improbable: That not one, but two smart, kind, loving men could fall madly in love and want to be with a controlling, complaining, pushy woman like the main character. Was it just because she was pretty? Of course, the Western man brings out her true kind and loving self . Oh, she was really a wonderful person inside all along. She just needed true love to bring her true nature to the surface. (I guess this one is both improbable and predictable.)

Improbable: That the Western man would kill himself (and death by horse, no less) because he couldn’t be with his true love. I could hardly believe it when it happened. Give me a break. He must totally be Jesus. He sacrifices himself so the woman’s little family can stay intact. I. Don’t. Believe. It.

One thing I really hated about this book is the idea that it puts out there that if one finds one’s “true love,” there is only now, so go ahead and disregard the person you’ve been married to for nearly two decades and just have sex with this person you’ve known for a month. This sex thing after a month, that’s not even love. That’s hormones! I’m not even married. I don’t even believe in marriage. But if a person is in any kind of monogamous relationship, I don’t think it’s OK to just have sex with another person. But this book gave a whole generation permission to just do it! (And I’m not talking about jogging or basketball.)

Bottom line: This book is a romance novel with a questionable moral message. I think the horses were thrown in to trick men into buying the book too.

Sep19

Review of a Book I Actually Like: Waking Up Dead

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[amazon template=image&asin=1493750461]Today I am sharing a review of a book written by my friend Margo Bond Collins. I wrote this review in January 2014. The name of the book is Waking Up Dead.

 

This book is not the sort I usually read.

I’m not typically attracted to books involving raped, murdered, and mutilated women. But this book was given to me by the author to read during the long cold winter, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did.

I think it’s cool that Callie, the main character, is a ghost who doesn’t yet know how to be a ghost (much less why she is one). I was disappointed that Callie didn’t meet any other spirits (or even a human) who could explain at least a bit to her of the how’s and why’s of ghosthood. Can Callie possibly be the only ghost in the Abramsville, Alabama? I hope that in future Callie Taylor adventures our hero will meet folks (dead or alive) who can offer some explanations and tips.

I appreciate that the author doesn’t go into gratuitous gory detail when describing the two murders that happen in this novel. Yes, a woman is raped and murdered and another is murdered and mutilated, but the reader isn’t forced to witness every disturbing detail. Collins reports what the reader needs to know to follow the plot, then allows each individual to imagine the nasty details or not, according to her or his preference.

I chuckled when Callie goes to the Wal-Mart to find a human who can see and hear her. It’s a perfect detail, proving that the author knows just how small Southern towns work.

I thought Collins also reflected race relations in the 21st century South in a true light. Blacks and whites do have relationships (friendships, work connections, romantic encounters) with one another, but such relationships are often fraught with a particular kind of tension. Hurray to Collins for having her characters involved in interracial relationships that are real and complicated.

The cadence of her characters’ conversations also impressed me as the real rhythm of Southern dialogue. I’m not sure someone who hasn’t lived in the South for many years could get the spoken sound of the region so right.

Collins also did a great job with the “who done it?” aspect of the story.  As I mentioned, I don’t usually read murder mysteries, but when I do, I either seem to figure out the answer to the mystery immediately, or find the plot so convoluted that I don’t understand the detective’s eventual tidy little explanation of events. Waking Up Dead kept me guessing, kept me reading, but made sense when explanatory details came to light.

My favorite part of this book is that it has not one, not two, but three kick-ass, strong, brave female characters. That one of these characters is a maw-maw (grandma to folks not from the South) who can’t drive and has poor eyesight is an added bonus. There just aren’t enough old lady heroes in the world of fiction, so I’m grateful that Collins has given us a new one.

All in all, I enjoyed this book and look forward to hearing more from Callie Taylor and Margo Bond Collins.

Sep11

Elephant Sex: Review of Modac

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[amazon template=image&asin=0060929510]In April 2015, I read a book called Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer. If you are interested in Elephant Sex, go ahead and read my review, which follows.

The subtitle of this book is “The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived,” but it reads more like a piece of adventure fiction. The author says the story is true, and I don’t doubt that most of it is. However, the author doesn’t offer any sources (no bibliography, no end notes), doesn’t even say he spoke extensively to Bram and/or Gertie Gunter. Helfer does mention in his author’s note that he used “research and documented proof, which may-or may not-be true.” He also mentions “‘hearsay’-that which people tell you is factual,” but he never says what people he talked to. Finally, he writes the sentence that makes me wonder… “Then a little (poetic) political license is taken.” What does that mean? I take it to mean the author embellished the story, but when and where?

The part of this book that bothered me most was all the direct quotes. How can a true story include so much dialogue? Did people really remember exactly what they said 30, 40, 50 years before? I doubt it. Why use direct quotes if you can’t be sure you’re quoting directly? Usually when authors make up dialogue, they note that they’ve done so, saying it was written to the best of their (or their subjects’) recollection. Nothing like that here, just direct quotes on page after page.

I guess a reader of nonfiction never really knows what parts of a true story are true and what parts are embellishment.

The book is well written and kept me interested, kept me reading. It is an adventure story, and what an adventure Modac and Bram (her trainer-companion-best friend) have. They survive a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean. They live in an Elephantarium somewhere in India. They meet the Royal White Elephant, which no one was allowed to see without permission from the maharajah. They work in the Indian teak forests. They are forced to go to war. They are a huge success in a circus in the United States. So much happens to the elephant and her boy!

Someone asked if this book is suitable for kids. While there are a few mentions of human sexuality (two older teenagers are described as engaging in “romantic intimacy” and there is a reference to a heterosexual couple playfully wrestling and the young woman being surprised by the man’s “hardness”), there’s an entire elephant sex scene. The male elephant’s “erect penis was bursting for attention…Some six feet in length, perhaps weighing twenty-five pounds, and prehensile…” (Prehensile?! Prehensile?!) After the cow elephant was introduced, “[she] spread her hind legs to support the bull’s weight…The penis had searched and found the vulva. Insertion was imminent…As the delicate tips of their trunks met, the orgasm erupted.” Don’t give this book to your 10 year-old unless you want to discuss all that at the breakfast table!

 

Honestly, I’d be more worried about kids being subjected to the violence in this book. There is quite a bit of violence here, much of which I did not want to read. The shipwreck scene and its aftermath are scary. A man is executed (death by elephant) for killing his wife. Bandits try to steal an elephant and kill her human friend, and she (the elephant) gets vengeance. A woman escapes rape only through death. Elephants and their people are forced to go to war when rebels take over their village. War leads to injury and death. Modoc is mistreated by strangers throughout this book, sometimes in extremely violent ways.

If I were responsible for children, I wouldn’t let anyone under the age of 15 read this book unless I knew s/he possessed a high level of maturity. Even so, I would read the book first and have frequent (possibly chapter by chapter) discussions of what the characters were experiencing. This book offers a lot of possibilities for nightmares, so I’d offer a lot of possibilities for talking through all those scary parts.

Aug31

Another Book Review: Metro Girl

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I thought it would be fun to share another book review today. I wrote this review in September of 2014. The book being reviewed is Metro Girl by Janet Evanovich. 

[amazon template=image&asin=0060584025]Why did I waste my time reading this book?

I picked it up from a free shelf in a laundromat, thinking I would give it away on BookMooch. Then I gave it to a friend I thought would enjoy reading it (she did), but she gave it back to me when she was done. So I started reading it, and even though I didn’t really like it, I had a really difficult time putting it down. There was no way I wasn’t going to find out what happened in the end. I guess in that sense, Janet Evanovich did her job well. An author must be a success if readers can’t put her book down.

The protagonist is a woman, which is cool, but she goes by a traditionally male name. (Why do female characters named Jennifer or Heather or Amy so rarely kick ass?) She also has the traditionally male skill of being mechanically inclined. On the one hand, it’s cool that Evanovich recognizes that it is possible for women to be mechanically inclined too, but in this book it feels like a gimmick, a plot device, as if she’s shoving down the reader’s  throat the fact that the main character is pretty, blond, feminine, and WOW, can repair an engine.

The reader gets a lot of information about what the protagonist looks like. Evanovich goes so far as to describe the character’s hairstyle. I didn’t find that information advanced the plot in any way. Nor did I need to know what the character was wearing or the length of her legs. I only needed to read one description to understand that the character is pretty and feminine and men want to fuck her.

And oh, how so very much does her romantic foil want to fuck her! He tells her over and over again, by innuendo and straight up proclamation. He kisses her uninvited and can’t keep his hands off her. She’s desirable. I get it! Of course, the protagonist doesn’t like this guy at first, but by the end of the book, after he saves her ass more than a couple of times, she is gaga over him and is ready and willing to put out. However, for all the flirting and innuendo and sexy talk, there’s no sex scene payoff. In the epilogue, it’s strongly hinted at (wink! wink!) that the deed has been done, but the reader doesn’t get the satisfaction of witnessing the event.

In reality, this book is as much a romance novel as a mystery. The reader is supposed to identify with the protagonist. I was supposed to want to be her. (Well, I would like to be more mechanically inclined, but as for everything else about this woman…give me a break!) As for how she looks, that’s so much fluff, filler to add some pages, to flesh out what in reality could be told in a couple hundred pages, instead of 374.

And I won’t even get started on the coincidences involved that make the plot possible. On more than one occasion, all I could think was, Really?

So I couldn’t stop reading this book, but when I finished it, I kind of felt dirty for having wasted my time and brain cells on this cotton candy of the mind.

And now the cover has separated from the book’s spine, so I can’t even give it away on BookMooch. I guess it will have to go back on the laundromat shelf.