Sacramento
F R E E
Book Review
Apr/May 11 VOLUME 3, ISSUE 6
NEW AND OF INTEREST
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Torn Between Two Lovers By Julie Compton, author of Rescuing Olivia and Tell No Lies Page 5
The Company We Keep: A Husbandand-Wife, True-Life Spy Story
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Trench: A History of Trench Warfare on the Western Front
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The Grand Illusion
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From grains grow giants By Vikram Akula Harvard Business Press, $26.95, 191 pages
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Vikram Akula saw the light – twice. On a visit back to India from his American home, he watched a woman gather spilled grains of rice and resolved to dedicate his life to the poorest of the poor. He chose village microfinancing especially to help women, and making the venture respectably for-profit sealed his decision and led to a prodigiously successful career. At first the author’s a little too much in our face. But he backs down and describes
a humble start before taking us step by step along his path. As the venture spreads, villages where women have barely two rupees to rub together find themselves for the first time control of their lives, able to support their dreams and their families. Inspired by Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel peace laureate, Akula reaches ever higher and displays his Midas touch as financial push each other aside to contribute. Reviewed by Jane Manaster
Interview With Joyce Jenkins – Northern California Book Awards Page 12
Expanded Science Fiction & Fantasy Page 13
132 Reviews INSIDE!
Children’s The Crows of Pearblossom By Aldous Huxley with illustrations by Sophie Blackall Abrams Books for Young Readers, $16.95, 40 pages Mrs. Crow has a terrible problem. Each day she lays an egg and prepares to welcome a new baby crow into her family—only to have the egg disappear. Day after day the cycle repeats, until Mrs. Crow finally discovers the culprit: a rattlesnake who lives at the bottom of the tree. She and Mr. Crow vow to stop him. With the help of Old Man Owl, the Crows execute an ingenious plot that teaches the rattlesnake a lesson he’ll never forget. This is the only book Huxley wrote for children; he created it for his niece in 1944. After being published in 1967, the book all but disappeared—until now. Sophie Blackall’s beautiful watercolor illustrations give the Crows’ world lush detail, from the tearsoaked hankies Mrs. Crow hangs on the tree branches as she mourns her lost babies to the blue bunny slippers the wise owl sports on his feet. The story is just this side of disturbing, with tart, snappish dialogue not often found in children’s tales. A note at the end by Huxley’s niece reveals that this work contains some personal details from Huxley’s life, making it all the more captivating. Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell
Small Saul By Ashley Spires Kids Can Press, $16.95, 32 pages Ahoy, Matey! Would you like to know the story of the smallest of pirates? Small Saul is just such a story. Saul has loved the sea as long as he can remember. He knows that’s where he belongs. When old enough, he tries to join the navy. He isn’t tall enough, but the navy isn’t the only way to go to sea. Off to Pirate College goes Saul. Saul excels in some things--deck swabbing, singing sea shanties, for instance--but not in all things--looting and being rough and tough. Still, through hard work and perseverance, Saul earns his diploma and becomes a pirate. After being turned down by all the ships in the harbor save one, Saul is taken on The Rusty Squid. He tries his best-cooking, cleaning, decorating--but he doesn’t measure up and is kicked off the ship. Will he ever sail again? Will the pirates of the Rusty Squid learn to appreciate his special skills? Ashley Spires’s whimsical story and witty illustrations will give hope to those who feel the smallest and most outcast and teach a very subtle lesson to all. Small Saul will sail away with your heart. Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck
Sparkler By Carolyn Millard Baico Publishing Inc, $15.95, 50 pages While the theme is worth writing about, its delivery is weighed down with a half dozen adjectives per sentence, making it difficult to slog through. Author Carolyn Millard uses five just to describe the day Sparkler was born: “woop-de-doo, fly a kite, pie-in-the-sky, dance till you drop, doesn’t get better than this kind of day.” After 34 pages of cutsie-wutsie, clichéfilled descriptions, readers finally get to Sparkler’s problem: Negative Nelly Notions that enter her head when she begins nursery school and believes “she couldn’t do much of anything.” At a loss, Sparkler eventually wanders down to the family dock to think by the water, where she meets “The Lady of Light.” This magical being proclaims, “Believe in yourself. Think positive thoughts and you will begin to sparkle again!” Sparkler gets it, changes her Negative Nelly Notions to positive thoughts and the “diamond in her heart …start[s] to sparkle again.” This reviewer recommends the author start with page 35, whittle the story down to about 300 words and use the fun adjectives sparingly to uncover a fun-to-read, tantalizing, page-turner, laugh-out-loud story. Reviewed by Susan Roberts
Biscuit and the Lost Teddy Bear By Alyssa Satin Capucilli , Pat Schories HarperCollins, $16.99, 32 pages Charming Biscuit is back with another “I Can Read” adventure for the youngest of readers. In this story, Biscuit and the little girl who owns him have to become detectives. When Biscuit signals his owner he has found something, she asks him what it is. We discover it is a lost teddy bear. They start by asking friends if they have lost a teddy bear. It doesn’t belong to Sam. It doesn’t belong to Puddles. Who could it belong to? Biscuit spies something new and signals his find to his owner. A moving van stands in the street. Men are unloading boxes and furniture for a new family in the neighborhood. Have they found the owner of the lost teddy bear? Is the mystery solved? Alyssa Satin Capucilli’s delightful story will engage new readers. The sweet illustrations by Pat Schories nudge readers along in deciphering words they may not yet know. Biscuit and the Lost Teddy Bear joins a long line of successful “I Can Read” books in the Biscuit series, charming new readers into building their skills. Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck
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Book Review 1776 Productions. LLC 1215 K Street, 17th Floor Sacramento, CA 95814 Ph. 877.913.1776 info@1776productions.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Ross Rojek ross@1776productions.com
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The Sacramento Book Review is published monthly by 1776 Productions, LLC. The opinions expressed in these pages are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sacramento Book Review or San Francisco Book Review advertisers. All images are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders. All words © 2011, 1776 Productions, LLC. April/May 2011 print run 10,000 copies.
IN THIS ISSUE Children’s....................................................... 2 Torn Between Two Lovers.............................. 5 Art, Architecture & Photography................... 5 Religion.......................................................... 6 Mystery, Crime & Thrillers............................. 7 Biographies & Memoirs.................................. 8 Modern Literature.......................................... 9 Classics........................................................... 9 History......................................................... 10 Humor-NonFiction....................................... 11 The Grand Illusion........................................ 11 Interview With Joyce Jenkins...................... 12 Expanded Science Fiction & Fantasy............ 13 Tweens......................................................... 19 Cooking, Food & Wine.................................. 20 Music & Movies............................................. 22 Current Events............................................. 23 Sports & Outdoors........................................ 24 Reference...................................................... 24 Business & Investing.................................... 25 Relationships & Sex...................................... 26 Local Calendar.............................................. 26 Poetry & Short Stories.................................. 27 Sequential Art.............................................. 27 Self-Help....................................................... 28 Popular Fiction............................................. 29 Romance....................................................... 30 Young Adult.................................................. 30 Science & Nature.......................................... 31
FROM THE EDITOR So, in this period of “Shop Local,” local business are encouraging their customers and potential customers to shop at independently owned businesses, to help keep them in business and afloat, instead of shopping at chain stores. In the book business, that boils down to shopping at the independent book stores instead of Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Amazon. The American Booksellers Association promoted Indybound as a resource for independent book stores. Most regions have an independent booksellers association as well. In Northern California, it’s the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA). Six weeks ago, the NCIBA took out a halfpage ad in the San Francisco Chronicle (link), reminding people that even though Borders was closing 14 stores in the Bay Area, there were still plenty of independent booksellers to pick up their business and that spending your book-buying money in those stores helped keep your money in your local community. However, their choice of advertising dollars didn’t go to helping their local community. The San Francisco Chronicle is owned by the Hearst Corporation that owns 14 other city newspapers, along with cable, TV, and radio outlets. From the Hearst website: “Hearst Corporation is one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies. Its major interests include magazine, newspaper and business publishing, cable networks, television and radio broadcasting, internet businesses, TV production and distribution, newspaper features distribution and real estate.” The SF Chronicle has used the problems in the newspaper industry to cut back local staff (¼ of the newsroom was let go in 2007) and using more AP and centrally created content. In 2009, management forced major concessions from the union workers under the threat of closing the paper. So how much of the money spent on advertising in the Chronicle stays in the Bay Area or Northern California? As reported in the Shelf Awareness blog, local bookseller Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, worked with NCIBA executive director Hut Landon to find 14 other Bay Area booksellers to collectively run a full-page ad in the Bay Guardian for $2500. And now they are considering doing something similar in the East Bay with the East Bay Express. This at least makes some sense– both are locally owned and operated. Yet here is where the frustration comes in. We’ve been publishing the Sacramento Book Review for almost 3 years now, with not one See EDITORIAL, cont’d on page 25
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Children’s (cont’d) For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart By Elizabeth Rusch, Lou Fancher, Illustrator, Steve Johnson, Illustrator Tricycle Press, $16.99, 32 pages For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart is unique in its focus on the sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Mozart family was long in talent and Wolfgang was not the only one to show musical gifts. When she was 12-yearsold, Maria Anna was known as one of the finest pianists in Europe. She and her brother toured Europe together, performing for the courts of Europe. While their story is intertwined, Maria Anna’s biography can easily stand alone for her own musical accomplishments. However, her brother went on to greater fame, it would seem, because he was male. Elizabeth Rusch describes Maria Anna’s life and skills and, ultimately, her need to give up her musical career so she could marry. The lush and detailed paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher add layers to the elegance of the historical period. With each page, Rusch also introduces musical terms to young readers with headers such as allegro, coda or cadenza. The story, which is recommended for children from 5 to 8, is based on Mozart family letters. For the Love of Music is a rich and fascinating true story. Reviewed by Elizabeth Humphrey Octopus Soup By Mercer Mayer Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books, $16.99, 32 pages Here is a children’s book without words, which makes it a genuine picture book. It rather resembles a youthful version of a graphic novel where the illustrations relate the tale of an octopus and his adventures. But with the lack of dialogue, the reader must supply the literal script. In glowingly bright colors, a young octopus, his four pairs of arms dotted with suckers, decides to explore the upper land world. Climbing up a fishing line, the curious young mollusk stows himself in the boat’s tackle-box. Once ashore, his adventures commence with escapades in a restaurant, exposure to city traffic, and we follow his ploys to evade the clutches of his pursuers. With culinary delight, the restaurant chef visualizes the marine visitor as the prime ingredient for his intended mouth-watering octopus soup. Watch how the young explorer escapes his
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adversaries and with a bit of luck, and picture book magic, he is able to plunge back into the ocean and tearfully return to the safety of his natural family and home. Children will adore interpreting the actions portrayed in the colorful pictures and the myriad caricatured animals will challenge their ability to identify them. Youngsters will snuggle together to trace the explorations of a gutsy young octopus. Reviewed by Aron Row The Red Wagon By Renata Liwska Philomel, $16.99, 32 pages Lucy has a new, red wagon to play with, but her fun is delayed when her mother asks her to go to the market. Reluctantly, Lucy and her wagon set out — only to soon realize that this trip is anything but ordinary. As Lucy pulls along her wagon, friends jump in, and as they encounter all manner of obstacles, including rain and a large rock, the wagon ceases to be a wagon at all. When it rains, it becomes a boat. When the sun returns, it becomes a covered wagon full of pioneer friends led courageously by Lucy. It transforms again into a circus wagon, and then a train, and a spaceship. By the time Lucy returns home with the vegetables her mother requested, she’s put in a full day of play. The charming woodland creatures Liwska introduces in The Quiet Book return here: an adorable crowd of raccoons and porcupines, foxes, and rabbits, all rendered so softly as to seem almost plush on the page. The pure delight Lucy and her friends take in her wagon’s exploits is heart-warming, a reminder that the best toys are often those that require nothing more than imagination. Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell Giant Steps to Change the World By Spike Lee, Tonya Lewis Lee, Sean Qualls, Illustrator Simon & Schuster BFYR, $16.99, 30 pages Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee engage young readers in Giant Steps to Change the World. The book, the couple’s third picture book, sets up the challenges that a young person may have to face in realizing a dream. A subtle shift and the authors are suddenly showing how many successful people have struggled to achieve something. Enveloping African American themes and struggles, the story
expands into other famous, successful people. However, the authors never use the names of the famous and instead rely on descriptions that convey so much more. For example, on one page, the focus is on the Tuskegee Airmen and flows into a page about astronaut Neil Armstrong. The inside pages of the book have colorful quotations that range from Jesse Owens to Mother Teresa. It is the uplifting nature of the book that makes it accessible for many children—of all races. The messages serve to challenge the reader to be the best and do the best. However, the authors prompt the readers: “You won’t always have the answers. Ask for help and guidance…” The mixed-media illustrations by Sean Qualls are colorful and bold. This would be a great book to help boost a young child’s self-confidence. Reviewed by Elizabeth Humphrey The Voyage of Turtle Rex By Kurt Cyrus Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99, 32 pages Beautifully written in tight, perfect rhyme, The Voyage of Turtle Rex tells the story of an infant archelon sea turtle that lives in the time of pre-historic dinosaurs. We find her on the beaches where she was born, waiting for the right time to cross safely. When the shadow of a tyrannosaurus rex makes her think it’s night, she scrambles into the water. But it’s not safe there where an “ocean of teeth” chase her until she reaches the safety of “a seaweed hotel.” Over time she grows into a two-ton sea turtle, but still must she hide from the “mosasaur, massive and dark:/ muncher of archelon,/ gulper of shark.” Eventually instincts lead her back to the beaches of her birth, where she lays eggs for the next generation. The tale culminates with a modern-day account of the archelon turtles, and ends with a turtle “scraping a trail to the sea once more.” As with other books by Kurt Cyrus, it’s the in-your-face illustrations of pre-historic dinosaurs that fascinate young eyes. The huge foot of the T-rex reaches half way across the page as it towers above the specksized turtle. Reviewed by Susan Roberts Tumtum & Nutmeg: The Rose Cottage Tales By Emily Bearn Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $16.99, 406 pages My boys really enjoy listening to a good story. So, when I saw the opportunity to re-
view Tumtum & Nutmeg: The Rose Cottage Adventures, I jumped at the chance. We were not disappointed. Reminiscent of Wind in the Willows and The Borrowers, author Emily Bearn has written three delightful tales detailing the adventures of two mice, Tumtum and Nutmeg. These two darling mice and their various companions save Christmas for two children, help retrieve stolen treasure at the beach, and deal with nasty circus mice. The chapters are designed to keep the listeners on the edge of their seats. Indeed, on more than one occasion, I genuinely enjoyed reaching a particularly good cliffhanger, closing the book, and suggesting it was time of bed, just to hear my sons clamor for one more chapter. Illustrator Nick Price’s charming pen-andink drawings are the perfect complement to these lovely tales. On finishing Rose Cottage and discovering that Bearn had written more books about these two mice, my nine-year-old son immediately requested we get all of her books. I doubt a children’s book could receive a stronger recommendation. Reviewed by Annie Peters Disappearing Desmond By Anna Alter Knopf Books for Young Readers, $17.99, 40 pages Disappearing Desmond is a beautifully illustrated tale of a painfully shy tom kitten and how he comes out of his shell. Reminiscent of “Where’s Wally?” in the sense that readers will search for the hidden shy cat in various places on the pages, this book is sure to appeal to both parents and kids. Sometimes dressed in green sitting in a tree or pretending to be a statue in art museum, Desmond has mastered the art of blending in with his environment in the hopes of being overlooked. Desmond’s reign of invisibility ends when a new classmate, Gloria the rabbit, calls him out and notices him day after day. Soon, the two become best of friends. It is not long before Desmond builds confidence and the boost he needs to find other invisible friends of his own. Humorous and quirky, Disappearing Desmond is sure to delight young readers with a charming approach to the subject of shyness. At the root of it all, children will be able to relate to Desmond’s secret desire to be noticed and make friends. Reviewed by Auey Santos
We e k l y colu m n : A F T ER T H E M A N U S C R I P T S a c r a me nt oB o ok R e v ie w.com
Torn Between Two Lovers
By Julie Compton, author of Rescuing Olivia and Tell No Lies . . . feeling like a fool . . . Let me state upfront, I am not talking about men. No, even though my conflict may be similar to choosing between two lovers, where one is forced to weigh competing desires against the consequences of acting on them, in this case, my struggle is of a more professional nature. I’m talking about writing versus that most famous of mistresses, the law. You guessed it. I’m an attorney turned novelist. There are a lot of us out there; pick up any legal thriller at your nearest bookstore or library, and odds are, the author is an attorney. A UK interviewer once asked me why so many American lawyers want to write novels. I think he thought all of us hated law so much that we would choose the starving artist life of a writer over the larger, more steady paycheck most attorneys enjoy (because, face it, very few of us will ever achieve the notoriety or bank accounts of a Turow or Grisham). And though it may be true that some hate it, most attorneys I know love practicing. Indeed, they are addicted to it. Lawyers relish a good legal argument; we appreciate any chance to dissect and discuss even the most arcane points of law, which for most lay folks would induce a coma. But so many of us write, too, because long before we were licensed lawyers, we were writers. Not professionally, in most cases, but I’ve met few writers who didn’t claim to have a drawer full of stories that date back to elementary school. It seems only natural to continue this hobby once you actually have some good stories to tell – and law, by its very conflictive nature, can provide the seeds for growing some fabulous plots. The problem arises for me when I try to choose one over the other. Writing over law. Law over writing. When I took my first hiatus from practicing, I thought I was choosing between motherhood and law, not writing and law. Writing was just something I did while my daughters napped. Nor did I set out to write a legal thriller. But somehow, my characters became lawyers, and my best scenes took place in the courtroom. I eventually realized I missed the practice of law, and writing a novel about it was the next best thing to actually doing it. (In-
deed, some days writing about it is better, since I can infuse my novel with the drama that is often lacking in day to day practice). So what did I do? I began to skim the want ads for law jobs. Just out of curiosity, I told myself. After all, if I truly wanted to return to practice, I knew much more reliable and efficient ways of finding a job than searching the want ads. But one day, I saw an ad for my dream job (my dream law job, that is), and on a whim, I sent off my resume. I’d been away from law for almost six years by then, and I figured I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting an interview, much less hired. But I got the interview, and I got hired. (Even after the man who would become my boss asked me in the interview what I’d been doing for the past six years. Uh, writing a novel, I replied. He laughed, and you can bet he was one of the first to get an announcement when I later learned that novel would be published.) So I returned to my jealous mistress. I still wrote, but my output slowed considerably. I missed the long days at my home computer creating characters and making bad things happen to them. But I loved my new job, too, and I only quit a few years later when my family moved to Florida. I knew I couldn’t replicate that dream job in my new hometown and, since the grass is always greener anyway, I cherished the thought of once again devoting myself full-time to writing. It’s been seven years now. I’ve since published that first novel, Tell No Lies, and wrote my second, Rescuing Olivia, a psychological thriller which was published just this year. I’m almost done writing my third, a sequel to the first, and as I work on the courtroom scenes, I can feel the itch. It doesn’t help that a few months back I had the privilege of serving on my first jury, every lawyer’s fantasy. It was all I could do not to jump the jury box wall and join the prosecutor or the defense attorney (I’m not picky) at the podium. Some may say, why not do both? And it’s true, there are many authors out there who work at least eight hours a day, five days a week, at a job unrelated to novel writing. I envy their stamina. But I’ve tried that, and for me, it didn’t work. Devoting oneself to both law and writing, like trying to juggle two lovers, means one will, almost without fail, get hurt. More often than not, the writing (and writer) will feel the pain.
Art, Architecture & Photography Hiroshige: OnHundred Famous Views of Edo By Melanie Treade, Lorenz Bichler Taschen, $39.99, 240 pages Originally published as one of Taschen’s XL books with a $150 price tag, this new edition of Japanese artist Hiroshige’s woodblock prints is a low priced $40. Smaller than the original edition, this new volume still contains all the original material, just at a more affordable price point. Hiroshige was one of the most famous Japanese ukiyo-e artists during the 19th century. Ukiyo-e means “pictures of the floating world” and primarily focused
on landscapes, historic tales, urban scenes and scenes from the theater and pleasure districts. The art was usually done as woodblocks, allowing mass production in a variety of formats, and is often the art Westerners associate with Japan. This book reprints one of his last collections of pictures, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.The source of the reprint is the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo, which is one of two complete sets of the woodblock prints. The book is bound Japanese style, using twine laced through the pages, and held in a hardcover cover that doesn’t hold the pages to the cover, but protects them and locks at the front. The art is gorgeously reproduced and the editors have included commentary for each plate. The colors are vibrant and the pages feel like silk. By using scenes from around
the city of Edo, Hiroshige has captured that period in time, allowing modern viewers to see the ebb and flow of life in Japan’s capital city 160 years later. For those who enjoy period Japanese art, they are going to be hard pressed to find a better collection at a more competitive price. And those that bought the $150 edition may end up purchasing this edition so they can more comfortably page their way though it, or leave it out on the coffee table for all visitors, young and old alike, to enjoy. Reviewed by Ross Rojek You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less By Mark Kistler Da Capo Lifelong Books, $19, 256 pages
R e a d T H E B A C K PAG E b y p u b l i s h e d a u t h o r s a t S a c r a m e nt o B o o k R e v i e w. c o m
Think you can’t draw? Well think again. In the bookYou Can Draw in 30 Days, Mark Kistler shows that drawing is something that can be learned by anyone, and that all it takes is knowledge and application of the proper techniques, although not necessarily in that order. Kistler’s approach is light and fun, and rather than overwhelming with technical terminology and intimidating concepts, he instead starts you out putting pencil to paper. Within the first few pages of the book, you are already well on your way. See DRAW, cont’d on page 28
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Religion Recovering from Religious Abuse: 11 Steps to Spiritual Freedom By Jack Watts Howard Books, $21.99, 237 pages From fairly benign acts of castigation to more pernicious acts, some church members will experience abuse at the hands of religious leaders who pervert their authority over those they are entrusted to guide and heal. Recovering From Religious Abuse provides a healing balm through an eleven step journey. The reader will get a glimpse into the mind of abusers and their victims. Watts, without giving a pass to abusers, stresses the need for the abused to find healing from bitterness and selfdestructive behaviors through forgiveness. He urges the abused to examine their responses to their abuse and to abandon the driving desire for vindication. Watts covers the natural tendency of the abused to blame God for allowing the abuse to occur, offering the insightful observation that God does not cause abuse and is in fact offended and hurt when it occurs. Watt explains how it is possible for victims to regain their intimate relationship with God. This reviewer felt the techniques would be helpful in situations such as when clergy verbally demean and embarrass people. However, the book is probably insufficient by itself in cases involving heinous acts of sexual predation. Sadly, it’s a timely book given the scope of this problem. Reviewed by Grady Jones Resurrection By Terry W. Dick Eloquent Books, $10.50, 120 pages The story of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion is a key part of the New Testament, but is handled in very short chapters in four Gospels. Each version tells much the same story from a different perspective, but each is only a couple chapters and pages long. Terry Dick has taken that framework and expanded it to a short, booklength story. The bulk of the book is a more story-like version of Jesus’ prayer in the garden, his capture and subsequent crucifixion. However Dick also includes several imagined dialogs between Jesus and God, Jesus and Satan, and the ultimate confrontation between Jesus, God and Satan leading to the Resurrection. The parts of Resurrection that follow the story from the Gospels simply take the bibli-
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cal text and make it more accessible, written much like a historical novel that has enough supporting history to flesh out the personal interactions not usually documented. Those parts not discussed within the Gospels are either expository material aimed at explaining the need for Jesus’ sacrifice, or Jesus’ own thoughts about his upcoming trials. The fictionalized interactions between Jesus, his followers, and those involved in his trail and crucifixion, feel smooth and fit within the Biblical narrative. It is those additional scenes that, while providing additional depth to the scope of Jesus’ trials, also are the most speculative and, while thought-provoking, not the strongest part of Resurrection. For readers interested in a novelization of the period around Jesus’ crucifixion, Resurrection will fit the bill and also provide some of the theological doctrine behind the necessity of the Crucifixion and subsequent death and resurrection of Jesus. Sponsored Review Because I Think, I Believe: A Personal Christian Manifesto By Donald R Wilson Millennial Mind Publishing, $19.95, 210 pages This impressive piece of work not only exhibits Wilson’s passion for Christianity, but it also establishes him as an authority on the subject. In an ironic twist of the ageold battle between science and faith, the author makes use of scientific data to make a compelling argument to support the Christian faith. Though he supplies the fabric in which to swathe ourselves, Wilson may have missed the mark in enlisting the nonbelievers and shoring up the faithful. But he makes no apologies for his unwavering stance on acceptable Christian beliefs and behaviors. Regarding atheists, Wilson questions why a group that believes “nothing regarding God” would attack his existence “with malice and great energy.” “For them, it should be like arguing against the Easter bunny…” On attending church, he charges that this generation “gravitates towards those that extend only feel- good philosophizing…” And lastly, hell he describes as a “final separation from God…” and “populated with those who want to be there.” Wilson describes hell as a “final separation from God…” and “populated with those who want to be there.” While the size of the book is somewhat compact, Wilson’s personal manifesto packs a serious punch. But his message is consis-
tent. Christianity is there for all to embrace and explore and “where man’s intellect fails, faith begins.” Sponsored Review One Precious Pearl: God’s Design for His Church By Robert Russell Infinity Publishing, $14.95, 137 pages One could spend a lifetime studying each verse of the Bible. Robert Lloyd Russell, in his book One Precious Pearl: God’s Design for His Church, helps the reader better understand the parable known as the Pearl of Great Price found in Matthew 13: 45-46. His goal is to demystify a passage that is often misinterpreted or overlooked. In Russell’s analysis, the one precious pearl is analogous to God’s universal Church. Made up of short chapters (between two to five pages each), the book is divided into two parts; Part One is a broad discussion of Matthew 13, and Part Two includes analogies that the symbol of the pearl provides to the modern reader. The chapters can be used in Bible study and Sunday school for both adults and children and can be used for the basis of sermons or as a devotional. At the end of each chapter are questions, summaries, and key concepts for further study and consideration. Russell’s book is a useful source for personal or group study. He begins with a discussion on the Two Adams (first Adam was the fallen Adam of the Garden of Eden and the last Adam is Jesus Christ). He compares and contrasts the birth, life and death of the Two Adams as a way to prepare for the discussion of the one pearl of great price. The main drawback is that the analysis is a bit repetitive. Russell is sure to make each point multiple times. But perhaps that naturally comes when an entire book is about just two verses of the New Testament. A plus is that anyone who picks up the book can use it as a study guide because of its simplicity and clarity. It certainly encourages deeper analysis of other verses or phrases found in the Bible. Sponsored Review Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self & Society By Jay Bakker FaithWords, $19.99, 203 pages Jay Bakker’s firsthand experience of God’s grace came after a great fall. His parents were publicly disgraced as a result of a financial scandal involving their Christian TV ministry in the late 1980s. Their son’s spiral downward into drugs and alcohol followed. All this and his journey back to faith
is chronicled in Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows. Ten years later, God’s grace still resonates powerfully in Bakker’s life as evidenced in his new book, Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society. Bakker and writer Martin Edlund have crafted a book appealing to all — Christian or not — to accept God’s grace and live it fully. The book flows nicely from chapter to chapter with a mix of persuasive narrative, scripture, touching stories, and well-placed humor. Without a doubt, many will disagree with Bakker’s beliefs and Bible interpretation. However, his call for compassion and appreciation of the dignity of every person, especially the ostracized, is admirable. It will certainly be a catalyst to some good discussions. Reviewed by Diana Irvine
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Mystery, Crime & Thrillers A Lonely Death: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery By Charles Todd William Morrow, $24.99, 352 pages Men are returning from the trenches of World War I to their quiet village in Sussex only to be found garroted. Inspector Ian Rutledge is called in, bringing with him his own ghosts from the trenches. The victims all grew up in the same village, but often came from different circumstances economically. This is the 13th Ian Rutledge book from the mother-son team that writes under the pen name Charles Todd, and in many ways, it is their best yet. While set in 1920, these veterans of WWI are facing many of the same demons that our veterans are facing today. They are still trying to make sense of what they did and how they can manage to just slide back into the life that while on the outside looks the same, will never be the same because of what they have seen. The inspector himself suffers from what we now call PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and the ghost from his past, Hamish, is never far away, giving advice or making useless comments. To say that Rutledge is complicated is an understatement. That doesn’t make him bad; it always makes him interesting to read, like an old friend with many layers to unwrap. Reviewed by Gwen Stackler LOCAL SACRAMENTO AUTHOR Mediterranean Grave By William Doonan BookYear Mysteries, $12.95, 272 pages In William Doonan’s second book in the Grave series, Mediterranean Grave, he has Henry Grave lead us on another murder mystery adventure on the high seas with some Greek mythology mixed in. Henry is a crotchety old man who’s rough, gruff, and very funny. Doonan has written this book as though you are Henry Grave, an excellent ploy that draws the reader into the character. Henry is called to investigate a murder mystery aboard a themed yoga/ personal healing cruise. Henry, being older then old school, has no need for this stuff, but has a little fun with it along the way. Once onboard the old, rickety, barely running, and grossly understaffed cruise ship, Henry begins investigating what turns out to be a
couple of murders and the theft of a valuable missing cup that had been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years. Doonan takes the reader to some exotic places and offers an education of these places along the way to a very surprising and pleasing end. Doonan’s crisp and descriptive writing style makes this a very entertaining and engaging read. This is the best combination of a murder mystery and humor that I have ever read. Based on the first book, Grave Passage, I had high expectations for Mediterranean Grave and my expectations were met and surpassed.. Reviewed by Marc Filippelli Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly: And Other New Adventures of the Great Detective By Donald Thomas Pegasus, $25.00, 368 pages Holmes and Watson have been the premiere investigators of all acts criminal and nefarious in literature for more than a century, and while many authors have attempted to follow in Doyle’s footsteps, few have done so with the panache, intelligence, and style of Donald Thomas. In his latest collection, the intrepid pair confronts a trio of perplexing mysteries: a theft at a young men’s naval academy, the untimely death of a celebrated actor, and the case of a woman haunted by ghosts and committed to an asylum after being convicted for a heinous crime. The first story, The Case of a Boy’s Honor, is a rather run-of-themill endeavor. The Case of the Ghosts of Bly has a similarly underwhelming start, feeling oddly like a Scooby-Doo mystery, but it soon develops into a riveting and intriguing tale reminiscent of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The collection closes strong with The Case of the Matinee Idol, a slightly messy affair that features Holmes’ oft-referenced theatrical experience. It is a showcase for both Thomas and Holmes, offering numerous twists and plenty for the reader to chew on. Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly is uneven, but still worth your time. Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Ares Rising By Brian Phillipson AuthorHouse, $23.49, 512 pages Many bad things have happened in the history of the United States. What if they weren’t random terrible events, but all part of the efforts of a secret organization started
by the US government? The Ares Project began with the best intentions to help develop technology to aid the government, but now is more interested in protecting itself, its budget, and its creations than being helpful to the US government. In the tradition of government bureaucracy, many of the people who work for Ares don’t even know who they’re working for or that they are no longer friendly to the US government. Because so few people know about the Ares Project, it isn’t difficult to keep a secret so large. But when a few people stumble upon information, the Ares Project directors launch a drastic plan to save it. A plan that involves starting a war. What is so appealing about Ares Rising is the experiences of the innocent people involved. People who are just doing their boring, not-take-over-the-world jobs. Then suddenly, instead of marking student papers or writing papers of geology, they find themselves careening into oncoming traffic or facing guns aimed at their heads. Ares Rising goes from 0 to 200 mph as it switches between those directly involved in the behind the scenes machinations of the Ares Project and the people who find themselves screaming, “What is happening?!” Even characters with less than stellar motivation find they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they took that bribe or agreed to follow that guy. It’s fascinating as author Brian Phillipson reveals how so many people, with varying degrees of knowledge, are involved in the Ares Project. Ares Rising is truly a spider’s web, weaving in and out and over itself connecting so many players and events. Sponsored Review Gideon’s War: A Novel By Howard Gordon Touchstone, $24.99, 322 pages Gideon Davis is a conflict negotiator who believes in using weapons as a last resort – a policy that disgusts his older brother Tillman. But even if Tillman is hard-core military, Gideon still has trouble believing that his brother has turned into a ruthless terrorist, killing indiscriminately, and intent on forcing America into an allout war. Now Gideon must find his brother and unravel the knot of deadly secrets that surrounds him before the terrorists blow up
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at: esandNoble.com Availab.le m o , Barn Amazon c rs.com ightfulhei r e h t . w w w one of the world’s largest and most expensive oil rigs, killing everyone onboard. Howard Gordon is a Hollywood writer who contributed to the first few seasons of X-Files and was an executive producer for the hit TV series 24. This experience is apparent in Gideon’s War, which often times reads almost like a script instead of a novel. The action is good and there’s at least one prime-time-worthy moment that’s well executed, although the end is just a touch too predictable and the romance between two of the main characters feels less organic and more inserted, as though the editor had gotten to the end of the book and suddenly realized that there was no love story. Gasp! In general, a decent read. Reviewed by Heather Ortiz The Anatomy of Ghosts By Andrew Taylor Hyperion, $24.99, 469 pages Widower and former printer John Holdsworth has been hired by Lady Anne Oldershaw to catalogue her deceased husband’s book collection. She wishes to donate it to the Jerusalem College library at Cambridge, where her son, Frank, is a student. She also wants Holdsworth to assess the college library’s needs, and to bring Frank home. (Frank is currently being treated in an institution, having purportedly lost his mind after seeing the ghost of Sylvia Whichcote.) Lady Anne sends Holdsworth with a letter of introduction to the Master of Jerusalem College, but nothing at Jerusalem College is as it seems. Soon Holdsworth begins uncovering clues to a sinister mystery that involves two deaths and a secret society with ominous rituals. This is a literary mystery that yields its secrets bit by bit in the hands of a master storyteller. The first chapter opens with a scene that might offend some sensibilities, but it is essential to the story, and its details are crucial to later events. Andrew Taylor lures the reader into the world of 18th cenSee GIDEON’S, con’t on page 11
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Biographies & Memoirs A School for Others: The History of the Belize High School of Agriculture By George LeBard Xlibris, $29.99, 280 pages “There was always something there, nagging me in the back of my mind, telling me there was more to life, that my existence had meaning. I knew that in order to be successful and make something out of life, I would have to change everything. The problem was that every time I thought about taking charge, I did what I always did—drank, did more drugs, and got laid. It didn’t help me find what I was looking for, but it helped me forget that there might be something better.” These are the words of a man in the fight for his life, a man in search. On his quest for a way out, he finds a jungle, a need and, perhaps the bravest act of all, he finds himself. George Lebard joined the Peace Corps, volunteering in Belize in Central America in 1981. While sweating in the humidity and swatting flying pests from his sleep, he finds a need and fills it. He has documented his dedication and the time he spent turning an abandoned school, tucked deep in the thick of the jungle, into a refuge for students who would not otherwise have had a chance at an education. His memoir is raw and unapologetic, from the backdrop days of a biker-wannabe to a drug-induced lost boy to a man with a vision and a purpose. His story sings with the refrain of fresh air. Each chapter is divided into small, bitesize segments and the writing flows much like one would hope: cohesively intriguing. There is a finely attuned balance between LeBard’s personal accounts and the political views and globalization of Belize, each detail lending itself to its counterpart. The woven history and exploration of this distant neighbor come alive on the pages at most times. Every so often the writing falls into “pronoun over usage,” but not enough to cut into the meat of the story, or to take away from the fluidity. He keeps things moving along and the characters absorbing. By stretching beyond himself, he comes to his own realities. Under the canopy of the jungle, LeBard manages to conquer both boundaries, the immediacy of the Belizean need and his quest for self. Sponsored Review Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart By Stefan Kanfer Knopf, $26.95, 290 pages Humphrey Bogart is one of the greatest American actors of all time. Men wanted to be like him and women wanted to be with
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him. He was the ultimate man’s man. He was the one who would never stick out his neck for anyone, and then help someone in need. Yet what was the real Bogart behind the Hollywood mask? In this new biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the life and the legacy of Humphrey Bogart. Humphrey was raised by a wealthy family, he went to a boarding school, and was assured a place at Yale; but then he dropped out and joined the Navy. After World War I, he left the Navy and got odd jobs on Broadway, eventually doing small bit roles. He rose through Broadway, and eventually, got his big break in movies when he was 40 years old. He would then come to dominate the movie screens with tough guy roles, always fighting for respect from other actors and studio heads. He might have talked a tough game, but underneath, he was insecure and afraid of what his life had amounted to. This biography really blazes no new trails, except for examining his impact; but even that part is rushed and nothing more than a quick overview of books written about Humphrey Bogart. Reviewed by Kevin WInter Cycles of a Traveler: True Tales of Voyage, Discovery, and Synchronicity By Joe Diomede AuthorHouse, $25.99, 648 pages Sometimes it really is about the journey. In Cycles of a Traveler, Joe Diomede shows us how important that journey can be. His book covers his journeys on motorcycle and bicycle throughout wide swatches of the world, and the philosophical journeys that matched the physical ones. The journeys cover a good part of the known world, from the United States to Canada, from Japan to Russia, By book’s end, it seems that he has covered anywhere that a road can be found. The travels themselves take a back seat to people he meets on the road. He encounters a lot of gorgeous geography, from the Rockies to the Chinese countryside. There are maps included to show where he cycled, but it is the photographs of those he meets that accentuate the travels. It makes for an interesting travelogue through cultures rather than landscapes. This sets the book apart from most travelogues; it’s the people and how they are similar that really makes the book interesting, including those he decides not to travel with. The journey into the mystery of the mundane is what this book is about. Through his
The Company We Keep: A Husband-andWife, True-Life Spy Story By Robert Baer and Dayna Baer Crown, $26.00, 305 pages
It goes without saying that the life of a spy plays havoc on a marriage. But, what happens when two CIA operatives discover quite by chance that there is more to their relationship than gathering secrets for the government? In a sizzling, fast-paced tale of espionage and intrigue, Bob and Dayna Baer take turns telling how they met, fell in love, married, and set a new course for their lives. You’ll not find a more nail-biting account of romance in print anywhere. Even the title is filled with irony, since insiders refer to the CIA as “The Company.” Although the manuscript had to be cleared with the State Department before it could be published, to prevent the risk of national security secrets being inadvertently disclosed, you’ll find plenty of cloak-and-dagger betrayal within these pages. An accomplished writer, Bob has authored three best-sellers involving the CIA, but Dayna’s narratives are equally compelling and laced with suspense. For example: “The tall man fired three quick shots into Welch’s chest. He and the other man walked back to their car and drove away. Welch died on the spot. Police found casings on the ground but none with a fingerprint.” More than a memoir, this is a real spy thriller and a heartwarming romance all wrapped up into one. Reviewed by Casey Corthron travels, Diomede is able to disconnect from the unimportant differences of people and look at the similarities. It is those similarities that are fascinating, especially when he goes to lands other than the United States and Canada. Although he encounters different levels of technology and different landscapes, he is able to find the common threads, showing us that we are not really all that different after all, and that we should focus on the commonalities. This book is a great travelogue, but an even better road map of the human soul. Sponsored Review Growing Up Under Fascism in a Little Town in Southern Italy By Dr. Nicholas La Bianca Xlibris, $19.99, 254 pages Remnants of Italy’s archaic feudal system remained when Mussolini became prime minister in 1922. By traditional standards, the author’s family was considered a lower middleclass family of landowners in their small southern village. La Bianca’s factual account is a glimpse of his life during the 1930s through the mid-40s--a taste of their labor-intensive culture, and his struggle to achieve an education in a society that normally sends children to work after they complete the fifth grade. La Bianca’s father left Italy as a teenager
to seek employment in America and was eventually drafted by the US military and served in WWI. Proud of his new patriotism, La Bianca’s father continued to work in America to support his family, but the author and his siblings remained in Italy with their mother until after WWII. The author takes us on tour of the town, their small apartment, and the quaint Italian culture during a time of deprivation and devastation. He describes the olive and almond harvesting; the drying, storing, and pickling of winter foods; the games the children played without the luxury of toys; fleeing from frightening air raids to sleep in barns and happier times like religious celebrations and carnevales. La Bianca gives Il Duce (Mussolini) his due for solving many of Italy’s problems, including sovereignty for the Vatican and vast infrastructure improvements, like public utilities and schools. The author also expands on the unnecessary carnage in southern Italy, due to poor military strategy by Allied Forces. After the war, his family relocates to America and La Bianca goes on to graduate school in New York and eventually earns a Doctor of Arts degree. The informational value of this book is extraordinary—a precious resource for anyone researching Italian life during this period. However, it contains errors, and like most memoirs, the author’s voice occasionally seems detached. The numerous pictures, maps and illustrations help to clarify the descriptions and add flavor to the narrative. Sponsored Review
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Modern Literature The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore By Benjamin Hale Twelve, $25.99, 592 pages The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is a book that likely will give potential readers pause. First, the book is told in the first person by Bruno Littlemore himself, who is a chimpanzee. Second, this chimp gets around. Not only can speak, but he also maintains legitimate relationships with human beings and ends up murdering one of them. Finally, the book checks in at almost six hundred pages. This is a hefty tome for a firsttime novelist. Of course, not all of these things are actually troublesome, least of all Hale’s prose. He writes with an effortless fluidity, and the story itself pulls the reader along throughout Bruno’s adventures and keeps the many pages turning. The book surely does not lack for plot. The problems lie more in the approach than in the substance. There is something preventing the complete emotional immersion of the reader in the story—a nonchalance that keeps readers at arm’s length. And perhaps it is this same nonchalance with which the writer pursues his story. Bruno is so lifelike that we forget he is a chimp, but when we do, something is lost. Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell
Classics The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel, Editor Belknap Press, $35.00, 236 pages “I re-read this novel every couple of years. It’s a poisonous book, vulgar, a sham, better unwritten, the atmosphere heavy with the mephitic odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction. Indeed, this book is false to morality, since it seems to condone a course of unnatural iniquity to a life of cleanliness, health, and sanity./” The words above are from the first reviews of Dorian Grayin 1890. Its frame of reference is Wilde’s Victorian London—the fashions, innuendos, the period’s precise codes of etiquette, and the political and sexual milieu. Today, we know the references as coded imputations of homosexuality. Dorian Gray was used by the prosecution against Wilde in his morality trial.
My Name Is Red By Orhan Pamuk, Erdag M. Goknar, Translator Everyman’s Library, $24.00, 483 pages Part murder mystery, part love story, part meditation on the power and meaning of art, My Name Is Red gallops on almost 500 pages, alternating voices with different characters who come together around the creation of an illuminated manuscript following European influences by secret order of a powerful sultan. The artists, calligraphers, and miniaturists, with names like Butterfly, Olive, and Stork, compete fiercely sometimes violently for leadership of the workshop. One fundamentalist faction of artists argue that paintings must not be made for money, nor can their subjects be drawn and reality. The competition becomes heated and the talented miniaturist Elegant Effendi is murdered, and his body is thrown down a well. Black Effendi sets out to uncloak the murderer, and returns to the house where, as a young apprentice, he fell in love with the beautiful Shekure, who has since married and is now widowed. He sues for her hand, but Shekure, on her side, can’t decide whether to marry the rather crude Hasan, her brotherin-law, or Black Effendi, and sends messages through Esther, the local matchmaker. Will Black Effendi discover the murderer? Will he win Shekure’s hand? In this tapestry richly interweaving philosophy and character, even the color Red has a say. Reviewed by Zara Raab
Mr. Chartwell: A Novel By Rebecca Hunt Dial Press, $24.00, 256 pages It is July 1964 and Winston Churchill wakes in his bedroom, feeling a dark presence in the shadows. It’s familiar, but still unwelcome. Later that day, librarian Esther Hammerhans goes to her front door to meet her new lodger and finds, to her shock, that it’s a large black dog. Mr. Chartwell is keeping busy this Wednesday. For the respected statesman, the black dog is an old companion he can’t seem to shake for long. For Esther, the animal also called “Black Pat” is a new acquaintance, one that’s unpleasant and tiresome but who seems to keep insinuating himself further and further into her house and life. The question becomes, will Churchill be able to free himself of the dog for one day, the day of his retirement from his life’s work? Will Esther allow the dog to make himself completely at home? Mr. Chartwell is a clever novel examining the deceptive and alarming way in which depression can insinuate itself into a person’s life. Does one ever have a choice? Is it possible to force out the black dog? Rebecca Hunt has taken an analogy and turned it into a highly readable book that is at turns witty and insightful. Reviewed by Cathy Carmode Lim
Me, Myself, and Why? By MaryJanice Davidson St. Martin’s Press, $24.99, 302 pages When exactly did the traditional romance novel go out of style? The cute meet, boy likes girl, girl doesn’t know the boy is alive, boy performs some heroic deed, girl finally notices boy and they fall madly in love just in time for the big dance. Now, there has to be a hook. Boy turns hairy once a month, girl has really pale skin and can only meet a night. Girl has multiple personality disorder. MaryJanice Davidson has always written odd-ball, outrageously funny, but strangely sweet romance novels. Her latest offering, Me, Myself, and Why is no different. Any man who wants to date main character Candace Jones doesn’t just have to win her heart but those of her “sisters” as well, her other personalities Shiro and Adrienne. But Patrick, her best friend’s brother, seems up to the task. Not only does he woo the strait-laced Candace but seems to appeal to and revel in all the sisters. Me, Myself, and Why is not your typical, traditional romance novel, and that’s what makes it so enjoyable. A little darker than the average Davidson offering, Candace is an FBI special agent with multiple homicides to solve and a serial killer on her tail, plus the new man in her life. The fast-paced action will have readers turning the pages as fast as they possibly can. Reviewed by Lanine Bradley
Dorian Gray is a novel about the aesthetic of beauty for its own sake. It’s also a feast of language, celebration of the exotic and esoteric in highly condensed poetic language. It’s also a tragedy. It’s Wilde’s only novel, written in decorative prose that works upon the senses, with a moral all too apparent in the end. In addition to the fascinating footnotes, this edition is filled with pictures, photographs, drawings, and reproductions from the artists that influenced Wilde. It is a fabulous and welcome addition to any library. Hats off to Nicholas Frankel the editor for this new annotated and uncensored edition! “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” Reviewed by Phil Semler
The Year of the Hare: A Novel By Arto Paasilinna Penguin (Non-Classics), $14.00, 194 pages The Year of the Hare is a fairy tale of escapism, one man’s rebellion against the status quo, and for some reason, a rabbit. To be more exact, a hare. Kaarlo Vatanen is a Finnish journalist on his way to an assignment. After striking a hare with the car, Vatanen decides to find the animal and care for its wounds. His impatient photographer leaves him behind, pushing Vatanen to come to terms with the fact that he doesn’t actually like his job, his wife, or his life. He leaves them all behind, cashes in on the sale of his boat, and disappears into the Finnish countryside.
One adventure after another besets Vatanen and the hare, and they meet a cast of amazing characters, including a sexy milk maid, an alcoholic logger, and a trigger happy pastor. The story bumps along with almost a complete lack of sentimentality, and the wild rabbit mysteriously seems to trail Vatanen with the strange loyalty of a kindred spirit. Paasilinna takes good-humored jabs at both the Finnish army and the United States and Sweden in the chapters following “The Bear,” a sort of commentary on the fruitlessness and cruelty of war games, and the people who seem to enjoy them. Vatanen’s passive run-away attitude changes into a more aggressive stance, told through a hunt that leads from his teenage-style rebellion into his “adulthood” as someone who stands up for what he believes in and meets it head on. The ending smells a little like Camus’ The Stranger, but less baleful. At 194 pages,
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History The American Revolution: A Concise History By Robert J. Allison Oxford University Press, $18.95, 106 pages Do not let the sheer economy of words in Allison’s concise history of our struggle for independence fool you into thinking this work is a glossy summary of events. It is rich with detail! Prefaced with an outline of key dates, the book immediately launches into the origins of the American Revolution, pointing out how unlikely a unified bid for self-government seemed at first. Pushed into the proverbial corner, the conflict escalates in a domino-like chain of events. Allison paints vivid pictures of the battles, and takes us behind the scenes to military strategies, betrayals, political intrigue, narrow escapes, and foiled plans. In each case, the author identifies the turning points of the war which brought recognition of American sovereignty and unparalleled military aid from France. Wonderfully illustrated and loaded with quotes; Allison brings the history to life with fresh vision of underlying motives that brought peaceful citizens to bear arms against a monarchy. As a baffled British officer noted, “I have seen an American general and his officers, without pay, and almost without clothes, living on roots and drinking water; and all for LIBERTY! What chance have we against such men!” Indeed, Allison’s quandary still rings clear despite pages of testimonials: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine exactly how many served; it is even more difficult to determine why they did so.” Reviewed by Casey Colthron The Hemlock Cup By Bettany Hughes Knopf, $27.95, 484 pages I’ve often wished I could go back in time, about 2,400 years ago, to the agora — the marketplace — of Athens. There I would seek a certain pot-bellied man, bearded with bulging eyes, barefoot, slovenly, famously ugly, who said the “unexamined life is not worth living.” I would ask him … what would I ask the philosopher? Bettany Hughes’ life of the philosopher, The Hemlock Cup, is more than just a life. It’s also a depiction of the world that created him, and the world he would come to influence as one of the greatest thinkers of all
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Trench: A History of Trench Warfare on the Western Front time. He emerges into a democratic Athens roiling in change — social and political — bursting with new wealth and warfare. What’s so remarkable about this vivid book is how it’s really about Athens’ Golden Age, its thinkers, writers, philosophers, politics, and power, its statues, gilt paint, gods, and temples, but also the slaves, prostitutes, workers, the mundane, and the tumult. The seething world is all brought to life. Socrates’ story begins in 469 BC, and runs for 70 years, until finally he is brought so famously to trial. Hughes ends her story where she began, in May 399 BC, with the disruptive 70-year-old answering charges of denying the gods and corrupting the young. He is found guilty, and drinks a cup of hemlock, a self-administered death sentence. Reviewed by Phil Semler High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America By Jessica B. Harris Bloomsbury Press, $26.00, 285 pages So often cookbooks lack the fascinating cultural and historical background that surrounds a recipe. In High on the Hog , Jessica B. Harris offers a unique perspective of our country’s food traditions and reveals the role black Americans have played in our culinary history. Harris’ book is so much more than just a cookbook or a book about food. She has researched and written about food for decades, including publishing ten cookbooks specifically about traditional AfricanAmerican food. Each chapter (with photos and illustrations) covers an important piece of history and outlines how food has impacted the world, in particular African cookery and its influence on the United States, South America, and the Caribbean. Every chapter has a chronological presentation of history, followed by personal reflections from Harris based on her own present day experiences, and concludes with recipes that relate to the time period. Most fascinating to read are excerpts from primary resources such as an enslaved man’s 1849 account of the rations allowed to slaves, or a description of a street markets. For further information, Harris provides a lengthy reading list and bibliography. Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin Unfamiliar Fishes By Sarah Vowel Riverhead Books, $25.95, 238 pages Anyone who has struggled with a Russian novel will see the parallel with Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes. Her history of Hawaii, particularly the years following the
By Stephen Bull Osprey Publishing, $24.95, 272 pages
“In the minds of many it is the bloody Western Front that epitomizes World War I of 1914-18, and the essential character of that archetype is the trench war.” Such is how author Stephen Bull’s masterpiece begins, and this tone of serious, informed reflection, and respect reverberated throughout the entire piece. How easy it is for my relatively modern generation to gloss over WWI as so many paragraphs in a textbook, not even able to comprehend the dirty, hazardous, extremely cramped quarters in which many soldiers--on both sides--lived for weeks, even months at a time. With Trench Bull helps in giving as complete a picture possible, attacking the problem of writing such a book with all the tactics he described in its pages. After explaining the military mindsets of the time, Bull instructs the reader on exactly how the sprawling mazes of tunnels, bunkers, and trenches were built, providing impressively-researched drawings and maps, along with an array of eyewitness quotations to make the included photographs all the more real. Despite the horrors and hardships described, there is an honorable sort of elegance in Bull’s writing which threads its way in the background of each scene and seems directly tied to the great mental fortitude the soldiers must have wielded in order tackle such a deadly game as trench warfare. Reviewed by Meredith Greene
arrival of American missionaries in 1820, is a series of names. All but a few start with an initial “K.” Persist or give up? Better the latter so you can laugh copiously as you read Vowell at her droll, sardonic best. The missionaries put a damper on the Sandwich Islands ( i.e. Hawaii). David Malo, the preeminent historian of the islands’ later 19th century, blamed the unenthusiastic welcome to the straitlaced newcomers on the way they “thundered at them” too much. He immortalized traditional Hawaii, recording customs, beliefs, and vocabulary. And Vowell drew the essence of his book and those by other Hawaiians, blessing their contributions. In this book, you will find no index, no distracting footnotes, no stress on pineapples. Humorous yes, but the book also acknowledges the darker side: deposing wise Queen Liliuokalani to bring about American statehood; measles, dysentery, and other vicious immigrant diseases; usurping the sugar industry. Reviewed by Jane Manaster Presidential Leadership By Nick Ragone Prometheus Books, $25.00, 332 pages Ragone introduces us to a novel trip through American history by detailing the crux of presidential problems in instances where the Commander in Chief decided to get directly involved; explaining how, why, and what happened as a result. Beginning with President George Washington’s per-
sonal command over the fifteen thousand troops dispatched to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, this concise piece of work takes us all the way to the threshold of President Obama’s handling of Healthcare Reform. Between the first president and the current one, Ragone reignites the stress of the day with vivid descriptions of the situations facing our American Presidents. In all, the author highlights fifteen separate crucibles where the future of our country hung in the balance, and the scale tipped only for the good or the bad by direct presidential intervention. Among these turning points, Ragone briefs us on the agonizing quandary of constitutional principles Thomas Jefferson struggled with in the secret negotiations with Napoleon for the Louisiana Territory. Watch Abraham Lincoln debate himself into a corner until he single-handedly ends slavery in our country. Grapple with the bombing of Hiroshima, and the firing of General Douglas McArthur. Feel the heat of the space race to the moon, the advent of Civil Rights, as well as other tensions that could have broken in a different direction had it not been for the most powerful man in America getting involved. Reviewed by Casey Corthron
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Humor-NonFiction Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination By Hugh MacLeod Portfolio, $24.95, 192 pages Part-manifesto, part-marketing guide, and part-collection of advice from an eccentric uncle, Evil Plans is Hugh MacLeod’s follow-up to his first foray into the lit world, Ignore Everybody, and he hasn’t lost an ounce of bite, common sense, or tongue-in-cheek honesty in the meantime. Populated by solid ideas, hard-won experience, and pithy witticisms, MacLeod breaks down the new world of branding, marketing, and selfpromotion in a world forever altered by the game-changing impact of the Internet. Reinforcing these crucial concepts and valuable adaptations are numerous illustrations, some entertaining, but most simply reiterating key points and small mantra-like statements to commit to memory. While the title might be misleading or off-putting, it is attention-grabbing and dead-on after you’ve read a few pages. After all, calling your master plan or your plan for success an Evil Plan not only sounds more impressive and exciting, but it implies a level of devotion and passion beyond your run-of-the-mill projects. MacLeod provides a perfect example of many of his talking points just in the title. Evil Plans is not only a great read, but a great push in the right direction for any aspiring entrepreneur. Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Understand Rap: Explanations of Confusing Rap Lyrics You and Your Grandma Can Understand By William Buckholz Abrams Image, $12.95, 181 pages Understanding Rap -- Explanations of Confusing Rap Lyrics You and Your Grandma Can Understandis the result of technical writer, William Buckholz’s, genuine attempt to muddle through some of today’s most-popular foreign lyrics known as rap music. Buckholz has produced an easy-toread translation for those who struggle to understand what their kids or today’s followers are rapping about. Through ten chapters, Buckholz methodically explains what every unfamiliar word or phrase he has chosen to represent the genre means to generations who came before rap’s birth or those who live under a rock without electricity.
Some lyrics may shock you, while others might provide you with a chuckle or two. Either way, you are sure to learn something about the mindset of the many popular artists who lead the music industry for today’s youth, the latter bound by rap’s continual beat, rhymes and words. This compilation of phrases from today’s rap artists may be beneficial to parents who want to understand exactly what their offspring are singing, and in turn explain it to them hoping to break the chains and set them free once and for all! For all others, the contents will possibly entertain you until you just can’t take any more, fo shizzle! Reviewed by Linda Welz Who Moved My Mouse?: A Self-Help Book for Cats (Who Don’t Need Any Help) By Dena Harris Ten Speed Press, $12.99, 144 pages Everyone knows that cats don’t need selfhelp books. But if they did, this would be the perfect one. Each chapter is patterned after well-known self-help books such as The Secret and the 7 Habits or Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series. As a parody book, Who Moved My Mouse works very well. It’s short enough to interest readers and have some depth, but not too long so that the subject matter becomes tedious and boring. The occasional illustrations are cute and complement the subject matter nicely. Unlike some of the cat books put out by the same publisher recently, this one is written as a parody for humorous purposes and uses that fact to keep the tone light enough that one doesn’t have to worry about the author’s sanity. Filled with “purrsonality” quizzes, short stories, a cat’s conversation with God, survival techniques and more, there’s a little bit of something for everyone in here. It’s a great book or gift for cat loving readers, and you might just get a glimpse into what your cat is thinking as he takes a nap in that sunny window while you read. Reviewed by Alyssa Feller GIDEON’S, cont’d from page 7 century England with lush, textured writing that never becomes tedious, revealing the various plights of the characters as they chafe against their roles. Reviewed by Elizabeth Varadan
The Grand Illusion By Joseph Arellano
I very much love reading fiction, but there’s just one thing that bothers me when I do. My mind starts spinning around fictional scenes and I begin wondering how much of what I see is not fictional but true; that is, based on actual events in the author’s life? So, dear Reader, I think I may have developed a solution to this question of real versus fake via the development of a new ratings system. Publishers, effective immediately, each novel is to carry a cover sticker that states, “This book is based __% on actual events.” Yes, every fiction book is to carry an informational sticker that gives the prospective reader a number that represents the average amount of content derived from true happenings. Or should it be the median? The beginning of each chapter must also contain a similar statement, “Chapter 4 is based 62% on actual events in the author’s life.” In addition, at the rear of the novel, a summary must detail which “fictional” scenes were based on which real events in the life of the author – let’s call her Suzie Smith. As an example, “When the protagonist Liz Borden crashes her Mini Cooper into the Goodwill dropoff box on her way home from a college party in This relates to the mat2011, this scene was based on the time that Ms. Smith crashed her Toyota Tercel into a U.S. postal ter of why most successful service box on her way home from a fraternity-sonovelists are past their rority mixer in Berkeley in 1987.” See, in this way, twenties and early thirwe will be able to determine exactly how original ties… Because one needs to and creative each author is, and we’ll also see how live at least 35 or so years often they’re just writing down things that hapbefore one has enough big pened to them decades earlier. This relates to the matter of why most suc- and interesting experienccessful novelists are past their twenties and early es in life to turn them into thirties… Because one needs to live at least 35 or alleged fictional events. If so years before one has enough big and interestyou think about this, it’s ing experiences in life to turn them into alleged totally logical. fictional events. If you think about this, it’s totally logical. How would one be expected to make up things about situations that one knows nothing about? It would be like asking a middle school dropout to write about life in graduate school at Harvard. You’re not likely to get a novel out of that. But ask a Yale graduate school drop-out to write about graduate school life at Harvard and you might well have something. Note: A new federal law prohibits individuals from making up scenes about life at a rival’s campus. If you went to Stanford, you cannot legally write fiction about being a Cal student. Writers, this is a matter to talk to your legal counsel about. Better safe than sorry.) This is not something that I’ve studied scientifically, but my guess is that the range of fictional content in a novel is going to be in the range of no more than 20 to 35 percent. If this is true, then there’s bound to be a demand for additional consumer protection. Federal regulations will surely come into play requiring a minimum of 51 percent fictional content in order for a story to be classified as fiction. Any less, and the book must be labeled as a pseudo-fictional work. (Caution: This book is substantively based on things that happened in the writer’s life when he/she wore a younger person’s clothes. You’re not getting much fiction for your money if you buy this one.) See how helpful this will be? And, yes, I can see what it’s going to mean in the long run… Many of today’s novelists will be converted into new-born memoir writers, telling us about their past lives without covering them with the guise of fictional events. The truth shall set them free! If you think I have some good ideas here, then write your congressperson or U.S. senator today and urge them to adopt these essential reader protections. Or better yet join my public interest group, the Association to Properly Brand So-Called Fictional Works. Once my crusade has proven to be successful, I may write a novel about it. Oh, make that a memoir.
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Interview With Joyce Jenkins – Northern California Book Awards Interview by Zara Raab, Contributing Editor with San Francisco & Sacramento Book Reviews Joyce Jenkins is the editor and publisher of Poetry Flash, described by poet Robert Hass as “an institution in the Bay Area’s literary culture.” In print in a tabloid format and on line, Poetry Flash is a resource for creative writers in California and the West that publishes literary reviews, interviews and essays, organizes poetry readings in the Bay Area, and maintains a extensive calendar of literary events. Jenkins is also the producer of the Northern California Book Awards, which will hold its 30th annual ceremonies Sunday, April/May 10, 2011, at 1:00 in the Koret Auditorium at the San Francisco Main Library, located at 100 Larkin Street in San Francisco. The ceremonies will be followed by a reception and book signing in the Latino/Hispanic Community Room of the library. Zara Raab: This year sees the ceremonies of the 30th annual Northern California Book Awards on Sunday, April/May 10. In this country, we have all kinds of national awards for writers, from the National Books Awards to the Pulitzer Prizes. What’s the value of a regional award? Joyce Jenkins: Most of the national book prizes come from a particular point of view and part of the country—New York. In a recent, provocative Huffington Post article, Anis Shivani examines the New York Times Review of Books, bemoaning their dearth of reviews on regional press and university press books, especially in nonfiction and poetry. Shivani opines on how New York Times reviews “lack any individual voice, any eccentricity of tone and attitude.” I found that interesting in light of the Northern California Book Reviewers, who nominate the books, and who are fairly representative of the literary mindset of Northern California. They are a diverse lot who write with a wide
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variety of styles and attitudes, often with feeling, opinion, and memorable language. Looking at our list from this perspective, the books by West Coast presses such as Counterpoint, Heyday, Chronicle Books, Post-Apollo Press, City Lights, University of California Press, LA’s Red Hen Press, Copper Canyon, Ahsahta Press (Boise State University), plus University Press of New England and TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University pop out. It’s exciting for us to recognize these books on behalf of the reading public. The kinds of books that are often ignored by the media—cutting edge political ideas, serious histories, edgy poetry, fiction by Northern California writers from West Coast presses—are the books that should be making a bigger impact on the national consciousness than they are. So we honor them. Of course, some NCBA selections do go all the way in national prizes: Time and Materials: Poems by Robert Hass, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers are two exceptions that prove the rule. After all, Northern California is a literary hotspot, one of the biggest book markets and writing centers of the nation, whether or not that fact is always appreciated on a national level, or even fully realized by Northern Californians. Finally, our concerns are to celebrate the work of excellent Northern California authors. And it’s a great writers’ party, one big book party with all the various “branches” of our literary family represented. ZR: In addition to awards in five categories, from fiction to children’s literature, NCBA confers the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement. Tell us about this year’s recipient. JJ: Afghan American Tamim Ansary, who was born in Kabul and has lived in San
Francisco since 1976, has been a remarkable inspiration to many through his literary projects. Last year, his book, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, broke through stereotypes of Islam and won the Northern California Book Award for General Nonfiction. His memoir, West of Kabul, East of New York, was San Francisco’s “One City One Book” selection, and has made us more aware of the human situation in Afghanistan. He leads the San Francisco Writers Workshop, the oldest, free, writing workshop in the Bay Area. His message of cultural understanding is crucial now. ZR: You’ve been involved with the awards from their inception. What have you learned from them? Can you describe an evolution in the selection process? Who decides what books make the grade? JJ: I came on in the second year of the awards. It was quite a year. Alice Walker had just received the Fiction Award for her short stories, You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down, in 1982, then Gina Berriault for The Infinite Passion of Expectation. Thom Gunn won in Poetry for The Passages of Joy. I’ve learned the infinite passion of book reviewers in that time. I’ve seen some of the greats locked in near mortal literary combat. So many fiercely held positions, so many perspectives, so many indefinable and inexplicable tidal waves of consensus, where the decision suddenly becomes clear and inevitable. In the early days, there were more editors of book reviews and staff of book reviews who represented their publications. Now there are fewer reviews (we aren’t talking blogs here), fewer newspapers and magazines with book review editors or sections, more online publications, and more free-
lancers. The book industry has radically changed. However, to review and recommend books still encompasses the same processes of reading, thinking, writing. NCBR members serve on committees that read everything published in the calendar year by Northern California authors. The members must have published at least three well-written reviews in a recognized review publication, be editors of a book review, producer-hosts of a book media outlet, or have otherwise distinguished themselves, such as a librarian who writes on Children’s Lit. The Book Awards are a microcosm of the Bay Area’s cooperative spirit, pulling together not only Poetry Flash and Northern California Book Reviewers, but Center for the Art of Translation, who screen and select Translation nominees, PEN West, Mechanics’ Institute, the writers’ website Red Room, and San Francisco Public Library and Friends of the Public Library. All have been so supportive. ZR: Tell us about this year’s Special Recognition Award to Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. This is the first anthology of its kind, bringing together American poets whose heritage includes Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It’s not a political exercise, or a concept anthology, it’s a richly worthwhile “read.” The forms run from traditional ghazals to slam poetry and experimental writing. It is anti-exotic, very much in the now, from inside the contemporary experience of living with a foot in multiple cultures, religions, and languages. It is the brain (and love) child of three editor/poets whose South Asian roots are deeply tied to the Bay Area: Neelanjana Banerjee, an editor of Hyphen; poet-cognitive scientist Pireeni Sundaralingam; and poet-psychologist Summi Kaipa. ZR: You’re a poet yourself, as well as serving for more than 30 years as the editor and publisher of Poetry Flash, described by poet Robert Hass as “an institution in the Bay Area’s literary culture.” What plans do you have for the website and the tabloid? JJ: Poetry Flash publishes poetry and fiction reviews, features, and poems that aren’t standard big publisher fare. We are of this place, of independent stance. I’m grateful for what we have accomplished. You’ll see a beautiful redesign of PoetryFlash.org posted soon.
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Science Fiction & Fantasy WWW: Wonder By Robert J. Sawyer Ace Hardcover, $25.95, 352 pages In Wonder, award winner Robert J. Sawyer’s thrilling conclusion to his WWW trilogy, after Wake and Watch, he takes the evolved consciousness of the Internet, known as Webmind, to a whole new level. After almost being destroyed by the US agency WATCH, Webmind is now released to the world by its discoverer, Caitlin Dector, a teenager, who goes on TV to broadcast the existence of this animate consciousness. Word spreads lightning fast on the Internet, and Webmind is soon communicating with millions of people around the world, simultaneously, learning much and helping those he can. In a short while he has discovered a possible cure for cancer, but Webmind’s goal is some form of world peace and to bring joy to humanity. Meanwhile Colonel Peyton Hume, the Pentagon’s top expert on artificial intelligence, thinks Webmind isn’t what it says it is; its intentions aren’t for the improvement of human kind, but for personal kind; with the power it has it could take over the world, or worse. In Wonder, Sawyer brings his separate storylines all together in a page-turning finish, going beyond the basic story and questioning philosophical ideas and scientific theories and what they mean for humanity and the future. While Sawyer may be letting his own ideology show itself here, it is no doubt one that is subscribed to by many readers, who will enjoy seeing some of these ideas come to fruition in this future world. And isn’t that one of the reasons for the existence of science fiction? Reviewed by Alex Telander
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EXPANDED SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY SECTION Regarding Ducks and Universes By Neve Maslakovic AmazonEncore, $13.95, 331 pages Thirty-five years ago, the universe suddenly and without warning split into two separate universes, each going down a different evolutionary path. Now citizens travel freely between Universe A and Universe B on business, vacation, and for some interesting sight-seeing. Felix Sayers from Universe A has happily spent his life believing he was born after the split, and therefore does not have an “alter” in the other universe. But all that changes when he unexpectedly finds out that he was actually born six months before “Y Day.” Terrified that his alter may have already written the mystery novel that he’s been wanting to pen for years, Felix anxiously heads to Universe B and ends up finding out more than he bargained for. The theory of alternate universes is a favorite staple of untold numbers of sci-fi movies and books, and Maslakovic does it plenty of justice in this, her first novel. The only downside to this work is the pace and tone of the story, which stays on an even keel without any increase in cadence or urgency. By putting her own twists on the theories of alternate universes, and keeping the science explanations light, Maslakovic creates a fun, light read. Reviewed by Heather Ortiz Waking Nightmares By Christopher Golden Ace, $7.99, 338 pages Dreamlike visions. Animal attacks. Ghosts. Wood gods. Something peculiar is happening in Hawthorne, Massachusetts. Former vampire Peter Octavian, now a powerful magician, bands together with two unlikely comrades: an earthwitch who is drawn by the weight of evil lurking in Hawthorne and a vampire gone rogue. Together, they must protect the world from the monsters and demons that threaten to destroy it. Christopher Golden, a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, isn’t a stranger to these types of monsters. He returns with the newest installment of the Shadow Saga series, where Octavian is already conducting paranormal investigations; the fast-paced plot is underway within the first pages. Golden creates some memorable, albeit disturbing, scenes where twigs and leaves grow out of human pores and angry wood gods assume female form to take on a fairy tale quality. Unfortunately, the descriptive
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scenes and the monsters are not enough to elicit suspense or fear. In some of the most climatic moments of the story, character dialogue resonates with melodrama. Although the idea of a combining vampires, demons, and sorcery is a worthwhile endeavor, perhaps this part of the saga is a worthy read reserved for loyal vampire fans. Reviewed by Wendy Iraheta Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? By Max Brallier Gallery Books, $16.00, 384 pages If you loved the Choose Your Own Adventure series and you’re a fan of zombies, this book is for you. Max Brallier, in his entertaining new book, Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?, lets you be the star of the story as you decide how the tale proceeds from page to page. You’re a 25-year-old New Yorker who is stuck in a boring corporate job and living in a rundown, overpriced Manhattan apartment. Your day starts like any other. You’re late for work and must endure another boring Monday morning staff meeting. Suddenly, in rushes the secretary screaming something about the walking dead. Your destiny is in your own hands. Do you call you mother, try to catch a cab out of the city, or stay put and start looting? Make your choice and follow directions to the next part of your story. With 150 different paths and 75 endings, you’ll have a blast creating adventure after adventure. It’s a perfect party game. Watch guests battle to see who makes it out alive. This unique book will have you laughing as you decide your fate in a city overrun by zombies. Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man: (Burton & Swinburne In) By Mark Hodder Pyr, $16.00, 354 pages It’s 1862 in London, England, but only Sir Richard Burton and a handful of others know that time has been changed and the London they are in now is not the one that should be. When a clockwork man is discovered abandoned without explanation in a town square, Sir Richard finds himself on a wild, hair-raising pursuit of the fiends who have orchestrated the destruction of the British Empire for their own nefarious purposes. The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man is an utterly delicious helter-skelter romp through a mindblowing steampunk diorama full of giant
All in a day’s work: New titles from Tor Only the most desperate colonists dare to make a home on Hellhole, a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits, and charlatans. But it can also be a place of real opportunity, for the planet Hellhole hides an amazing secret—one that could tear the galaxy apart. ★ “Hellhole is a militaristic SF story of galactic
proportions. The characters are easy for the reader to believe in, brought to life through not only their own emotions but also the responses and thoughts of the individuals around them.” —Booklist, starred review on Hellhole 978-0-7653-2269-2 • Hardcover | 978-1-4299-6516-3 • eBook
Welcome to a land that has known peace and prosperity for generations. But the veil that has held deific evil at bay is weakening, and the world must acknowledge the new threat before it can be confronted. The Unremembered is both an authorial debut, and the start of epic fantasy series The Vault of Heaven. “This is one huge, compelling, hard-hitting story. A major fantasy adventure.” —Piers Anthony 978-0-7653-2571-6 • Hardcover | 978-1-4299-6086-1 • eBook
In Book Two of The Chronicles of Siala, Harold and his companions continue their journey. Where armies of warriors and wizards before them have failed, they must fight legions of untold, mysterious powers before they can complete their quest for the magic horn that will save their beloved land from The Nameless One. “A cast of charming, quirky, unsavory, even loathsome characters in a fast-paced, entertaining adventure.” —Kevin J. Anderson, co-author in the Dune universe 978-0-7653-2404-7 • Hardcover | 978-1-4299-3487-9 • eBook
Can an accountant defeat a super-villain? Celia West, only daughter of the heroic leaders of the super-powered Olympiad, has spent the past few years estranged from her parents and their high-powered lifestyle. But when mutation fails, only auditing can bring down the villain. “Enough excitement, astonishment, pathos, and victory to satisfy any reader.” —Charlaine Harris on Kitty and the Midnight Hour 978-0-7653-2555-6 • Hardcover | 978-1-4299-6085-4 • eBook
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E X PA NDED SCIENCE FIC T ION & FA N TA SY SEC T ION swans, steam-driven vehicles made from the cannibalized shells of gigantic insects, foul-mouthed parakeets that can talk, and all other manner of extraordinary and grotesque beings. Hodder crafts a mesmerizing and delicious steam-driven landscape of an alternate London where science and séances exist side-by-side and are used without restraint to further devious schemes. The second book in a three-book series, Clockwork Man doesn’t always fill you in on previous events, but frankly, you’re going to be too busy marveling at the next incredible apparition to mind too much. Highly recommended for any steampunk fan and for any reader who’s looking for an out-of-the-norm read. Reviewed by Heather Ortiz Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived By Paul S. Kemp LucasBooks, $27.00, 304 pages Coruscant, crown jewel of the Republic, will fall. Darth Malgus swears it, and he has masterminded an attack that will bring the Jedi and the Republic to their knees. But there are unintended consequences for everyone involved. Malgus falls victim to Sith behind the scenes politics. The Jedi master, Malgus has a loyal student, who abandons peace talks between the Jedi and the Sith to come after her master’s murderer. A lone smuggler may decide Malgus’s destiny once and for all. As more and more stories emerge detailing the long, history of conflict between the Sith and the Jedi, two archetypes have emerged: the rogue vengeful Jedi and the doubting malleable Sith. Although The Old Republic: Deceived has a fairly run-of-the-mill (if engaging) former, the latter is more interesting than any Sith since Darth Vader. Malgus has emotional ties, a strong sense of individual purpose, and a vision for the future that makes for a contradictory yet compelling character. As a tie-in book for the expanding Old Republic series of video games -- the novel fleshes out a scene in a trailer for the newest game -- Deceived stands on its own for the most part, though there are some references to past events and key characters from the game series that will sail over the heads of the casual reader. Kemp’s previous entry in the Star Wars canon was Crosscurrent, a book full of good ideas that was hobbled by an overabundance of plot and a blah protagonist. But Kemp rebounds nicely with Deceived, dialing back on the star fighter battles and light saber duels that normally populate Star Wars books and focusing more on character interaction, questioning
of authority, and the struggle to walk one’s own path when a larger force controls one’s destiny. This is a book about negotiation, with others and with one’s convictions, and it makes for quite the intriguing read. And while Darth Malgus is ostensibly the centerpiece of the novel, I found the smuggler Zeerid Korr -- perhaps an ancestor of Crosscurrent’s Jedi Jaden Korr? -- the most enthralling character. As a man in debt to his employers, a man trying to keep his family away from the dirty dealings of his daily life, he isn’t exactly a unique character, but his quest is so genuine that the reader cannot help but root for him, especially when it seems an entire galaxy of circumstance is against him. For Zeerid alone, this one is worth a look. Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Star Wars: Knight Errant By John Jackson Miller LucasBooks, $7.99, 385 pages The Grumani Sector has been in the hands of the Sith for decades. The lives of millions are threatened daily by squabbling warlords fueled by the dark side of the force. But a single Jedi, the sole survivor of a failed mission, has dedicated herself to learning all she can about the numerous factions, as well as thwarting their diabolical plans for galactic domination whenever possible. As chaos, insanity, and the darkest of plots unfold around her, can Kerra Holt stay true to the Jedi way, or will she succumb to anger and despair in the face of i mpossible odds? Knight Errant is a curious entry in the overstuffed Star Wars universe. It dumps the reader blindly into a complex and strange landscape, unmoored from established characters and stories. It demands a great deal more attention and deduction from the reader than the average Star Wars fare, which makes for a slow start but a very satisfying read overall. The machinations of the various Sith lords are unique and engaging, and Kerra’s growing sense of horror and defeatism only adds to the atmosphere of the novel. I’ve never read a Star Wars book like it, but more like it would be welcome. Reviewed by Glenn Dallas The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 By Jonathan Strahan Night Shade Books, $19.99, 546 pages The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentleman’s Ball.The Jammie Dodgers
And The Adventure Of The Leicester Square Screening.The Care And Feeding Of Your Baby Killer Unicorn. The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains. Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots. The Maiden Flight Of Mcauley’s Bellerophon. The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath The Queen’s Window. The Spy Who Never Grew Up. The titles of these stories alone stir the imagination and excite the senses. Whether the world is familiar or alien, whether magic rules or anarchy does, the depth of science fiction and fantasy as a dynamic and fluid genre is on great display in Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5. Admittedly, the fantasy stories outshine the sci-fi ever so slightly, but both are in fine form, with some of the funniest, darkest, and flat-out weirdest stories I’ve read in quite some time. Populated with talents like Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, and Ellen Kushner, Strahan’s collection is a terrific introduction to how creative science fiction and fantasy writers are. In fact, I could easily recommend this one solely on the lyrical beauty and understated gentleness of Ian Tregillis’s wonderful Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale). Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Cowboy Angels By Paul McAuley Pyr, $16.00, 364 pages The idea of traveling between different dimensions has long been a staple of science fiction. The most famous being the mirror episodes on Star Trek. What would life be like if we went to an alternate universe? This work explores the many different dimensions using turing gates as the mode of transportation. The first turing gate was open in the Brookhaven laboratory in the 1960s and then eventually made big enough for people to travel through. And the United States, in that reality, called itself the Real, and started to send CIA and military forces through to unite all the different Americas together in a Pan America Alliance. In this story, a retired CIA agent must find out why his partner is murdering the same women in different realities, and along the way he will discover a plot to change reality; that he must stop before it all changes. This book works remarkably well, McAuley brings to life the many different versions of the
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United States, and shows how tiny changes in the fabric of reality can have big consequences. Only a few times does the story falter, mainly when McAuley is describing intense action sequences. Reviewed by Kevin Winter Hamlet’s Father By Orson Scott Card Subterranean Press, $35.00, 92 pages The problem with prequels is that they don’t always work out, especially when the author makes changes that run counter to why we liked the work. Hamlet’s Father takes all of our preconceptions of Hamlet and throws them away. This is not necessarily a good thing. A prequel should give a better understanding of its source material; otherwise, it should just be a different book. Here Hamlet is a prince who has everything he asks for except his father’s attentions; as we learn, that turns out to be a good thing, as we find how the other boys in his circle have suffered at the hands of his father. The problem is that this book’s plot twist changes everything that you know about Hamlet. Although Laertes is given more reason to be angry with him, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s relationship is explained, the problem is that the plot twist comes out of nowhere. Card is a great writer, and it’s a decent book until the end, when the new twist on things goes into effect. It just should have ended better, the ending kills the book. Sometimes changing the source material works; in this case it did not. Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Mad Skills By Walter Greatshell Ace, $7.99, 306 pages Paranoia and technology seem to go hand-in-hand and this is not always a great mixture. Mad Skills is the story of Maddy Grant and an implant that allows her to do pretty much anything she wants, except realize that she can do anything she wants. Also in the story is a monolithic world-domineering Braintree that sees Maddy as a threat and yet lets her do as she will anyway. Maddy eventually uncovers that Braintree is attempting to put all of the country’s poor under mind control and attempts to do something about with her delusion-based raccoon friend.
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E X PA NDED SCIENCE FIC T ION & FA N TA SY SEC T ION The problems with this book are immense. In all honesty, Braintree needed to stop throwing personal confrontations in her path and start using snipers; she was able to deal with people within a short distance of her easily enough. When Maddy finally realizes that her options are unlimited, she tracks down her mother and is honestly surprised that the bad guys were able to track her down. Yes, there is even an escape from the usual prisoner-style village. If you love conspiracy theories, hate anything mainstream, and don’t bother reading yet another chipped Mary Sue story, this is the book for you. Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories By Ursula K. Le Guin, Cory Doctorow, Paolo Bacigalupi, Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Shirley Jackson, Kate Wilhelm, Carrie Vaughn, and John Joseph Adams, editor Night Shade Books, $15.99, 496 pages Dystopia as a word was created by John Stuart Mills to describe the British government’s Irish land policy. Created to define the opposite of that perfect place, Utopia, dystopias are places wherein something is not right. The most famous dystopias are those portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, these two authors present radically different worlds that despite their differences chill readers. Dystopias, of course, do not exist to show us other worlds but to shed light on our own: the societies, cultures, and institutions that make it up; how they might be changed if things were only a little different. Attempting to show through fiction and narrative the fine line our, and every, society makes as it builds civilization, John Joseph Adams has collected some of the West’s greatest genre writers to share their dystopias in his new anthology, Brave New Worlds. From Neil Gaiman’s graphical exploration of a world without “queer” culture to Paolo Bacigalupi’s ruminations on population control in a land of immortals, this book delivers the dystopian goods and allows the reader to explore complicated societal issues without having to experience the hell of them. Reviewed by Jonathon Howard Times Three By Robert Silverberg Subterranean Press, $40.00, 480 pages Political prisoners are sent on a one-way trip half a billion years into the past. After falling in love, a time courier encounters havoc while guiding tourists to ancient Constantinople. An experimental project swings
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twin brothers through a pendular arc over a remote past and into futuristic worlds. In this omnibus collection, Silverberg displays his narrative prowess by exploring the facets of time travel. In Project Pendulum, the standout piece, twin brothers displaced ninety five million years across time fall in love, experience the wonder of seeing real prehistoric dinosaurs, travel through tunnels with elongated, transparent creatures and endure extreme isolation from each other and humanity. The descriptive language is lucid, genuine, and evokes a realistic sense of the past and unknowable futures; we imperceptibly sense we’re reading a classic time travel narrative that pierces the veil of time. We are shown, through alternating viewpoints, ancient civilizations and new worlds that satisfy our innermost curiosities. Filled with awe and capture, these stories offer us a glimpse of Silverberg’s own fascination with time travel and the wonder of observing a constantly evolving universe. Reviewed by Wendy Iraheta Remnant By Roland Allnach All Things That Matter Press, $16.99, 209 pages When humans finally visit a far-off world, there will be no escape from our basic traits. No matter what the future holds, jealousy, trust and greed will always be with us, and Roland Allnach knows this. In the debut book, Remnant: An Anthology, he brings us thoughtful tales of conflict and the folly of being human. The book is the combination of three short tales, “All the Fallen Angels,” “Enemy, I Know You Not” and “Remnant.” While the three are set in different places, all carry on a continuing message-a message that the past will always affect our future. The relatable themes also make reading the book a personal journey of the human condition. It is hard not to read it and think, “If I was in Peter’s place, what would I do?” I also enjoyed the use of exploring the concept of what makes us human. Many of the stories deal with the issue of the “natural state” and how memory makes us who we are--issues that can only be truly explored in the science fiction genre. Out of the three short stories, “Remnant” left a huge impression on me. The story revolves around survivors of a devastating plague. The dynamics of the world and the philosophical subject matter explored was outstanding. It was chilling how real the
The Soul Mirror: A Novel of the Collegia Magica By Carol Berg ROC, $16.00, 515 pages
A follow up to her last book, The Spirit Lens, Carol Berg digs in deep to pull another winner from her head. The Soul Mirror follows the story of Anne de Vernase. She is a no-nonsense noble with a distaste for magic, because it has ruined her life. Her father is on the run, her mother is locked up, and her sister is dead, all because of a misuse of magic. Her world becomes much smaller and frightening when she becomes the target of a much larger scheme. The Soul Mirror is a Renaissance-style fantasy that grabs the reader’s hand and never lets go. An intellectual read (meaning I had to look up some words to see what they meant) that makes no qualms of pushing itself to the limits. Berg’s characters fill each page with emotions and deep feelings. Soul Mirror is unlike anything in this genre I’ve read in a while. The book feels more like watching a play, rather than reading a book. The ending is truly amazing. I look forward to the next installment of the series. Reviewed by Kevin Brown characters felt and how naturally the plot progressed. It was like reading the diary of a survivor, and it was very intimate. I liked it so much that I hope the world of “Remnant” will be revisited sometime in the future. Allnach’s writing style can be described as smart, elegant, and addicting, and you will find yourself deep into the story before you know it. Remnant: An Anthology is an accomplishment of a book for both die-hard fans and those new to science fiction genre. Sponsored Review Bloodshot By Cherie Priest Spectra, $15.00, 359 pages Raylene Pendle is a thief-for-hire who accepts only the most interesting and challenging jobs. After all, vampires are in another league altogether, so true tests of her skills are few and far between. When fellow vampire Ian Stott hires her to obtain government files related to a secret experiment that blinded him, Raylene accepts, more for Ian’s sake than her own. But what starts as an intriguing assignment quickly becomes personal when Raylene finds herself and her allies in the crosshairs of gun-toting g-men bent on silencing anyone in their way. While the synopsis above may sound like an average thriller gussied up with a bit of supernatural flare, Bloodshot is anything
but. While meshing the best of urban fantasy with spy-tinged action, the novel possesses engaging warmth, humor, and more than a touch of well-placed silliness. It’s a wonderful, lighter-hearted counterpoint to the oppressive yet enthralling energy of her Clockwork Century adventures. As the launching point for a new series, it’s a little too manic for its own good -- by trying to introduce a tremendous amount of Raylene’s story -- but that enthusiasm is so infectious that it doesn’t hamper the actual narrative in the slightest. Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Leviathans of Jupiter By Ben Bova Tor, $24.99, 477 pages Leviathans of Jupiter is the latest in the Grand Tour series of books by author Ben Bova. What I like about the Grand Tour is how cozy and familiar the books are while also being still enthralling. Many times science fiction tries to move itself from our solar system so much that it feels too alien. In the Grand Tour, humans stay in this Solar System. The book doesn’t feel bogged down with too many past details, and the characters are lively and crisp. The star of the book are the Leviathans, which are whale-like creatures that are found in Jupiter’s great oceans. Their inner thoughts are a great social commentary on human. A strong point of the book is not letting the
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E X PA NDED SCIENCE FIC T ION & FA N TA SY SEC T ION settings, or actual science, infest the story. The book is a thinly veiled comment on capitalism versus environmentalist. There are humans trying to protect and research the leviathans, and a wealthy industrialist trying to close them down. Leviathans of Jupiter is a strong, political motivated book with ties to an amazing history, for fans, and newbies alike. Reviewed by Kevin Brown Shadowheart: Volume Four of Shadowmarch By Tad Williams DAW, $27.95, 672 pages Shadowheart is the concluding volume of Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch fantasy series. There is a multitude of characters and personalities, a sweep of history and a deep world structure that gives the reader vivid images. Williams tends to write large books, and this is no different, with the entire series reaching over 2500 pages. Yet his books are immersive, drawing the reader into his work, seducing them to not notice the time flying past them as they delve further into Williams’ imagination. In Shadowmarch the culmination of events leads to a gathering of forces around the castle of Shadowmarch. The Autarch of Xis has captured the castle and the Shadowmarch royal twins Briony and Barrick are both trying to retake the castle and stop the Autarch. Beneath the castle, the human captain of Shadowmarch’s guard is battling the Autarch’s forces with a group of Funderlings, or Williams’ version of dwarves. Everything has to be resolved before Midsummer’s Night, or the Autarch will gain the powers of the gods. Shadowmarch is like many epic fantasy novels, people caught up in events, world spanning conflicts and the eventual confrontation between good and evil. But Williams doesn’t create “standard” epic fantasy, he defines it and helps set new standards for the next generation of writers. Here, in this fourth volume, plenty has gone on before, therefore it is almost impossible for someone to begin with this book and hope to truly capture the flow of the story and the essence of the characters. So in many ways its almost impossible to review the book, other than to recommend it to those who have already read the first couple of books, or to those who like their fantasy novels epic and sweeping – if you’ve read George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Williams’ original Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn or Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy will all find much to love about Shadowmarch. While it is a commitment of time to get through 2500 pages, not
only is the series now complete, but you’ll also be amazed at how quickly those pages go by, and how satisfying they are. Reviewed by Ross Rojek LISTEN TO OUR INTEVIEW WITH TAD WILLIAMS AT AUDIBLEAUTHORS.NET Hawkmoon: The Runestaff By Michael Moorcock Tor, $14.99, 208 pages Duke Dorian Hawkmoon’s first series of adventures reach their conclusion with the aptly titled fourth novel, The Runestaff. Fantasy maestro Michael Moorcock has already set the stakes for this epic confrontation between our hero and the evil hordes of gothic twisted Gra nbret a n, and especially the arch-fiend, Baron Meliadus. What should you expect? Love. Torture. Betrayal. All of the stuff that makes Hawkmoon not just a must read for fantasy fans, but a fun reread as well. Moorcock’s flair for battle scenes and gift for description (some of which here is plainly an homage to Lovecraft) are all here on full display, as well as his wonderfully dry humor. As with this reissuings previous volumes, illustrator Vance Kovacs provides not only a wonderful cover but evocative interior art as well. Having set the stakes so high in the earlier novels of this series, Moorcock has difficulty spinning a conclusion to match, particularly in comparison with the famous final Elric novel, Stormbringer. Nonetheless, The Runestaff will satisfy your cravings to see Hawkmoon’s adventures drawn to a close and make you look forward to your chance to read more of the larger Eternal Championssaga. Reviewed by Jordan Magill The Executioness By Tobias S. Buckell Subterranean, $20.00, 104 pages When war ravages a medieval society, what happens to the mothers, daughters, and sisters? War is man’s business, or so the stories would have us believe. But what if an imperialist race of religious zealots felt the only way to save the world from a magicfed bramble choking the land was to commit genocide, leaving only women past childbearing years alive, and to steal the children to brainwash them? In Tobias S. Buckell’s The Executioness, Tana, a middle-aged mother of two, must wield the axe of the ex-
ecutioner both in revenge for a dead family and in search of her children stolen by just such madmen. Via Tana’s perspective and experiences, the reader is presented a lavish fantasy world, a unique character, and an epic short story of love, loss, revenge, and the power of the feminine to wage war. “When the songs are sung about great battles, the women who helped sustain, feed, and build the army, who donated their husbands to the cause: they are always somehow forgotten. You forget they are just as good at war as men,” says Tana as she gathers her army of bereft women to destroy the capital of the enemy Paikans. Buckell ensures that Tana’s age and background are an integral part of the story, key to understanding her motivations as she takes on the role of symbol and leader in her people’s uprising. Though there is enough material here for a lengthy novel, Buckell limits himself to the outline of an epic fantasy rather than its substance. Tana’s character development is rushed, and the hinted at depth of the fantasy world is only given a wink and nudge. This damages the story’s effectiveness, preventing the reader from really connecting with Tana and her conflicts. The tale’s brevity and Buckell’s occasionally wooden and simplistic dialogue coupled with a lack of depth keep the narrative from rising above the level of intriguing. Strong on idea, fair on execution, this paired novella – with The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi – entertains but doesn’t shine. Reviewed by John Ottinger Citadel: Troy Rising II By John Ringo Baen, $26.00, 382 pages This is the second of Ringo’s new series, following his engaging Live Free or Die. We follow two young people entering the space effort after the devastating changes on Earth following its disastrous initial Galactic interactions, interactions that include bombardment, plagues, genetic tampering, and invasion. Dana Parker is blonde, therefore she is subject to the periodic heats Johanssen’s Syndrome imposes before gene scrubbing by the Navy. Despite that, she passes screening to become an engineering apprentice. She meets the almost obsessive-compulsive requirements of functioning and surviving on and around Troy, the human’s own Deathstar analogue. Also on Troy, and with much to learn is Butch Allen, entering an entry-level space welder’s job one hop ahead of the draft. Mankind is, after all, in one hell of a war for survival and freedom).
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Ringo uses these viewpoints to edge us into another rousing tale of peril, space warfare, and, because he writes of humans, that most disgusting and frightening conflict, politics. As multi-faceted and original as his last, Citadel is well worth a read. I m delighted to have had the experience of reading it, and will undoubtedly do so again. Reviewed by David Sutton Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra By Poul Anderson Baen, $13.00, 432 pages Poul Anderson wrote about eighty books, beginning in 1952. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He held himself to be in the Heinleinian tradition, and was revered by many of us in Libertarian circles for his scholarly essays on the Irish Tuathas and the Icelandic Thing. As an eight-year-old, I started reading his books when he had only been writing for a couple of years. As an adult, I visited his home with my lady. I never overcame total hero worship. A good deal of Anderson’s output was in his Technic Civilization universe, populated by sophonts of all kinds, by Nicolas Van Rijn, David Falkayne, and other larger than life illustrations of Anderson’s far-ranging mind and awesome word crafting. His vocabulary ranged from heraldry to astronomy. Hank Davis has assembled four wellselected stories of the Terran intelligence operative, bon vivant, and Muser on the Universe, Dominic Flandry. He has picked well from Flandry’s later career, and astonishingly found one I had not read! I cannot give details on short stories without violating the reviewers’ code: give nothing away. This book is excellent as revisit or introduction. Reviewed by David Lloyd Sutton Back to the Moon By Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson Baen, $25.00, 303 pages NASA professionals and writers Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson explore what could have been and can be in a science fiction adventure that will thrill astronomers and space dreamers. It is also fantasy of sorts in that Obama had decided not to send NASA to the moon, rescinding the plans of George W. Bush who expected NASA
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E X PA NDED SCIENCE FIC T ION & FA N TA SY SEC T ION to set up a moon habitation by 2018. We have been there before, said the Obama camp, instead pushing out the date farther and focusing instead on the mission to an asteroid and then on to Mars. Those interested in the moon and manned space exploration have not gotten over it, as shown in this thrilling space adventure. Back to the Moon is a double treat for those who are sad that we will not be having this adventure soon, so in a sense this is also a fantasy, even though it is a dark one. It is also an adventure in a realistic universe. It was interesting to read a space science fiction novel without extraterrestrials. There is, however, some international espionage with other nations going into space, and the work may ruffle the feathers of Asian readers who do not think we Americans will need to “save” them. Space engineers may be angry that the technology also does not always work. There is also a role played in this saga by the space tourist industry that helps save a marooned crew left on the dangerous surface of the moon. Fun, possibly controversial, and bittersweet. Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller The Ouroboros Wave By Jyouji Hayashi Haikasoru, $14.99, 267 pages Sometimes you need your science fiction crunchy. Oroboros Wave is a book of collected shorts by Japanese author Jyouji Hashashi. They represent the collected history of the Artificial Accretion Disk Department, and its dealing with rogue AI’s, assassins, and alien monsters and intelligences. The AADD approaches each situation on its own merits, raising interesting questions, such as consciousness in a primitive ecological bubble, and provides a fascinating look into the future, with some very nice plot twists and great characterization. That the concentration is on the importance of physics and hard logic makes for a lot of fun. However, it acts as an example of communist thought, with leadership shifting more on current politics than actual ability. The AADD leader is a man who recognizes his own symbolism as more important than he himself. Leaders in AADD tend to act mysteriously, and the followers are too much like children allowed to run amok, as long as they do their jobs. This reduces the Terrans to simple capitalists, greedy for more resources, disdainful of the very technology required to do well in space. Otherwise, this is a great change of pace for those who like hard SF. Reviewed by Jamais Jochim
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Shadowheart (Legends of the Raven 2) By James Barclay Pyr, $17.00, 383 pages Picking up where Elfsorrow leaves off, James Barclay continues his epic fantasy saga in Shadowheart: Legends of the Raven 2. Conflicting magical forces collide and fight for ultimate supremacy. The Ravens, a brave group of mercenary heroes, have always battled against evil for the good of Balaia, Barclay’s magical world. This new destabilizing magical conflict and potential war attracts the Ravens once again and challenges them physically and mentally as they aim to protect Balaia and its people at all costs. Serious fans of the fantasy genre will want to start with Barclay’s first trilogy, Chronicles of the Raven. Barclay’s novels are very character driven. Starting from the beginning allows readers to get caught up on all the intricacies and subplots of the overarching saga. In a series with lots of fighting, Barclay creatively varies large-scale battle scenes with close and personal fights so that the reader never tires of the action. The imagery makes visualizing the story quite easy. Readers will rejoice upon meeting up with some of the Elves introduced in Elfsorrow. Fans will hardly be able to wait for the final installment in the trilogy. Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin The White City By Elizabeth Bear Subterranean Press, $25.00, 189 pages Nimble, witty and short are the best three words to describe Elizabeth Bear’s next book. Taking place at the turn of the twentieth century in Moscow, The White City follows the immortal Don Sebastien as he solves a series of homicides. Don Sebastien, the vampire sleuth, slinks around the city with his court following close behind. The book switches between two different murders, in two different time frames. Instead of being overly serious and confusing, the narrative comes off as floaty and playful. The characters shine bright in this book, as if each is painted with a different brush and color. Jack and Sebastian’s relationship was enjoyable while also provocative. Mixing crime with fiction, Bear excels at making a world filled with vivid mystery and won-
der come to life, but there is a discontent between past events and current ones: there is little to no motive behind each character’s actions. While a short read, the story is still full and wraps up things nicely. If you do choose to read this book, bundle yourself up: it’s going to be a long winter in the White City. Reviewed by Kevin Brown The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) By Clay and. Susan Griffith Pyr, $16.00, 320 pages In a world full of merciless vampires that kill outright, millions of humans die from these monsters, and millions more from disease and famine. Those who survive flee to the south because the vampires cannot tolerate the heat. Now it’s 2020, and a reckoning is about to hit as humans plan to take back their world. While this novel is full of action, romance, and funny scenes, I think the biggest asset to this book is Greyfriar, a vampire hunter who is the result of two cultures colliding. I did think the other characters were just as developed and carried themselves well. The premise was amazing and, although the plot was a little uneven, I found myself easily able to overlook the flaws by being swept away in the story. The scenes were amazingly detailed, while the world-building and ending left me looking forward to the sequel. This is a definite must-read for fans of YA and adult fiction who also enjoy fantasy, mythology, steam punk, and, of course, vampires. If you’re burnt out by all of the lackluster vampire stories out there, I guarantee that The Greyfriar will redeem the vampire genre for you. Reviewed by Missy Wadkins The Prometheus Project: Stranded By Douglas E. Richards Paragon Press, $7.95, 307 pages Sci-fi readers rejoice! There is a new Prometheus Project book on shelves now. Book 3: Stranded is a standalone addition to Douglas E. Richard’s popular series The Prometheus Project. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the beginning of the adventure. Book 1: Trapped and Book 2: Captured can be found at your local bookstore, making it easy for you to become one of the thousands of middle school kids who can’t get enough of Ryan and Regan.
One of the world's most controversial religious relics, an ancient spiritual order, cutting edge genetics, the Internet, and a world torn by cultural and religious strife—all coming together in an adventure novel that explores today's headline-making scientific, spiritual, and ethical questions purchase at
www.theshroud.net In Trapped, the Resnick siblings’ boring summer is turned upside down when they find out their parents are part of a secret scientific project called Prometheus. The kids must break into an underground alien city and solve scientific problems in order to save their mom and dad. Can they do it in time? Captured takes place six months later. Ryan and Regan’s lives are about to get more exciting when they find themselves back in the alien city. Only now it has been invaded, and a ruthless alien plans to destroy the city and take over Earth. Ryan and Regan have to work fast to outwit the alien, save the prisoners, and stop the hostile takeover. In Stranded, Ryan and Regan are trapped on an alien planet. They are surrounded by flowing lava and deadly predators. And the “Enigma Cube,” man’s deadliest weapon, has been stolen. Can the siblings save the team, the Cube, and themselves? Attention educators: Teachers everywhere are delighted at the chance to incorporate these books into their lesson plans. As author Douglas E. Richards likes to say, “The aliens are imaginary ... but the science is real.” Many science-related topics can be further discussed in the classroom. The books creatively use the scientific method, include experiments that could be recreated in the classroom, and are full of puzzles, riddles, and math problems waiting to be solved. Fans of sci-fi and of Douglas E. Richards can meet him at Comic-Con in San Diego this July. Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin
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Tweens Enter The Zombie By David Lubar Tor, $5.99, 184 pages Nathan Abercrombie has his hands full. There are spies – both good and bad – as well as obnoxious schoolmates that need to be taken care of. Nathan and his ever-faithful sidekicks, Abigail and Mookie, not only have to defend against the rotten kids at school led by Rodney, but they have to defeat them in a Brainy Brawny contest in order to be recruited into RABID – Raise Anarchy by Inciting Disorder – the most evil spy group. RABID is looking for the brainiest and brawniest kids. Fortunately, our hero and his friends are being directed by good spy, Mr. Murphy from BUM, the Bureau of Useful Misadventures. Abigail is brainy; Mookie is a good athlete; and Nathan, being a zombie, is very strong and has great endurance. The contest is just the beginning to a grand adventure as the three try to defeat rotten kids and bad spies, while seeking a cure for Nathan’s zombie-ness. David Lubar has a great feel for his target audience of young boys. He knows what tickles them and what makes them turn the pages. This fifth and final book of the Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series is a bone-rattling, flesh-rotting, laugh-outloud good read. Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures #6: The African Safari Discovery By Jeff Brown with illustration by Macky Pamintuan HarperCollins, $15.99, 112 pages Flat Stanley travels to Africa for his next adventure but this time he isn’t alone. His father and younger brother Arthur come with Stanley to learn more about a flat skull found in an African dig. Could it be one of Stanley’s ancestors? Along the way, the Lambchop boys parachute, hide from lions, and find themselves literally “up a creek without a paddle”. Even if Stanley weren’t flat, The African Safari Discovery would be a fun book: Masai tribesmen, hiking through African grasslands, meeting eccentric scientists. The interesting twist is how Stanley’s flatness is used as a problem solver in so many instances, such as when there aren’t enough parachutes or canoe paddles. The frequent illustrations through-
out the book make it an easy adjustment for a reader just starting chapter books. The “What You Need to Go on Your Own Safari” fact pages at the end were a welcome addition, although I wish they had been more extensive than the two pages. Overall, it was an interesting book that addressed many things: Africa, feeling different, solving problems. Something for everyone. Reviewed by Jodi Webb The Emerald Atlas (Books of Beginning) By John Stephens Knopf Books for Young Readers, $17.99, 432 pages Book One of John Stephens’s trilogy is richly textured and oftentimes funny, despite the plights of several characters. Ten years earlier, Kate (14), Michael (12), and Emma (11) were left at an orphanage. Shunted from facility to facility, they still hope for their parents’ return. Then they end up at Cambridge Falls, a peculiar orphanage indeed. Exploring the building, they find an underground study, where an enchanted atlas transports them back in time. A beautiful witch, calling herself the Countess, has kidnapped the children of Cambridge Falls. Their fathers are her slaves, working the mines under the Dead City, trying to find her the magic atlas with its powers. The three siblings are key players in a mission, and a kindly wizard, Dr. Stanislaus Pym, is intricately involved with the atlas, the children’s mission, and their parents’ disappearance. Adventure follows adventure: dwarves, undead creatures called Screechers, creepy underground monsters, a larger-than-life hunter, a wise woman. The world John Stephens creates is so real it is tangible. The siblings each have distinct personalities-responsible Kate, gutsy Emma, scholarly Michael. And each has separate adventures, all leading to a satisfying finale that leaves one eager for Book Two. Reviewed by Elizabeth Varadan Rascal: A Dog and His Boy By Ken Wells Knopf Books for Young Readers, $16.99, 201 pages Set deep in the South and filled with the rich dialect and culture of Louisiana, a sweet beagle puppy named Rascal finds he is a perfect match for a young boy who loves the outdoors. Meely (Rascal’s boy) and
Rascal become inseparable pals who make every day an adventure by exploring the Louisiana bayou. With all their mischiefmaking, hunting, and fishing, trouble is bound to find them. One day while crossing a rotted bridge, Meely is injured and needs help. Rascal is angry at himself because his instincts told him that bridge was dangerous, but he was having so much fun that he ignored those feelings. Now it’s up to him to high-tail it back to the farm and get help before dark, and before Pick, the nastiest, largest and most venomous swamp snake, finds Meely. Pick is a snake with an attitude and he wants revenge! Rascal: A Dog and His Boy definitely has the feel of the great Huckleberry Finn stories. Author Ken Wells grew up in Cajun country, along with five brothers who shared a farm with a dozen or so adopted dogs, including a beagle named Tootie. Wells has managed to bring his experience and imagination to life through the adventures of Meely and Rascal. Reviewed by Doreen Erhardt Little House on the Prairie 75th Anniversary Edition By Laura Ingalls Wilder HarperCollins, $16.99, 335 pages This is the 75th edition of Little House on the Prairie. A lot of parents have read it aloud to their little ones over those years, and a lot of people, not all of them children by any means, have delighted to read it to themselves. There were two books by Mrs. Ingalls Wilder before this one, one telling about her earlier childhood, Little House in the Big Woods, and one, Farmer Boy telling about her husband, Almonzo Wilder’s, childhood on an Eastern farm. And the lady wrote six others after this one, so if you are just now finding her fine work, you have a delightful reading prospect ahead of you. Filled with engaging detail, like how to make hinges without metal or nails, or what it was like to have your quilt-doored house surrounded and serenaded by a superpack of (now extinct) buffalo wolves, this is an expansion of anyone’s world. The Ingalls’ built a home among wild animals, mistakenly too close to earlier-arriving Americans, the Osage tribe, and with little beyond their own hard work. The book is hardbacked with colored Garth Williams pictures, and nice big print. A wonderful read at any age. Reviewed by David Sutton
Best of the Best: A Baseball Great Novel By Tim Green HarperCollins, $16.99, 272 pages Winning is everything. Josh LeBlanc has heard this mantra all his life. After participating on a national championship baseball team and landing Nike funding, the twelve-year-old appears to be at the top of his game. His dad, a minor league veteran, pushes the young athlete to his limit and expects Josh to take part in a Little League quest in Best of the Best by Tim Green. But are the stakes too high? Baseball isn’t the only concern on the adolescent’s mind. His parents have split, and his dad’s new girlfriend, Diane, tries to force her baseballbumbling son, Zamboni, into the spotlight. Can Josh learn how to handle responsibility to his teammates and to his family? Sometimes, winning means doing what’s right, even if the right thing isn’t a popular choice. While young readers will appreciate the action-packed baseball games and descriptions, older readers on the tween spectrum may find Josh a bit self-absorbed. His attempts to thwart his dad’s wanna-be girlfriend are comical, but perhaps not totally realistic for someone his age. Tim Green’s baseball expertise shines through in this book’s narration. Many scenes will have readers feeling like they are at the ball park, watching the game. The only things missing are hot dogs and the 7th inning stretch. Reviewed by LuAnn Schindler House of the Star By Caitlin Brennan Starscape, $17.99, 282 pages Caitlin Brennan introduces a magical, new world in House of the Star. The kingdom’s princess, Elen of Ymbria, yearns to ride a worldrunner, or supernatural horse, which crosses Faerie roadways joining the mystical with Earth. “Blanca, Elen had long since realized, was more than a worldrunner. She mattered in ways Elen was just beginning to understand.” When Elen receives an invitation to view where the horses are bred at the House of the Star ranch in Arizona, she learns a member of the Caledon royal family will also be attending. Convinced the invite is a trap, See HOUSE, cont’d on page 22
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Cooking, Food & Wine Grilled Cheese, Please! 50 Scrumptiously Cheesy Recipes By Laura Werlin Andrews McMeel Publishing, $16.99, 158 pages Combine two much favored ingredients, bread and cheese, toast them to further enhance flavors, and you have our old-time darling, grilled cheese sandwich. This cookbook serves up 50 grilled cheese recipes, a sequel to the previous Great Grilled Cheese. Forget about the standard quick-grilled cheese you can assemble in minutes and have on the table soon after. For most of these recipes, the ingredients are unlikely to be on your pantry shelf. A visit to a specialty food store or cheese shop is likely to precede your kitchen work. Many ingredients may be hard to find, but to make recipes user-friendly, the author suggests easy-to-find alternatives. Expect to spend time in the kitchen to assemble and prepare a recipe. The result is likely to be worth your time, but grilled cheese sandwiches, even if from sophisticated recipe, are not meals you proudly serve for dinner guests. Indeed, most recipes are elaborate, original, and unusual, many adopted from grilled cheese restaurants, chefs, and cooks having their own original ideas. The presentation is beautiful with many full-page color illustrations of the final product. You’ll find both stovetop and sandwich maker methods for each. The cross-referenced index is thorough. Reviewed by George Erdosh Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook By Weight Watchers Wiley, $29.95, 436 pages Weight Watchers is the world’s leading provider of weight management services. Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of over 500 recipes that combine great taste with nutritionally smart choices to achieve weight loss and maintain it. With a variety of cooking tips, howto’s, and full color photographs, this cookbook promises to be the all-in-one kitchen resource you’ll go to again and again for outstanding ideas and inspiration as a springboard for your own unique flavor preferences. Whether you’re looking for something fast and easy after work or something everyone will be raving about for a special occasion or a gathering of friends,
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there will be a recipe sure to suit the event. One doesn’t have to be an active Weight Watchers participant to reap the benefits of cooking recipes that healthy with low fat and calories. To further promote a healthful lifestyle the book contains tips, nutritional information along with Point Plus information, how-to’s and skill level assessment for each recipe. Reviewed by Laura Friedkin SuperFoods: For Babies and Children By Annabel Karmel Atria, $17.99, 192 pages Feeding a baby seems to start out tough and just get tougher. Newborn feeding is far from easy with the difficult early days of breastfeeding and, later, the hassles of measuring formula on the go, but when the weaning process starts, new issues come to the fore. Will my baby like it’ is one of the first questions; Is it good for her? a close second. Fortunately, figuring out what foods can best benefit your baby doesn’t have to be a guessing game. SuperFoods illuminates the murky waters of nutrition and helps parents plan and cook healthy, delicious meals for both curious new eaters and picky toddlers. Though the recipes are for the most part simple and offer plenty of room for adaptation, one of the best parts of SuperFoods is the clear description of what foods are healthy and appropriate for different age groups an excellent resource for first-time parents venturing into uncharted waters. Author Annabel Karmel delivers sound feeding advice that everyday parents can embrace -- without feeling like they’re poisoning their children if they fail to shop exclusively at Whole Foods. Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell The $5 Dinner Mom Breakfast And Lunch Cookbook By Erin Chase St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.99, 325 pages Eating well on a budget may bring to mind images of flavorless chicken breasts and mixed veggies, but it certainly doesn’t have to. Erin Chase’s new cookbook The $5 Dinner Mom Breakfast and Lunch Cookbook will provide you with the inspiration you need to feed your family without going broke. With over 200 recipes to choose from, you’ll find a plethora of breakfast, lunch, and snack ideas for home or on the go, all for $5 or less per meal. I love Chase’s oatmeal recipes, including apple cinnamon oatmeal, maple pecan oatmeal, and pumpkin spice oatmeal. Fla-
voring quick-cooking rolled oats is infinitely less expensive than buying boxes of instant oatmeal to feed my four children and also makes me feel like I’m putting effort into their breakfast. The caramel apple breakfast casserole was my family’s favorite and something we’ll be repeating frequently! One thing I disliked about this cookbook was its lack of pictures. There is one small section of select recipe photos in the center of the book, but the remainder of the cookbook is largely colorless. The book is jampacked with useful, kid-friendly, and tasty meals your family will enjoy eating. If you’re looking for a little inexpensive inspiration, look no further! Reviewed by Jennifer Melville The Simple Art of Eating Well: 400 Easy Recipes, Tips and Techniques for Delicious, Healthy Meals By Jessie Price, The Eating Well Test Kitchen Countryman Press, $35.00, 510 pages Eating Well Magazine has offered up their new The Simple Art of Eating Well Cookbook to join the parade of trendy, healthy, whole-foods cookbooks. This book, designed to benefit both experienced cooks as well as complete kitchen novices, is filled with recipes for all occasions interspersed
with preparation techniques, food profiles, and helpful hints. There are recipes in here to appeal to people of every taste, from vegetarian or omnivore. The book covers a huge range of different ethnic flavors. Recipes include Bouillabaisse with Spicy Rouille, Indian Mango Dal, Filet Mignon with Madeira-Prune Sauce, and Sunny Citrus Chiffon Cake, among others. The huge variety of recipes just begs to be tried, and the pictures add to the mouthwatering appeal of the book. The recipes are mostly simple to follow, with clear directions and many color photos, and the detailed nutritional information makes planning well-balanced meals easier. Also provided is an estimate of the length of time necessary to prepare each recipe, as well as an appendix full of conversion charts, equivalents/substitutions, and even a detailed glossary. This cookbook is a keeper, deserving a place of honor on any chef’s kitchen bookshelf. Reviewed by Holly Scudero See ORIGINAL, cont’d on page 21
Look Who’s In The Neighborhood! Author Sara Quessenberry will sign The Good Neighbor Cookbook: 125 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Surprise and Satisfy the New Moms, New Neighbors, Recuperating Friends, Community-Meeting Members, Book-Club Cohorts and Block Party Pals in Your Life!
Sunday, April 10 at 2 pm The Avid Reader
1600 Broadway, Sacramento, CA (916) 441-4400
A r c h i v e d p u b l i c a t i o n i s s u e s a t S a c r a m e n t o B o o k R e v i e w . c o m /a r c h i v e s
ORIGINAL, cont’d from page 20 The Original King Arthur Flour: The Yogurt Bible By Pat Crocker Robert Rose, $24.95, 317 pages Have you ever attempted to make yogurt at home? Even if you’ve tried and failed numerous times, gear up for one more (successful) try with author Pat Crocker’s steady and informed hand to guide you. A culinary herbalist and professional home economist Crocker put together a thick volume not only on the health benefits of regularly consuming yogurt, but on a wide variety of other foods as well, most of which--not coincidentally--go rather well with yogurt. The array of recipes included touched on many aspects of using yogurt in cooking, baking and snacking, including Raspberry Fudge Cookies, Basque Chicken Saut‚, Creamed Scallop Soup and my personal favorite: Pear Cardamom Yogurt. Thus armed with fail proof recipes, there remains little reason not to embark on your own yogurt brewing adventures. Reviewed by Meredith Greene Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook By Kim Barnouin Running Press, $29.95, 298 pages Fans of Barnouin’s previous books likely know what they’re getting into with Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. For those who have yet to be introduced to the series, here is a rundown of the author’s point of view. Eating meat and animal products is bad for you, and bad for the Earth. A vegan diet will help you lose weight and find more energy in your everyday life, and eating that way doesn’t have to involve tasteless meals or unusual hippie foods. This cookbook proves it. Recipes like OrangeKissed Beet and Arugula Salad and Seitan Sweet Potato and Onion Hash are full of delicious ingredients and are good for you, too. There are recipes for every meal of the day, as well as desserts: White Chocolate Chip Cookies and Vanilla Bean Cake don’t need eggs or butter to taste amazing. And in true Skinny Bitch style, there’s even a drink section. Who wouldn’t want a Pink Fizzy? The recipes are clear and easy to follow, and interspersed with factoids about different ingredients and quick “how-to’s” to make preparation even easier. Barnouin makes being vegan nearly effortless and so delicious that there’s really no good reason not to try it. Reviewed by Holly Scudero
The Flavors of The Florida Keys By Linda Gassenheimer Atlantic Monthly Press, $27.50, 271 pages If your interests are in American regional cookbooks, this recipe collection from the Florida Keys could be a useful addition, should you have none yet from that region. Yet you may be disappointed in the recipes that are neither original, nor very exciting. Each recipe is from the kitchen of one of the food establishments in the Keys, from beachside shacks through bars to high-end resorts. The recipes were supplied by owners or chefs and tested by the author. They are placed on a single or two facing pages for convenience, are well written and easy to follow. They are not difficult recipes and ingredients are mostly readily available though this is not scratch cooking. Each recipe’s head note describes the origin of that recipe, some history and anecdotes about both people and the place. The printing is monochrome with green ink highlighting titles. Otherwise the only illustrations are 16 pages of photos bound in the center. The book begins with a good introduction of the Florida Keys, including history. The index is not very good (Herbal Spiny Lobster under H) but well cross referenced. Reviewed by George Erdosh The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 Recipes Plus Lessons for a Hand-Crafted Life By Tom Hudgens Chronicle Books, $35.00, 608 pages This is the mother lode. The Commonsense Kitchen is more than a mouthful of morsels. It packs the punch of a history lesson while teaching the fundamentals of the deliciousness of simple living. This tome is a painstakingly birthed creation, through years of labor and love. The conception began at Deep Springs, a small, fully-accredited two-year college tucked into the high-desert of the California valley. The program is so exclusive (for academic achievers) that it only accepts twelve students (young men) a year. Along with a demanding academic load, there is the laborious activity of each day, the men wear may hats, among them, rancher, farmer, mechanic, cowboy, cook. Here is where Tom Hudgens comes onto the scene. Author, chef, and former student of Deep Springs brings the best of his toil to the pages. He shares with his eager readers? recipes of hearty menu items such as Elaine’s Baked Grits, Griddle Toast, Asparagus-Mushroom Frittata, and a whole chapter on beans. Each chapter is crisply
divided and balanced; from Fish and Shellfish, Sauces and Relishes, Beef, Pork and Lamb, as well as Pies and Fruit Desserts. It even teaches you how to make homemade soap! The only visible predicament here is the lack of photos. For a visual learner this could deem a challenge; however, with such extensive and surprisingly simple directions this is one staple your kitchen will not want to be without. Reviewed by Sky Sanchez Heart of the Artichoke By David Tanis Artisan Books, $35.00, 344 pages As David Tanis’ book, Heart of the Artichoke, reveals, spending half the year as the chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and the other half living in Paris, provides fodder for a pretty delightful cookbook. The recipes in the book are not elaborate, and while the flavors are always bright and spot on, the book offers little in the way of surprises, and that is exactly how Tanis intended it. Reflecting the types of recipes that he prefers to cook at home for himself and friends, those in the book are geared toward home cooks looking for dishes with simple, clean flavors that are easy to execute, without a lot of extra fluff. The first and last sections of the book focus on small meals and large feasts, respectively. The middle, and bulk of the book, provides multi-course menus, which cover seasonal cooking, while tapping into a multitude of cultures. A chard and ricotta dessert tart is strangely wonderful, while a modest roast chicken, with just a small handful of ingredients, is impossibly delicious, as is the case with most of the recipes in this book. There are even a few artichoke recipes thrown in for good measure. Reviewed by Andrea Rappaport Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, From Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan By Nancie McDermott Chronicle Books, $22.95, 168 pages Once in a great while one stumbles across a particular cook book that one will not only use often, but pass along to your eldest when she marries. Southern Pies is one of these books. Upon stirring up a batch of the graham cracker crust, the simplicity of the recipe is striking, but when tasting the pie and said crust, there is a realization that almost nothing
is quite as delicious as simplicity. There are genuine and carefully-preserved memories in these pies, each formulated for a summer gathering, or a spring garden party, or a rainy winter day-- all made from scratch with fresh, wholesome ingredients delivering unstinting flavor. There are familiar friends within the pages... the Key Lime Pie and Strawberry-Rhubarb, but also new associates come to greet you: The Black Walnut, the Old-Time Chess, the Muscadine Grape Hull, the Tar Heel, Green Tomato and Black Bottom, all of which proved far more delightful than their names. Reviewed by Meredith Greene The Entrees: Remembered Favorites from the Past: Recipes from Legendary Chefs and Restaurants By Gail Monaghan Rizzoli, $45.00, 191 pages Gail Monaghan has gathered wonderful old dishes from around the world and I’m sure her final selection was difficult, but the result is an absolutely beautiful cookbook that celebrates well-known and a few lesser-known dishes from past eras. These remembered favorites are not just a list of ingredients the average kitchen doesn’t contain accompanied by and impossible set of instructions to prepare and serve the entree, but each recipe features the exquisite photography by Eric Boman and Monaghan provides you with a delightful history of the famous restaurant and people from around the world whose fame is associated with the entr‚e. Each of the seventy-five recipes has been adapted for ease of home preparation and ingredients, with a few tweaks to adjust for a more contemporary appetite. A food writer and editor, Monaghan has truly created what might become a classic cookbook to be cherished and passed down from generation to generation. If you are looking for a unique and beautiful wedding gift, this book would make an excellent choice! Reviewed by Doreen Erhardt
HARE, cont’d from page 9 it can be read over a long winter afternoon and will leave you feeling a little warmer inside. Reviewed by Stacy Kuning
T H E B A C K PA G E , w r i t t e n b y p u b l i s h e d a u t h o r s a t S a c r a m e n t o B o o k R e v i e w . c o m
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Music & Movies David Lynch (Masters of Cinema) By Thierry Jousse Phaidon Press, $9.95, 103 pages Jousse’s portrait of Lynch begins in the subtle tones of imagination, and then adds the layers of his earliest efforts which reveal a cult film artist in his own element with the creation of Eraserhead, and out of it with the loss of control that naturally comes with gigantic productions as Dune. “Following Dune’s release in cinemas in 1984 and its subsequent critical failure, Lynch turned away from super productions and focused on writing.” Best known for his outstanding work in The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and the ABC TV series Twin Peaks that began in 1990 and ran for thirty episodes, Lynch now reveals his genius in more recent feature films, Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006). Jousse points out the rarity of a big screen auteur adapting well with a small screen production. “In Twin Peaks it seems as if the Lynchian universe has contracted to fit into the small screen but, in fact, it also managed to expand to cover a breathtaking range of contemporary mythology and give the filmmaker space to explore his obsessions in a novel like way.” Jousse describes the significant traits that separate Lynch’s work from the pack. He underscores with subtlety, cinematic overtones which plunge the viewer into an experience rather than merely entertain. Although a Hollywood director, Lynch works on the peripheral of the studio system, exploring the multi-facets of art, including photography, painting, and music. Now even these creations are finding their way into galleries and museums. Reviewed by Casey Colthron Francis Ford Coppola (Masters of Cinema) By Stéphane Delorme Phaidon Press, $9.95, 103 pages In this profile of Coppola’s work, Delorme spends as much time highlighting the lessons learned from Coppola’s dismal failures, as with his enormous block-busters. What movie buff doesn’t know about the fast money generated at the box office from the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Rainmaker? But, Delorme digs deeper into what transformed the megalomaniac after what appears to be a decade slump. It is
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impossible to consider Coppola’s genius outside the scope of his brainchild, Zoetrope, which plunged into debt after Warner-Seven Arts withdrew their support in 1970. His dream team broken and scattered, Coppola rebuilds himself while repaying the debt. “Apocalypse Now and One From The Heart together represent an interlude of autarchy, when he imagined he was a dictator. From The Outsiders on, he had to learn to work “with” a writer, and “for” a school. He embraced the practice of dedicating his films; he was making films for somebody, and for a studio, too.” After the failed experiment, One From The Heart, Coppola regroups into a series of efforts that center around a recurring theme of time; life and youth, and decline and death. His work takes on distinctive empathy with personal tragedy when his own son dies during the production of Gardens of Stone; and this pain is felt thereafter in latent ethos. Widely criticized for his flexible style, Coppola historically lets the subject of the film dictate the tenor. And yet, each one carries his undeniable artistry. As Coppola puts it, “Films are like haiku; they express a thought or an emotion in very few words.” Reviewed by Casey Colthron The Tempest By William Shakespeare with introduction by Julie Taymor Abrams, $29.95, 176 pages Her detractors say Taymor sacrifices substance for spectacle. I suppose that worked for Lion King on Broadway, where there was little substance, but seeing the wide-open eyes of my eight-year old daughter watching her first play, I thought: Julie Taymor is a genius. In The Tempest , she promisingly casts Helen Mirren as the wizard Prospera (Prospero in the original), but rather than viscerally dark (and what could be darker than Taymor’s 1999 film Titus?), she settled for lukewarm. Despite this, The Tempest is cinematic. Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh’s shots beautifully alternate between some wondrous close-ups of Mirren and wide vistas of the volcanic Hawaiian landscape where the film was shot. The costume design by Sandy Powell contributes to the lushness, gorgeous courtly attire that manages to incorporate some quite obvious zippers in a nod to Taymor’s predilection for anachronisms. And special credit goes to the makeup department for the evocative prosthetics ap-
plied to Djimon Honsou as Caliban and Ben Whishaw as Ariel. The Tempest offers an in-depth look at the film. Here is Taymor’s screenplay, adapted from the original work, illustrated with the stunning images from the film. So here we have a unique and richly visual edition of the one of the bard’s greatest plays, his supposed farewell to the theater. It remains to be seen whether the film will acquire more admirers. Reviewed by Phil Semler More Miles Than Money: Journeys Through American Music By Garth Cartwright Serpent’s Tail, $15.95, 380 pages The author with a Greyhound ticket and enough money for his next beer sets out to see whether the music he loved -- blues, country folk and soul music -- is still alive in the 21st century. He finds an epic mix of a population, plus a supportive cast of cowboys, poets, and blues men. On his journey he encounters Navajos, beauties, Chicago and soul peoples. He observes how America is divided between the rich and the poor and investigates whether our rich heritage remains. “We grow up on the myth that America is so rich and everyone there has more of everything. But I stop believing that long time ago.” This book is about history, cultures, and definitely jobs, and is also a history of what it means to be a human being. Its author celebrates the power of music to emphasize suffering of people and the search for human dignity. It seems, according to this reviewer, that this book is symbolic, that it starts and ends in Chicago where Studs Terkel, a great American oral historian, started writing about jazz before recording voices of working class across America. Reviewed by Claude Ury
groundwork art design that provided the base for the film’s final look. For those who like concept art, you’ll find plenty of it here. The book also includes a short history of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice story, which started as a poem, but is probably most well-known for the cartoon short starring Mickey Mouse. Most of the remaining graphics are film stills, although there are some very nice progression photos from some of the effects, including the famous Fantasia broom sequence. Naturally, this book would probably be enjoyed most by those who have already seen and enjoyed the movie. And while it does have a few spoilers, there isn’t anything to completely ruin the plot for those who haven’t seen it yet. Of course, being a Disney movie, the end is pretty predicable anyway. Highly recommended to hardcore Disney fans and also recommended for those who like getting a glimpse at how movies are made. Reviewed by Alyssa Feller
HOUSE, cont’d from page 19 named Blanca spirits her to the Arizona desert and the ranch. Once there, Elen learns that the Caledonian visitor is none other than Princess Ria. Will the two put years of hatred and intolerance behind them and learn to cooperate? Brennan’s treatment of princesses sets this novel. She doesn’t place them on a pedestal and they aren’t presented as weak girls constantly seeking help. Instead, she creates strong characters that learn from life’s lessons and past mistakes. The weaving of magical realms and realworld settings is brilliantly achieved. Both worlds join to form a perfect union of the enchanted with the present. House of the Star is a charming book that will delight readers, even those who haven’t been introduced to the lure of fantasy. Reviewed by LuAnn Schindler
The Answer Is Yes: The Making and Art of Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice By Michael Singer Disney Editions, $35.00, 144 pages The Answer Is Yes is a large coffee-table size book the features a behind the scenes look at the making of Disney’s 2010 movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The cover is nothing special, although the overall inside design is much more impressive and visually appealing. The book focuses on explanations of the films many special effects and the
C ome on o v e r a nd s e e w h at w e ’v e got at S a c r a me nt oB o ok R e v ie w.com
Current Events The New Normal: An Agenda for Responsible Living By David Wann St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.99, 274 pages The world is changing in some fundamental ways. The world is still recovering from a recession caused by the current economic paradigm. If we have not already reached peak oil we’re not too far off from it. The purpose of government is actively being re-evaluated both here in the United States and abroad. These issues can be seen in two lights: impending collapse or opportunity for change. David Wann, the author of The New Normal, sees the latter. His book is a call to actively participate in the changing world view today, participate so that the end result is not more of the same but rather a radically different world. Wann envisions a sustainable, natural world that provides meaning, purpose, and time outside the workplace. The New Normal does more than paint a picture of what the this post-industrial/post-services world would look like, he delivers twelve new paradigms and what we need to do now to make sure his bright clean world comes about. Wann’s new paradigms seem naïve and pie-in-thesky. I don’t know if that is because they are or if I’m too close to our current paradigm to see things his way. Regardless, The New Normal is a great book to help you see the world in new ways. Reviewed by Jonathon Howard The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason By John K. Wilson Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99, 373 pages After painstaking research, and with excruciating detail, the author builds his case against the most controversial radio personality on the air today. The question remains:
Will Wilson’s work impact Limbaugh’s audience? As the author points out, 72 percent of an estimated 15 million to 25 million listeners are men. Limbaugh is paid over $2 million dollars a show to stir them up, roughly $15,000 per minute. Will all of this suddenly change with the advent of this book? Perhaps the author could have accomplished more with witty political satire than a straightforward bombardment of facts. For example, Limbaugh’s botched presidential primary plan of 2008, code named Operation Chaos, where he asked conservative listeners to switch sides temporarily, and vote as Democrats in an effort to pit Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama for as long as possible. The irony surfaced after the Obama administration passed the Health Care Bill into law with the support of a Democratic majority, which was elected largely with the help of Operation Chaos. Nevertheless, maybe the author need only wait for Limbaugh to shoot himself in the foot with infamous statements such as: “I hope [Obama] fails....I hope it prolongs the failure. I hope it prolongs the recession.” Reviewed by Casey Corthron Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other By Sherry Turkle Basic Books, $26.95, 360 pages Do you have a Twitter feed? A Facebook page? Are they accessible from your smart phone? Did you ever have a Tamagotchi, Furby, or Aibo? When computers were first
developed no one quite knew what we’d be using them for. The first computer marketed to consumers was the size of your kitchen counter and acted as a recipe file! Now our lives are inextricably connected to and through the computer. No longer do we correspond through just letters or phone calls; now we have text messages, IMs, tweets, e-mails, and wall posts. The technological (and Internet) revolution have changed the way we live, but is it also changing who we are? Sherry Turkle set out to answer that question in her new book, Alone Together. Turkle’s book is broken down into two parts, the first being how our lives have been altered by robotics. Turkle explores how the young and the elderly are increasingly turning to robotics for the connection they would once receive from their families and peers. The second half is dedicated to how the Internet, social networking, and mobile phoning have created an intimacy exemplified by how alone we are in it. Alone Together is an insightful, relevant book that reveals some of the hidden costs of our technological revolution. Reviewed by Jonathon Howard How to Win on the Battlefield: 25 Key Tactics to Outwit, Outflank and Outfight the Enemy By Rob Johnson, Mike Whitby, John France Thames & Hudson, $27.95, 256 pages The more things change, the more they stay the same is a truism that is often overlooked in many fields, but not on the field of battle. Technology and weapons may change, but the basic tactics used by the opposing forces still roll back to tried and true ones, many thousands of years old. The very classic book on warfare, The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu in about 600 B.C., is still taught in military colleges and classrooms today.
B o ok re com me nd at ion s at S a c r a me nt oB o ok R e v ie w.com
How to Win on the Battlefield takes twenty-five classic military techniques and maneuvers, and through specific examples and case studies, shows how they work, who used them and why. The tactics range from Drawing the Enemy, Terror and Psychological Warfare, Blitzkrieg, Flanking and others, and the associated case studies draw from 2,500 years of military history. Clear maps and diagrams of battlefields, illustrations, and pictures help illuminate the battles and the people and armies involved. Authors Rob Johnson, Michael Whitby, and John Francis are all experienced military historians whose interests and specialties overlapped to make what will probably become a classic overview of tactics for aspiring military officers, armchair historians ,and college students learning the history of warfare. Reviewed by Ross Rojek
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Sports & Outdoors Baseball: An Illustrated History, including The Tenth Inning By Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns, Kevin Baker Knopf, $39.95, 564 pages The acclaimed nationwide best-seller and companion volume to Ken Burns’s 22 ½-hour 1994 PBS documentary—has been updated and expanded to coincide with the broadcast of last fall’s Tenth Inning that looked back on the age of steroids, home-run records, the rise of Latino player, and how baseball is the mirror of our country—at its best and at its worst. When the original film and companion book came out, baseball fans were disillusioned with the millionaire players and billionaire owners. In
fact, the original series was shown during a strike! Baseball recovered, perhaps aided by rising patriotism after 9/11. Then another scandal of epic proportion cast doubt on the integrity of the game itself. Today, baseball is more popular than ever to watch, though it doesn’t seem like kids play it much anymore. With celebrity-athlete worship, greed, spectacle, and lack of regulation, flawed baseball still transcends its own shortcomings. When the Giants won the pennant and sailed through the playoffs and series, even normally blasé San Francisco went nuts. Most baseball fans now acknowledge our society is all-too-imperfect—yet baseball is still the most perfect game in the universe. This book is a must-have for any fan. With a rich concoction of narrative, essays, and almost six-hundred photos, this is the best book on baseball. Period. Reviewed by Phil Semler
The Essence of Budo By Dave Lowry Shambhala, $16.95, 182 pages Mr. Lowry’s martial arts writings are extensive. I had only read his magazine articles, some time back, and was delighted at this lucid, thorough, introductory work on Budo in general. I would especially recommend Budo for anyone just starting in the martial arts. Mr. Lowry’s debunking of myth, placement of budo where it belongs in a healthy life, and recommendations for picking a sensei are invaluable. I’ve seen many folks trapped in psychologically, economically, or organizationally poor
Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities By Mark C. Taylor Knopf, $24.00, 240 pages Mark C. Taylor, a professor of religion at Columbia University, calls for the elimination of tenure and mandatory retirement of professors at age 73. He believes that current higher education is expensive, wasteful, and archaic. Among his alternatives to the current state of higher education is a more flexible, adaptable, and interdisciplinary curriculum delivered both in classrooms and via Internet. Alternatively, the writer believes there is diminishing emphasis on research and publishing. We need more teachers in the classroom at places such as Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, and less of the cheap labor namely in the form of teaching assistants with less than doctoral degrees and little or no teaching experience. However, if all proposals set forth by the author are forthcoming, they will require strong financial support. Here are a few of TaylorÕs recommendations: Tenure must be given to faculty based upon teacher competency and not just on the number of books and articles published; libraries must be fully funded in our colleges and universities; community colleges must carry the burden and allow our young people to complete two years of general education by qualified teachers in a wide area of fields. For those not planning
to transfer to a four-year college or university, job skill training must be provided. Finally, scholarships and financial aid should be provided to all students, regardless of ethnic and religious background. Reviewed by Claude Ury
situations in my own martial arts career. This fine book could save many from similar problems. Budo is Japanese martial arts. Lowry argues that some Japanese culture must come with it for it to be truly learnable. Simultaneously, he debunks both the mythic status of the samurai caste and the idea that just because someone is racially Japanese, or comes from Japan, that they truly understand the philosophical ground of Japanese Budo. One of the most attractive aspects of this book is the humor therein. Mr. Lowry points out the sheer necessity of self deprecation and humor mellowing the inevitable mistakes and failings of both students and sensei. If you or your child is contemplating Japanese martial arts training, buy this book. Reviewed by David Lloyd Sutton
Reference Now Write! Screenwriting: Screenwriting Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers By Sherry Ellis, Laurie Lamson Tarcher, $14.95, 336 pages Everyone wants to be on the silver screen, but first, you need a story worth telling. Editors Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson provide the impetus for new and experienced screenwriters to fine-tune those scripts. Now Write! Screenwriting, the newest book in the Now Write! series, breaks down the creative process with stories and exercises from top film and TV writers. Successful writers guide readers-writers through nine categories: Choosing Your Story, Get Writing, Structure, Theme, Crafting Scenes, Character Development, Verbal and Nonverbal Communication, Revision, and Now What. Each short entry includes practical exercises that will shape your screenplay. As a writer, I find that several of the exercises are adaptable to fiction writing. Leslie LehrÕs character development exercise takes the writer to the next level of thinking by considering how a character landed in this situation. Michael Ray Brown shows that a change in perspective will point out holes in the storytelling or it may lead to a new story. Now Write! Screenwriting is a valuable workbook to add to a writerÕs toolbox, especially writers who are serious about the art of storytelling. Reviewed by LuAnn Schindler
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Business & Investing Rise: How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life By Patty Azzarello Newton Park Publishing, $18.95, 304 pages Meet Patty Azzarello, a sharply witty businesswoman and mentor who has discovered, and decided to enlighten us with, the secrets to loving your work while maintaining a life worth living. In her experience she has ascended, and struggled, which is what makes this contribution so readable. She doesn’t just tell us what to do, she shows us what she has done and what has worked well, along with the cases that haven’t been such triumphs (read: her beginnings as an artist turned electrical engineer). In this easy-to-follow and fun to read guide, she has created a recipe for success. Rise is packed with key insights that truly rock the foundation of individual and corporate thinking, “No one cares how hard you work. It’s about results. Not taking vacation is not something to be proud of, nor is it a precursor to great success. This is really only a sign of being so out of control at work that you are demonstrating you are someone who can’t plan and prepare enough to take a week off.” She also incorporates bold headings and tightly succinct chapters making this one writer/businesswoman you want as a climbing partner, a spotter. This is far more than the average business field guide; it is nitty-gritty inspiration at its finest. Azzarello’s writing style must be taken note of. It is such a rarity to tiptoe into the business section, thirsting for knowledge but dreading the sandpaper taste of so many of the selections. That is not what you will find here. This woman is cleverly humorous. She not only fills us in on how to DO Better, LOOK Better, and CONNECT Better, in order to find the right footing between working and living, she adds in a promise from the beginning: her recipe for a tuna sandwich, and, additionally, she has tucked in little language gems throughout. She has taken a topic which could have easily spelled out: Caution- Slippery Hazard, and placed us on even ground, a place with a much broader and brighter view. Sponsored Review The Thank You Economy By Gary Vaynerchuk HarperBusiness, $24.99, 239 pages This book by the social media expert and New York times bestselling author stresses the need to strengthen relationships between businesses and customers by utilizing social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This study is not only about leading companies, but shows how
they are succeeding and many times failing. The author stays away from statical data and looks at social networking in building the economy. Winning in the thank you economy involves several ideas, namely building a sense of community around one’s brand, aiming for social objectives not by quantity solely. Further, it allows the customers to dictate the direction of one’s business and involves a caring relationship with one’s customers about one’s brand and employees, and finally, companies must be, according to this writer, original, whether online or offline. The author’s insights into social media and message of opportunity could not be more timely. Appreciation along with combining passion with business are the keys to building a sustainable business. Lastly, from entrepreneurs and corporate managers to business students, this book is a must read for those wanting to build a great business. This book closes with a most impressive catalog of selections from a cover design contest held for this study. Reviewed by Claude Ury Headhunting For World Peace: An Inside View of UN Employment Law and Practices By M J Balogun PublishAmerica, $32.95, 293 pages This semi-exposé of the internal workings of the UN gives an insight into the real, everyday concerns of the 40,000 staff – keeping their jobs and getting promotion. Clearly, for most of those from poor countries, the agency is one of a few paths to a better life. So they go to any lengths to keep their jobs, which guarantee decent schooling, a pension and foreign travel – unattainable dreams in their own country. Reform is badly overdue, but Balogun admits it is a huge task. Every country is to blame, with the richest demanding that their orders are followed but getting angry when events don’t turn out their way. A good start, as Balogun notes, is to slash the number of subsidiary agencies that have popped up like unwanted children. Balogun makes a far-reaching suggestion to set up regional courts of the International Court of Justice, which would speed up prosecutions and bring in jurists with knowledge of local conditions. This is a useful guide to the bureaucratic workings of a
body that the world needs, but which has become badly infected by corruption and waste. Sponsored Review
EDITORIAL, cont’d from page 3 bookstore ad, and the San Francisco Book Review for a year and a half with almost no bookstore ads. Pete Mulvihill was a quick supporter when we launched, running ads in our first six issues. Arkipelago Books was another that ran ads for a short while. Of the other 13 bookstores that were part of that group ad, William Stout ran a couple of directory ads next to the calendar. Nothing from the rest. And we approached all of them more than once. One local chain told us that they never do print advertising, yet they made an exception for this ad. Several of the others always have events we promote in our print and online calendars, and we’ve given them extensive web and print coverage of those author events. Yet when trying to get any advertising support from them, they usually just dodge our calls. Now I get that money is tight. Our money is tight. We publish two locally focused book reviews, month after month, with next to no promotional or advertising support from an industry that keeps encouraging people to shop local, yet we get nothing from most of them. If the same 15 stores ran a full-page ad (without frequency discounts) from us, it would cost them about $40 each. Would a full-page ad make a difference in our budget any given issue? Why, yes it would. We give our paper away. We carry the cost of printing and distribution, and try and make those costs back in advertising. Some of our publishers take out ads, but those are few and far between as well (as they focus on outlets like the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, USA Today etc.). And we don’t just distribute in bookstores and libraries. We’re also in Sacramento’s state offices, along with three outlets in the state capitol. We’re in coffee shops, theaters, and community and retirement centers. We reach a diverse book-reading crowd of about 40,000 between both publications. If we’re late with an issue, we get calls, emails, and actual letters from readers wanting to know when they can find the latest issue. Other forms of distribution we’ve considered are a straight pay model; we’ve had a couple of magazine distributors ask about it. It would probably cost consumers between $1-2 per issue, but we’d make more money from that than giving it away for free. Book Page sells bundles of their paper to bookstores and libraries for distribution, and many of our current outlets buy that to give away to their customers for free. We’ve started licensing (Portland Book Review), and that will help a bit. But the primary people we help are the bookstores who dis-
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tribute our paper to their customers, who then read one of our reviews and go back to that store asking to buy a copy. We had a complaint once from an unnamed bookseller that we had Amazon links in all of our reviews. “Shouldn’t we be supporting local booksellers?” Sure we should. We’ve tried. I personally emailed Indybound about six times and called four times, looking for ways to support the local booksellers. Never got any response. While I did have some conversations with NCIBA about doing things with them and their members, apparently they’d rather spend their money corporately than locally. We’ve contacted EVERY Sacramento and San Francisco bookseller more than once. And it isn’t like our ads are cost prohibitive. Hell, they start at $35. So what does this all mean? It means we may drop our calendar or only include events from retailers or publishers that advertise with us. It may mean we move to a bundle program where only retailers or outlets that buy our issues at a low cost, distribute them. We may go to a paid distribution model where readers will have to subscribe or buy copies at a newsstand. Or maybe we’ll go to a web and digital publication model and stop paying attention to local literary events and coverage. After all, we get more money from those Amazon affiliate ads than we get from ALL the local bookstore advertising we’ve received since we started. Amazon may not care about the local community, but they help us pay our bills on a local basis. If you’re a local book reader and want to see us continue to publish either of our two papers, provide a calendar of local literary events, review local authors’ books, interview local authors, and cover author events, then remind your local (or chain) retailer that you read our paper and appreciate it. If you are a retailer that wants us to continue to publish under the model we have been, take out an ad that will probably cost you less than 10 paperback books at wholesale. Shop Local means just that – shop local. Advertising with a national entity doesn’t help the local environment. And smaller than that, the Sacramento Book Review and San Francisco Book Review publish more book reviews that almost all the other media outlets in Northern California combined. So, if you want to see a vibrant, thriving book community, you need to support the people who support you.
--Ross Rojek Senior Editor
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Relationships & Sex Total Flirt: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques Every Girl Needs to Get the Guy By Violet Blue Viva Editions, $12.95, 208 pages Think only men corner the market on witty pickup lines and the art of flirting? Think again. Violet Blue gives women a hip instruction manual with Total Flirt. You’ll be transformed from shy bystander to flirting diva. “Flirting isn’t just for making that initial connection; flirting wears many hats. It makes us feel sexy and attractive, or gives us a feeling of satisfaction and self-reliance.” Blue offers quintessential flirting advice, beginning with how to discover your flirt style. Filled with quizzes and suggestion lists, Total Flirt gets you in the mood to get your flirt on. With its common sense approach, Blue shares how to get noticed, why nonverbal communication says so much more, what opening lines keep them coming back, and how to use your seduction persona to gain an advantage. Total Flirt is a fun read that provides practical advice in a sexy, amusing manner. Make sure you read the introduction where Blue makes readers feel at home. She shares that flirting isn’t necessarily something you’re born with. It’s a skill that can be learned and should be practiced! Plus, Blue reminds readers that while the tone of the book is directed toward women, the guide has takeaway value for everyone. So, c’mon, get your flirt on. Reviewed by LuAnn Schindler Shameless: How I Ditched the Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure ... and Somehow Got Home in Time To Cook Dinner By Pamela Madsen Rodale, $24.99, 288 pages Who would endanger a happy marriage and a successful career for sexual fulfillment? Actually many people do all the time. Author Pamela Madsen had it all -- she was happily married to her high school sweetheart, mother to two sons, and a nationally known advocate for women’s fertility issues. But a “seismic shift” as she calls it, changed her perception of what constitutes a happy marriage when a growing restlessness pushed her to confront some areas in her personal life she felt were lacking.
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Shameless is Madsen’s blatantly and overtly unapologetic memoir about her search for sexual fulfillment. Madsen’s story isn’t the usual foray into illicit affairs, though her “means to an end” to some, might not sound unfaithful. Some readers will be offended. Others will be jealous, and still others will be taking notes to find their own sexual nirvana. Madsen’s writing style is bawdy and hilarious, humorous and painfully honest. I can’t say I’d follow her lead by any means, but still I did enjoy the book. It’s a fun romp and it certainly took me into a world I didn’t realize existed in anything other than women’s erotic novels. I won’t divulge how she found the answers to the gaps in her marriage, but I will give you a little insight. She’s still hap-
pily married to her high school sweetheart, and he knows all about her quest. Sounds to me like this guy’s a saint and a catch any SANE woman would hold onto. Reviewed by Laura Friedkin
Local Calendar April 10
Cookbook Author Appearance - Sara Quessenberry, “The Good Neighbor Cookbook 2pm – 3pm Avid Reader Books - 1600 Broadway, Sacramento Ishmael Reed reads and discusses new novel, JUICE! 12:00 pm Time Tested Books, 1114 21st Street, Sacramento
16 Book Discussions - African
American Author Series 10am – 11am Robbie Waters Pocket-Greenhaven Library - 7335 Gloria Drive, Sacramento Author Appearance - Seanan McGuire, “Late Eclipses” 1pm – 2pm Borders Roseville - 2030 Douglas Blvd. Suite 9, Roseville Author Appearance - Peter Grandbois, “Nahoonkara” 7:30pm – 8:30pm The Avid Reader - 617 2nd St, Davis
17 2011 Sacramento Living
Library series - KZAP Radio Retrospective 7:00 pm Time Tested Books, 1114 21st Street, Sacramento
21 Author Appearance - Hallie
Ephron, “Come and Find Me” 6pm – 7pm Borders Sacramento - 2339 Fair Oaks Boulevard, Sacramento
29 Author Appearance - Spring
Warren, “The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family” 7:30pm – 8:30pm The Avid Reader - 617 2nd St, Davis
29 Author Appearance - Spring
Warren, “The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family” 7:30pm – 8:30pm The Avid Reader - 617 2nd St, Davis
May 1
Author Appearance - The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year by Spring Warren 4:00 pm The Avid Reader, 617 Second St. Davis
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Author Appearance - Box of Darkness: Story of a Marriage by Sally Ryder Brady 7:30 pm The Avid Reader, 617 Second St. Davis
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Author Appearance - Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction by Marjorie Sandor 7:30 pm The Avid Reader, 617 Second St. Davis Author Appearance = Traci Foust ‘Nowhere Near Normal’ Reading & Book Signing 2:00 pm Barnes & Noble, Sacramento
16 Author Appearance - The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Death with David Herlihy 6 pm The Avid Reader, 617 Second St. Davis
G o t o S a c r a m e n t o B o o k R e v i e w . c o m /c a l e n d a r f o r a u t h o r e v e n t s
Poetry & Short Stories Life is a Treasure By Karen Ann Treasure Xlibris, $15.99, 107 pages Poetry has a rhythm of its own—one that speaks to the mind and deeply impacts the heart. Karen Ann Treasure, in her beautiful poetry book Life is a Treasure, captures the intricacies of life, love, and relationships. Divided into two parts, Speak to Me and Matters of the Heart, Karen Ann’s book offers more than 75 poems written by a strong, creative, and honest woman. The author has a knack for finding the perfect rhyming combinations, and readers may find themselves reciting the poems aloud to further feel their beat and musicality. One is reminded of spoken word sessions. Karen Ann’s faith shines through in poems like Quiet Time and Angelic Wings. Fan favorites are sure to include Unclassified, a poem that takes on the notion of labeling and classifying oneself and turns it on its head. The poet does indeed define herself but, at the same time, delivers the message that no one can be defined in a simple way—we are all multi-dimensional. Karen Ann’s love poems take us to sandy shores and beaches filled with moonlights and romance. Only a woman who has experienced deep, passionate love can capture its essence like the author does in poems like Wild Nights and Rendezvous. In Treasure’s world, love is something to make sacrifices for and something to take a chance on. Just as in life, there are ups and downs, but love does prevail. Karen Ann ends the book with a song titled You Will Remember Me. Even
though the notes are not printed on the page, readers will hear a tune as they take in the words. Every reader will find a poem to identify with, whether as a woman, a mother, a lover, a traveler, or as a friend. Life certainly is a treasure with Karen Ann Treasure’s poetry. Sponsored Review Did You See The Monkeys? By Eddy Arnold Trafford Publishing, $11.92, 94 pages Did You See the Monkeys? is a stream-ofconsciousness narrative that invents itself in much the same vein as Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The protagonist, a young boy by the name of Tad, allows readers a look into his thoughts as he goes about the business of his daily life, much like Dalloway. However, unlike the matron, Tad brings into his narrative a series of secrets, relationships, and human bonds. Tad’s foil is his opposite in every way: strong, confident Tom, and the book follows the burgeoning friendship between he two via Tad’s florid thought process. Did You See the Monkeys? is packaged as a fiction novel, separated by scenic chapters, but an ending section titled “Characters in the play” allow the readers past Tad’s (beautiful, but narrow) perspective through a summary of the major “characters” in the book. Readers who are highly interested in characterization, or who are frustrated by the monologue of Tad, may want to flip to the back for a little more depth on the other “players.” Despite
the title of this section, the novel can still be characterized as such, as it lacks the formal scenery, blocking and dialogue necessary to be considered a dramatic act. The revisionary purposes of the novel seem to be to touch and reach targeted readers with the strong bond and friendship between the two main characters, Tom and Tad. In addition, the author makes a statement about the kinds of plot, action and dialogue that is available in this type of narrative. The copy style can seem a bit purple at times, but the florid language is well done in certain chapters. In these areas, it draws the reader into the syntax-level beauty that is possible with this type of prose, but does so without detracting too much from the plot and story of our main characters. The novel would be most enjoyed by those open to experimental prose and stream-of-consciousness styling; it delivers both, while also giving adequate attention to action and plot. Sponsored Review Body Rhymes By Donna L. Emerson Finishing Line Press, $14.00, 30 pages When your eyes flicker across the last line of a particularly satisfying poem, one of two reactions is virtually guaranteed. Either you will instantly go back to the first line and begin rereading it, reveling in the parts that danced in your mind’s eye, or you will sit quietly for a few moments, silently reflecting on the magic left in the poem’s wake. I’ve always been one to experience the former more so than the latter, and several of Donna Emerson’s pieces in Body Rhymes had me journeying back to the beginning of the piece to again explore the flowing peaks
and valleys of language she so deftly employed. The meticulous word choice is often as effective as it is stirring. From the brutal melange of nostalgia and pain in The Orchard to the honesty and vitriol of The Princess Who Told the Truth, from the aching desire in Close to the Heart of Rose to the unabashed sentimentality of Heath and Audrey, Body Rhymes is unrelenting in its emotional demands on the reader. Your soul will be stirred, whether you wish it or not. The centerpiece of the chapbook is She Lay Asleep Wearing Oxygen, a multi-sectional examination of a woman’s last moments after a long illness. Taxing in its sincerity, it’s one of the most personal and revealing works I’ve encountered in a long time, and such pellucidity contributes to its impact. The entire book, in fact, feels like the rise and fall of a regular pulse, an EKG of emotional highs and lows, leading up to and through She Lay Asleep Wearing Oxygen and into the subtle resignation and optimism of Grace Notes. It’s a fitting conclusion to an evocative project. Sponsored Review
Sequential Art Ice Haven By Daniel Clowes Pantheon, $16.00, 90 pages A cross between Twin Peaks, The Brothers Karamazov, and a Peanuts cartoon, Ice Haven depicts a bucolic small town riddled with mystery and vice. Daniel Clowes, author of numerous comics including Ghost World and David Boring, turns his fine nib pen to the mysterious disappearance of David Goldberg, a child in an angora sweater and a shag haircut straight out of a “Monkees” episode. Interlocking storylines (a jilted teenager, a misanthropic poet, unhappily married detectives, the Leopold and Loeb 1920s murder case) establish a suspenseful pace and a complex whodunit mystery with clues given both visually and verbally.
But Clowes is up to more than straightforward storytelling, and Ice Haven is ultimately a meditation on comics as an artistic medium. From the shape of the book (short and rectangular, like the old Peanuts books), to the mixture of visual styles used within its individual panels, to the monologues of “Harry Naybors,” comic book critic, every element of Ice Haven is a commentary on the marriage of word and image in the so-called graphic novel. A tour-de-force of intellectual satire and visual punning, Ice Haven is the creation of an artist at the peak of his powers. Reviewed by Catherine Hollis
Library Wars: Love & War, Vol. 3 By Kiiro Yumi with Hiro Arikawa, contributor VIZ Media, $9.99, 200 pages Iku Kasahara and her fellow members of the Library Task Force continue their mission to protect the library and the freedom of information it promotes at all costs. Volume Three of Library Wars: Love & War includes a whole new set of challenges for Iku, including a debate about the future of the library, the opportunity to be a role model for book-loving children, and the acquisition of some new library material
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that must be protected from the Media Betterment Committee at any cost. And that’s just work. There are Iku’s coworkers and the developing friendship between her and her boss, Sergeant Dojo. For a girl who just wants to protect books, Iku’s life is always getting more complicated! This newest volume in Kiiro Yumi’s entertaining series lives up to the standards set by the prior books and will draw readers ever deeper into the story set in this alternate future. As the characters become more developed and the story becomes more complex, readers will not want this book to end. Yumi’s artwork continues to be as amazing as ever; her ability to depict emotions and events with accuracy makes this series a pleasure to read. Reviewed by Holly Scudero
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Self-Help No More Regrets! Create a Better Tomorrow Today By Marc Muchnick Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $14.95, 168 pages We’ve all done things in our lives we wish we hadn’t. And then we spend a lot of time and energy beating ourselves up for those things we regret. Author Marc Muchnick presents 30 inspired ideas to help one reevaluate their personal perspective on life. Why do we regret in the first place? We are creatures of habit and we get stuck in routines. We take things and people for granted. We lose touch with ourselves – our true selves – and because of this, we stop growing, evolving, and learning. Then in turn, because we stagnate, we become caught up in ourselves, and insensitive and judgmental of others. Muchnick’s book, No More Regrets! 30 Ways to Greater Happiness and Meaning in Your Life, divides the process of learning to live without regret into five parts, and then subdivides further, to six chapters in each section, with focus on steps to change our perceptions, to mix it up to get a new view of the present, to appreciate everyone and every moment, find our authenticity, step out of our comfort zone, and make an impact on our own life and others. Each chapter ends with helpful questions to answer, to further emphasize the lessons in each section. Life is challenging enough that we could all stand to free ourselves of past demons and regret. Muchnick’s book is the first step to lifting the weight of these things and feeling free to enjoy life in the now. Reviewed by Laura Friedkin
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Bullseye By Lannah Sawers-Diggins Xlibris, $15.99, 104 pages Lannah Sawers-Diggins has created an important and much-needed book on the subject of bullying from the viewpoint of the victims. Having been a victim, she is familiar with the territory. Bullying is fast reaching epidemic status in the US, with an extremely sad outcome. When children and teenagers find suicide as the only imaginable remedy, it’s long past the time for the supposed adults to step in and find other solutions. This slim book tells 36 case histories in the words of the victims. No real names or places are mentioned, to help protect the innocent, but the overall sadness will weigh you down for days. We must learn to believe the victims rather than perpetrators. Unfortunately, in spite of its good intentions, this book is probably not going to be a leader in the revolution against bullying. It’s not an easy book to read for several reasons. First, of course, the stories themselves are heart-breaking in their unrelieved sadness and senseless cruelty. But second, Ms. Sawers-Diggins chose to print the stories exactly as she received them, adding a legibility burden on the reader and making it very difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to wade through the myriad inaccuracies to get to the gist of the tale. Not all of the stories are in this unhappy condition, but the rare exceptions just emphasize the inequities of the others. Perhaps this reviewer is overly critical, and if so, I’ll readily apologize, but the purpose of editing is to clarify and make the reading easier. An editor could have accomplished a great deal with this material. The originals could have been kept beside the corrected portions. Also, offering sugges-
tions and/or possible solutions would have been very helpful to the reader. As it is, the book is a continual downer, with no relief in sight. This is very unfortunate, I think, as bullying is being uncovered at a terrific rate; solutions are desperately needed to help these victims. Parents need to be more involved; they cannot simply and entirely blame teachers or the education system. Indeed, it does take a village to raise a child, but only one bully to destroy everyone’s efforts – along with the child. This book could have been so much more. Sad. Sponsored Review
Available at Amazon
ISBN 9781450215169
DRAW, cont’d from page 5 in previous chapters. By the time you’ve reached the third chapter, you’re amazed that you are already creating detailed, three-dimensional drawings with proper sizing, contour, perspective and shading, even though these concepts have yet to be explained. The approach presented in this book works so well because you get instant results, which inspire you to continue with the process. Once you’re comfortable drawing, only then does Kistler explain the techniques, showing you through the examples of your own work exactly what you’ve learned. It’s really quite clever and clearly a technique that works well. Reviewed by Andrea Rappaport Visual Journeys: Art of the 21st Century By Edited by Nina Mihm and Mary Carroll Nelson University of New Mexico, $40, 157 pages This is a collection of work by people who belong to the Society of Layerists in MultiMedia, a group that is based in Arkansas. The collection brings together many members of that group and covers many ranges and talents. Unfortunately, this book does not really explain the goal, purpose, or what layerists and multi-media types are all about. Often we are left wondering what we are looking at; is there a common theme, a common element that holds all these people together? At first glance, I would say no. They use different techniques, some are painters, others are craftspeople who glue stuff on canvas and wooden boards. Few are well-known artists. Many are retired and have taken up art. You will find a few artists who display their works in small galleries. In the back of the book is a record of where collections have appeared in museums and major galleries. It’s not a big number. This is a decent introduction; it simply lacks context. The art is decent, though like much modern art, you really have to read into the picture to get what the artist is trying to express. Reviewed by Kevin Winter
e R e a d e r C o m p a r i s o n C h a r t a t S a c r a m e n t o B o o k R e v i e w . c o m /e R e a d e r s
Popular Fiction When the Killing’s Done: A Novel By T.C. Boyle Viking, $26.95, 369 pages T.C . Boyle breaks all the rules. He indulges his readers with a smorgasbord of verbiage—sometimes brilliant and other times nonsensical. His unique torque on adjectives is probably illegal in several states. He oscillates writing styles, points of view, and protagonists. And somehow, Boyle makes it work. Much of the environmental story takes place off the California coast on the Channel Islands. Boyle’s main characters consist of government biologists pitted against a team of environmental zealots. Alma Takesue, a park service biologist, coordinates a greenprint program designed to return the islands to a balance of local native animal species. She is up against local animal rights activist Dave La Joy who is fiercely against any animal losing its life for the political correctness de jour—even those from a rat spill. Two of the characters have strong ties to the Channel Islands and Boyle gives us not only a history lesson of the islands, but a biological tutorial on the brown tree snake invasion of Guam. Boyle offers a vast amount of environmental information without prosethelizing and weaves it into a stark study of contemporary relationships. If you enjoy Boyle’s thick textural style, you will like the beginning of the book. If your tastes run more toward incendiary scenes, the middle of the book will thrill you. If you are fed up with predictable, feel good epilogues . . . cross your fingers . . . keep reading. Reviewed by Sheli Ellsworth The Illumination By Kevin Brockmeier Pantheon, $24.95, 257 pages It comes on suddenly. Every bruise, wound, cut, ache, and pain begins to glow with an unearthly light. In an instant, the world is forever changed by The Illumination. With brief glimpses into the pre- and post-Illumination lives of half a dozen characters, woven together by encounters with a book of love notes, The Illumination paints a greater picture of our experiences, our suffering, and the invisible connections that bind us. Kevin Brockmeier is the author of works like the devastating The Truth About Celia, the lighthearted and goofy Grooves: A Kind of Mystery, and the
utterly fantastic The View From the Seventh Layer, and he has topped himself with The Illumination. It’s a work of unrelenting honesty and surprising beauty, a novel that will challenge you as much as it inspires. While the book does lose some of its momentum in the Ryan Shifrin chapter--the first three sections are more closely related and require less introductory work for the character--it regains its footing for the most part before the final two players are featured. Stunning at times and evocative throughout, The Illumination is a very worthwhile read. Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Restless Heart: A Novel By Wynonna Judd NAL, $25.95, 320 pages To be sure, it’s hard to know who did how much of a book, when the celebrity author’s name is all over the place, including the covers, but the title page says “with . . .” In this case, the celebrity is famous country singer Wynonna Judd, and the “with” is multipublished romance author LuAnn McLane. Regardless, this collaboration produced a very well-done book, with great characters (the heroine just happens to be a country song-w r iter/singer) and a very true-to-life plot. Destiny Hart is the younger of two sisters, brought up on country music. A small-town girl, Destiny wants to make it big, and because of a dare from a schoolmate and some help from her older sis, that’s exactly what happens! But when she falls in love Seth, a man she knows from town who is already in college when she gets her big break, she must make some tough choices. Set against the tale of her parent’s longtime marriage and its gradual disintegration, Destiny has ample opportunities to see how the words left unsaid can create innumerable problems. The main characters are people you know and like and choices are the kind each of us face every day. It’s likely that this book, full of wonderful “down home-isms” could help you with those choices: “If it’s really what you want, don’t pussyfoot around!” Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz
The Book of Peach has all the best elements of a zany, wacky Southern story: an exbeauty queen returning home divorced and disgraced, determined to figure out her next move, whatever that may be; a cold, heartless, Mississippi mama equally determined to bring up her children right, to always be respectable and a good reflection of the Rondell name; and the inevitable clashing of the two. Unfortunately, Stokess novel failed to live up to my expectations of a quality
read. Perhaps it was main character Peach Rondell’s passive aggressiveness or her indulgence of acting like a spoiled adolescent. Perhaps it was the predictable plot or the rehashing of the many slights suffered by Peach under the thumb of her iron-willed, tyrannical genteel mother. Portions of the story dragged slower than a lazy afternoon. In truth, for much of the book, Peach isn’t a very sympathetic character. Only by the See PEACH, cont’d on page 31
For those interested in why radio “was and is a force in our lives, this is an enjoyable trip for a quiet afternoon.
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-- San Francisco Book Review
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The Book of Peach By Penelope J. Stokes Berkley, $15.00, 304 pages Based on the description on the back of the book, I wanted to like this novel by Penelope J. Stokes.
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Romance The Viking’s Captive By Sandra Hill Avon, $7.99, 384 pages Sandra Hill is known for her sexy, slightly anachronistic, but good-hearted Viking romances, and The Viking’s Captive is no different. A caveat: this was published as My Fair Viking in 2002, so for fans of Hill’s books, you might already own this book! For those unfamiliar with Hill’s work, this is a slightly bizarre, yet sexy and hilarious romp featuring Princess Tyra of Stoneheim, a very tall Viking warrior princess, and Adam, the Saxon exphysician she kidnaps to heal her father. With shades of Xena: the Warrior Princess’s more bawdy moments, The Viking’s Captive nonetheless captures the tender and romantic moments inherit in the romance genre, and Hill balances these elements with her outrageous sense of humor with a skill most would fumble. Along for the ride, as Tyra and Adam struggle to fight their attraction, are her many sisters who cannot marry unless she does, Adam’s Arabian best-friend who is full of proverbs, and the Viking warriors under Tyra’s command. Though the story does grow impossibly silly at times and Hill’s writing can be repetitive to fans of her work, the hilarity is genuine, and chances of reading this book without at least cracking a smile are nil. This book is highly recommended to those wanting a good laugh while reading a gem of the normally stuffy historical romance genre, and definitely to fans who’ve lost track of Hill’s Viking romances. Reviewed by Angela Tate
Driftwood Cottage By Sherryl Woods Mira, $7.99, 384 pages If you’re part of a big, sprawling family, you’ll feel right at home with the O’Brien clan. If you’re a loner, however, you can only drool with envy at the closeness and intense levels of support that exist in this extended family. They’re a bit intimidating, to be sure, but love is everywhere! Youngest son of Mick and Megan, Connor took their break-up more personally than his siblings. It motivated him to become an attorney, specializing in divorce, mostly from the male opinion. He saw nothing wrong with riding roughshod over those left behind if husband/father spied greener pastures elsewhere. When he and Heather Donovan met in college, they were immediately drawn to each other, and to be sure, Connor never misled Heather as to his antipathy toward marriage. He would happily agree to love and honor her and any offspring forever, but without a wedding. No ring. No ceremony. Period. Then, Heather becomes pregnant, and still Connor refuses to consider marriage. So Heather does the next best thing—inadvertently. She takes baby Mick to his grandparents and leaves him there. Connor of course, is furious. And lonely. When Heather is in a serious accident, he begins to take another look at her – and himself. The abandoned Driftwood Cottage symbolizes all of Heather’s dreams, and no matter how many times Connor proposes,
she says no, because she doesn’t think he really means it. Can Driftwood Cottage prove his sincerity and change her mind’ Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz
explaining why it was done. This one doesn’t and there are just too many such errors to be overlooked. Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz
Outrageously Yours: Her Majesty’s Secret Servants By Allison Chase Signet, $7.99, 384 pages Sadly, this well-written book is extremely problematic ‘ at least for this reviewer. The book was frustrating to read because it was so outrageous. It’s also irritating in many ways. It’s the sort of book that doesn’t seem to know what it is ‘ or wants to be. Is it a romance’ A mystery’ A thriller’ A fantasy’ A history of one facet of science’ It’s a bit of all those things, set in a very specific time and place ‘ England in 1838. Putting a book in that time frame means adherence to certain facts, or at least it should. This reviewer is not all that into science, to be sure, but I found those portions to be interesting and apparently well put together. It’s when they tangle with the other components of this 360-page story that it runs into difficulties. At least the ‘hero’ saw through the ‘heroine’s’ cross-dressing venture as a young male student at Cambridge, but others with whom she came into contact accepted her imposture without question. Because of her intellectual acuity, he selects her to be his assistant. His laboratory is at his country estate, as is the bed they promptly tumble into. An author can certainly ‘fudge’ history a bit, but should at least offer an author’s note
Goddess of Legend By P.C. Cast Berkley, $15.00, 309 pages In the seventh book in P.C. Cast’s Goddess Series, we are whisked away to the magical world of Arthurian Camelot. Viviane Goddess of Water is unhappy that Merlin has foreseen the future and wants no part of it. He has merely spelled himself to sleep rather than deal with the whole Arthur-Gwen-Lancelot love triangle. Viviane wants her Druid lover back and uses her Goddess divination to find a woman from the future to win Lancelot’s heart. Isabel drives her car into a lake and is transported to Camelot by the Goddess of Water. There instead of falling for Lancelot, Isabel is immediately assaulted by the handsome Arthur. Their courtship grows fonder as Isabel begins to help him find new ways to run Camelot in a more ‘capitalist’ environment. Quirky and not wholly unimaginable, the book plays on Cast’s obvious and well used humor to move along the plot of taking a twenty-first century girl into the past. If you are looking for historical accuracies in Arthur and company, you will be greatly disappointed. However if you are looking for a steamy love story with a fantastically updated use of lore, this book is for you. Reviewed by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg
The Princess of Las Pulgas By C. Lee McKenzie WestSide Books, $16.95, 346 pages Carlie’s father dies from cancer and her life changes when she leaves her wonderful home by the sea and moves to a low-income apartment in Las Pulgas. Where she once had many friends, at Las Pulgas she waits for the moment she can leave. A teacher asks her to play the lead part in Othello and she reluctantly agrees. The teacher encourages her to make friends and she’ll be fine. Yea, right. When she realizes she has to kiss the lead, a Hispanic boy who she believes lives
in a rat-hole hotel, she thinks, “No way!” Not really joining in, but showing up to school and rehearsals, she begins to know the strangers at Pulgas High. She begins to accept their “straight talk,” and develops compassion as she learns more of their back stories. KT, the tormenting, loud-mouthed former lead, shares a comforting insight: “Once you got the miseries … you got to go through a long, dark journey before you come out the other side.” When her old friends mingle with the Las Pulgas ones, Carlie starts to see her old world differently. Maybe the Las Pulgas kids have it right. A compelling story of how one girl pushes through her grief, awakens to her own limited viewpoints, and finds out who her real friends are. Reviewed by Susan Roberts
Young Adult All Just Glass By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Delacorte Books for Young Readers, $15.99, 246 pages Sarah Vida, once a Vida witch, is now a newly converted vampire. Once a vampire hunter, Sarah tries to orient herself in her new life by getting over her qualms of drinking blood. The brothers Nikolas and Kristopher, who turned her, are there to support her. But things are not so simple for Sarah. Her grandmother has evoked an ancient Vida law to kill Sarah, in the belief that she is dead in vampire form. Her own friend and
sister, Adia, is put in charge of the hunt with a few family members. Adia has to decide if she will be able to kill her own sister or not. How far will someone go for duty until love conquerors all? Amelia gives her readers another great book, continuing the first book, Shattered Mirror. With amazing skill, she shows different characters’ faults, and their strive for control without being called soft. Her vampire world is very realistic, and keeps a dark, serious tone throughout the book, combining it with bits of light. When I read All Just Glass, I felt as if I couldn’t get enough of Sarah and Adia’s world. After reading the last page, they will crave more of Amelia’s work. Reviewed by Amanda Muir
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Science & Nature Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World By Jane McGonigal The Penguin Press, $26.95, 388 pages Jane McGonigal is saving the world, and she wants your help. Not feeling heroic today? McGonigal begs to differ, and she illustrates her point in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How They Can Change the World. McGonigal, a video game developer, brings readers a book that describes the power and uplifting nature of games, the unique qualities of dedicated gamers, and how a “gameful” life can improve individual happiness and, ultimately, the world. In contrast to the common belief that games are used to escape reality, McGonigal describes how games are being used to fill reality. But why? Because reality is broken. Reality does not engage individuals with the level of satisfaction that games do. McGonigal wants this to change. However, she does not simply want reality to harness the stimulating nature of games, she wants to see reality go farther by harnessing the power of hundreds of gamers spending hundreds of hours playing together to solve complicated problems. McGonigal posits that a reality crafted to incorporate and utilize the appeal of game structure is a reality in which millions of people can come together to solve real-world problems. Her experience in alternative reality games is used to demonstrate how thousands of people, each bringing unique strengths to a group, will willingly come together to work out solutions to problems such as oil shortages, poverty, climate change, and terrorism. These aren’t just any people, these are gamers. But, the term “gamer” describes more and more people every day. McGonigal foresees a future in which everyone is some type of gamer, and she wants to see reality become a place where gamers can be connected, their strengths identified, and their combined efforts channeled into games that improve global quality of life. Reality is Broken is well-written, engaging, fascinating, and inspiring. But these accolades pale in comparison to the book’s ultimate achievement: hope. McGonigal doesn’t see a future of individuals being subsumed into an isolating digital world. She looks at the increasing number of gamers and she sees community, solidarity, collaboration, and joy. She sees a future in which reality is better because people have access to a “gameful” life that is personally satisfying and globally significant. This is a must-read title for everyone; even if you’ve
never played a video game in your life, you’ll want to pick up this book. Reviewed by Rachel Wallace The Whole-Brain Path to Peace: The Role of Left-and Right-Brain Dominance in the Polarization and Reunification of America By James Olson Origin Press, $21.95, 318 pages Author James Olson has spent years of research and analysis looking at the way each hemisphere of the brain reacts to the same stimulus, and what that means for the individual’s perspective on that same stimulus. The results are detailed in The Whole-Brain Path to Peace, and they provide a guide to different ways of viewing the world around you. Olson uses the traditional right- and left-brain lateralization theories for discussion on political affiliation (Democrats tend to be right brain and inclusive, Republicans left brain and individualistic), religion, public policy, and other personal characteristics, and the inherent issues between the two perspectives. The Whole-Brain Path to Peace is a wellresearched and documented book, with extensive notes and bibliography. Olson’s conclusions tend to fall on the liberal side (thus probably making him more right-brain), and his choice of the war on drugs as his example in the chapter Perspective and War, when there are two major wars currently ongoing, not to mention recent regional or ethnic wars, reduces the impact of his thesis. Sure the war on drugs affects hundreds of thousands of people, but it doesn’t really rise to the level of Iraq or Afghanistan. It was simply an unfortunate marketing decision which led to the label “the war on drugs.” The Whole-Brain Path to Peace will provide an interesting look at ways to consider your world, not just through your natural filters, but through others as well. However, those most in need of reading something like this are probably most disinclined to do so. Deep Future By Curt Stager Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99, 304 pages The only people who haven’t come to accept the fact that global warming and climate change are happening are those who are not facing reality; and while many of us have ideas, thoughts, and con-
cepts of what climate change may bring over the next century, Deep Future goes one giant step further. Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleo-climatologist, and science journalist, who has written for National Geographic and Science magazine. In Deep Future he goes into detail on what effect climate change will have on our planet not just for the next hundred years, but over the next hundred thousand years. Stager makes clear two things early on in the book. One is that the likelihood of the world falling into an ice age any time soon is nonexistent. The other is that we are now living in a new age, which is coming to be known as the Anthropocene, better known as the Age of Humanity or the Age of Humans. It is the age in which everything we have done and everything we do has a longlasting effect. In eleven detailed chapters with titles such as “Beyond Global Warming,” “Oceans of Acid,” “The Rising Tide,” and “An Ice-Free Arctic,” Stager doesn’t hold back the grim news for Earth’s future. The point he makes clear is that this isn’t going to happen tomorrow; it’s going to take hundreds and thousands, and tens of thousands, of years. We also are using up our fossil fuels, which means we will eventually be unable to continue heating up the planet. A plateau will be reached in the far future, and then Earth will eventually return to normal in the very distant future. While many of the devastating effects discussed in Deep Future will not come to fruition for a long time, they are nevertheless fascinating and disturbing to discover, and Stager is sure to keep readers informed on what they can do now to alleviate some of these seemingly inevitable events. Reviewed by Alex Telander E Is for Environment: Stories to Help Children Care for Their World -- at Home, at School, and at Play By Ian James Corlett Atria, $18.99, 128 pages Ian James Corlett’s new book does something that might seem unthinkable to many of us: It treats children like they can and should make a difference. It empowers them to make good choices about conservation, and encourages them to educate others, including their parents and teachers. The story of brother and sister Elliot and Lucy begins when two environmentalists visit their school on a trip around the country to raise money and awareness. The information they give to the kids follows Elliot and Lucy on a trip to the grocery store (Lucy remembers to bring reusable shopping bags), on a walk to the post
T H E C R I T I C A L E Y E . . . w h a t ’s i t l i k e t o b e a b o o k r e v i e w e r ?
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Providing an interesting look at ways to consider your world, not just through your natural filters, but through others as well.
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Sacramento Book Review San Francisco Book Review
Two brain hemispheres, two perspectives on the world.
Are you taking full advantage of both? ISBN 9781579830557
Available on Amazon | Barnes & Noble office (Dad wanted to drive), and during playtime (Lucy wears a sweater instead of messing with the thermostat.) The best thing about Corlett’s book (aside from the adorable illustrations by R.A. Holt) is that it encourages interaction from readers. It asks questions in the middle and at the end of chapters and offers eco-friendly tips. This guarantees that sitting down to read E is for Environment will not only be fun, it will also be a valuable learning experience that will leave you and your child feeling empowered and uplifted. Reviewed by Amanda Mitchell PEACH, cont’d from page 28 end, through the relationships with zany townspeople, does Peach become a character one wishes to read about. By then, it’s too late. Reviewed by Lanine Bradley
April/May 11 31
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