A Glimpse into my mind

Indulgence in Death by J.D. Robb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


What's there to say? It's a solid 3 stars. Nothing fancy, nothing truly exciting, but nothing that turns me away and loathed reading it.

I put the "In-Death" series in the same category as Regency Romance books for my reading pleasure. A guilty pleasure that I don't expect anything close to realism. It's an escapist treat for me.

Unlike other books in the series, this one pretty much hands you the killers early and you and Dallas know it's them. So the question is how long until she has the evidence she needs and how does she take them down. As always Roarke helps in ways that you know in real life there is no way he would be allowed. There are a couple leaps of logic that are there for the story but highly improbable otherwise.

I will continue with the series because, as I said, it's reading candy and is a nice break when I am doing more thinky reading stuff.



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Han Solo's Revenge by Brian Daley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


to be honest, it's more of a 2.5.

Taking place before "A New Hope" Han and Chewie have found themselves in need of a job and take the first one that comes along, not bothering to ask too many details. It's only after taking on the cargo that they learn it's the one thing they won't do... transport slaves.

They take matters into their own hands and find themselves still being owed LOTS of needed money, so they go seeking the ones who arranged the deal in the first place. Causing them some rather uncomfortable entanglements with the regional Powers-That-Be.

This is the 2nd book in a trilogy. I did not know that when I picked up the book, and frankly you don't need to have read the first one to read this one. I had issues. It was slow to start and I found myself constantly going "that's not how Han would react" or "what kind of description is that for Chewbacca's language?" I found myself having to constantly remind myself that this book was written between the release of "A New Hope" and "The Empire Strikes Back" and here I am, almost 30 years after the book was written upset that it was not following cannon or even established fandom that hadn't come yet, so the character issues I had were all my own and once I managed to remind myself that was the case, the characterizations were tolerable.



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Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Amy Gumm of Kansas is a high school girl from the wrong side of the trailer park. She dreams of escaping her life when a tornado comes through and just like the fictional Dorothy, her home is scooped up and deposits her right into Oz.

Only it's not like the Oz she's read about or seen in the movies. Everything is wrong. And the reason.. Dorothy is back in Oz and has become evil. But before she can say ruby slippers, she is swept up into a revolutionary movement to free Oz from Dorothy's tyranny.

I can't say that I disliked the book. But I really can't say I enjoyed it either. I think that the whole thing comes down to the fact that while I usually enjoy YA books, I am not the target audience. For me it was just OK and it did not leave me wanting to rush out and get the next book to find out what happens next. but I did not dislike it so much that should the next book come along, I won't walk away from it.

I will say that I did find myself chuckling over the Amy's last name as the real name for Judy Garland was Francis Gumm. I see what you did there author. Nice play.

Also, as I did this an an audiobook, I have to rely on the fact that others said that the book has a red spine.



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Guest of the Revolution by Kathryn Koob

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Mentioned in "Laughing with an Accent"

Katherine Koob was working at the American Embassy in Iran when the Revolution started in 1979 and was one of the people taken hostage and held for 444 days. This was her recounting of her experience.

If Goodreads allowed for half stars this would be a 2.5. It wasn't bad, but it certainly was not what I expected the tale of the experiences of one of the Iranian Hostages to be.

Now, I don't know if that is because I was 6 when she was taken hostage and my memories of the time are vague at best, and my life experiences have caused me to have a different view on "being a hostage" from other stories, movies, tv and such than what Ms. Koob did, but I found myself frustrated by her.

She said she told an interviewer that she and the other female hostage that she ended up sharing quarters with as being scared all the time. But that certainly did not come across in the writing. I expected more descriptions of the fear, the isolation before she was quartered with Ann, the pains of hunger because they didn't always feed her, the general uncomfortableness of having to wear the same clothes day in and day out, etc.

Instead she describes spending her days reading the bible and hymnal she had with her, praying, making plans for what she would cook for dinner, etc. But frankly the entire read made it seem like it was just an inconvenience for her, not an ordeal. She talked about decorating whatever room she was in to celebrate the holidays, chatting with the female guards, cooking meals for all the hostages. She even describes back-talking her captors and doing other things that in my mind I'm screaming "are you insane, that's how you get shot?!?!?" She says she was allowed to write letters home and then was completely upset that they were never mailed.

Again, I can only think that it is a cultural difference over the last 37 years that made me go "what made you think they would send them?" She talks of the outrage she felt that she did not receive the letters that were being sent to her with any kind of regularity. Again...HOSTAGE... not vacation guest.

I am not upset I read this book. In fact it did make me think and reflect on how much the world and socio-political feelings have changed in the near 40 years since this happened. That is always a good thing to see where we were and where we are and where we could be.



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Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The premise sounded interesting. Former Army Pilot Mia's husband is murdered, just a couple months after her sister's grizzly murder. Her best friend gives her a nanny camera to help her keep an eye on the house and her 2 year old daughter while she's out. One night, she checks the footage and sees her dead husband playing with her daughter. This causes her to start her own investigation into the events regarding both murders.

The description of the plot caught my attention, though the genre is not one I generally gravitate towards. But the actual story was far from as exciting as I expected by the write up.

Shortly into the book, I feel that Mia is not displaying any form of grief for a supposedly loving widow. She keeps referring to this scandal that caused an abrupt end to her military career but never goes into details, other than saying that if all information came to light, she would be even more ruined than she was already. She treats one of her best friends like crap. I start classifying her as an unreliable narrator - which instantly makes me hate her. Her continued behavior, the lack of logic to much of the story, the vagueness to actions and behaviors made me literally cry out once "stop pussyfooting around and hinting and just say what you mean".

When we finally do learn all the "sordid" details, I found myself going "you know what, I honestly don't care". And I didn't. In the end I was just grateful for the end of the book.

This was my first introduction to the author and upon reading other reviews of this book, I find that he follows pretty much the same formula for them all. And since I really didn't like this one, you can bet, I'm not going to bother reading anything else by him. The only reason this book got 2 stars is because the audiobook narrator made it something I could actually finish.



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Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad by Firoozeh Dumas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While I found "Funny in Farsi" funnier, I enjoyed the stories in this installment more enjoyable and ones I could relate to more.

this time we get to experience even more of her personal life, both growing up and after being married, and how she had to deal with Parents from a very different culture than what they were living in. The story of her mother, husband and the bright red bedspread had me giggling to no end. Her realization that Jewish Mothers and Iranian Mothers are the same creature, just separated by religion, classic.

I highly recommend both this and "Funny in Farsi" and at roughly 6 hours each, they are both quick listens.





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Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What a fun book. An enjoyable look at one woman's struggle growing up in the 70's and 80's in California after immigrating from Iran and dealing with being both American and Iranian by culture when her parents were strongly Iranian (pre- Iranian revolution Iranian culture, not what we associate with Iranian culture today).

I found myself smiling throughout the entire book and have already obtained a copy of the author's next book as I am looking forward to more of a glimpse into her life and family.

Highly recommend.



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Amish Vampires in Space by Kerry Nietz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


They say "Don't judge a book by it's cover". Same holds true for the title.

I went into this book expecting a written version of a story you'd see made into a movie shown on public access TV at 2am, or torn apart by Mystery Science Theater. I mean, come on, a book entitled "Amish Vampires in Space"? What else could it be but camp and nonsense?

Boy was I wrong. Instead I got a well written, enjoyable Science Fiction story that wove Amish, Vampires and Space Travel together with a logical thread that made me go "Huh, I never would have thought of that, but it makes total sense".

Oh sure, you can figure out early on where the bad guys come into the picture. But that's secondary to how the crew of the Raven and the Amish settlers deal with them.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book and have actually started recommending it to others. I may even look to get the next book in the series now.



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The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I neither liked nor disliked this book. It was just OK for me. The writing was good and the reader talented, but it just didn't pull me in. Perhaps if I had read the previous works of this author, I might have liked it more, but as it was, I had no knowledge of the author or the fact that she had written an entire other series of books set just before this one.

As far as the mystery goes, I pretty much figure out who the killer was within a chapter or two of them being introduced. That doesn't mean it was a bad story, just that if you have read murder mysteries, there were flags early on.

I can't say that I will continue in this series, but if the next one crosses my path, I won't turn away from it.



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The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was definitely not the target audience for this book. And I can see how a person of a much younger age might have enjoyed this book. However, I felt incredibly eh about it.

if you've seen the movie by the same name, the movie is the first third of the book. I have not seen the sequels but from those that have, they encompass the rest of the story.

I found the first third interesting and I vividly recalled the movie parts as they came up. But once we reached the part where the first movie stopped, I really had trouble focusing and caring about the characters.

In the end I felt that the book was aptly named... as it felt like it was neverending.



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