The Bookaholic

This is the latest book in the adventures of Joanne Baldwin, Weather Warden.  As usual, Joanne gets herself into more trouble that the average person.  Of course, since she’s once of the top Wardens around, she’s not exactly the average person.

This time around, Joanne gets to save the world from some very bad people who are trying to destroy the Djinn, the Wardens and, oh what the heck, how about the entire planet?  It turns out that one of her friends is one of the very bad people.  I didn’t see that one coming.

Ah… and despite some major opposition from Ashan, Joanne and David actually get married.

Ok, so now I just need to know when the next one is being published.

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Like most of Grisham’s novels, this one involves lawyers and judges.  I know… I’m surprised, too.  And like all of Grisham’s other novels, this one is well-written, quite readable, and presents a tense story line pitting good against evil.  I’m not surprised by any of that, quite frankly.

Actually, it’s typical Grisham.  If you like Grisham, you’ll probably like this one.  Oh, except for the ending.  That sucked.  I don’t really need fiction to reflect reality quite so perfectly.

One thing I admire about Grisham is his ability to create truly loathsome characters.  There were one or two in here I just wanted to rip off the pages and throttle.  These were well-balanced by the folks you’d want to socialize with, and the semi-clueless naif.

Yep, Grisham sure is good at characterizations.  But darn… is a happy ending too much to ask?

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The latest from Kay Hooper in her Bishop / Special Crimes Unit collection is the first book of a new trilogy.

Bishop and his people work for the FBI hunting really bad guys.  The twist is that Bishop and his people are all psychic.  In some ways, this gives them an advantage over the bad guys.  There are clairvoyants who can see what’s going to happen and mediums who talk to the dead.  The telepaths certainly have an advantage in the communications department, especially where cell coverage is spotty.

But even with the advantages psychics have, they still need to do old fashioned police work… and that’s the fun part!  I like Hooper’s books… well, most of them.  She does write romance novels which aren’t as interesting to me as the detective novels.

The next book in this series comes out this month… and I’ll be searching for it.

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You’d think that after taking a 16-week class and reading a half dozen books on the subject in those 16 week, I’d be done with the topic of Buddhism for a while.  Oh no, not so.

I borrowed this book from a friend a couple of months ago (thanks, Kiran!) and finally finished reading it.  Although it might seem to be a dry, unreadable book from the length of time it took to finish it, that is completely not true.  (Life got in the way, darn it all!)

Kogen Mizuno one of Japan’s leading scholars of Buddhism, and he writes with an engaging and very readable style.  While there was very little in the book that I hadn’t already learned in my 16-week course, it was a delight to once again read about the origins of the Buddhist faith.  I highly recommend this book to anyone even the slightest bit interested in the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha.

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When I told One Spirit book club to go ahead and send this one to me, I’m not sure what I thought it was all about.  As it turns out, it’s a nice little motivational book about building new habits.

Most of this is either common sense or I’ve heard it said in slightly different ways by therapists, friends who seem to have their lives put together, other authors, or the multitude of personal growth and development teachers I’ve encountered over the years.  That doesn’t make it a bad thing!  Sometimes you have to hear a thing a thousand times for you can say, “Oh!  I get it!”

The time of year for resolutions is swiftly approaching, and this would be a nice book to pick up if you just can’t stick to your resolutions.

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