The Bookaholic

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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This is the first book I’ve read by Robert Parker.  It was a recommendation from Booksfree based on some of the other books I’ve rented from them.

I’m not sure exactly why, but I’m utterly delighted with Parker’s style of writing.  The dialog seems more real than many of the authors I’ve read lately.  Someone ought to tell other authors what Parker has discovered… real people don’t always talk in complete sentences.  No, seriously… they don’t.

In this book, we have a murder mystery.  I seem to read a lot of those.  There’s a dead girl… who is she?  Who killed her?  There are interesting interpersonal relationships… Jesse, our hero, still dates his ex-wife.  He dates other women, too.  He drinks too much, he plays softball, and he seems like a basically good guy.

In the end, the killer confesses after only a small amount of police intimidation.

I’ll be adding more of Parker’s books to my Booksfree queue.

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My buddy Stan the Baseball Man recommended this book, and I must congratulate him on an excellent recommendation.  It’s a little bit science fiction, a little bit philosophy and a whole lot of fun.

What would you do if, after you died, you came back to live out a portion of your life all over again.  What if you did it again and again and again… except that every time you came back, you were a little bit older?  You know all of the history that happened your first time around, and you know exactly when you’re going to die.

What would you do?  What choices would you make the second or third or eighth time around?

That’s the idea behind Ken Grimwood’s novel.  It asks the age-old human question, “Why are we here?” in an entirely novel way.  And it certainly made me stop and think… if I could answer the question about choices I’d make the second and fourth and sixth times around, what’s stopping me from making those choices right here, right now?

I highly recommend this book!  Thanks, Stan!

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Yet another Harry Bosch novel from Michael Connelly.  This one is set many years after the one I read last week.  Harry spent three years in retirement, and learned that he has a six-year-old daughter.  Yeah, I’m going to have to go back and find out what that’s all about.

Harry is back on the job, this time working in the Open-Unsolved division of LAPD.  He and his partner get a DNA hit on one of the open cases on his first day back.  And wouldn’t you know it… there’s high jingo involved!  There were cover-ups, and Harry’s old nemisis Deputy Chief Irving is somehow involved.

Even though the case has been open for 17 years, the detective work is top-notch.  It’s a fast-paced story, with enough twists and turns to keep you wondering just what happened back in 1988.

I think it’s fair to say I’m a fan of Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch.

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I’ve read a number of Connelly’s books over the years, so I’m somewhat acquainted with Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective who stars in most of his books.  One of the things I like about Connelly is that he’s good at twisty plots, and tossing in little surprises here and there.  Here’s what the cover blurb has to say about this book:

They called him the Dollmaker — the serial killer who stalked Los Angeles and left a grisly calling card on the faces of his female victims.  With a single faultless shot, Detective Harry Bosch thought he had ended the city’s nightmare.

But then the dead man’s widow sues Harry and the LAPD for killing the wrong man — an accusation that rings terrifyingly true when a new victim is discovered with the Dollmaker’s macabre signature.

Now, for the second time, Harry must hunt down a death-dealer who is very much alive, before he strikes again.  It’s a blood-tracked quest that will take Harry from the hard edges of the LA night to the last place he ever wanted to go — the darkness of his own heart.

Well, it’s a little over the top, but the bottom line is that this new “Dollmaker” isn’t the guy Harry killed and is just following in the footsteps of the Dollmaker.  There are a few wrong guesses made by Harry (and me) about who the new killer is.  And darned if it doesn’t all make sense when everything is finally revealed at the end!

This book gets a thumbs up from me.

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This isn’t a book you sit down and read in an evening. Oh sure, you could read all the words at one sitting… but it’s the amazing artwork that keeps drawing you back.

I’ve had this book for about a year now, and it’s never once made it to a shelf. It moves from place to place (the coffee table in the living room, the side table in my reading room, under my chair in my computer room, my backpack, or most frequenly my lap), never staying in any one spot for more than a few days.

I don’t get tired of looking at the fantastic work presented by a plethora of collage artists, and it’s certainly given me inspiration for some of my own work. In fact, I think there’s an idea starting to bubble up for all those spare CDs I have stuffed in boxes downstairs. Check my art blog to see what comes of it all.

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This is a new author for me, although she’s been writing for a while apparently.

First the good points… I love the supernatural stuff.  Having a werewolf (ok, technically, she’s a shadow wolf, but I’m not going to go into the differences) in the Special Forces is pretty cool.  There’s plenty of intrigue.  The story is well-written.  The characters are engaging and don’t have that “cardboard” feel to them.

Now the bad point… what the heck is up with all the pornographic sex in novels these days?  It seems like nearly every fiction book I pick up these days has sex, sex, sex in it.  The more supernatural elements in the story, the more explicit sex it needs.  One or two in a story… fine.  But that many in every chapter??  Give me a break.

Dear writers… yes, sex sells.  But good writing, well-crafted characters and a taunt plot line is actually more of a selling point for me.  If I wanted pornography, I’d be going out on the Internet to find it.  I really don’t need to have it sneak up on me in the grocery store.  So stop it.

Having said that, I probably will go back and read other books by L. A. Banks… because she does craft a very good tale.

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