Summer Reading Flowchart from Teach.com

So, this is pretty cool

Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online

I'm gonna sleep with this under my pillow

Lookee! I had a conversation (well, a Twitter conversation) with Mary Roach! I don't have anything else to say about it. Just wanted to make sure that I kept some proof that it happened.

So Cold the Winter in Nebraska, I mean the River

Author: Michael Kortya
Title: So Cold the River
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (June 9, 2010)
Format: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B0035IIBUA

A good twisty story that connects a creepy story from the past with current characters through the paranormal. You will find ESP, possession, and ghosts. The characters are vivid and I liked the main guy a lot. I thought I could tell a bit where things were going, but I liked the trip; there are great descriptions of architecture and setting. There's a nicely drawn older female character. The main guy, a failed movie maker whose marriage is on the rocks, is likeable, too. I thought this was scary enough to be unsettling but not so violent or gross as to be off-putting. A memorable read; I will track down more of this guy's books.

Lee Child, Worth Dying For

Author: Lee Child
Title: Worth Dying For
Publisher/format: Delacorte Press, cloth
ISBN: 978-0385344319

I really respect Lee Child for not churning out identical Reacher books each year. This author has taken care to develop his character in interesting ways, and he has also taken him through various psychological twists and turns. The penultimate Reacher book, 61 Hours, ended with a cliffhanger that I wasn't expecting; also, it featured a more broken, uncertain Reacher, and fabulous descriptions of a barren South Dakota winter. Child has stayed in the middle of the country for Worth Dying For: here, he places Reacher in a rural, agricultural area of Nebraska--not near the larger cities of Lincoln/Omaha but somewhere in the west (but not, I think, the Sandhills, because the main occupation of the people is farming).

Child does a great job with the NE landscape, its wideness, starkness, and flatness, and he describes a certain kind of Nebraska woman--older, strong, no-nonsense, modest, conscientious, full of integrity, reserved--perfectly. He describes many of the rest of his Nebraskans as quiet, fairly passive go-along-with-the-flow sorts. (Many Nebraskans do seem this way to others, but I believe that the truth is that once you find the part in the flow that they refuse to go along with [which does, in fact, exist, but which they will not tell you about until you accidentally stumble onto it], they will be shockingly stubborn and unmovable.) Even the Nebraskan evildoers in this book have a certain amount of integrity and civility despite their psychopathic, horrid selves. The culture of civility and refusing to make waves is important in NE, but as I hinted before, not everyone here is as passive as the folks in Reacher's town.

Also suffering from this passivity, sort of, are the ten Cornhusker (I think ten) football players Reacher beats up at one time or another in the course of the book. This is very amusing in some ways, but these could not have been Blackshirts. Note that Child is careful to call them "Cornhuskers," and that the trademarked name for the team is "Huskers." He did not want to run afoul of UNL/trademarking/etc.etc., I bet (or his publisher did not want him to).

Anyway, this book is interesting in that it's kind of humorous in an Elmore Leonard sort of a way--criminals and Reacher showing up at the same time and same place without realizing it; comic timing and quick cuts, etc.etc. The nature of the evildoers is kept uncertain until late on. It is very, very horrible what they are doing--which is pretty shocking to the reader because you've been set up, so to speak, by the Elmore Leonard-type timing/humor, and it kind of falls away very quickly into horribleness. There's something of a revenge scene at the end that shocked me a bit in that it has a civilian being Reacher-like.

Reacher is especially hard and distant and killer-like in this one--scary again, despite the fact that he begins the book injured and presumably psychologically battered. Not much is mentioned about the unresolved cliffhanger from 61 Hours; Child is in no hurry to tell us what happened, and when he does, it's almost off-handedly. This I liked.

Anyway, this was a very satisfactory installment in the Reacher series, and I liked it a lot. My big problem is this: there was no shopping expedition for Reacher. I don't care that there are no stores in the middle of the country. I really, really missed the shopping, and I hope he will get back to it. Those are absolutely my favorite parts of the books.

The first two books in the bibliophile series by Kate Carlisle

Homicide in Hardcover

Bibliophile series #1

by Kate Carlisle

Ebook (B&N)

9781440687655

Penguin

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)

Plot: 4

Characters: 3.5

Writing: 3.5

Final: 3.66

Comments: Extra points were given to the plot category for setting the series in the world of book restoration. This series reminds me of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mystery series. It's pretty goofy, but not quite as over-the-top ridiculous. It helps that the main character is actually good at her job.

Publisher's description

The streets of San Francisco would be lined with hardcovers if rare book expert Brooklyn Wainwright had her way. And her mentor wouldn’t be lying in a pool of his own blood on the eve of a celebration for his latest book restoration. With his final breath he leaves Brooklyn a cryptic message, and gives her a priceless—and supposedly cursed—copy of Goethe’s Faust for safekeeping. Brooklyn suddenly finds herself accused of murder and theft, thanks to the humorless—but attractive—British security officer who finds her kneeling over the body. Now she has to read the clues left behind by her mentor if she is going to restore justice . . .

If Books Could Kill
Bibliophile series #2
by Kate Carlisle
Ebook (B&N)
9781101184707
Penguin

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4
Characters: 3.5
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.66

Comments: I'd love to see even more about book restoration. I hope that Carlisle doesn't let that part fade away as result of Brooklyn's improved financial circumstances. I'm finding the number of very attractive men she encounters ridiculous almost to the point of distraction. I think we have enough in there to keep her busy for a while. Please don't add any more.

Publisher's description

Murder is easy-on paper. Book restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright is attending the world-renowned Book Fair when her ex Kyle shows up with a bombshell. He has an original copy of a scandalous text that could change history and humiliate the beloved British monarchy. When Kyle turns up dead, the police are convinced Brooklyn's the culprit. But with an entire convention of suspects, Brooklyn's conducting her own investigation to find out if the motive for murder was a 200-year-old secret—or something much more personal.

This is how far behind I am

Sadly, I think I'm even missing some.


Books That Need to be Reviewed

Title (series, if applicable) Author

• It Sucked and then I Cried by Heather B. Armstrong
• The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
• The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2) by Alan Bradley
• Homicide in Hardcover (Bibliophile series #1) by Kate Carlisle Update: reviewed here
• If Books Could Kill (Bibliophile series #2) by Kate Carlisle Update: reviewed here
• The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
• Heat Wave (Nikki Heat, #1) by Richard Castle
• Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann
• Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz
• Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr
• My Fair Laz: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or A Culture-up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
• Killing the Shadows by Val McDermid
• Still Midnight by Denise Mina
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
• Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro
• Hardball (V.I. Warshawski #13) by Sara Paretsky
• Body Work (V.I. Warshawski #14) by Sara Paretsky
• Sea Change (Jesse Stone #5) by Robert B. Parker
• High Profile (Jesse Stone #6) by Robert B. Parker
• Stranger in Paradise (Jesse Stone #7) by Robert B. Parker
• Night and Day (Jesse Stone #8) by Robert B. Parker
• Split Image (Jesse Stone #9) by Robert B. Parker
• The Professional (Spenser #37) by Robert B. Parker
• Blue Screen (Sunny Randall #5) by Robert B. Parker
• Spare Change (Sunny Randall #6) by Robert B. Parker
• 206 Bones (Temperance Brennan #12) by Kathy Reichs
• Spider Bones (Temperance Brennan #13) by Kathy Reichs
• Going in Circles by Pamela Ribon
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
• Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

Inklings cartoonist will be in #LNK Wednesday 11/10/10

When Jeffrey Koterba was six, he started drawing his first cartoons, painstakingly copying from the Sunday Omaha World Herald’s funny papers and making up his own characters. With a pen and a sheet of white paper, he was able to escape into a clean, expansive, and comfortable refuge from the pandemonium surrounding him. The tiny house Koterba grew up in was full-to-bursting with garage-sale treasures and televisions his father repaired and sold for extra money. A hard-drinking one-time jazz drummer, whose big dreams never seemed to come true, Koterba’s father was subject to violent facial tics, symptoms of Tourettes Syndrome, a condition Jeffrey inherited. From the canyons of broken electronics, the lightning strikes, screaming matches, and discouragements great and small, emerged a young man determined to follow his creative spirit. Inklings is an exuberant heart-felt memoir infused with an irresistible optimism all it’s own.

You can see some of Koterba's favorite cartoons, read his blog, and more at his website. He'll be at the University Bookstore on Nov. 10 at 7:00 p.m. for a reading and signing.