Cannonball Read - Book 75

Possible spoilers!

Dead Until Dark is the first in the series of Sookie Stackhouse novels, the basis for the HBO series True Blood. Since I don't have HBO, and since the book is always better than the movie (or TV show, I'd assume), I thought I'd check this one out. Here's the description:

"Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of 'disability.' She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark and handsome - and Sookie can't hear a workd he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all here life...
"But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of - big surprise - murder. And when one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next..."

Here's the problem: I've already read the Twilight series. I couldn't get past the good vampire vs. the bad vampires, and the bar owner having his own supernatural secret... well, it was just too much like the Cullens versus the baddies and little Jacob being a werewolf. Are there no more original ideas?

I enjoyed this book. It think it's more accessible than Twilight. It's more down-home, and if possible in a vampire book, more realistic. Yes, Bill the vampire glows, just like Edward Cullen, but it sseems natural and not over-blown. And there are honest-to-goodness sex scenes! None of the longing crap (or the written version of a fade-to-black) - no, Bill takes Sookie and makes her a woman. Good times.

It's also a murder mystery - who killed all the slightly trashy girls? Was it Bill? Some other bad vampire? Sookie's brother Jason? I didn't see the answer coming.

I would read more of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, but probably only in a pinch, like if I'd left my real book behind and was at the airport.

I could have done without the subtle product placement (isn't Nike a brand name?)

Dead Until Dark - B

Cannonball Read - YEAR TWO

To all my friends and loved ones:

You know you've been impressed with all the reading that I've been doing this year. You should be - I'm awesome! And maybe you've been saying to yourself, You know, I wish I had joined in on that, but gosh, 100 books in a year is an awful lot.

Well, friends, I'm here to tell you about Cannonball Read 2: Electric Bookaloo. The rules have changed. Books still need to be over 200 pages long, no graphic novels, short story or essay collections must contain at least six stories/essays. But this year, the book total has dropped to 52 books. That's one book a week. So join in the fun!

One other requirement: you've gotta have a blog, and you've gotta post reviews. Oh no, you cry! I don't know how! Just ask me, I'll help you.

Literacy, people!

Officially, Cannonball Read Year 2 begins Sunday, November 1 (click here for all the official info). But since I started on January 1, 2009, I'm starting year 2 on January 1, 2010. So that means, to keep up with the rest of the gang, I have to read my 52 books in nine months. Challenge!

Cannonball Read - A+

Cannonball Read - Book 74

Thank goodness for the Cannonball Read. I am reading all sorts of books that I've seen for years and have thought, "Oh, I really should read that," but something more compelling always came along. But now, with my trusty library card in hand and a goal almost within reach, I'm finally getting around to it.
Book 74 is Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff (which came out in 2004). Sheff is a writer by trade, so it's a good book - but not a very good story. Perhaps it's the nature of the story being told: an addicted kid mayb be compelling, but it's certainly not uplifting. And here's the part where I'm going to sound hateful: it was really repetitive. Nic, the son, relapses a couple times. OK, that's sad. But how many ways can the dad say "I was in agony. I worried. I wanted him to get better. He called me and he was high?" It was a pageturner, but not in a good way - I was just waiting for the next new thing, instead of the next description of the agony or the high phone call.

Beautiful Boy - B-

Cannonball Read - Book 73

Wendy Wasserstein wrote one of my favorite plays, The Heidi Chronicles; I didn't know she had written this novel, Elements of Style, but I saw it at the library and grabbed it. Here's the book jacket description:

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author of the essay collection Shiksa Goddess ("Utterly delicious" - Judith Thurman), a dazzling debut novel, a comedy about New York's urban gentry living in a post-0/11 world - the arbiters of fashion and the doyennes of charity balls; about the rich and the nouveau rich(er), the glamorous and the desperate to be.
"We meet Francesca Weissman, the Upper East Side pediatrician rated number one by Manhattan magazine, who takes us into the upper strata of privilege and aspiration (she's originally from Queens with a father in hosiery; life on the fringes of glittering New York is fine with her)... Samantha Acton, thoroughbred descendant of the Van Rensselaers and the Carnegies, who defines the social order in the great tradition of Mrs. Astor and Babe Paley... Judy Tremont from Modesto, California, daughter of a cop - her life's work, her obsession, is New York society and its richest families... Barry Santorini, Republican, moviemaker, winner of twelve Oscars, and his wife, the Italian supermarket heiress and former media rep for Giorgio Armani... and many more.
"As Elements of Style opens out, we see a madcap mosaic of the social lives and mores of twenty-first-century Manhattan - of romance, work, family, and friendship. Satiric, fierce, touching - and deliciously Wasserstein."

First, let's talk about that last phrase: deliciously Wasserstein. I think that's going to be the name of my next band.

Next, the book cover. OMG! Doesn't it make you want to read it? I judge books by their covers all the time - and you do, too, so don't deny it! It looks like a fancy purse is inside that box, and I for one want to open and see it.

The inside is just as good as the outside. I imagine that Elements of Style is like a grown-up version of the Clique series. Better yet: a fictional version of the Real Housewives of New York City. Except, these characters seem more real that those crazy ladies on that show. It's satire, to be sure, and many elements are over the top (there's a party scene set in an old pantyhose factory, and you should see what these ladies are wearing), but where I don't care about the Real Housewives' struggles to get their kids to the right nursery school or pediatrician, or if they have this season's Birkin bag, I did care about those same trials and tribulations with the characters in this book. And couple of somewhat tragic things happen, but they seem like a sad part of life instead of a complete derailment of a perfect existence.

It's good.

Elements of Style - B+

Cannonball Read - Book 72

Here's the back-of-the-book description for The Bridesmaid by Hailey Abbott:

"After years of watching couples come to blows over ice sculptures, Abby wants no part of the family wedding planning business. She'd rather spend weekends kicking a soccer ball or antagonizing Noah, the cute son of a famous pastry chef - not doing the Electric Slide. Then Abby's barely legal sistr, Carol, does the unthinkable - she announces she's getting married and wants Abby to be her maid of honor. Clearly, Carol has lost her mind. Will Abby soon lose hers?
"So what if Carol turns into Bridezilla? So what if the dresses are hideous? So what if the invitations get messed up? So what if Noah looks extra hot with frosting in his hair? Abby can handle it. After all, it's just one day, right?"

So really, what else do I need to tell you? Jock girl, cute boy she's known since she was a kid, awesome sister turned psycho by wedding planning, slightly sketchy fiance of said sister, and every wedding cliche you can think of - and more than that, every "this is why weddings are bad" cliche you can think of. Yes, we all know you should put the Macarena on your "do not play" list. Yes, we all know that you should not commission a local artisan to create wooden figures of the bride and groom to use as cake toppers. And yes, we all know that most bridesmaids' dresses are unattractive. Do you really need to it us over the head with this, Hailey Abbott?


To be fair, I picked this up from the young adult section at the library yesterday. I think that teenage girls want to read about weddings, warts and all, and I bet a fourteen-year-old would love this.

The Bridesmaid - C

Cannonball Read - Book 71

My dad recommended Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell to me. Not only that, he sent it to me. I was skeptical. My dad's tastes run more towards Louis L'Amour then, say, Augusten Burroughs or Michael Chabon. But it's hard to be choosy when you're thirty books short of your goal with less than three months to finish, so I picked it up a couple days ago and gave it a shot.

Here's the book jacket description:

"Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan's worst hospital. He has a talent for medicine, a shift from hell, and a past he'd prefer to keep hidden. Whether it's a blocked circumflex artery or a plan to launch a massive malpractice suit, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.
"Pietro 'Bearclaw' Brnwa is a hit man for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close relationship with the Witness Protection Program. More likely to leave a trail of dead gangsters than a molecule of evidence, he's the last person you want to see in your hospital room.
"Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Jimmy Squillante, is Dr. Brown's new patient, with three months to live and a very strange idea: that Peter Brown and Pietro Brnwa might - just might - be the same person...
"Now with the mob, the government, and death itself descending on the hospital, Peter has to buy time and do whatever it takes to keep his patients, himself, and his last shot at redemption alive. To get through the next eight hours - and somehow beat the Reaper."

Don't you just love book jacket descriptions? I remained skeptical. It seemed like Beat the Reaper would be just another former-Mob-guy-on-the-run trashy novel, only set in a hospital. Quick and easy, but nothing special.

Sorry, Dad. I shouldn't have doubted you. This book was. Off. The. Chain! For one thing, there are footnotes. Hilarious footnotes. And Peter's voice is over the top, for sure, but completely believable as the hardened doctor trying to do the right thing but save his ass at the same time. The action flips back and forth from the present-day hospital to snapshots of Peter's past (I won't give it away...), which really helped keep me engaged. It's action-packed, to be sure. Some violence takes place within the first, oh, two pages, and it's compelling and funny a little gross, but voyeuristic. And did I mention the footnotes?

Shit gets real around the last ten pages. I've read lots of books that have made my lady parts tense up for one reason or another. But no lie, I was in the fetal position, cringing, while I read the big finale. I could see it. I could feel it. And it wasn't pretty. But it was awesome.

Moral of the story? Listen to your dad.

Beat the Reaper - A

Cannonball Read - Book 70

Short back-of-the-book description for Stiff:

"Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers - some willingly, some unwittingly - have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them."

This. Book. Was. AWESOME. Seriously bad-ass. Funny and gross and totally respectful of the dead - although at times, not so much of the living. But that's what makes it even more awesome. You can't really help what happens to you once you die - but you can control what you do to dead people. Does that make sense? I mean, science has benefited greatly from cadavers, but did you have to go and grave-rob, people of the 18th- and 19th-centuries?

I could probably write a better review, but who needs to read that? Just read the book! Probably one of my top ten favorite non-fiction books of all time, and certainly one of the best this year.

Stiff - A

Cannonball Read - Book 69

Did I tell you I joined a book club? I did. Aside from the social aspects of being in a group of women, drinking booze and eating party snacks, I like the book club because I don't have to pick ALL the books I'm reading this year. No, I can let someone else pick a book from time to time.

Which leads me to One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus. Here's the basic premise: an Indian asks President Grant for one thousand white women (hence the title) in exchange for one thousand horses - and Grant agrees. Ladies looking for a way out of their current bad situation are given the opportunity to join the group traveling to the Indians as the first wave of the trade. Enter May Dodd, formerly locked away in a mental asylum due to her promiscuity. May signs on to travel to Indian Territory, and befriends some outrageous characters along the way. There's Daisy, the scorned Southern belle; Gretchen, the homely, burly Swiss; Susie and Meggie, the swindling Irish twins; Sara, young, lovely and mute; and Phemie, the escaped slave (so not exactly a "white" woman, but you get the idea). These ladies travel by train, then by wagon, out to Indian Territory, where they meet their future husbands and fathers of their children. May is paired with Little Wolf, Sweet Medicine Chief of the tribe, and her life carries on with equal measures of joy and hardship. But maybe May is promiscuous. Did I mention John Bourke, the rugged Army captain May meets at Fort Laramie, on the way out west. May and Bourke have one steamy night that May must revisit only in memory; she grows to love Little Wolf, but her heart often returns to her time with Bourke.

I've gotten carried away. You don't want to know everything, do you? Of course not. You want to read the book. Maybe. It's not a classic, it won't stick with you for weeks on end, but as far as "fluffy" books go, it's solid. Fergus has written some great characters, particulary the supporting characters. May's fellow white women, as well as Little Wolf's other wives, are well thought-out and often quite funny. It did get tedious at times - weather, tipis, peeing outside, etc. I think I'm done with alternative history for a while. But if you're looking for a book for your book club (or reading group, which sounds more illustrious), this is a good pick.

One Thousand White Women - B

Cannonball Read - Book 68

I found this synopsis at Books On Board:

"Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, disappeared 40 years ago... and her octogenarian uncle is determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

"Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, is hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance... and Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age — and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it — assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism... and an unexpected connection between themselves.

"A contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives."

Throughout my Cannonball Read quest, I've been taking a lot of recommendations. Some of them paid off. Others, not so much. Maybe it's that I trust too deeply, or maybe that I want to believe my friends or relatives and I have the same taste in books when really we don't. Or maybe, it's that I end up not buying into the hype. And The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo falls into the latter category.

Don't get me wrong. It's good. REALLY good. Sandwiched between an overly wordy first 40 pages and an interminable final twenty pages is an incredible story about family, revenge, violence, finance, and IKEA. It's a pageturner, folks, and I stayed up way past my bedtime to read one more chapter, or sometimes just one more paragraph. The family at the center of the story is simultaneously twisted and lovable, and the protagonists, Mikael and Lisbeth, were incredibly well-written, to the point that at times, the book seemed like true crime rather than fiction.

But with all that said, it's not as good as people make it out to be. I can't tell you how many people I know have said (or written) to me "Oh my God, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is awesome. Go get it now! Add it to the top of the list!" etc. And yeah, it was good. I just didn't think it was incredible.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - B+

Cannonball Read - Book 67

Here's the book-jacket synopsis for A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer:

"Daniel Emerson lives with Kate Ellis and is like a father to her daughter, Ruby. But he cannot control his desire for Iris Davenport, the African-American woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. During a freak October blizzard, Daniel is stranded at Iris' house and they begin a sexual liaison that eventually imperils all their relationships, Daniel's profession, their children's well-being, their own race-blindness, and their view of themselves as essentially good people. A Ship Made of Paper captures all the drama, nuance, and helpless intensity of sexual and romantic yearning, and it bears witness to the age-old conflict between the order of the human community and the disorder of desire."

Here's my synopsis: yearning, yearning, yearning. Consummation! Angst, angst, angst. Yawn. But then, an event so shocking that I gasped aloud while I was reading. Which doesn't happen that often. Followed by a "come on, that's the best you could do?" And then yawns until the end.

This was one of those books where I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop - and when it did, it dropped hard. Gruesome (without being graphic) and terrible. But then I just went back to waiting - is Daniel going to choose Kate or Iris? Which one? WHICH ONE!? But instead of being left with a sense of anxiety about it, I just wanted him to hurry up and make up his mind already. And as I mentioned above, there's one more big deal moment near the end, but it's so over the top that it completely removed me from my reading experience. I may have even snorted in derision.

A Ship Made of Paper - B (would have been a B- but I'm telling you, the shocking moment is really shocking)

Cannonball Read - Book 66

I'm trying, I'm trying so hard to keep on track with my reading, but I'm falling further and further (farther and farther?) behind. The last two books I've read have been re-reads, in the hopes that I can skim the parts that I remember. And I'm trying to choose short-ish ones, but that only gets me so far when "short-ish" is still 300+ pages. And I spent three hours last night reading - thank you, TV, for nothing good on Tuesdays - but am only about 2/3 of the way through book 67. I'm trying, I'm trying so hard, and I'm not giving up. Can't someone arrange for me to have a three-day weekend where my husband and dog go out of town and leave me here, and I don't have to work, and drop off four 220-page books?

On to Storm Front:

"Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the 'everyday' world is actually full of strange and magical things - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a - well, whatever.

"There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when they police bring him in to consult on a grislu double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And that now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get... interesting."

To me, Storm Front is the best of all possible worlds for nerdy boys. There's sex, murder, a hard-ass in a long black duster, and lots and lots of magic. It's like Louis L'amour books for sci-fi nerds. It's not amazing: the magic parts are great, but the murder and crime stuff are sort of weak. But it's fun, and it's funny, and dorks of all ages will eat this shit up.

Storm Front - B-

Cannonball Read - Book 65

Here's a little description for you:

In one of the most acclaimed and original novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

It's tough for me to write a review of this one, because it's really good, and I want people to read it, but basically anything I write will be one big spoiler. It is haunting, for sure, and I've been thinking about it for days. In fact, I read it once before, and couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards then, too. And it's creepy. I like to think of this as sci-fi literature, heavy on the -fi and not so much sci-.

My copy has this quote from the Sunday Times on the cover: "A clear frontrunner to be the year's most extraordinary novel." I quite agree.

Never Let Me Go - A-

Cannonball Read - Book 65

I sure wish I'd known about The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter during the last Cannonball Read 5K, when I was supposed to read book set in places that I've lived. The Feast of Love takes place in my current town, and I get a little charge out of reading descriptions of places that I pass every day. It makes me feel part of the in-crowd.

I could pick many adjectives to describe The Feast of Love. Here are a few: Luminous. Lush. Realistic, yet unbelievable. Deep. Sumptuous. Did I mention lush? There's an economy to Baxter's writing, but he doesn't shy away from using big words. I like to think that writers have perfect words at their disposal, and sometimes they use the perfect word, and sometimes they use imperfect words to make the same point, leaving the writing either clunky or overblown. Not Baxter. He makes perfect choices, every time. It's a book about love, that's for sure, but sometimes love isn't awesome. Sometimes it hurts real bad - and that's where The Feast of Love comes in. Good days, bad months, they're all here, and it feels right.

The Feast of Love - B+

Cannonball Read - Book 64

My guess is, a lot of you haven't read The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, so here's the book jacket synopsis:

"It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family's polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife.

"Soon after Ann Eliza's story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds - a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father's death. And as Ann Eliza's narrative intertwines with that of Jordan's search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith."

Have you ever read Carrie by Stephen King? You know how it pulls from "sources" like courtroom transcripts, letters, academic journals and first-person accounts? The 19th Wife is just like that. It uses different types of writing (letters, academic papers, some IM messages, a Wikipedia entry, along with the narrator's voice) to tell the story. But the big difference between Carrie and The 19th Wife is this:

Carrie is good.

Seriously, The 19th Wife is just not good. It's not written well, partly because of all those literary devices, but mainly because it's just not a good story. It's a morality tale disguised as a murder mystery... but I didn't really care whodunit. And Jordan, the protagonist, isn't really that sympathetic a character. He's gay, which is fine, but he's got this faggy best friend. I mean, really. Why does every "normal" gay man need a faggy best friend who calls everybody Sweetie and Miss Thing? And he's got a dog, too. Now come on. The unconditional love from the dog who rides along in the van (a van, too!) bit is kind of stale. The sections written by Ann Eliza, Brigham's wife, are better - actual historical fiction that feels real. Which, I suppose, is the point of historical fiction. But the tie-in between the historical segments and the current, murder-driven segments never really came together, and overall, the badness outweighed the sort-of goodness.

I could go on - but why? Read Under the Banner of Heaven instead.

The 19th Wife - C-

Cannonball Read - Book 63

I'd only read Water for Elephants once before, so I read it again! Hooray for the re-read.

Water for Elephants is a circus story. You got your midgets, you got your bearded ladies, you got your big tents, you got love triangle between horse boss, sparkly horse rider, and circus vet. Sorry, I'm not really into writing this review. But I do really like the book.

That's all.

Water for Elephants - A-

Cannonball Read - Book 62

The Lightning Thief is the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (am I the only one that thinks Percy Jackson and the Olympians sounds like a boy band from the '60s? "Here, with their smash hit "Burnin' Me Up," it's Percy Jackson and the Olympians!") Percy is a young lad who just happens to be a demi-god: one human parent, one parent who's a Greek god. When Percy finds out he's a demi-god, and shit goes pear-shaped, he goes to a summer camp called Half-Blood Hill, where he learns some god skills and sets off on a quest with his two buddies.

Sound familiar?

Percy Jackson certainly feels like the poor man's Harry Potter at times. There's fancy weaponry, and rival cabins, and good guys who betray, and lots of creepy monsters. But unlike the world that J.K. Rowling created, Percy's world is grounded in history - you can go to a reference book and look up Dionysus and Poseidon and Athena, and you'll find things that Rick Riordan has folded into his book. But still. Another boy wonder, the best anyone's seen in a long time, proving his worth but facing gigantic obstacles along the way? It's all been done before.

The Lightning Thief - B-

Cannonball Read - Book 61

I am falling further and further behind in my quest to read one hundred books this year, particularly since I had two three-hour flights this weekend when I could have cranked out two or three books. Instead, I read just one.

But it was so worth it.

Middlesex was fantastic. I mean, seriously awesome. This story of a hermaphroditic Greek-American and his family's struggles and intracacies was wholly engrossing from the first page. And the moment I was done with it, I wanted to start it over, to see what I had missed the first time around. It was funny and painful and shocking and just... just... look, I'm no Jeffrey Eugenides. I can't explain it any better than this: it was outstanding.

Middlesex - A+

Cannonball Read - Book 60

I had never heard of Mount Misery by Samuel Shem, but EJack was giving it away in his moving "sale," and who am I to turn down a free book?
I found this review/synopsis from the School Library Journal at Amazon:
Roy Basch, protagonist of House of God (Dell, 1981), has survived his internship and now begins his three-year training at the aptly named Mount Misery, a posh New England psychiatric hospital. Things get off to an ominous start when his mentor, a renowned therapist in the field of depressive disorders, kills himself. This is just the beginning of a year filled with disaster. Employing gallows humor, Basch and his fellow residents confront bureaucratic nonsense in a manner reminiscent of Richard Hooker's MASH. The tone then becomes more like that of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as patients are assaulted by the cruel words and manipulations of the powerful attendings. Shem's novel confronts some powerful themes - sexual abuse, psychosis, greed, depression, suicide - and counters them with examples of the very best the human spirit has to offer. The field of psychiatry is unflinchingly held under a microscope and its failings, limitations, and successes are relentlessly catalogued. With such ferocious intensity, this lengthy novel will not appeal to all teens, but those who persevere will find that Mount Misery's "Laws" and characters will live on in their imaginations for some time to come.

First of all: if you read that synopsis, and you have a teenager, DON'T LET YOUR KID READ THIS BOOK. Seriously, it is not for kids, not even high schoolers.

Now, on to the rest of my thoughts: I really hope I never have to go to therapy again. No, that's not true. What I mean is, I hope I never have to go to therapy with any of these jokers. So Mount Misery is a satire, right? So probably the characters needed to be over the top, more like caricatures of psychiatrists than real psychiatrists. Well, they were, all of them, even the ones I was supposed to like. I basically couldn't stand the protagonist, Roy, even though I'm sure I was supposed to feel his pain, be with him in the trenches as his patients failed and then failed some more. But I didn't give two shits about this guy. He was a sucker. He took on every problem that his patients had. Working on the depressive wing? He got majorly depressed. Drug and alcohol wing? Developed a leetle problem with phenobarbitol. As a reader, I didn't find this compelling; I found it annoying.

The sex scenes weren't that great, either. And every time the author threw in a naughty word, it felt like it was for shock value, not in a way that someone would actually use said naughty word.

And then... and then... the ending! It got all preachy and enlightened. To that, I say bah. When your protagonist, his wife, and their adopted Chinese baby daughter go to Arizona and he starts working with drunks on the res and she starts taking care of their preschoolers... I mean, are we supposed to believe that in the course of one year, this guy changed so dramastically (that's dramatically and drastically, for those of you paying attention) that now he's all one with the universe? NO.

Mount Misery is out of print. Just an FYI.

Mount Misery - D+

Cannonball Read - Book 59

Remember the Jungle Book? Remember the story of Mowgli, the lost baby who is raised by wolves and a host of other creatures who live in the jungle?

This book is JUST LIKE THAT. Except, instead of a jungle, it's a graveyard.

Here's a synopsis:
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs neither to the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy - an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, the he will come under attack from the man Jack - who has already killed Bod's family...

Neil Gaiman's book is certainly geared toward a younger reader... but a good story's a good story. And this, my friends, is a GREAT story. Gaiman is an incredibly gifted writer, and with the Graveyard Book he's created a fantasy world that's completely believable. It's suspenseful - there's bad people (and non-people) out there, trying to get at Bod. It's funny - Bod, after all, is a little boy, and he gets into little boy mischief (and revenge). It's sad, too - I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes as I wrapped up the last chapter, but they were real tears. I cared about Bod, and about his family, and all the characters in the graveyard.

Rumor has it this is not the last we'll see of Bod, that Gaiman is writing another collection of his stories (much like Kipling did with his second collection of Jungle Book stories). I can't wait.

The Graveyard Book - A

Close Up Shop

Hey, Michelle Duggar? Sweetie, I think it's time for you to take a little break. I worry for you. 18 kids, and you're having another? Listen, I respect you - you obviously love children, and that's awesome. But you know what? God would probably be just as happy if you ADOPTED a kid and let your hoo-ha rest for a little bit.

And Jim Bob? Dude. Get off of her. Literally. Take her out to dinner, maybe a nice G-rated movie, enjoy some time together without knocking her up.

Read more about it here.

Duggar 19 - C (an average grade, people)