My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Title: My Father's Dragon
Author: Ruth Stiles Gannett
Publisher: Dover Publications
Rating: WORTHY!

It's unusual for me to write a review so long after reading the book, but this one was so short and weird that it was hard to forget what it was about. It's an amazingly fantastical adventure wherein nine-year-old Elmer Elevator bravely sets out to make early acquaintance with his destiny, and ends up almost as much by luck as by judgment, rescuing an imprisoned young dragon who naturally becomes his friend in the doing.

It's a bit of a scary adventure in the jungle, which Elmer, who lives in Popsicornia, has to reach by way of Tangerina. On Wild Island he predictably meets up with wild critters who aren't exactly friendly, but Elmer, having learned of the dragon's plight on the island from an alley cat with whom he teams up, loads up his back pack with useful items like chewing gum, a comb and a hairbrush, lollipops, magnifying glasses, toothpaste and brush, seven hair ribbons, an empty grain bag, and food, supplemented by tangerines, but of course I won't spoil it by revealing where he obtained those....

The cool thing about Elmer is that he's all about smarts and trickery. He never resorts to barbaric fisticuffs or brawling, and he always manages to outwit his foes no matter how big and scary they might be, or whether they be rhinos or tigers, monkeys or crocodiles. It's quite a remarkable book given that it was originally published seventy years ago.

This book is a very fast read and is the first of a trilogy (Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Bluelandfollowed it), so there's more to come after this one is done. I recommend it.

Made with Love by Tricia Goyer and Sherri Gore

Title: Made with Love
Author: Tricia Goyer and Sherri Gore (no website found)
Publisher: Harvest House
Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"she came buy" should be "she came by"p197
"flood ight" should be flood light" p205
"Lovina's lips sealed close" should be something like "Lovina's lips sealed closed" or "sealed shut' or better yet, just "sealed" period! p223
"her mixed emotions were clean on her face" should be "clear on her face" P223
"to tell they world" should be "to tell the world" p232
"so much to learn about each" should be "So much to learn about each other"
"swallowed down her emotion dared to look" arguably, emotion ought to be pluralized, but there definitely needs to be a comma between 'emotion' and 'dared' P243
"It help that your coworker is nice to look at too" should be "It helps..."
"A bolder grew in the pit of her stomach" should be "A boulder grew in the pit of her stomach"
"and would som day weigh them' should be "and would some day weigh them" p252
One recipe is missing a header
One recipe which has a header was missing the actual recipe

This is going to be a long review even by my standards, so brace ourself! This novel came to me as a review copy which isn't going to be released until August, yet the typescript I read was far from ready for prime time. There was a host (definitely not a heavenly host!) of issues with the copy I read. It has multiple spelling and grammatical errors, for one thing. I can see how some of these would slip by an inattentive reader, but any spell-checker would have caught, for example, the use of "flood ight" where it should have been 'flood light".

I don't see any excuse for putting out a review copy that hasn't at least had a 'one-more-time' spell-check run on it. I know that writers and publishers like to put out standard excuses for this - that the text is in flux and shouldn't be quoted, but how hard is it to run a spell check? Of course, that won't catch grammatical errors or real words used in the wrong place, such as "she came buy" where it should have read "she came by".

So the main problem with the technical reading of this particular novel was that it was sometimes hard to tell if something which read like an error to me was actually an error or if it was intentional. There was a lot of 'Amish speak' in the text. By this I don't mean German words tossed in such as 'ja' for 'yes' and 'wunderbar' for 'wonderful', and so on - although the odd thing there is that while 'ja' is used in place of 'Yes', 'nein' isn't used in place of 'No'! I found this strange. No, as far speaking goes for me, "It help to know" should be "It helps to know". The problem was that I couldn't be sure if this was an error or if it was intentional, meant to depict a mode of speech used by the Amish. I included it in my list of errata because I saw so many errors and I was therefore unwilling to give these the benefit of the doubt.

There was the occasional oddball sentence, too, such as this one on page 291: "Lovina cared for him. He knew she did. Now he just needed her to realize that for himself." It's that last sentence which doesn't make sense. Shouldn't he need her to realize that for herself?! But this book is all about male dominance. I can't get with any societal plan which puts half the population in the back seat, as this one does. The women are supposed to be modest and modestly dressed. The women are supposed to have their head covered with this "kapp" of theirs. The women are supposed to have their eyes down-cast and their hearts on marriage. The man is supposed to be the provider and master of the house. I don't subscribe to that, and this book was hard to read because of this kind of thing showing up every few pages.

Those issues aside, this wasn't too bad of a story as it started out, except that it had too much cliché, which surprised me given that this was set in an Amish community. I'm not a believer. I'm a born-again atheist, if you like. Like everyone else, I was an atheist when I was born right up until I got brain-washed by the Christian community, but the washing didn't take, and I became atheistic once again. Yes, I'm a dirty atheist! Everyone goes through that same process, but most of them do not regain their original skepticism and healthy rationality. Most of them adopt the religion into which they were born, without even giving it a thought.

Notwithstanding that background, this story actually sounded interesting to me, which I guess means the blurb did its job. The problem was that it turned out to be just like every other romance story out there! Take out the references to 'God' and the Amish portions of it and it was indistinguishable from scores of other romances. Leave in 'God' and even the Amish portions of it, and it was still indistinguishable from any other Christian romance. This saddened me because had it been your usual Christian romance, I never would have been interested in reading it. It was disappointing to find nothing new, original or different here.

The Amish community is an offshoot of the Mennonites. I've visited the Amana colonies in Iowa which a lot of people think are actually Amish, but in fact they're pietist. There are very many such splinter groups. I read once that there are some twenty thousand Christian sects, which just goes to show what a spectacular failure the Bible was in creating a community of like-minded worshipers!

Some of these splinter groups have a lot in common whilst others do not. I once went on a date with a Mennonite girl because of the very fact that her lifestyle interested me and she was an interesting person, but none of this makes me remotely an expert on this topic, which was why I thought it would be fun to read this. Not that you should take your education from fictional romances by any means, but it's still nice to learn what authors of various persuasions think and feel.

This story can be thought of as a cookbook with a free romance, or as a romance with free recipes. I haven't tried the recipes as of this writing, but some of them are seriously tempting. Bakery, specifically of pies, is at the heart of this story because it's the dream of the main character to open a pie shop. She believes it's her god's will that she open this shop! I'd have to seriously doubt that a creator of a universe, who evidently hasn't put in an appearance for at least two thousand years, really cares one way or the other about whether person A opens a pie shop or joins the circus, or whether team A wins or team B wins, but that's part of the premise here.

In this story, Lovina Miller lives with her Mem and Dat, and her four sisters, all of whom are single, and pretty if not beautiful. More on that score anon. Her dream is to open a pie shop in the little Florida Amish village to which her family has moved. It's amusingly named Pinecraft; amusingly because it sounds so much like Minecraft. Does Minecraft have an Amish mod? I doubt it, but you never know: there's a mod for pretty much everything!

This book is augmented with odds and ends like Lovina's list of things she needed to keep in mind, and Noah's Mem's skillet pear ginger pie, which is funny because someone is stealing pies, and it's probably not Lovina. The pie thefts never are resolved. It's also funny because in another novel I've been reading lately, pies are being stolen from the palace kitchen - by the princesses! Maybe they're stealing from here, too?!

Noah is obviously the guy who will become Lovina's love interest. This novel really isn't the remotest bit subtle. Noah is trying to find work for three boys who remind him of his own troublesome self when he was their age, but their reputation precedes them, and no one wants these boys around their property - except maybe Lovina who, it appears, might have finally managed to get her hands on a property she can turn into a pie shop.

For a book about faith, there was surprisingly little in evidence. For a people who base their lives on a book which dictates, 'judge not, lest ye be judged', there was a disturbing amount of judgment - of Noah and his troublesome teens in particular. Also for a community which follows a book which states, 'take no thought for tomorrow' there was a disturbing amount of capitalism going on! But no one ever made a case for religious belief being rational.

There was what amounts to an undercurrent of what might be very loosely thought of as "racism" or at best, part of that disturbing amount of judgment I mentioned. The Amish community considered all outsiders to be "Englischers", and this term was used often. It felt insulting. Believe it or not, there is actually a romance novel titled "The Amish and the Englischer". Englischer is meant not to describe English people, but anyone who isn't Amish/Mennonite. I know it's probably not intended in the way it felt to me, but it's still a case of "us" and "them" which is cultist, and which seems out of keeping with the purported Christian ideal of loving thy neighbor. It just struck me as odd and unnecessarily divisive.

This "us and them" mentality wasn't only exemplified just in the use of that word, either. At one point, a reporter comes to interview Lovina about her new pie shop. Now this reporter wasn't from the Amish newspaper The Budget but from a newspaper called the Sarasota Sun, but her attitude was weird, and unnecessarily combative.

She said something which I found extraordinarily blinkered and insulting: "It's stories like these our world need to hear. Stories to let people know that not every place is corrupt". Let's for a moment ignore the issue of poor grammar in that last sentence. This sentient strongly suggests that only the Amish (it's a great life in the Amish!) aren't corrupt, and everywhere else is a violent, criminal, low-life society, which is bigoted and insulting. Of course, there are people in the real world who are bigoted, so this in itself wasn't the problem, but was it necessary to put that insult into her speech? At the very least, it could have been worded more gently or less holier-than-thou.

This oddly blinkered view of life popped up throughout this story. For example there was one place where I read that food was a special part of Amish life, but this suggested that it isn't a special part of everyone's life, especially for gatherings, including church functions of other faiths. I found that very short-sighted to intimate that food has a special meaning to the Amish that no one else shares. It was this kind of thing that made me think that he author really needs to get out more - out of her confined community and see some of the world if she really thinks we're as bad as some of this writing suggests.

One of my pet peeves with writing is the obsessive compulsive use of the word 'beautiful' to describe a woman - and only the use of that word, like she has no other worthy qualities than deeper than skin, and this defines her and is her and is all she is or can ever hope to be. I object strongly to this and think it shameful that this is used and accepted in novels. It's especially shameful when used by a female author, and in this case even more so when used by a writer describing a community which is supposedly rooted in modesty and acceptance. I did a search for use of this term as applied to a woman's looks, and here's what I found:

• Her beautiful face p52
• A gentle confidence that made her beautiful p55
• Unlike my beautiful sisters p93
• Didn't she realize how beautiful she was? P179
• You look beautiful p228
• She'd never been told she was beautiful before p228
• You are beautiful p229
• Joy had a beautiful face p235
• A beautiful young Amish woman p252
• Knowing Noah found her beautiful p328

I think it's a disgrace to classify women like this. Yes, some women are beautiful - but the problem with that is that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, so what defines it - well everything and nothing, everyone and no one. I have no problem with someone who is in love thinking their partner is beautiful! That's a given, regardless of how others may view that person, but to routinely describe every young female as beautiful is not only unrealistic, it's insulting to the majority of women who look perfectly fine, but who are not routinely classed as beautiful. And its completely out of place in a novel of this nature.

Personally I think this needs to stop. There's no reason whatsoever to habitually describe women in novels as beautiful unless it has some marked bearing on the story or on what happens in the story, or on what happens to the woman specifically. Otherwise why mention it if not to make every-day, regular woman feel like they're ugly and really ought to try harder to look acceptable - i.e. beautiful?

This is a pogrom perpetrated by the fashion industry, and the make-up conglomerations, and the dietary product industries, all of which are intent upon forcefully declaring that women are useless tubs of ugly lard if they are not willowy, and magnificently beautiful, utterly hairless, and dressed to the tens (the nines is so five minutes ago dahlink). This destructive behavior needs to be starkly highlighted for what it is: an abuse of women, not bought into and supported. This abuse is far more pernicious and destructive than ever pornography could be.

'Pretty' was another issue tied directly to this one: when it wasn't how beautiful they were, it was how pretty they were:

• Smiled at the pretty dark-haired Amish woman P20
• How could someone forget such a pretty face P20
• Lovina was a pretty girl P29
• The pretty woman who'd been checking out the warehouse P49
• The pretty woman smiled P54
• Pretty lashes P54
• She's pretty P83
• God had sent someone pretty P84
• It was as pretty a name as any he'd heard P84
• More time with that pretty Amish lady P84
• Not her pretty smile P84
• The pretty Amish woman P136
• You are so pretty like your sister P235
• Lovina's pretty sisters P271

Moving on. One thing I have honestly never understood about these communities is the fact that many of them have hit the pause button on technology, right at the point where they left their original homeland, in Germany, for the most part, and never hit 'play' again, so they don't have electricity, and they drive around in buggies. They eschew car ownership but have no problem traveling in taxis and buses? To me this makes no sense. Why freeze it at that specific point? Not all of them do; some have moved on to electricity, but still perceive technology as evil. If they wish to freeze their technological lives, why not go back to two thousand years ago and adopt Hebrew dress and customs and technology - such as it was then? Why wait almost two thousand years before hitting pause?

No god decided this. It was decided by people like Menno Simons, and Jakob Ammann, and their successors, but they lived four hundred years ago, so why not freeze it at dress and customs of their age? As this story relates, some communities have moved on, but not completely on - so electricity is fine, and cell phones are fine, but digital cameras are not? Phones are cameras these days, so I don't get this distinction either. There is no logic or rationale to these choices! It's entirely arbitrary, yet no one questions it. If they do, they're not forgiven; they're shunned and ostracized! None of this makes sense to me and I was no wiser on this topic after reading this novel, either.

But I digress! The romance isn't all plain sailing, of course. Indeed, I was as surprised as I was disturbed to discover that this romance was exactly the same as all other romances. The couple meet, they don't believe they like each other, but are amazed that they do. At least one of them has a secret. Friends or parents object to the relationship. Somehow, no matter how many weeks they have, there is never time to discuss the secret. The secret is revealed at the end, and everything is happily ever after.

So what did this story have to offer that a gazillion other romances don't have? Quite literally nothing! The Amish setting was interesting, but it really didn't make an ounce of difference to the romance in the same way that God didn't make an ounce of difference to what happened. There were no miracles here, no revelations, no magical presences. It was just a love story and if the Amish part and the references to god were all removed, it would still have been the same love story.

Noah Yoder has a troubled past, yet in the three months in which Lovina and Noah work together on a daily basis to get the pie shop up and running, they seem utterly unable, even once, to find an hour to discuss what his sordid little secret is! I found that utterly unbelievable. When the secret comes out it's not Earth-shattering. What he did was awful, but it wasn't something that hasn't happened to scores upon scores of irresponsible teenagers. No one died. No one was hurt, and Noah worked hard to fix what he did. Case closed. it was really a non event - a non-mystery especially given the spoilers that had gone before.

There's also a huge spoiler when they talk about purchasing the property to turn into a pie shop and then they take out no insurance on it. I'm sorry but faith doesn't cut it. You need insurance, period. It made them look really stupid to make such a big investment without insuring it and it telegraphed loudly what was going to happen later. Worse than this, there are building codes - even the Amish and Mennonites have to adhere to building codes. Where were the fire alarms? Where were the sprinklers? I guess Noah didn't learn anything after all.

It's tempting to say that the worst part about this whole story is the precipitous rush to judgment and their colossal loss of faith, but that isn't it. The worst part is the Disney princess ending which spoiled the whole story for me.

I know that some stories in real life do have fairy-tale endings, but this one was so over the top that it was completely unrealistic. It was arrogant, too, that only people of faith can help each other. I cannot - in good faith! - recommend this novel. The basic premise was good, but this story doesn't get it done. If you want a good story about baking, watch the Will Ferrell - Maggie Gyllenhall movie Stranger than Fiction. That gets it done and is a fun movie.

Edge of Tomorrow by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Title: Edge of Tomorrow aka All You Need is Kill
Author: Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

Read poorly by Mike Martindale.

Not to be confused with Isaac Asimov's The Edge of Tomorrow or a score of other novels employing this tired title, this Edge of Tomorrow was originally released as All You Need Is Kill accompanied by illustrations from Yoshitoshi Abe. This was not a manga, but there was a later manga adaptation released.

The novel was re-released under the new title to tie it in with the movie of the same name which was based on the novel. I listened to the audio version of the novel read by Mike Martindale. I have to say that the reading was poor, and the story wasn't very good, which might account for a tough reading. What, Simon and Schuster couldn't get an Asian guy to read this? Shame on them. Way to go big Publishing&Trade;.

The plain fact is that the movie writers got it right. I had a chance to see a sneak preview of the movie and was completely won over by it. This novel (or short story more like), on the other hand was less than thrilling because the author had striven so hard to make it sound so hard-bitten and tough that it was almost a parody of a war novel. Everything was exaggerated and bitter and it was such a laughably stereotypical military conflict story, that I sincerely believed I would not be able to listen to it all. It did improve as the story progressed, but nowhere near enough to make me consider this a worthy read.

The movie depicts the main character as an American, Major William Cage (named after the original character's nickname), who has no training beyond basic and who is frankly cowardly and happy to be the PR voice of the military. He's unceremoniously tossed into the front lines against his will. In the novel he's Keiji Kiriya, a lowly soldier in the United Defense Force, Japanese contingent who has basic training and is in an infantry unit. In both cases, on his first battle, the soldier somehow gains the ability to reset time every time he dies, and so after he's killed, he always wakes up on the day before the battle where he died.

Sergeant Rita Vrataski in the movie is Sergeant-Major Rita Vrataski in the novel, and is a US special forces soldier, but is otherwise the same person (except that she's British in the movie, not American), and the one highlight of this novel is how she is described and referenced throughout it. The novel doesn't have Kiriya linking up with Vrataski for the longest time, and even when they do, their story is different. He's a much more independent operator, although he quickly decides that she has the right idea, and manages to work out, over several lifetimes, that he needs to arm himself with the same battle-ax which she uses since the bullets in his little standard issue gun don't do diddly against the Mimic carapace.

The ending is different, too, and that's all the spoiler you're going to get. Had I read this before the movie came out, I would have had no intention of seeing the movie - until of course, I saw the movie preview and realized it was much better. I can't recommend the novel. I do recommend the movie which I also review on this blog.

Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius with Megan Lloyd-Davies

Title: Ghost Boy
Author: Martin Pistorius with Megan Lloyd-Davies
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Rating: WARTY!

Martin Pistorius might have chosen a better title for his autobiographical book. Ghost boy is a very common title (B&N lists at least half a dozen), and that's not even Martin's face on the cover as far as I can tell. Why isn't his picture there? Why not a before and after kind of cover? I know that writers don't get a say in their covers unless they self-publish, but you'd think a publisher might have more clue than this.

The book was co-written by novelist and ghost-writer Megan Lloyd-Davies, so it's one of those novels where it's really hard to be sure who said what and whether that description or turn of phrase was really the author's - it was really something he honestly felt, or endured or experienced, or whether the ghost writer simply chose to dramatize it that way. It was an interesting read in parts, and no one in their right mind can deny the horrors through which this author went, but in the end, I can't rate it a worthy read and I am not sure I can properly explain why.

It didn't feel like a satisfying read to me even though it starts out horribly and has a happy ending. Indeed, it feels very much like a fairy-tale, except that it's true. That said, the book seemed a bit jumbled, and it jumped around way too much for me instead of giving me a smooth narrative, and a clear idea of what was happening and how things were regressing or progressing. I was never quite sure where I was in the story or which Martin I was reading about at any given time unless there were obvious indicators in the narrative. It was too easy to lose track of time period, and this negatively impacted the impact, as it were.

There were things in it which bored me and which I skimmed, and there were other things which I felt were not discussed, or were discussed inadequately and glossed over instead. There were some commendably harsh and cruel truths in these pages too, humbling truths; truths which make you doubt the decency of humanity, but in the end I felt like I didn't read a satisfying story. I didn't know this guy, and didn't really have a good idea of his life, or of him. Despite what it did deliver, it felt shallow and superficial to me, and this is why I can't say this was a worthy read, and I'm sorry for that because people need to read books like this, in order to know what horrors can come - and the biggest of these wasn't even his condition, it was the way he was treated when he had it. A story like this deserved a better telling.

My Two Moms by Zach Wahls

Title: My Two Moms
Author: Zach Wahls
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Rating: WORTHY!

After sadly having to review The Invisible Orientation negatively today, I'm relieved to be able to review this one positively. Posting so many reviews of gender-queer books and novels, some people might ask: does he have an agenda? And the short, simple answer is yes, I do! I have an agenda of siding with those who are abused by right-wing religions.

Zach Wahls grew up with his biological sister Zebby, both children of Terry, who was married to Jackie. Terry was a strong and independent woman who fought against almost impossibly long odds to get pregnant as a single lesbian. She grew up on a farm in Iowa, so maybe that farm is where her dedication was born, or maybe it was just in her genes. As a nine-year old, she protested her father's plan to name the farm "John Wahls & Sons", given that Terry worked on the farm too, and just as hard as any son. He wouldn't change the "& Sons" to "& Family". He also told her she was "out of [her] god-damned mind" to want to have a child, but if she had not, Zach would never have been born, and I never would have had the chance to read this book.

The pathetic thing about all this isn't what was happening with Terry's child, but the antique attitudes of jerks like the doctor at the fertility clinic and the editor or the local newspaper who actually used the term "illegitimate child" to refuse on the one hand to in vitro fertilize her, and on the other, to announce the birth in the newspaper. It's for people like these: pathetic, bigoted, and clueless people, that swearing was actually invented, because they simply cannot be described in polite language. Did you know that?! The really sad thing is that these events were not in the 1950's where they would have been just as reprehensible, but at least in some ways understandable. No, this happened in the 1990's, just two decades back. How far we've come since then.

I love some of the things this author says and the juxtapositions he offers us in his relating the history underlying this:

On December 21, 1996, Terry Lynn Wahls took the hand of Jacqueline Kay Reger and made public, openly and honestly, the highest commitment two loving people can make. ...[walked] down the aisle at our church to the theme song of Star Trek: Voyager

What's not to love?!

President Bill Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA, a bill - sponsored by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who was carrying on an extramarital affair and signed by President Clinton who was later impeached for lying about an affair of his own - explicitly defined marriage, in the federal government's eyes, as between one man and one woman, ostensibly to protect the sanctity of the institution

What's not to despise?!

There was some inconsistent writing in this book. For a book which is trying to fight against stereotyping and bigotry, I found it odd at best and hypocritical at worst when I would read a sentence like this: "Maybe part of that had to do with the Midwestern habit of not asking too many questions about things that don't concern you". I've lived in the Mid-west and not found that to be true - or at least not any more or less true there than it is anywhere else. It struck me as really weird to stereotype a group - in this case mid-westerners - in a book which was making a case for gay marriage! Not all Mid-westerners are the same, and this wasn't the first time I had read a phrase like this in the book.

It was equally odd to read this: "Another advantage of lesbian moms: I knew girls didn't have cooties". I'm not concerned with the trivial fact of his discovering girls don't have cooties, but that he's suggesting he could only learn this from growing up the child of a same sex couple. Heterosexual marriages can't teach this? This comment just seemed odd and out of place to me.

On this same theme, one phrase I didn't need to hear more than once was "we worked through the hard times so we could enjoy the good ones," yet we get that almost, but not quite, like a mantra. That and one or two other items were a bit annoying, but overall, I liked reading this, and I recommend it.

What I didn't like reading was of the roadblocks which were put into path of this family because of a few clueless and very vocal "moralists" who through ignorance and blinkered obstinacy tripped up everything they tried to do as a family. This was starkly highlighted in Zach's description of what happened when Zebby broke her arm. Terry was indisposed at the time and Jackie, a nurse by profession, knew that Zebby needed hospital treatment. Even though she was married to Terry and knew these two kids better than anyone other than Terry, the hospital could do nothing without Terry's permission, and Jackie had to endure this, knowing that this girl, who was for all practical purposes her daughter, was in pain, yet not being able to help her because of what religious nut-jobs and antiquated government polices said.

What bothered me in learning this was why we didn't learn of co-adoption, guardianship or right of attorney. I know nothing about this so maybe it wasn't an option. Maybe it's not even possible, but as feisty as Terry was, I can't believe she didn't look into any of this - into a means by which Jackie would have some rights with the children without Terry having to give up hers.

Having no rights, Jackie had no power, and if Terry had died, Jackie would not only have lost her, but the children, too, because she had no legal claim on her own family, over the very children she and Terry had lived with and raised together. Maybe there were no options, but if so, it would have been nice to have read that Terry tried this that and the other thing, and nothing worked or was possible. I felt that this was a serious omission.

This same abuse was inflicted upon this family by the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (a place I have worked I'm now sorry to say!), because the ER doctor wouldn't listen to Jackie - not a family member as far as he was concerned - when she and terry were there for treatment of a painful condition brought on by Terry's multiple sclerosis. Thereby Terry's suffering was prolonged. Again it would have been nice to have read here as to why a power of attorney had not been put in place - did they not think of it or would it not have worked? We don't know, and I think this is a big hole in this story.

Another thing which intrigued me was when Zach tells of the time he was driving in a van with a bunch of other adolescents and this girl who was sitting next to him struck up a conversation about how homosexuals feel as they enter the phase of life where they start noticing their biologically-assigned gender of interest, just as we heteros do. Zach had apparently never talked to nor been talked to about this topic by his parents, which I found strange in a family where this played a significant part, and in which there was a commendable openness about maturity and values and so on. It struck me as a strange gap in the story.

I have to take issue with Zach on his assertion that the United States is not a theocracy. No, we don't have a Pope or an Imam or a Rabbi running the country, but you pretty much can't get elected, and sure as hell couldn't become president if you don't hold - or at least don't profess - strong religious beliefs. Can you imagine an out atheist ever becoming president? The Democrats might run one, but the Republicans would pillory him or her and the election would be lost to such a candidate. It's never going to happen. So while the US isn't a theocracy like some Middle East and Asian nations, it is without question one of the most dedicatedly fundamentalist nations on the planet, more so than places like Iran and Pakistan.

On this same topic, I also have to remind him that while he is right in asserting that the urge to show kindness is "...a sentiment found in religious texts of all kinds...", many of those same religious texts contain passages demanding that you shall not suffer a witch to live, and you will stone to death female adulterers, and so on. Religion is a mess. It's a double-edged sword, and the only benign religion is to have none. It's antiquated and unnecessary.

This is really Zach's 'life story' more than it is about his two moms, so the title is a bit misleading, but in the end it is about Zach, because the assault on the family, of which the right-wing constantly bleats, isn't coming from gay marriage, but from clueless, heartless, and all-too-often psychotic religious zealots who are trying to dictate to the rest of us - based on nothing more than the ignorant scribblings of old primitive men - how we should live our lives.

Yes, it's a fact there was no god who wrote the Bible. Rest assured it was written by men who had no clue about our modern world - and little clue about anything else, yet these myopic right-wing zealots are now trying to hold that over our heads and dictate to the rest of us that an antique, blinkered Middle-Eastern view of the world is what should rule our lives.

If these hypocrites were living that life themselves, then I would be far less outraged about their arrogance (although still outraged!), but the plain fact is that they are not. Not a single one of these people actually follows the Bible teachings. They pick and choose which Biblical dictates they're willing to adopt and which to reject, and they live by the one and conveniently ignore or forget all the others. Then they turn around and lie that they are holier than the rest of us horrible sinners. They're hypocrites every last one of them and they should not even be given the time of day let alone taken seriously, period.

They sure as hell shouldn't be allowed to dictate to people who should be allowed to fall in love and marry and who should not. I recommend this book as a very worthy and moving read.

The Invisible Orientation by Julie Sondra Decker

Rating: WARTY!

In a survey two decades ago, about one percent of the British population self-identified as asexual. How the book blurb makes a giant leap from this, to asserting that "A growing number of people are identifying as asexual" is a complete mystery, and that's indicative of the real problem with this book. It hedges so many bets, and qualifies so many aspects, and opens itself to such an excessive diversity of definitions that in the end, it establishes nothing, defines nothing, clarifies nothing, least of all the blurb claim that the set we term asexuals, whoever and whatever they really are, is growing.

I am completely open to the possibility that this is an orientation rather than a condition. The problem for me was that this author comprehensively failed to make her case. I started in on this book hoping to learn something about his topic and I finished it (well, finished half of it before I gave up on it!) precisely as uninformed at the end as I had been at the beginning - or perhaps more accurately, no more informed than I was before I read it, and worse, no more convinced.

One problem with it was that is was one of the driest tomes I have ever laid eyes on. It was like reading a scientific paper, but without any science in it, leaving only stilted semi-scientific language, but with no vigorously beating heart of solid science underlying it. There were quotations, and references, and definitions galore, but nothing from scientific research. Almost worse than that for a book of this nature, it had absolutely no personal accounts whatsoever, not even that of the author! Not in the portion I read anyway. I think I would have learned a lot more, and empathized a lot more if I could have heard from people who experience this phenomenon/condition/orientation, and been able to read their input.

According to the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), an asexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction, yet in this book we are advised by this author that this isn't necessarily the case. Asexuals can be attracted to other people of the same or other gender, they can find romance, companionship, and they can have sex. If that's the case, then what does it mean to say they're asexual?

The author, in a weird table which totals to significantly over 100%, indicates that some 7% of asexuals enjoy having sex, almost 20% would be "willing to compromise" and have regular sex, almost 40% would be "willing to compromise" and have occasional sex, and almost 40% are indifferent to sex - which means they reject it no more and no less than they favor it. I'm confused! If they're willing to compromise with regular sex, what were the two extremes between which this compromise was drawn? No sex ever again and constant sex? I don't even know how to honestly and seriously interpret a survey as wishy-washy as this one, and the author offers no help.

Now I can see how some people might have legitimately checked more than one box in such a survey if they were not expressly prevented from doing so, but even given that these numbers explicitly reveal that asexual does not mean no sex. So what does it mean? Prostitutes have sex with people to whom they are not sexually attracted, and I don't doubt that heteros, gays and bisexuals have had sex like that when they were drunk, or high, or desperate or something, but that aside, what does this survey actually reveal, exclude, or demonstrate? The author doesn't discuss it. And that was one of the problems - all definition and refutation, but no real discussion or clarifying information.

The biggest problem of course is that this was an Internet survey, which really negates it anyway for all practical purposes. It's sad if that's the best we can do. The fact remains that some researchers assert that asexuality is a sexual orientation while others disagree. We have no scientific or medical definition, no baseline, no reliable data, and therefore little to no understanding. The author helps with none of this. She doesn't address the research objections to her position, much less try to refute them. In short, she fails to explain how asexuality differs from a condition, and how it is, therefore an orientation. For a book like this, this was a tragic blunder and seriously lets down her position and that of her peers.

The blurb says,

Critics confront asexual people with accusations of following a fad, hiding homosexuality, or making excuses for romantic failures. And all of this contributes to a discouraging master narrative: there is no such thing as "asexual." Being an asexual person is a lie or an illness, and it needs to be fixed.

and the problem is that this author offers nothing concrete to refute that or dispel these questions. Not that I'm saying it's valid, by any means.

It doesn't help to read things like this in wikipedia:

...asexuals may identify as heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or by the following terms to indicate that they associate with the romantic, rather than sexual, aspects of sexual orientation:
aromantic; lack of romantic attraction towards anyone
biromantic; as opposed to bisexual
heteroromantic; as opposed to heterosexual
homoromantic; as opposed to homosexual
panromantic; as opposed to pansexual

If a person is asexual, why are they identifying with any sexually-oriented group? The author doesn't tackle this - not in the first fifty percent of this book, anyway. It's more like she was interested in addressing or refuting any and every objection, no matter how trivial or stupid, to a declaration of asexuality, than she was in actually and realistically establishing this orientation and staking out a real position.

This is a problem because what this book felt like to me was more of a defensive retreat than taking a stand, or offering a manifesto or whatever it is she thought she was doing. In taking this tack, it felt to me like she wasn't nailing down anything or securing her premises, but instead leaving doors unlocked and windows open for any moronic home invasion which happens along.

I agree with the blurb on one respect: this is a way-the-hell far too sexualized world, which makes it all the more difficult for your average Jo to understand someone who has no interest in sex, and/or who isn't attracted sexually or romantically to another person, but instead of setting herself and her peers apart and staking out her turf, she's simply dug a hole for herself and fallen into the muddied waters at the bottom of it. Despite all her dancing around this important topic, she failed to demonstrate here that it has legs. Personally I have no trouble accepting that there is a valid and legitimate asexual community; I just wish this author had done a better job of delineating it. I cannot, therefore, commend this as a worthy read.

The Adventures of Miss Petitfour by Anne Michaels

Title: The Adventures of Miss Petitfour
Author: Anne Michaels
Publisher: Tundra Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Emma Block

This is a highly whimsical book with a delightfully British tone. The author is Canadian, and though I don't normally care what authors look like, I have to say that I have seen a picture of her and she has an awesome look to her - like a character from a novel herself! It's written I assume, for younger readers, but it delighted me. It reminded me of several other books even as it proudly exhibited its own unique take on life. There's an element of Gail Carriger in it, also a touch of TS Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. It's sparsely illustrated in a child-like style, but the pictures are perfect for the story. The text is large, so the novel is very short. It consists of several stories linked only by the characters, so you can comfortably read them in any order.

Miss Petitfour has several cats: Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Clothespin, Clasby, Earring, Grigorovitch, Hemdela, Minky, Misty, Moutarde, Mustard, Pirate, Purrsia, Sizzles, Taffy, Your Shyness (although not necessarily in that order) and they are a lively bunch who like to travel with her by table cloth to the village, the cats clinging to each other's tail.

If you've never traveled by table cloth, I do advise it, but please remember that you must match the table cloth color and pattern to the needs of the day, and that you have to be prepared to visit only the stores to which the prevailing wind takes you on any given trip. Thus enabled, the five stories are these:

Miss Petitfour and the rattling Spoon - when Miss Petitfour runs out of marmalade, it's a crisis with which I fully empathize, and which must be addressed forthwith!

Miss Petitfour and the Jumble. Every five years the village has a jumble sale, so you know it must be high time to open the junk cupboard. Or is that wise?

Miss Petitfour and the Penny Black. The Penny Black is a very rare and extremely valuable British stamp from the Victorian days, and is the pride of Miss Petitfour's collection, so what do you think will happen when it happens to blow out of the window on a snowy day?

Miss Petitfour and the Birthday Cheddar. Adventures on birthdays are particularly adventurous when you're a table cloth short of a picnic, and there's a chilly river nearby.

Miss Petitfour and the "Oom". Miss Petitfour hears an Oom! While she has definitely not lost the Oom in her life, she does hear two of them. What on Earth is that noise and does it have anything to do with the confetti factory? Miss P and the cats find they must abandon the annual festooning festival to go in search of odd noises.

The novelty of the stories for me tended to wear off a bit the more I read of them, but this is probably a case of familiarity breeds discontent. I found myself wondering if I had read them starting with the last first, whether I might have found the first less adorable than I did and the last more, but of course there is no way to do that now! I recommend this book as a really fun read, but you might want to pace yourself and spread the stories out over several days so you don't become a dissatisfied glutton for them. Maybe keep the book in the bathroom and read a story each day, or read them to your kids one per night? The bottom line is that we need stories of this nature and I'm glad we have them and that I read them. This is a worthy read.

Tovi the Penguin Goes Camping by Janina Rossiter

Title: Tovi the Penguin Goes Camping
Author: Janina Rossiter (no website found)
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

Tovi the Penguin is a series of books in which Tovi is as Tovi does. In this particular richly-colored adventure, he goes camping with two penguin friends. Does that make them frienguins? Sporting packed and rather heavy-looking backpacks, they hike off into the pine forest and eventually find the camping site.

It's dark when they get there, but this doesn't deter them. They have to raise their tent if they want warmth and shelter for the night, but they're ready and capable, and soon they have the tent erected and a nice fire to sit around. Everything is perfect isn't it? Except for the odd noise they can hear as they're about to drift off to sleep.

What is that crack-crack-crack? Though the penguins are nervous, they have to find out. The source of the noise turned out to be highly improbable, especially given that they hear it in the middle of the night from a creature which isn't active at that time of day.

I had thought that this book might offer something of educational value with regard to camping. I mean why set it in a camping milieu if not to teach kids a bit about that? If it's just to show them they can rely on friends and don't need to be scared of every little noise they hear, then that's all well and good, but such a story could have been set anywhere. Why waste such a golden opportunity?

I understand that not every children's book needs to be a lesson in field craft (or whatever the implied topic is, but why waste an opportunity to impart something of value? They could have been shown arriving in daylight and hastening to erect the tent before it gets dark. We could have seen a bit about how the tent is put up, and how they start the fire, and how they keep the fire from spreading and starting a brush fire. We could have seen something about the wisdom of not keeping food in the tent which might attract ants. As it was I felt let down and I felt children would be too, especially older ones in the recommended age range.

I know it was aimed at two- to six-year-olds, which seems like an odd spread of age to me, and two-year-olds are not going to get much out of it in terms of camp craft, but six year olds certainly can, and this story, beautiful as it was to look at, failed children at the older end of that scale by not delivering enough in my opinion. Even two-year-olds can appreciate being tickled as you tell them not to let ants in the tent, and they can hide under a blanket and pretend it's a tent.

I really felt this story could have and should have been much more than it was, and I can't therefore in good faith recommend it. I hope the author will be more imaginative and inventive in future volumes in the series because this has the potential to be so much more.

Clone Fourth Generation by David Schulner, Aaron Ginsburg, Wade McIntyre

Title: Clone Fourth Generation
Author: David Schulner, Aaron Ginsburg, and Wade McIntyre
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!
Art work: Juan José Ryp.
Colors: Andy Troy (no reliable website found)

I began this thinking it was the last in the series and thrilled that the library had all four volumes in at once, but when I reached the rather cliff-hanger ending, I have to wonder if there are more volumes, but I have no word on that as of this blog. This story takes off where three left it - with the clones and their clone ninja escort making its way to an airlift which is two days' hike away. Eric the tattooed clone refuses to travel to the island.

The rest of them stop at a cabin in the forest and Amelia is shot. Feeling bad that every single character in this series has been white to this point, the writer or artist or both made the two villains in the cabin black and clone-haters. None of this massive universal hatred of clones was ever explained in this series. Amelia recovers from her gunshot wound and Luke lets the clone haters go - only to discover that they've been intercepted and slaughtered by one of the ninjas.

Meanwhile Mrs K joins the psycho reverend and ends up kidnapping Amelia and Luke's baby even though she's supposed to have reformed. This does not end well for Mrs K. Eric joins the clone haters as a spy. This is how he discovers the kidnapped baby and manages to rescue Eva and return her to her mom. The plane leaves with out Amelia supposedly by her choice, we're told.

Everything seems to have worked out fine until the clones arrive at the island, and in a series of views to which we're party but to which the clones are not, we discover that there's something rotten in the state of Japanese private islands. To be continued? Who knows? This series has been optioned for TV, but given that it took seven years to get this thing from conception to print, who knows how long it might be before - or even if - a TV show appears? Orphan Black does provide a precedent for clone shows, and The Walking Dead provides one for the rampant violence. We'll have to see. I recommend this series as a whole as a worthy read, although some parts of it are not that great.

Clone Third Generation by David Schulner, Aaron Ginsburg, Wade McIntyre

Title: Clone Third Generation
Author: David Schulner, Aaron Ginsburg, and Wade McIntyre
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Art work: Juan José Ryp.
Colors: Andy Troy (no reliable website found)

The third novel in this series is much more violent and sexual than the previous two and the one I liked the least of the quartet I read. Luke is still stupid unfortunately. This is also a kind of Joss Whedon tribute edition in that favorite characters are killed off (or appear to be killed off) willy-nilly.

This novel introduces cloned sisters, just as Orphan Black introduced brothers. The ones we meet are Kazumi, Meiko, Rei, and Sayaka Hatanaka daughters of Ayato, a friend of Luke's father. They are trained in martial arts. When they learn of the plight of the Luke clones being hunted down like animals in the US, they decide to take action.

The problem I had with this whole scenario is one I have with a lot of US-based stories, TV shows and movies. The US is only a tiny portion of the planet - less than five percent of the population - yet it acts like it is the planet, and we see that same arrogant, aggressive stance starkly illuminated here in that this entire story is a claustrophobic world of its own. Every single one of these clones lives in the USA - not a one of them has moved abroad for any reason despite being army brats every last one of them.

Worse than this, when the pogrom comes, not a word is spoken about these people moving to Canada or Mexico or some other place where they would be safe at least temporarily. Not a word of objection to this bloody and barbaric slaughter is heard being voiced neither from within the US nor from any other nation. It's like the US is the world, and there is no other place, and this story is taking place in a vacuum, and frankly, it simply isn't realistic. It's this which made me start to doubt the worthiness of this story for the first time.

At one point, one of the characters suggests that it's time to "...cut tail and run..."?! Cut tail and run? What the heck is that? Does he mean "turn tail, and run" and is perhaps confusing it with "fish, or cut bait"?! Who knows.

It's at this point that we learn that Ayato Hatanaka is willing only to take the clones - no family members, helpers or loved ones. Obviously this is going to create maximum friction. Amelia has already deposited the baby with her rather estranged (if not outright strange) mother, which I considered to be a serious mistake. This is supposed to ensure the safety of the child, but it's with her mother - do they not get that the evil government will know that Amelia has a mother and might leave the child there? No one raises this as a problem, but I predicted big issues with this (and I was right).

The novel ends with a show-down at a house in the country where the clones are hiding out until Hatanaka can organize their escape to an isolated island off the coast of Japan - a place which will be a sanctuary for them. Before they can leave, there is a government assault on the clones. Jennifer, Sanah, and Bennett hold-off the assault rather ineffectually as everyone escapes down a tunnel, and then the house blows. Did anyone survive?

I had some issues with this particular volume but in the end consider it a worthy read as part of the entire series, and I looked forward to volume four.

Clone Second Generation by David Schulner, Aaron Ginsburg, Wade McIntyre

Title: Clone Second Generation
Author: David Schulner, Aaron Ginsburg, and Wade McIntyre
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Art work: Juan José Ryp.
Colors: Andy Troy (no reliable website found)

Luke is now at the secret underground (literally) clone base, but he's understandably obsessed with finding his wife Amelia and child Eva, who have been abducted by elements in the government who are themselves obsessed with wiping out every member of generation one of the cloned Luke, and so have no regard for the life and welfare of his family - except, of course for the scientific interest the child might hold.

This novel opens with Luke trying to escape. He's prevented from doing so but he convinces his clone family that he must find his wife. At an arranged meeting at a truck stop, with a scientist who knows where Amelia is, Luke instead meets an evil clone named Patrick, who is slowly killing off every one of Luke's siblings. The clone passes himself off as a victim, desperate to find sanctuary from the purge, and like an idiot, Luke blabs everything about the secret underground location to him.

Meanwhile, the vice president and his daughter are both taken there, his daughter having been rescued by the indomitable Jennifer. That's unfortunate, because after Luke stupidly revealed where the base was, it immediately came under attack and scores of the clones were killed. Luke helps to overcome the attack, and most of the clones along with the VP and his daughter, escape. They retreat to the VP's country residence, which is a profoundly stupid thing to do. It's not like no one knows where that is!

Luke, Jennifer, and Sanah leave to track down Amelia and Eva. A new clone, this one named Eric, who is tattooed up the wazoo (I'm guessing, given how pervasively his entire body is covered!) comes down on Amelia's side and helps her escape the facility. He is attracted to Amelia the same way Luke was, but Amelia, not being a clone, isn't attracted to him in the same way. She does kiss him in gratitude for his help.

Again the art work was fine, but artist Ryp quite clearly has no idea what a woman looks like post-partum. Women are not weak and helpless (well, a few are, just like a few guys are, but in general women are pretty darned tough and recover well after pregnancy, even difficult ones), but Amelia's "recovery' here is simply not realistic.

A woman's ability to bounce back after delivery doesn't mean she isn't debilitated or weakened to one extent or another by the ordeal she's more than likely been through. It can be a real work out, and even the easiest of deliveries is accompanied by certain physical states which do not miraculously disappear overnight as Amelia's evidently did according to Ryp's art work!

Her large pregnant belly has magically gone - there's no "jelly-belly" which in any ordinary woman takes time to disappear, and which in some women never does really vanish completely. There are other physical facts, too, as other reviewers have pointed out: lactation is in full swing (although this varies from one women to another), and there is post-delivery vaginal discharge for which pads are needed.

No matter how strong a woman is or how easy the delivery may have been, she still needs time to recover and time for her body to return to something akin to her pre-pregnancy state, yet Ryp depicts Amelia as being quite literally no different in physical appearance or stamina immediately post-partum than she was before she became pregnant! It's not at all realistic.

What's also not realistic is Roy's horniness for Amelia. Yeah, guys like that have few qualms about using helpless women, but the way Roy is presented I got the feeling that he was the kind of spineless loser who wouldn't actually want to have anything to do with a woman, sexually or otherwise, who had just given birth. Despite this he's all over Amelia like she's a nymphomaniacal swimsuit model (which is how Ryp inappropriately depicts her - the swimsuit part at least). It just didn't strike me as realistic at all.

We also got Navajo medicine tossed into the mix as we met both Luke's dad and later, his mom, who is evidently a Navajo healer. While I acknowledge that there is medicine to be found in herbs and other plants, and I acknowledge that what we consider to be primitive peoples might well have had a handle on some of this through history, none of them were scientists or medical doctors, so I take all this new age and native medicine stuff with a large pinch of salt. Since we spent little time with this however, it was not a killer for me. It was actually nice to see that part of Luke's life. Not that he really knew anything about it!

One thing which bothered me was Patrick's readiness to slaughter his siblings. This was never accounted for to my satisfaction. We're told he was bred to have no feelings, but this is nonsensical. Even if we take that at face value, however, this still doesn't constitute a motive for his dedication to wiping out the other clones.

Those caveats on the table, I did still enjoy this novel, and I considered it a worthy read. I'm looking forward to volume three.

Clone First Generation by David Schulner

Title: Clone First Generation
Author: David Schulner
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Art work: Juan José Ryp
Colors: Felix Serrano.

Being a big fan of Orphan Black on TV, I was curious to see what this graphic novel series would do with the idea of multiple clones. It's a very different story, and much more gory and violent, be warned, but I found volume one to be a worthy read.

Luke is happily married to Amelia who is heavily pregnant. Nothing unusual here until Luke shows up at work one morning to discover that he has a twin, who is bleeding to death all over his nice clean floor. It turns out this isn't a twin, per se, but a clone nick-named Foss, and Foss advises Luke he had better get to his wife fast.

But it's too late - his wife has been abducted, and Luke is picked up by Foss and some female non-clones (Jennifer and Sanah) who spirit him away to a secret underground - literally - base, where he learns the truth - there are scores of clones developed in an army program many years before. Now, with a senate vote due to ban embryonic stem cell use, the government is planning on eliminating the evidence of their past indiscretions, and some of the clones are hunting down and slaughtering the rest of them.

Luke's wife is of particular interest because none of the clones is capable of reproduction - so we're told. The only exception to this would be the original. Is this Luke?

Luke has a picture of a very brief meeting with his father. The odd thing was that whereas one page shows a photograph of Luke wearing a plain white T-shirt with a super hero logo on the front, all of the other pages showing this photo depict Luke in the same T-shirt but with blue sleeves. I guess someone screwed up!

The rest of the story depicts Luke trying to find and rescue his wife (not that Amelia or any of the females depicted in this story look like they need any male help to effect an escape).

Cloning - yes, clones do look all alike, but no, they're not exactly alike. As the saying goes, even identical twins have different fingerprints, and the reason for the differences in clones, especially in this case, is that it's not just nature, it's also nurture. More than that, your genome isn't just about genes, it's also about epigenetic material which can influence how genes are expressed, so even amongst true clones, there will be differences.

The other problem I had with this, and having read volumes two and three at this point I can tell you it's not addressed there either, is what was the point of this experiment? If it was to get super soldiers, how come none of the clones were in the armed forces or even cops for that matter?! It's not explained what the point of this experiment was, or why it was suddenly decided to terminate it with extreme prejudice as they say. Yes, they had the second generation "coming on-line" as it were, but it's never explained why the arrival of the second necessitated the destruction of the first. Since none of the clones knew about each other, and the program had been kept secret for three decades or so, it made no sense that they should suddenly be afraid that it would all come out in the news.

I liked this story and now intend to go on and read subsequent volumes. the artwork is bloody but realistic, and competently done. I saw one reviewer dismiss this because all the females were masculine looking. I guess he likes his women ultra feminine because I saw no problem here except that had Jennifer been drawn with the same red hair as Amelia she would have looked like her twin. The story itself, though a bit too bloody and violent for my taste for a story like this, was nonetheless well written, skillfully illustrated, and realistically colored. I liked it and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Carrots by Colleen Helme

Title: Carrots
Author: Colleen Helme
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

I've said frequently that you can get away with a lot with me if you tell a decent story, and this novel is a classic example of that. Now you know I'm a man of my word!

This is the first in a series about a character named Shelby Nichols. It's told in first person, which is the worst of all voices. Most writers screw it up, which makes for an obnoxious read. A few can get it right, and this author managed that, for which I was very grateful. It was an easy read and easy to empathize with this character even though she was far too focused on, nay obsessed with, clothes and looks for my taste. Neither was she very smart, but she made up for her lack of smarts with a certain amount of inventiveness and pluck. I didn't like the way she was far too ready to take a back seat to her husband. It undermined the adventurous spirit with which the author was trying to imbue her elsewhere.

On her way home one evening, Shelby stops at the supermarket for a bunch of carrots, and gets into the middle of a robbery of the bank which is within the store. She's grazed by a bullet, which skims her head. From this point on, she discovers that she can read people's thoughts if they are close by. Unfortunately, "Uncle Joey", a local mobster, manages to learn of her ability and by threatening the welfare of her family, he 'persuades' her to work for him part time, listening in on conversations he has with his lackeys, to alert him to any signs of unrest and dissent.

As if this isn't trouble enough, the bank robber is out to kill Shelby so she can't testify to his appearance in court should he be apprehended, and the new hire at her husband's law firm, Kate, is definitely after her husband and doesn't care if Shelby knows it.

I liked this story because although it was a bit far-fetched, it stayed largely true and real, and it was believable. Yes, the mind-reading is nonsense of course, but this is fiction, and that's a part of the framework for the story so I had no problem with that, especially since it was presented in an interesting and realistic-feeling way. I also liked that Shelby was married and had children, so we didn't have to deal with dumb-ass romances. That would have spoiled this story, so I felt that it was a smart decision on the part of the author.

I enjoyed Shelby's struggle to cope with the demands on her, especially in light of her new power and her subsequent 'gray-area' employment. I think her husband's acceptance of her lying to him about it was a bit to easily glossed over. I think it should have been more of a problem, and more of an argument than ever it was. Yes, he loves her and isn't about to divorce her over this, but he's a high-priced lawyer and could have helped her with this, at least by giving advice and support. He also probably would have been far more suspicious of her than he was.

The fact that she got into so much life-threatening trouble and shared none of her situation with him should have been more of a hot spot than it was, too. I also didn't like that he often tried to take over her life and control her behaviors - such as when she replaces her car and he gives her the third degree about it. Yes, she isn't too smart, but his domineering attitude and her passive acceptance of it was a bit disturbing to read. One example which comes to mind is that Shelby has some pain pills from the time she was shot in the head and later, we read: "When Chris offered me a pain pill, I gratefully accepted." This makes it sound like he was hoarding her pills and doling them out to her as he saw fit. That probably wasn't the author's intention, but that's what it read like to me! If you're a good little girl and do what I say, I'll let you have your medicine! Rightly or wrongly, that made me bristle a bit!

I had a huge problem with the cover since it in no way represents the main character in any way whatsoever other than gender. Normally I ignore covers because they have nothing to do with the writer, and you can blame their ill-fit on the publisher and the fact that the cover artist never, ever, ever, ever reads the novel for which they're illustrating the cover, but in this case it's self-published through Amazon's Create Space scheme, so I'm not convinced that we can let the author off lightly here here!

There were a lot of other problems, too, which a good book editor or even a decent beta reader might have caught. This is another author who can't tell the difference between 'stanch' and 'staunch' when she writes: "He staunched the bleeding with a bandage". The antique 'whom' shows up here not as part of the narrative, but as part of a character's speech: "...identify the guy whom...", but shortly afterwards we get "There’s too many things wrong..." when it should have been "There are" or even "There're". You can't have it both ways - either your characters are going to speak correctly or they're going to speak like almost everyone else does. Mixing it up, especially with the same character doesn't work.

We got a "My name is Detective Harris..." when his name is just Harris. It's his title that's "Detective". I know it's a minor thing and a pet peeve of mine, but little things matter, especially when there are a lot of them. Why not just have him say, "I'm Detective Harris"?! It's that easy.

There was one part where it looked like one sentence had been cut and pasted smack into the middle of another sentence: "I’d barely hung up the phone when Then they’d probably want to stay me as possible.it rang again...". Then there's the flirtatious redhead who has auburn hair! Yes, I know that technically auburn is classed as red hair, but when people think of a redhead they typically don't think of auburn, so if you've directed them down Redhead Road, it's a bit of a jolt for them to discover that they're really on Auburn Avenue! It was for me anyway!

One or two things made no sense, such as when Shelby thinks to herself that she "...could read minds. I’d know when he was around. I could make it work...." The problem was that this came right after she had failed dismally to detect an assailant in the parking garage! It was inconsistent, or it made her seem really stupid, one or the other. I liked Shelby and it was annoying to have her portrayed as an idiot on more than one occasion.
Also obsessed with saying, "the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes"

Another thing which made little sense was where it was revealed that Shelby helps her husband with legal work. This came as an announcement out of the blue because we had not been told that she was employed by the law office where her husband works. it sounded bad - like confidentiality counts for nothing in this law firm. I doubt the clients would have appreciated that their lawyers randomly have family members wander in and do odd jobs. I certainly wouldn't.

Those quibbles aside, I liked this story a lot. It wasn't something which made me desperate to read the next in the series as soon as possible (especially not now that I've seen the cover!), but I don't doubt that I will read it if I come across it on sale somewhere. This was, in general terms, an engaging, fun, and enjoyable story, so overall, I rate this one a worthy read.

The Diggers by Margaret Wise Brown

Title: The Diggers
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Rating: WARTY!

Illustrated by Daniel Kirk.

There is one reason and one reason only why I'm reviewing this, which is to show how utterly brainless Kirkus reviews are, and why I have neither time nor respect for anyone who employs their reviews as advertising to promote books.

Kirkus idiotically describes this book as an "utterly modern re-visitation of a classic...". Utterly modern? Let's see what the text says:

• A man was digging a hole....
• The big digger made by a man....
• A man put a train in the hole.... (seriously?!)
• Another train with another man....

Anyone see "woman" in there? No, me neither. And Kirks thinks this is utterly modern. Excuse me while I spit somewhere. I can see how this got away with ignoring women when it was first published, but for it to be republished in this day and age and not a single thought given to updating the text to make it at least gender neutral is a travesty at best and a gross insult at worst.

The purpose of the book is not, as some might think, to introduce readers to Australians, but to introduce kids to all manner of things, living or mechanical, which dig holes. Can you dig it? Aimed not at miners but at minors, we get pictures of mechanical shovels, worms, moles, and so on, and we see to what ends these things dig.

The little book is colorful, with fun drawings. When the author, she of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny was alive, this might have been described as a delightful book for young children. Today it would still have been fine enough had the text been updated, but as it is, I can't recommend this at all. Unfortunately, the author died over half a century ago, at the appallingly youthful age of 42, so she isn't around any more to do the necessary. Maybe a more recent edition to the one that I read takes care of this problem? If there is one, I'd go with that rather than this particular one.