Sons of the Devil Vol 1 by Brian Brucellato

Rating: WARTY!

This was a graphic novel about a psychopath who was a baby when his parents were killed, and now he has issues galore, the worst of which is that he leads with his fists for no good reason. The guy is a complete jerk and totally uninteresting, not even from the tired trope of having heterochromia iridum. The story isn’t helped by numerous flashbacks. Half of the time I had no idea what was going on. The real problem though, was that the other half of the time, I really didn’t care.

The basic plot line is that the main character is a baby in a crib when both his parents have their skulls smashed by some psycho wielding a small mallet. The baby is spared because he is the chosen one. Then we jump to the present where he’s a grown-up who loves his dog, but hates people to the point where he’d rather put his fist in their face than shake their hand. Mallet-Man comes back into the guy’s life and kills again.

The guy is supposed to be in therapy, but it isn’t helping. There are several (apparently - it was too hard to keep track of them all) others like this guy – with the mismatched eyes, but what roles they played, other than two of them helping him cheat justice, was a mystery to me. I didn’t like the story, but I was committed to reading two volumes of this unfortunately. The art work wasn’t bad but it was too scratchy and angular for my taste. I cannot recommend the series based on this volume.

Bubba the Bulldog Tries to Smile by Bree Clausen

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not a fan of bulldogs. They're quite literally deformed little dogs, but this story really has little to do with them. Real ones, anyway! Bubba the Bulldog is in a sorry state: he doesn’t seem to know how to smile! His best friend Ryan the Human smiles miles of smiles all the while. Apparently Bubba suffers from heavy lip syndrome! He just can’t lift ‘em! One day Ryan came home with his leg in a cast. Skateboarding was going to be out for a while. So was smiling, it seemed. No matter what Bubba did, Ryan could not seem to lift his lips any more than Bubba could his own.

Ryan would never tape up his dog’s lips to make him smile, but when Bubba got wrapped up in tape all by himself, his mouth did seem to be sporting a smirk, but it would take something truly odd which Bubba found inexplicably under Ryan’s bed to bring a really toothy grin to his face. I wonder what it was he found?

I liked this story because it was fun, and absurd, and the colorful drawings were highly amusing. For all I know, this might even be based on a true story! I recommend it.

Still There? A Little Zen for Little Ones by Sanjay Nambiar

Rating: WARTY!

In a retelling of an old zen Buddhist story, we read here of two boys with improbably, amusingly, large heads, who encounter a girl in the school yard. She's lost an earring and isn't dealing. She seemed to think that stomping and yelling was the best way to find her earring, and in actual fact, she was right! One of the boys thought the best thing to do was get down and dirty and search for it. The other boy didn't, but once the earring was found and the girl stomped off without even thanking her helper, the boy who didn't help was annoyed! The girl was rewarded with her earring. The two boys were rewarded with nothing, but wasted time and dirtied clothes and hands.

It seems like the lesson we're supposed to learn here is that it doesn't do to cry over spilled milk (it's actually much better to clean it up before it stains and stinks!). There are several lessons to be learned here though, and we're offered only one, which is that when you perform an act of kindness for someone, do not expect a reward. I agree with this. You set yourself up if you expect something in return, and the quality of your life is lessened by the act of wanting. The girl didn't specifically ask him for help of this particular boy. The boy volunteered. As a lawyer (Buddhist or otherwise!) might say, there was no contract entered into here. The boys should not expect anything in return, not even thanks, and therefore shouldn't by adversely affected when none come. Nor should the unhelpful boy be upset by the helping boy's attitude.

I think that the author missed a great opportunity though, to look at other lessons here. He focused on only one perspective, which doesn't seem very zen to me. There's a better story here. For all I know this is the one which inspired this children's version.

It would have been a better story had we looked at each perspective in turn, and then looked at how things could have been better all around. Of course, in real life, you rarely get an opportunity like that, but in real life, there is a concept of justice and equity. It doesn't do to let those who are selfish, ungrateful, fraudulent, arrogant, or endlessly demanding. It is better to teach them the error of their ways - or to at least try. Only one lesson was learned here where several could have been. None of the other lessons were considered, which lessen the lesson! In a way, this is a very selfish lesson to teach a child. This was a very short story so there was room for lots more.

In some ways, this book is the polar opposite of one I reviewed favorably back in 2014. In that book, not focusing on the now was the point which was extolled. In this book, it seems to be just the opposite! Now that's zen! But I can't recommend this story as it stands. There's no still there, there!

I Love my Dog by David Chuka

Rating: WARTY!

From the auhtor of such literary efforts as Billy and the Monster who Loved to Fart and Billy and Monster: The Superhero with Fart Powers comes yet another disaster: a book about dogs (and yes, there are fart jokes in this book). Two kids, boy and girl, are excited to go find their first pet dog, but never once is the animal pound considered. All the dogs featured here are so-called "pure bred". The first dog is an Alaskan Malamute, and though the story is initially narrated by the sister, when we meet the dog, it describes its own role, but it says, "Do you know man still uses me as a sled dog...." I think a gender -neutral word would have been better, as in "Do you know that people still use me as a sled dog...." There's no reason at all to imply that only men can do this. Not in a year when we're newly celebrating the fact that the US finally wised-up and let women have their run of the army!

We also meet a Schnauzer (and yes, the name does come from snout, but it refers to the dog looking like it has a moustache!), an old English Sheepdog, a Poodle (the second most intelligent breed of dog, believe it or not), Dalmatian, Collie, Greyhound, Dachshund, Cocker Spaniel, Great Dane, Saint Bernard, Golden Retriever, and several others.

We learn only a very small amount about each dog, and while we do learn a bit about the down side of dog ownership, we don't learn anything, really, about what is potentially the most important thing about these 'pure bred' dogs, which is that inbreeding leads to awful deficits in too many of these animals. These problems range from, for example, deafness and hyperuricemia in the Dalmatian, to heart disease in the Boxer, to hip dysplasia in the German shepherd, to breathing problems in bulldogs, and other issues, such as mitral valve disease in the King Charles Spaniel (although this dog is not featured in this book).

I would have preferred a book that mentioned the options available and talked more about how much care, attention, and outright love a pet needs, as well as what it costs in buying the dog in the first place, and then in ongoing outlay for food, toys, bedding, and vet bills for routine visits alone. I can't recommend this book because it lacks far too much important information and kids deserve so much better.

Spiral Bound by Aaron Rainier

Rating: WARTY!

Spiral Bound is one of the most tedious graphic novels I've ever tried to read. I made it about half way through and was bored out of my mind. The characters are all animals who behave exactly like humans, in every imaginable way. There is no difference. Why the animals then? Who knows?

The story went nowhere. It wasn't even a story worth that name. It was simply a drear diary description of an average day full of ordinary events in the lives of these thoroughly uninteresting humanimals. Nothing happened that was worth repeating. It was neither engrossing nor funny. The drawings were all heavy-handed black and white line drawings and they were so busy that it hurt my eyes to look at them, let alone read the text. I cannot recommend this at all.

The Last Fall by Tom Waltz

Rating: WARTY!

I wasn't impressed by this rather gory graphic novel which really brought nothing new to the table. It was a mishmash of other sci-fi stories including a dash of Avatar wherein the brash rebel soldier falls in love with one of the enemy. Here it made no sense whatsoever. This young man, Sergeant Marcus Fall, was so filled with blind hatred of the Krovinites that his transition to pacifism made absolutely no sense whatsoever, much less his falling for one of them.

I read this advance review copy in electronic form on a decent desktop monitor, and the text was too small to read comfortably. I can't speak for the print version, but I wouldn't recommend reading this on an iPad, unless the text is improved considerably in the published edition. It was complete gibberish on that first page. Some of the text was humorously compressed. When I read, "What is he doing?" it looked like it read, "What is he dong." Another section read like it was "No talking, only dong" which is unfortunate at best! I skipped the introductory page because it was far too small to read the labeling on the solar system map, and the white on black text was just annoying. Maybe the final version is better.

The story is your standard fighting over a resource. This takes place outside of our solar system but is still fought largely between white guys. There is only a token few people of color despite people of color being in the huge majority on Earth. The soldiers on Fall's squad are clad in bulky suits of space-age armor and the carry swords and battle axes for no apparent reason other than gore. They look like a space-age A team. Fall's CO, Lieutenant Cole, looks Like a clown version of Mr T. He and a soldier named Lockwood are coincidentally about the only people of color on their side. Sgt Fall looks like he's ten years old, and he's a good Aryan soldier with yellow blonde hair and blue eyes. No wonder he wants to wipe out the other side and is constantly at odds with his darker shaded CO.

There are no robots here, for reasons unexplained. Yeah - the explanation is that writers can't get any emotional resonance out of an army of robots, although in this case the characters may as well have been robots being programmed and reprogrammed and on one note only. It was therefore amusing to me that the military was religious! Evidently the writers are fans of the Doctor Who episode Time of the Angels and its sequel, which, if true, is commendable, but this story didn't bring anything new. It never felt like any of these characters really believed what they were saying, not even the most dedicated religious devotees. Overall, the story made no sense, was constantly interrupted by boring flashbacks, and failed to really engage me at all. I only finished it because it was quite short. I can't recommend it.

Boy-1 by HS Tak

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
"descision" on p98 should be "decision"

Boy-1 has a lot in common with the rebooted planet of the apes - genetic manipulation. They have super-intelligent chimpanzees, but the real focus, for reasons unexplained, is on producing genetically superior humans. Their DNA donor is code-named Clark Kent, for example. Jadas Riezner is a pill-popping young man with predictable issues, who is inexplicably in charge of the lab where the genetic manipulation is going on. He has, of course, the requisite "hot" girlfriend, who is evidently both very willing and long-suffering, and he has a 'Jarvis' in the form of a pale blue holographic face which somehow is supposed to help him with the experiments, and which magically hovers in the air in his lab. Jarvis here is named Victor, and "he" speaks in matching pale blue text which was actually hard to read.

Victor tells us he has already started on the experiment by tweaking chromosomes for disease resistance, and for "prolonged lung capacity". I have no idea what that is. We all have prolonged lung capacity - some people can reach a century or more on one pair of lungs. How much more prolonged do you need? I suspect what was meant here was increased lung capacity, but that would do no good without corresponding changes to the rest of the respiratory system, so the science here is a bit shaky, but not abysmally bad.

There was an unfortunate amount of active genderism and passive racism in this, which in some ways isn't surprising - it's a comic book and those features seem to go hand-in-glove. In any rational way it's disturbing that the girlfriend - and very nearly all other females featured here - are included purely as sex objects (with the naughty bits excluded, of course!). All the lab people are white males. Even Victor is really a white male notwithstanding his blue tinge. Victor utters genderist pronouncements like "...man discovered genetic superiority 700 years ago...." I suspect it was a lot earlier that that, and whoever was the first to have these ideas, who is to say it was not a woman? It would not have hurt to have phrased that as "...humans discovered genetic superiority many years ago...."

Jadas's issue is his dad, who evidently has disappeared and of course, Jadas knows squat about him. His dad was a scientist, so you know there's something going on with Jadas. The latter asks Victor, an AI which has been around in one form or another for a long time, for his help, but Victor can't remember! Jadas magically ditches his prescription pill addiction and starts investigating. Down in the computer area, the IT guy evidently knows squat. He opens a drive door and the drive slides out like it's a CD. No. These drives are sealed to keep out air and dust (and yes, this applied even in the nineties). You can't slide one open like that. Worse, the IT guy says he "wiped the drive to see what's left" I dunno. Maybe he means he wiped it with an oily rag, because if you actually wipe a drive then there's nothing left because it means you erased it all! LOL! It's highly unlikely that old data from the nineties would be on drives. It'd be more likely on digital back-up tapes stored off-site.

I would have been happy with the story as it was at this point, but there was a rather predictable back-story to it. There's a secret about Jadas. It's not just that he can ride the subway without having a penny on him! Nor is it that he's questioned by someone who thinks her name (rather than her title and name) is Dr Martinez! She was one of the few women in this story who was not a prostitute, a bad guy, or a submissive mating partner. So she was in it for only a few panels, of course. But there's a disease spreading out of Nigeria, and apparently Jadas's history and this disease are connected. Suddenly Jadas is on the run, and everyone wants to find him.

Like I said, I had some issues with the science, and with the author's idea of how evolution works. You can't create a 'superman' by genetic manipulation, because genes mutate, not only in your super-race, but also in diseases. This is how evolution works. Even if you created someone with powerful genetic resistance to disease, disease would evolve to combat your improvements and over time, down the generations, humans would succumb again, even had they been bred from 'super parents'. The fact is though, that we already are super people in a sense. We're the ones endowed with genes which have survived endless onslaught from disease and parasites. Our genes are super genes, having proven themselves for literally thousands of years, but as you can see from disease outbreaks all over the world, they will never be super enough to do what this story argues has been done.

If you're willing to overlook that, then this graphic novel may well do the trick for you, and be a worthy read. For me, the story wasn't that compelling, and it was far too white and genderist for my taste. For all the talk about global communities, almost the entire 'cast' of this novel was white. Even the Chinese people looked Caucasian. The two black guys featured were both shown in subservient roles. The fact is that although humans, having been through a bottleneck, are genetically homogenous, the greatest genetic diversity is found in Africans. I would have made more sense if Jadas had been a black child, and even more sense if he had been a she, since female infants tend to be much more hardy than males.

It's for these reasons that I'm not willing to rate this as a worthy read. Comic books are never going to shed their juvenile baggage if they continue to approach stories from an immature perspective.

See You at Harry's by Jo Knowles

Rating: WARTY!

Read acceptably by Kate Rudd, this audiobook version is about middle-grader Fern. She's the youngest child in the family apart from so-called "surprise baby" which is actually a toddler named Charlie, who's a bit like the Tiny Tim of this family, although he has no physical condition other than general snottiness and stickiness common to all such children. He's not really that much of a surprise given how wide-spread in age this family is. Fern is, quite frankly, a bit self-centered, spoiled, and whiney.

Her older sister Sarah might have been a more interesting subject. She's taking a gap year after high school, although she appears to be doing nothing with it since she's staying at home and working part time in the family restaurant, Harry's. The family is rounded out with Holden, who is gay and thinks no one knows it, and mom and dad, but dad is a jerk who is completely out in left field, and mom has to literally bribe the kids to get them to go along with his weird ideas about how to advertise his restaurant. His name isn't even Harry.

Despite his devotion to her, Fern is mean to Charlie, which is what made me think that when " tragedy strikes" and Fern is at fault, as the blurb tells us, the tragedy afflicts Charlie. It;s absolutely no spoiler whatsoever to reveal that Charlie dies and Fern feels responsible. Unoriginal and cynically, manipulatively pulling heart strings? Yes. Trite and pathetic? Definitely. It's another story written by a woman where the main female character has to have a guy come rescue her because she's nothing but a maiden in distress waiting for exactly that event for her life to be complete. Stick a Newbery in it. It's done to death.

A Small Pony Tale by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

A Small Pony Tale, in addition to being a pun worthy of a horse laugh, is a story about a pony, and thereby hangs a tail. All the pony's brothers were saddled with some talent or skill, be it strength or speed, but the one thing those horses didn't have? Well, that was this pony's great strength, and it wasn't even the mane thing abut her! This is a very short review for a very short and very adorable story!

The Little Duck and the Great Big Pond by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not talking about a pond which put on a bit of weight over the holiday season. I'm not talking about your typical overly large pond. I'm talking about a great big pond. This pond was huge. It was resplendent in its massive pond-i-ness. If Doctor Who said, "Come along, Ponds," this pond wouldn't even be able to move an inch. It was that grand. At least that's how the Little Duck saw it.

Can I just say a word about overly generous families as long as we're banging on about largeness? This momma duck had twenty ducklings. I am not egging you on. This was a sizeable, yellow, fluffy ball of a ducklings. Unfortunately, there was only one girl and she was hydrophobic to the max, like totally!

Told poetically, this story of the huggable duckling is very sad, no mater how cute she is. She's hardly unflappable since she so wants to get into the swim of things, but entreaties from the rest of her family are like water off a duck's back. I kid you not. It looks like a stuck duck. A duck stuck in a tree. How will this fluffy duckling ever get down?(!) Call me quackers, but I loved this story.

Princess Maddie Mouse by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

Moving into the second day of my Lily Lexington Retrospective, today I feature the mouse princess! Maddie Mouse lived in a hole in the side of a red barn with her mom, the queen, her dad, the king, and her kid sister, the Princess Molly, and her two older brothers, Mitchell and Mark. My word! There goes the throne! Each of the children was the royal heir of something. Mark is in charge of the crops. Not the riding crops, but the growing crops. Mitchell is in charge of the animals. Not the five-member pop group from Newcastle of swinging 60's in Britain, but the farm animals. Maddie was in charge of the bugs. Not the Volkswagen's, but the insects and other creepy crawlies. Young Molly was in charge of the flowers...okay, I got nothing. Let's move on!

One day Molly's crying was so bad it woke the sun early (!), and all day, everyone was tired. This wouldn't do at all. Maddie set herself to thinking how she could help her sister sleep. I wonder if it had anything to do with her little six-legged charges? Well don;t let it bug you! Buy the book! I loved this story. A kid who cries so loud she wakes the sun early? C'mon! That's treasure that is! And Princess Maddie ought to be arrested for gratuitous cuteness.

Princess Tiffany Tooth Fairy by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

Princess Tiffany rides a royal cart pulled by two ponies as bright as the moon. Not only does she fulfill all the usual royal duties, she also had to collect teeth. it;s hard work, but it's not like pulling teeth, since these have already fallen out and have been placed hopefully under pillows by young children.

Do you have any idea how heavy teeth are when you’re a tiny fairy and you have fifty seven of them in a huge bag? I thought not. Well, neither do I! But it has to be something that makes you grit your teeth, right? It’s especially onerous if the young child wakes up right as you’re carrying our such an important duty, and rudely traps you in a glass jar. What a royal pain!

This little girl greatly underestimated Princess Tiff, however. The princess is not only cute, she’s also smart. The princess would give her eye teeth to get free, but unfortunately she has none, so she tricks the girl into letting her go. Actually it’s not even a trick. It's more like a brush off as she offers some really good advice that all children would do well to heed, and escapes by the skin of her teeth. Delightfully told and warmly illustrated, this is a fun and inventive story you can really get your teeth into. If it made an old codger like me smile, it can probably work wonders on your child!

Gracie Gourd by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

I have no idea what goes through this author's mind, but a conversation with her would probably be weird if her routine thoughts are anything like her authorial meanderings! A gourd named Gracie? A gourd who can't get moored?! Why not?! Gracie has no idea where she belongs (she's a bit green) and she tries to take up residence with the pumpkins (which are kin - not to pumps, but to some gourds), but when the pumpkins round on her (and they're a lot rounder than she is!), she finds she has to move on.

She considers popping round to the corn, but she really doesn't fit in. She has no ears, and evidently rumors of her kinship have not even a kernel of truth to them. Where else can she go? Not the tomatoes. She makes them see red, and watermelons are even greener than she is, so perhaps it's just as well that the farmer's daughter has a stately residence available! I liked Gracie Gourd.

Luna the Night Butterfly by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

Luna has issues. She's glowing luminous green to begin with, which is a problem, because she's a night "butterfly" and those nighttime predators are pretty skillful. Fortunately, she meets none in this poetic paean to positivity and perseverance (and don't try saying that too fast unless you cover your mouth!). Luna's kinda cute actually, despite having two legs and four arms, but you know what they say - four armed is forewarned. Maybe I got that wrong. Never mind.

Poetry is only one pleasing part of the picture (there I go again! Sometimes you just have to pee....). The images are gorgeous. Colorful (yes, even the night-time ones) and wonderfully rendered. Luna actually doesn't realize that she's a Luna Moth, but when she finds out, she adapts admirably and ably. She's absolutely awesome! I give her an 'A'!

Which is My Way Home? by John G Pedicini

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a fun children’s book: seagull vs coyotes featuring snail and puppy! What’s not to like? Note that the coyote encounter was a bit scary, and the images for that encounter are suitably dark, so really young children might not appreciate it.

The story is that a young seagull loses his home on an iceberg and is chased by a polar bear. If I had a penny for every time that;s happened to me. We can conclude from all this that these events took place at the north pole. Somehow this little seagull seems to rub everyone up the wrong way and ends up shunned, even by other seagulls. Finally there’s some rest to be had in a forest, which is just as well since it’s dark already. This is hardly the natural habitat of a gull, and there are many new and scary things, not least of which are the hungry coyotes. They’re always hungry, the predators, in these stories, aren’t they?!

Well it turns out that the gull is not the only lost soul in the forest that night. There's a puppy and some young children, and working together, the avian, the mammal, and the gastropod manage to make it through, and bring the children to safety. A fun, scary and unusual adventure told in poetry. I liked it!

The Private Eye by Brain K Vaughan, Marcos Martin, Muntsa Vicente

Rating: WORTHY!

This graphic novel was immediately interesting, well-written, brightly colored, and unusually, every "page" was a two-page spread! I liked this, but it makes the comic a bit small for reading on the iPad, and impossible on a smart phone! I read it on a desktop computer with a reasonably large screen. I used Adobe Digital Editions opened to full screen and it looked wonderful like that. I can't speak for how the print edition will look.

The novel's setting is either set in the near future, or set in an alternate reality. It wasn't completely clear, but the world is very much like ours except more futuristic (and in some cases anachronistic). This is a world where people routinely wear disguises. The reason for this was a cloud burst (after a fashion!) and subsequent flood of private information across the Internet which turned everyone obsessive about privacy. Now there's no internet, and it's all but impossible to find out anything about anyone. The people who do the investigations are not the police. I don't know what happened to them! The press are the ones enforcing the law! Weird but amusing, especially since they're not very good at it.

The first guy we meet appears to be a peeping Tom, but it soon becomes clear that he's actually the eponymous private eye. He's taking pictures of a woman who has just arrived home. She looks quite stunning, but then she peels off some sort of head cover in a manner rather like we routinely see in the Mission Impossible movies. Underneath, she's a lot more representative of the entire population: ordinary, and given to wearing masks. Nearly every in this country wears either a facial or a full head masks nearly all the time. Some of the masks are every elaborate, and run the gamut from the bizarre to the animal to the circus to human. The rich can afford expensive hologram projector for their masks.

The PI delivers the photos he took to the man who hired him. Curiously, the photos are on actual film, with negatives and prints. The client was someone who knew the woman in high school and was trying to track her down. This is where we learned that the PI actually does have some ethics. He won't give out her address. His next client is killed the same evening she hires him. She wants him to dig up any dirt on her that he can find, as a test for how hard it might be for her newly prospective employer to find out her secrets. And secrets she has. From that point onwards, all hell lets loose. What was she into? What did she know? Who is so bothered by it that they're willing to kill - and not just her?

The story borrows from a lot of movies for its artistic inspiration. The cars are right out of Back to the Future - hover vehicles with folding wheels. The motorcycles look like they were taken from Star Wars - the ones where the bike frame was within the one large wheel. Some of the ideas seemed odd. Although they have those hover cars, for example, they also have payphones on street corners, which seemed highly improbable.

Those were minor complaints compared with the artistry and story-telling here though, which was engrossing and which moved apace. I loved this story, and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Mr Getaway and the Christmas Elves by Sally Huss

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a nicely drawn and colored, and poetically told story about a school class which gets a substitute teacher. Mr Getaway loves to do field trips (and evidently doesn't worry too much about permission slips!), and this particular excursion spirits the children away to the snowy wilds, where Santa's elves are busily creating this year's crop of toys, games, books, musical instruments and other assorted joys.

Sally Huss books often carry a message, and this one is to the effect that taking pride and joy in your work is a good thing. This is actually a wonderful lesson to impart to children, as long as it's not all work and no play! These children find themselves impressed that the elves are a happy bunch even when at work. They're sad that the elves don't get to play with the toys they make, but they learn that an elf's happiness comes from a job well done, and from giving without thought of receiving. These are good ideals at any time of the year.

We learn what Santa does the rest of the year and it turns out that he's really the Greek god Apollo, riding with the sun, or maybe the Egyptian god Ra, whose blessings come down on the sunbeams. I had no problem with this, until I read this advice: "remember when you look at the sun, think of me." It's not a good idea to look directly at the sun! Maybe "When you enjoy the sun, think of me" would have been wiser? That aside, I liked this story and recommend it. Since my blog is about writing as well as reading, here's a writing issue to ponder: For whom the who tolls?!

When Santa showed up, I read, "And whom do you think appeared in that space?" I think this should be 'who', not whom. Note that I am far from expert on this! Indeed think it's time to ditch 'whom' from the language altogether. No one speaks like that! But which use is correct? The trick, apparently, is to see if you can substitute a 'he' or a 'she'. If you can, then it's 'who', not whom. If, instead, you can substitute 'her' or 'him, then it's 'whom' which should be employed. If that's right and I translated this reasonably, then it's really asking, "Do you think he appeared?" To use "Do you think him appeared?" is clearly ungrammatical, which is why I'm going with 'who' as opposed to 'whom'. Whom knows?! 'And who do you think appeared?' just seems right to me, even if it's technically wrong!

But that's a writing issue to wrestle with. I'm not too worried about it here, because I liked this story. It was perky and colorful, and promises a fun read to enjoy with your children.

Thirteen Days to Midnight by Patrick Carman

Rating: WARTY!

Read pretty decently by Steven Boyer who actually does sound almost like he could be the character narrating it, this first person PoV story was, refreshingly, not nauseating. Unfortunately, the novel itself was not very entertaining. I was most impressed by how profoundly dumb, sadistic, and all-around obnoxious the main characters were, and this is the reason I did not find this to be a worthy read.

The basic plot revolves around Jacob. Two of the three main teen characters in this novel are known by their first initial for reasons unexplained, so Jacob is 'J'. Ophelia is 'O'. Milo doesn’t get an initial. Jacob is coming back to school after some time off because his guardian was killed in a car accident. I suspected that Jacob was the one driving. After the accident, he not only discovers he has a super power - invulnerability - but also that there's a "pretty" new girl in school. More on that last issue anon.

Right before the crash, Jacob's guardian tells him, " You are indestructible" and so Jacob became so, he later learns. He also learns that if he says this to another person, or even thinks it, then they take on that power, and Jacob loses it, but he can recall it if he chooses. His new friend Ophelia, with whom Jacob ridiculously indulges in instadore, is a complete jerk, and suddenly starts managing Jacob like he's her protégé. She starts treating his power like it’s her power, and demanding that Jacob turn it over to her on various occasions and without any prior notice. On one occasion, her demand for it during an apartment fire means that Jacob is unable to loan it to Milo, who is then in trouble from the trope school bully and one of his cronies.

Ophelia pretty much takes over all super-power-related activity, including an incessant push to test the limits of it, even after those evidently non-existent limits are well known. She's relentless, selfish, and a borderline psychopath, yet this fails to prevent Jacob from blindly falling for her and she for him after two or three days. Pathetic. On that score, and I've gone into this business before, whereby writers, both male and female, obsess on looks, particularly with female characters, to the point where it not only seems like it's the only trait the character has, but that it’s the only trait that's worth having if you're female.

It was sickening to read how often Jacob goes to 'pretty' to pigeon-hole Ophelia, and not to some other, deeper or more enduring trait. Maybe that actually is the only thing she's got going for herself. I guess he couldn't choose 'smart' because Ophelia evidently wasn't. Neither was Jacob for that matter. At one point, she stabs Jacob with a pencil to test his power, and Jacob complains that she's given him lead poisoning. She responds that they don't use lead any more in pencils. Excuse me, but they never did! When it’s employed with regard to pencils, the word 'lead' has nothing to do with the metal.

The bully, Ethan, is weird, because he starts out like he's a rather obnoxious but harmless friend, and then he morphs into this sad bully without any good reason for the change. It didn’t work. I'm becoming really tired of reading school stories where there's unmitigated and unpunished bullying. It’s a pathetic cliché and it needs to end, as do love triangles and parent-less high schoolers. These tropes are tired and un-inventive and any novel which uses them without at least trying to put some sort of a twist on it needs to be automatically one-starred. We readers deserve better than this.

I can't recommend this story because it really wasn't a story in any meaningful sense. It went nowhere. It felt more like it was a short story written by a middle-grade school kid the night before it was due to be handed in.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians by Lou Harry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a novelization of a movie from 1964, and it shows! I'm guessing the movie is at the level of a bad fifties or sixties Disney live action movie, but I can see for myself, since it’s included with the novel. It's on a DVD claiming it’s a 'Holiday cult classic' although I’d never heard of it before. It extols the appearance of Pia Zadora - hardly an 'A' list actor, and she's in a relatively minor role as one of the children. None of the other actors are known popularly.

I'm not big into novelizations of movies or TV shows, so maybe this is why I have not encountered this book-and-a-movie deal before. Although the book is dated 2005, almost no effort whatsoever has been expended in updating the novel version of the movie. It is still referencing antique TV shows, for example.

The novel is printed in green text, and the gray-scale pictures are actually green-scale, which is hardly enticing. The pictures are evidently taken directly from the movie and have the amateur look of Hollywood 'B' movies to them. The news caster featured in one picture looks more Martian than the Martians do! The Martians are, of course simply humans with a bad paint job on their faces and hats with antennas on them. Because it’s so old, there is some unintentional (I assume it's unintentional!) humor such as when one Martian, remarking upon a comment on how lively something is, says: "You should see the nightlife on Uranus." That was the only LOL moment I got out of this book.

The plot is that the Martians who are technologically advanced, but profoundly stupid - very much like Spock in the original Star Trek TV show - decide they need to come to Earth to kidnap Santa Claus and try to figure out what he's all about. The Martians have no sense of humor, we're told, and no childhood to speak of, but are inexplicably addicted to United States network TV sit-coms. This suggests to me that they never actually leave their childhood! LOL! They end up picking up two kids who tell them Santa lives at the North Pole, so they all head up there and kidnap him.

The story is dumb and childish (and not in a good way), and the plot and script are stupid. There are some amusing moments, but nowhere near enough. The adult characters are universally moronic. I honestly cannot recommend this at all. I saw the movie and it was every bit as crappy as I suspected it would be! I fell asleep half way through and have no intention of watching the rest!

Smoke by Dan Vyleta

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"Lizzy makes a comb of her fingers, and runs it through Thomas's tangled her" should be "tangled hair"!
"is not the walls he inspect but the floors" 'inspects, but'

There's something paranormal going on here. The problem is that we never learn what it is! The story begins in a British boys boarding school - a very strict school where the upper class children are brutally pushed towards purity. Those who are not pure in thought and deed are outed by the appearance of smoke and soot from their own bodies - visible signs of falling from grace, which leave almost indelible stains on clothing. You can't hide from your sins in this world, but it wasn't always like this. People just believe it was. Curiously enough, upper crust folks don't seem to have the same problem with sin that the 'lower classes' do.

I was drawn in almost immediately to this idea, but about half way through, the story changed from gripping and enticing to sheer boredom. It suddenly ceased completely to be appealing and became a real chore to keep reading. After the first couple of chapters, which I wasn't that fond of, the story really picked up, and from that point on, I didn't look back until it came to a screeching, grinding halt in London. It never took off again.

There were the usual formatting issues with the Android smart phone crappy Kindle app, which are nothing to do with the publisher or the author. The Kindle app doesn't like drop caps or formatting! Please note that this was an advance review copy so there may be changes which render my comments irrelevant or outdated by the time the published copy arrives.

The author did have a strange way of expressing himself at times, such as in this clause: "...and his look at Julius is like a dog's that has been beaten." Odd (to me at least!), but not disastrous. The story was told in third person, which I prefer, but the tense seemed to shift between present and past, which was annoying, and between multiple first person PoVs in some scattered chapters, which was more annoying! I didn't get the point of this, especially since it's a real distraction from the story. Other those issues, it was easy to follow, so non-Brit readers should have no trouble with this one, if they don't mind the occasional obscure reference, such as "...breaks open the coach like a conker," or the use of 'flannel' instead of washcloth.

A conker is a horse chestnut seed. The seeds are large, like the chestnuts you roast at Christmas time, but they're more rounded and a beautiful, rich brown color. British kids drill a small hole through the center and suspend it on a string. The "conker" then then be used to hit another such conker held by a second kid. This proceeds by turns until one or other of the conkers is cracked, thereby rendering victory to the intact conker, which can go on to other contests. British kids are weird, what can I say?!

There was one other oddity which struck me. Maybe other readers won't care about it, and I can't say it's a problem, but it just seemed odd to me, so I mention it because my blog is about writing as well as reading. Here's the exchange, between a servant and the young lady of the house:

"He looks at one as though he means to search one. Down to one's petticoats. Strip one of all secrets. It isn't a pleasant look."
But Lizzy only shrugs. "I don't mind. I haven't got nothing to hide."

I have no idea how servants spoke back then, but it struck me as odd that Lizzy was so grammatically correct and "upper crust" in employing the term "one" when she begins speaking, but then descends to what might be termed stereotypical "servant speak" by employing "haven't got nothing". Maybe this is perfectly fine, but it sounded weirdly contradictory to me.

The best thing about this novel initially, was that it kept moving into new territory, each marked by a new part in the story. We started in part one in the school, and then in part two, we moved to Lady Naylor's country residence for the Christmas "hols", where Thomas and Charley, the main male characters, learned interesting things about the smoke, and met Livia, the other main character. Soon they had to move on and not everyone wanted them to get where they needed to go, which was London. The journey down to London, part three, was fun, but as soon as they arrived, the story came to a shuddering halt. There was page after page of literally nothing happening, and it became truly, deadeningly boring.

Normally I would abandon a novel at this point, but I was really curious about the smoke and soot, so I pressed on, only to meet disappointment after disappointment. We learned nothing about the smoke - not how or why it arose, not why some people were immune to it, not where it came from or how it might be beaten. Not even, really, what one of the mysterious protagonists hoped to do with her secret plan. Instead, the story simply fizzled out in bleak inevitability, and it was not even remotely interesting. I was very disappointed after a truly promising start. It was like the story simply gave up! It felt to me like the author ran out of ideas or never planned on resolving anything in the first place. This is the main reason why I cannot rate this as a worthy read, but it is not the only one.

I am not a fan of first person PoV. It's very limiting voice as this author admitted by bouncing in and out of it. For me, it's typically nauseating, and especially so in young adult stories. Some authors can carry it, but the chances of failure are multiplied by the number of first person voices there are. In this novel, as I mentioned, there were many such voices, and they were completely random. In the end, they bogged down the story and stretched it out tediously. I quickly began skipping them because they contributed nothing aside from irritation, and they reduced the story to a tedious walking pace. Completely by-passing them caused me no problems in following the story - none at all. That speaks volumes!

This novel was a slow read to begin with, and it would have been improved enormously if all of the first person chapters had been deleted. It would have improved significantly further if parts four, five, and six had been condensed to a half dozen chapters instead of endlessly dragging on for interminable page after endless page. I can't recommend this one at all, not unless you want to read the first three parts and then move on to something else. This is actually a classic illustration of why I don't do stars. A novel to me is either worth reading or it isn't. I can't rate one two-fifths or four-fifths worth reading because then I'd be recommending this one and that wouldn't be honest! This was not a worthwhile read and I resent the time I wasted on it.

Doodle Adventures: The Search for the Slimy Space Slugs! by Mike Lowery

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a really cool idea to get children totally involved in reading. Of course, it doesn't work in ebook form at all! The book is, in some ways, a do-it-yourself adventure, except that in this case, the adventure is laid out, and the reader has to illustrate it in places here and there, set aside for this very purpose. There are lots of pages for kids to draw on, and lots of different, weird and fun things to draw. I could imagine myself having a lot of fun with this were I of the right age. Maybe even were I not!

The story is about space slugs - duh! - which are causing all kinds of mayhem. You, the reader, are thrown into this at the deep end because the actual agent who is supposed to take this job fails to show. Carl the duck(!) us your advisor, and if you think that's quackers, you're right, but at least he doesn't demand to be addressed as m'llard.... The question is, can you find the missing artifact? And what's in it? Why is it so important? Do you really want to know?

There's one oddball adventure after another here, all crazy and fun. The slugs turn out not to be so bad, so it's nice to see a negotiated ending, and it's nice to see some slugs are helping Carl and the reader. I liked the story. It was fun, enticingly gross in places (it's slugs!), and interesting for the age group. It had lots of doodle opportunities and the doodles are a doddle. Apart from the word 'terribly' misspelled with an extra 'e' on P102, the text was good. I recommend this.

The Tapper Twins Go to War by Geoff Rodkey

Rating: WORTHY!

This novel was flat-out hilarious, and I breezed through it super-fast. Of course, it's not aimed at me, but at middle-graders, but that's never stopped me! Not if the novel is engrossing and entertaining enough. This story is about Claudia and Reese Tapper, not-so-fraternal twins (or nutso fraternal twins if you like) who enter into an escalating war against one another. It's not even clear how it began because both twins disagree. Afterwards, Claudia decided to write a book about it, although she mistakenly calls it an oral history. Her twin gets to say his piece here and there, and other people are drafted in for comments, including Claudia's parents, whose texts she managed, somehow, to obtain.

Perhaps her decision to slip a fish into Reese's soccer backpack was a mistake. The weird thing was that he didn't even notice, and when he tried to retaliate later by putting Gorgonzola cheese into Claudia's backpack, she discovered it immediately. While Reese seems to have been endowed with more than his share of physical prowess, Claudia definitely got most of the brains between the two of them. her problem though, is that her brother seems incapable of being embarrassed or put off his stride by anything, so her attempts at retaliation seem to be entirely ineffective, until she decides to hit him where he lives - which is inside an online video game

I lived this story. I loved the humor, and the way the story twits Minecraft (which here is disguised as 'Metaworld'). I loved the photographs used to illustrate the tale, and the Claudia comments 'handwritten' in the text, which looks like it's typewritten. I loved the way it took Claudia three attempts to get chapter one started, and the way both Reese and Claudia reference their babysitter, who is rather less than on top of things. I liked the way Claudia plans and steams and fumes about things, and I especially liked the happy ending. This was a really great, fun novel and I recommend it. it's also part of a series so there's more to go read if you like this one.

Animals That Make Me Say Ewww! by Dawn Cusick

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a cute way to get children interested in learning about nature. I recommend it on that basis although I had an issue or two with it. One issue was a question of wording. On page 13 I read, "help them smell better" and I felt, in order to be clear, it should have read, "help them to detect smells better", or something to that effect! A minor point but worth attention. Other than that it was written well, but personally, I would have liked it better if it had said a word or two about endangered species given that it featured one or two, such as the gorilla. The attraction for kids is based on the gross-out factor, obviously, but since I knew this going in, I had no problem with it. There are other books in a series based on other perspectives, to round-out the picture, such as Get the Scoop on Animal Poop, Bug Butts, Animal Tongues, Animal Eggs: An Amazing Clutch of Mysteries and Marvels, Get the Scoop on Animal Puke!, and Animals That Make Me Say Wow!, none of which I've read.

The novel covers a variety of animals, but is focused strongly on mammals, and often the larger or better known ones at that. This is a bit class-ist, but it's not all mammals, by any means. There is the occasional insect or two, a fish here and there, a spider (my favorite spider, too!), and an amphibian or two, and quite a few birds, so there is variety, and for me, if you can get kids through that potentially difficult door of initial interest with the cuddly ones, that goes a long way to keeping them interested and helping to wise them up to other less adorable animals, and to what we're doing to the world, and how much we have to lose if we don't all wise up! Hopefully they will realize that not all animals are furry and relatively closely related to us. There's a huge variety out there, and maybe they will realize they can find 'eww' locally, too, if they're willing to keep their eyes open and away from their video games for a while! They don't need to travel to exotic locations.

My biggest problem was with technical issues. This is an advance review copy, so hopefully these will be worked out before the final copy is published, but just FYI, there were, for me, two main problems. The first was that many words were missing the letter 'r'. I have no idea what that was all about because it wasn't every 'r' which was missing - just some! For example, on p12 'bird beak' was missing an 'r' - it has a space instead. The same thing happens on p22. The same with kangaroo on p27, with flower on p35, with bird and fur on p39, with strong on p47, sources p51, 'Fly swatted and directions' on p55, 'upward and figure' on p58, 'are' on p59, 'Fight-or-flight and response' on p62. Also one 'f' in buffalo is missing on p77. Just the one!

This problem was apparent my iPad both in the Bluefire reader version, and in the kindle app version (I wouldn't recommend trying to read this book on a smart phone!). The Kindle app also screwed-up the placement of the pictures. Many of the pictures are evidently seated on a blue-green colored background, but in the Kindle app they were missing this completely and were all over the place and appeared in a variety of sizes! Bluefire Reader did not have this problem. Also some of the larger text was a bit blurry on the Kindle app (but not in Bluefire). Again, this may have been because this was an ARC or it may be because Amazon produced a crappy Kindle app.

Those problems had nothing to do with the idea or the writing, so I'm not worried about them! I consider this a worthy read and I recommend it.

A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd

Rating: WARTY!

Read hick-ily by Cassandra Morris, this is a children's novel which at first irked me somewhat, but which then began to grow on me, before really irking me so I quit listening to it (it was an audio book). The irking part was the 'southern bumpkin' accent of the reader. I don't know if she really speaks like that, or if she just adopted the voice for this novel, but it wasn't an easy voice to warm to because it sounded so annoyingly vacant. The text of the novel was what kept me listening for a while. Initially, I liked the way it was written and the kid's philosophy despite it being first person PoV, but the kid was too country hayseed for my taste, and the endless rambling really ticked me off. She used phrases like, "What the hayseed is going on here?" and she used made up words such as "spin-diddly" to signify something wonderful.

If it had been just once or twice, I think I could have withstood it, but when it's every chapter, it's offensive, especially when the story is quite literally going nowhere. I'm not one of these people who likes to read stories about people who are quirky just because it's about people who are quirky. I need for the story to go somewhere or do something. This one didn't. The blurb lied that it was about a magical town that had lost its magic and implied that this country bumpkin would bring it back. She did absolutely nothing - not as far as I listened, which about 75%.

Her friend was 'The Beedle' who was a character who did good deeds for people anonymously. She learned who he really was, but I honestly could not tell if the reader was saying 'Beetle' or Beedle'. I decided it had to be 'Beedle' eventually, but I wasn't sure. Not that it mattered because he did nothing either.

I assume something in the way of fixin' the magic happened at some point before 'THE END', but I sure as heck isn't hell had no interest in traveling all the way through the great state of tedium to get there. It was nothing save endless rambling about day-to-day life, with a mind-numbing amount of tedious detail. I really, honestly don't need to know exactly how she dries dishes. I'd rather watch paint drying than hear that, especially when what I wanted to hear was what they were talking about while they dried the dishes. Her unremarkable experiences in school were equally uninteresting as were her trips to the ice cream parlor. Yes, this is the kind of story where they have an ice cream parlor even if they don't call it that. If you know what I mean.

I can't recommend this one. Stick a Newbery in it and move on.

The Christmas Secret by Donna van Liere

Rating: WARTY!

This is the first of a few seasonal stories I'm reviewing this year, and I wasn't impressed. It's really nothing more than a Disney princess fairy tale gussied-up for adults (and not well gussied, either), and the plot is more black and white than the ink on the page. This woman whose name I readily forgot, is a single mom. her husband is a complete villain, so we're given to understand, who has her neighbor spy on her and report back so he can call in frivolous complaints to child services. The worst one seems to be that there are children's toys all over the house, and this woman is unable to cope with that by offering simple instruction to her kids about cleaning up after themselves. She isn't poor. She lives in the family house. She and her kid are well fed and clothed. they're having no issues with payments on anything. Her biggest problem seems to be that she's completely inept when it comes to hiring a babysitter so she can work her job at a restaurant, because this is evidently the only kind of work she's capable of performing for reasons unspecified.

Enter her prince - the son of a wealthy business woman who passes out in her car at the end of the main character's driveway. It was crystal clear from that point onwards what was going to go down, so no mysteries to come. It's kind of pathetic really, but well representative of the kind of sap that seems to clog up Christmas like a lethal case of atherosclerosis. The novel was all over the place in terms of person, which didn't help it one bit. Why authors, who plainly admit that first person isn't up to it by the very nature of how they write, still insist upon using it and then clutzily switch back and forth is a mystery. This one jumped between first person PoV and third person omniscient, and it was right in the middle of chapters, which made it all the more clutzy and annoying, as well as a jolt every time it switched, This was really bad writing. First person doesn't make the character more immediate to me, and I certainly don't want to identify with someone as inept as this character was, nor do I want to read yet another story about yet another woman who can't make it without a man coming to her rescue. especially not at Christmas!

There seems to be a thriving trade in this kind of Christmas story, and even in this very title! Don't confuse this one with The Christmas Secret by George C. Bulpitt, The Christmas Secret by Wanda E. Brunstetter , The Christmas Secret by David Delamare, The Christmas Secret by Tesia Johansen, The Christmas Secret by Joan M. Lexau, The Christmas Secret by Jim Struzzi II, The Christmas Secret by Jeannie Watt, The Christmas Secret by Virginia Wright, to say nothing of variations like A Christmas Secret by Jim Cook, A Christmas Secret by Candace Hall, Christmas Secrets by Bayard Hooper, Christmas Secrets by Susanne McCarthy, Christmas Secrets by Ann Schweninger, Her Christmas Secrets by Breena Wilde, A Christmas Secret by Kurt Zimmerman, or even The Cowboy's Christmas Secret by Veda Boyd Jones. But you can't beat Noël's Christmas Secret by Grégoire Solotareff! Not that I've read it, but that title has it all, so it's the winner for me, only just beating out SANTA'S CHRISTMAS SECRET by John Kleiman!

Sheesh guys, get a friggin' original title for goodness sakes! You can see just from this what we're up against in trying to find a worthy Christmas-themed read. Not me. No more stories about Christmas secrets. I'm done!

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Rating: WARTY!

I had mixed feelings about this novel as I read it. For me it started out looking like something I was not going to rate favorably, and I'll get into that, but over time it started winning me around to regarding it much more positively, but towards the end it really went down hill, and I can't view this as a worthy read for a number of reasons.

So what was wrong with this novel that made me rate it negatively? The first thing is the obvious thing: this novel was published in 2015, yet there is this idea underlying it that being gay is a big deal. It isn't! It isn't even a big deal, generally speaking, to come out as gay. If it was written twenty or thirty years ago, then I could see that this novel might have had some value. but not in 2015.

There really isn't anything here to make it necessary for Simon, the protagonist, to hide what he;s all about, yet he is hiding even from his closest friends. The other side of this coin is that in the real world, for any given individual, it might well be a big deal to come out. Personal circumstances, the community in which they live, their parents' attitudes, and a host of other things could well contribute, even in a relatively enlightened age, to creating difficulties in being who you truly are in public, but really, Simon wasn't in this category. He was just cowardly, and that was one of many unlikable and unsavory traits he had. Indeed, he really was a bit of a jerk and I never felt like I wanted to root for him. All the holes he fell into, he dug for himself.

Simon is sixteen and has known for some time that he's well and truly gay. He has no doubts - and no problem with it, except in that he hasn't come out to anyone. Well anyone but this one person - he assumes it's a guy - who attends his own school, but with whom he's been corresponding through emails. Both parties have remained anonymous throughout these exchanges, so although they know they are schoolmates, they do not actually know which schoolmate the other is. This lends a certain intrigue and interest - and perhaps danger - to the proceedings.

This is also where his problem begins, because he fails to log out of his email account and another schoolmate, Martin, gets on the computer right behind him, and is able to read Simon's emails. He even takes screen shots, and then blackmails Simon into giving him an intro to Abby, a close friend of Simon's and a girl for whom Martin has the hots - so we're given to understand. For a long time I thought that Martin was actually Simon's anonymous email friend but it soon became clear that he wasn't. Simon completely caves to the blackmail and then goes into it half-heartedly, thereby pissing off his blackmailer, and then he spends an unwieldy portion of the novel whining to himself about his predicament. It doesn't make or entertaining reading.

One review which I liked on Goodreads made the point that the book encourages online love affairs. I disagree. Besides, all online relationships aren't doomed to failure. If they were, I wouldn't be married! OTOH, I was not a teen when I got involved online, and both parties proceeded cautiously and honestly, becoming reliable friends first and only evolving into something deeper later. But these things can go bad, and especially for inexperienced teens, we do need to sound a note of caution, not only about falling for someone you really don't know, but also about misrepresenting yourself online as teens and adults can do. We do get a brief explanation of how Simon and "Blue" came to interact, but not how Simon knew for sure that Blue was a gay guy as opposed to an obnoxious old man or a mischievous teen female or whatever.

Another issue I had with this was that Simon was the clichéd gay drama student. I didn't see the point of that. There was far to much cliché - the supportive sister, the supportive hot female friend, the supportive mail friend, the unexpected discovery of a boyfriend, and so on. There was no reason whatsoever why he needed to be a drama aficionado or in a school play. It could have been a sports event, or a science class, or gardening club or anything. I thought this was too trope, too pathetic, and insulting to gays, like they're pointless if they aren't actors or hairdressers. Honestly?

Not a lot really happens in this novel, be warned. It's pretty much the hum-drum of everyday high school with the backbeat of a closeted gay, so there's nothing new here, nothing extraordinary, nothing different. Some of the relationships were dynamic and interesting, even amusing a little, but overall, nothing special. I didn't think much of Simon's two best friends, an overweight girl named Leah, and a video-game addicted boy named Nick. I felt they let him down badly when they failed to inform him of something really important, yet there was never any fall-out from this. I didn't get that at all. Conversely, Simon treated Anbby and Leah like crap, and there was no blow-back from that either, so this was entirely unrealistic. Simon pretty much dumped on everyone, got away with everything, and went unhindered and unobstructed through the novel like a Mary Sue. He never had any really serious problems, yet he whined all the time. He abused his friends, gave very little, and never opened up to them about anything. For as little as he knew (or really cared) about his friends, I had to wonder how he considered himself a friend as opposed to an acquaintance.

Simon had a full and rich family life, with two sisters and an intact pair of parents, which is becoming a rarity in YA. It was also nice to finally get a high school depicted in YA where rampant bullying is non-existent and where, when a case of misguided bullying under the flimsy guise of humor does occur, it is flatly not tolerated by the school staff. Yes, Martin was bullying Simon, but no one knew about this beyond the two of them, so this wasn't an issue in that regard. So on those scores, the novel was refreshing, but pretty much in everything else, it failed dismally. I can't recommend it. And be warned you'll meed an insulin shot to get through the last few chapters. They were disgusting.

Matched by Ally Condie

Rating: WARTY!

I started listening to Matched by Ally Contrick (I may have mispelled that name) on the way to work yesterday morning and I quickly wanted to put a match to it. It's your standard dystopian trilogy and believe it or not, it's actually worse than Divergent. When I say that, I say it in Malfoy's voice from Harry Potter, when Harry and Ron are impersonating his two henchboys, and Malfoy insults Dumbledore, and Harry, forgetting who he's impersonating, objects. Malfoy says, "You mean there's someone who's worse than Dumbledore?" And Harry responds, "Harry Potter!" In my version, Malfoys says, "You mean there's a novel that's worse than Divergent?" and I say, "Matched!" and Malfoy responds, "Good one!" and then starts poking around in the little gift box he stole.

If there's one nice thing about a commute to work, it's that it's captive time. You have nothing to do for a fixed period of time twice a day, and so you fill it with thoughts, or study, or writing, or music. I fill mine with audio books. The view is boring after making the trip several hundred times, especially in the morning when it's dark, so this seems to me to be a good time to get caught up on my backlog of books, and also to try some experimental reading. Matched was one such book. I honestly didn't expect to like it, but I've long been curious about it. I'm curious no more. The writing is lousy and the reading is equally bad. The reader of this book sounds like she's about thirteen, and her voice is hard to listen to. She makes the main character (oh, yeah, it's a first person PoV novel and not well-written) come off as a thoroughly immature ditz.

The character is supposed to be seventeen, yet she holds her mom's hand to the matching ceremony. She says utterly bizarre things like "There's a girl in a green dress. Me." Yes, it was that bad. She sounds like the 'Me' Carebear, who I actually think is hilarious, and this didn't help. Not that I've had much exposure to any of the Carebears but Me was definitely my second favorite 'Me', after the Doctor Who character from series nine, who is otherwise known as Ashildr. But I digress! This character is completely self-absorbed, and is obsessed with boys, clothes, and make-up, and she thinks of nothing else. This is no heroic figure. It's not someone I want to even listen to, let alone follow into action.

The basic plot is that this is an ultra-controlled society. And we're expected to take that on faith. Admittedly I didn't read much of this novel, but there was nothing offered (and nothing given later from what I've learned reading other reviews) to explain how society ever got into this position (in the not-too-distant future) from what we have today. Everything is controlled. All but one hundred works of art in various fields have been destroyed, so now there is only one hundred paintings, there is only one hundred novels, one hundred poems, etc. It's utterly ridiculous, nonsensical and profoundly stupid. Obviously this is set in the USA, because only a YA author from the US could come up with such a patently ridiculous idea for a story and get it published. Yes, Veronica Roth, Stephanie Meyer, I'm looking at you. In reality, no one would ever let this happen, least of all self-respecting and rebellious young men and women. The very premise of the novel fails completely - and that's before Cassia Maria Reyes starts acting like a professional moron.

The matching ceremony is pretty much a rip-off of the "matching" ceremony in Divergent where you're matched to your faction, except here you can't choose. Cassia's man turns out to be Xander (yeah, about those names) who has been her friend from childhood and with whom she's delighted in every way - until there's a glitch in the system and she's briefly shown another guy, absurdly named Ky - a character who's never been in the story - much less in her thoughts - until now. He's the bad boy of this ridiculous instadore triangle, and of course, Cassia, who was totally thrilled with Xander is now humping Ky's leg - metaphorically. It's moronic. Ky - who makes her turn to jelly - is the designated bad boy and Xander is the good boy, so it's your tedious trope triangle all the way down.

We're told it's exceedingly rare to get matched as Cassia has been, yet we're told that cities are huge, so how rare can it be to end-up matched to a person you know? Someone didn't pay attention during statistics 101. Not that I blame the author for that! It's obvious from the start where this pointless trilogy is going, so there's really nothing to surprise the reader, and there's really no reveal to come. It turned out to be exactly what I expected for at least as far as I could stand to listen. I was honestly hoping to be wrong, and to find an author who can write original YA and bring something new and exciting to the table, but Ally Condie isn't that author, which is sad, because it argues strongly that English teachers can't write! LOL! I hope that's not true!

Instead of new and different, I got warmed-over Divergent, by way of the movie Logan's Run. Others have accused this of ripping off "The Giver" - with which I'm not familiar, so I can't comment there, but it's definitely a rip-off. And yes, I know that all novels are rip-offs to some extent, but really? At least try to make it different. I can't recommend this based on the portion I was subject to. At the end of the first disk, there's a clunkily foreshadowing line to the effect that Cassia won't be able to look at Ky the same way again. Here's my version: I won't be able to ready any books by Ally Condie again, now that I've read too much of this one.

The Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

Rating: WARTY!

How cool is that title? I hate novels which fail - utterly and miserably - to live up to their title and this was one. Note this is not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Diana Norman, which I have not read. This is one of those historical, if not hysterical, novels which forgets that it's supposed to be telling a story and instead regurgitates the author's extensive notes. Pages and pages were wasted with extraneous detail and long rambling conversations which were utterly irrelevant to the main story and served solely to let the author show off. This alone turned me off the story, but there was less. Much much less!

There never was a Thomas à Becket. It was Thomas Becket. It wasn't until long after his time that some moron decided to add the à. No one in his time would ever have used that form, yet this author does. This is one of many anachronisms. I don't expect a story set in 1171 (or whenever), to use the language from that time period, but neither do I expect an historical story to be written in thoroughly modern English with thoroughly modern sensibilities. It was ridiculous.

I listened to the audio book, and the most hilarious thing was when the reader described someone eating "pasties." This word is pronounced PASS-tees, not "pastries" without the 'r'. It's a type of pastry eaten in England, but the way this reader read it made it sound like the guy was eating those stick-on nipple covers which showgirls use. I laughed out loud, and the sad thing is that this is the best part of the entire novel.

The blurb has this novel of medieval England as "A chilling, mesmerizing novel that combines the best of modern forensic thrillers with the detail and drama of historical fiction." It's not. It's neither chilling nor mesmerizing, and while I applaud the desire to put a strong female character into a medieval novel, it's hard to do convincingly, and this one didn't work for me, especially since the story unfolds as slow as molasses in an Alaska winter.

The premise is that the church has sent a woman from Italy to investigate a series of child murders in England. This is absurd. Why would anyone care about children being murdered in medieval times? They wouldn't have cared in England, much less in Italy. It's entirely wrong, I agree, but this was the attitude back then. No one cared that much! I felt the story would have been stronger if there had been more behind this motivation, and there really wasn't. Basically, all the author did was say, "This is how it is!" It was unconvincing at best. There's a big non sequitur lurking between the fact of female physicians extant in Italy and the dispatch of one - by the church! - to investigate children going missing in England.

The attempt to give the visiting physician some street cred by having her save the clergyman's life felt way too forced and was also unconvincing. If the visiting physician had been Arabic (and therefore would pretty much have to have been be male) I might have bought the CSI stuff. If it had been Chinese and female I might have bought it, but the way this was launched didn't float my boat. There's a big difference between saying, hey, Italy allowed female physicians, and saying, hey this Italian female doctor is a whiz at solving murders and therefore is going to England! The church detested women in any role other than mistress, and they positively abhorred science. Galileo was censured and Giordano Bruno was burned by the church just a couple of hundred years after this novel is set, so this was too much of a reach, and was a DNF for me.

I DNF'd it because it was so awful. The idea of a learned woman, especially one who is a forensic scientist, having to go undercover in England to avoid accusations of being a witch is a truly compelling one, but the only execution here was that of a good idea for a novel.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not a fan of epistolary novels and had I been, this one would have un-fanned me! Nor am I a fan of of coming of age novels, which this also is. The reason I picked it up at the library was that it was the basis of the movie in which Emma Watson - of Harry Potter fame - appeared, before she retired from real life to hide behind the plastic face of Lancôme. I haven't seen the movie and doubt I will bother now.

My problems with this were, for one, that I can't stand Johnny Heller reading it. His voice is so chocolate-y that it's sickening. Additionally, it's completely wrong for a fifteen year old, and worse than that, Heller imbues the character with a constant sense of surprise - as though every single thing he encounters is entirely new and unexpected. It was so wrong as to be a joke. The cover said that the novel is "performed" by Heller which is an outright lie. It's read by Heller, and that's all it is, as indeed is the case with most audio books, Once in a while you get one which can be accurately described as a performance, but that was not this one, not by a long squawk.

The letters this fifteen year old Charlie writes are stupid and boring and make him look like he's either the most sheltered fifteen year old ever, or he's really a ten year old masquerading as fifteen. There's no reason whatsoever why he would ever have been brought into the orbit of the two older kids with whom he hooks up, not given how juvenile he is. I couldn't stand to listen to it beyond the first disk. Charlie is dealing with three deaths - because one is nowhere near enough to give this thing the angst-y weight it needs, obviously. The first death is the suicide of his friend, Michael, from the year before. The second is the death of aunt Helen, which took place years before, and the third is the long, drawn-out, and painful death of this novel.

Of course, there are other elements - the requisite gay one, and the requisite impossible crush one, with bad parenting and family secrets tossed in. In short there's about everything in this, but the kitchen sink (which would have been the best part had it appeared) and it's far too much of a mess to take seriously. I certainly couldn't, and I can't recommend it based on the admittedly small portion I suffered through.