The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Adan Jerreat-Poole is, I believe, Canadian which may account for some of her "English" spellings of words in this novel - words like 'sombre' and 'glamours'. This shows my ignorance because I'd always thought that Canadians used American spellings. However, it's always good to read outside of one's comfort zone, especially since far too many novels published in the USA seem to take the position that it's the only country in the world and nothing of interest happens anywhere else! I beg to differ!

I liked this novel because it was operating outside the box and far from the beaten path. Far too many novels play it safe - clone someone else's work and turn it into a trilogy. I blame publishers for pushing this boring approach and writers for kow-towing to it. I love the ones which don't comply!

The story here is that Eli (not sure how it's pronounced: E-lie? Ellie?) is less of a person than an object - an assassin 'robot' almost, constructed by witches out of organic bits and inorganic bobs. She can pass through the vortex between the witches' world and the human world, and her 'job' is to take out ghosts. And I don't mean date them!

These ghosts are not the incorporeal remains of a dead human. They're wispy beings which are almost zombie-like in some respects, and which typically occupy a human body. They can't be seen by humans, and the witch powers-that-be detest them. Eli's maker, a witch who is growing in power and influence, hands out her assignments proudly because Eli is the best assassin. She has seven special knives that help her do her work to perfection, and she has never failed. Until she does. That's when things change.

It takes a while for Eli, who constantly grows and evolves throughout this story, to figure out exactly why the ghosts are a problem for the witches, and all the time she is learning and seeing her world in very broader strokes. She discovers she's in a much different world from the one she'd thought she was in. In pursuing her last assassination - the one mission that's doomed to fail - Eli encounters two people: Tav, a non-binary person who is a biker, and Cam, a gay cab driver. These two become close to her - the first people in the human world she's ever been drawn to.

I've seen some reviews of this novel that praise it for including genderqueer characters, but in some ways it's rather overdone here. It's not a problem that they're included, but that they risk overwhelming the story to the exclusion of all others. At times it starts to feel like there are only gender-queer people in this world.

To me, the way to fix a problem where the pendulum has been pushed too far and for too long in one direction isn't to push it forcibly and equally back in the opposite direction, but to weld it firmly in the middle so no one is cruelly excluded or artificially included ever again. As it happens, in this story it wasn't too intrusive despite Eli being apparently non-cis as well. Perhaps I didn't mind so much because I really liked Eli as a character. She's definitely one of my strong-female character icons.

I enjoyed the story and read it quickly. I liked the originality. I enjoyed the different take on witches and ghosts and the magnificent world-building. This was a tour-de-force of inventive thinking outside the box and it was a most welcome read. There were some technical issues no doubt caused by Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process. I'm not the kind of reviewer who gets to read a hardback print version, so I got the e-version and there was the trademark Kindle mangling in evidence here.

One classic example of this is the embedding of the page header (alternating title and author on even and odd pages) right into the text, so I would read, for example: "She clenched her hands. THE GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS Took a breath in." The way I avoid this in my own published work is never to include page headers or footers (including page numbers) in the version I'm using for ebooks. I don't even use the headers in the print book version. What, is your reader going to forget what they're reading? I have a little more faith in readers than that.

The book also contained some abstract images that were included between chapters and sometimes as section separators in the text. These images were apparently broken-up and turned into Kindling by Amazon as well, although without having seen the original images, it's hard to tell. In other instances of generic Kindle mangling, the text was missing a line break between speech from different characters, so I'd read it all on one line:
"Hey, it usually works like a charm." "I'll bet." Eli rolled her eyes."

And one final observation: I'm sure that even in Canada, there's a difference between staunch and stanch. I read, "Tav staunched the bleeding" but unless Tav was making Cam bleed in a loyal and committed manner, she didn't staunch it. She stanched it. I've seen this error increasingly in YA novels and I find it sad. The error was repeated later as "one hand staunching the flow of blood." Nope! Stanching! There was one lone error in spelling that I noticed: "you will owe use a thousand glamours," which I think should have read 'us' rather than 'use'. Presumably that sort of thing will be corrected before this is published officially.

But we've all been there and I'm not going to downgrade such a stellar book for some minor issues. I thoroughly enjoyed this and I commend it as a worthy read. I look forward to the next offering from this author.

The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

Rating: WARTY!

Several years ago I tried reading The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by this author and did not get along with it. I guess I picked up this book at the same time form the same close-out shelf! It's been sitting gathering dust and I finally decided to give it a try-out, without holding out too much hope. This book is part of a long series, so I guess it has a readership, but after sampling about a tenth of it, I can safely say that readership does not include me. I'm done with this series and this author.

This book had precisely three same problems the other one did in that it rambled incessantly, it insisted on using the full name of every character every single time they were mentioned, which was tedious, and the story simply didn't pull me in at all, so I gave up. The thin plot revolves around Mma Ramotswe worrying over her fiancé, Mr. JLB Matekoni not having set the date for their marriage yet, along with Mma Makutsi, Ramotswe's assistant, wanting a husband, on top of which, a rival detective agency has opened doors for business. It's not enough. I can't commend this based on the admittedly limited sampling of it I could stand to suffer.

The Candy Mafia by Lavie Tidhar, Daniel Duncan

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a middle-grade book that amused the heck out of me just from the description. Written highly tongue-in-cheek by Tidhar, and with spot-illustrations by Duncan, this tale of a city in the grip of prohibition - of candy - had me smirking so much that it was painful to the face. Things have gone sour, with no chocolate, no licorice, no chewy toffee to be had! The new mayor banned it all three years ago and so of course, an elaborate smuggling operation has sprung up, with all the attendant bribery and corruption.

Not that any of this affects the main character, the honest and upstanding Nelle Faulker, a 12-year-old private detective who is out of work now school is out for the summer and no cases have been coming her way lately. She's a smartie and is sitting in her office (a shed in her back yard) when who should stop by, but Eddie de Menthe, one of the biggest candy-smugglers in town. Eddie has a serious problem - he's lost his teddy-bear.

Nelle takes the case, and even though she smells a rat - or is it a chocolate bunny? - in her sweet innocence, she has no idea what she's getting herself into. Has Nelle been taken for an all-day sucker? No! Trust me when I say she's no marshmallow. She has encounters with the other two big candy smugglers in town: The Sweetie Pies, and Waffles Mackenzie. She also learns of the Big Five Families, and becomes concerned when Eddie disappears like sherbet dip from a punctured bag!

What's going on here? What's the secret of the shut-down chocolate factory and where did the owner Mr Farnsworth vanish to? Why was Nelle's office turned over? What were they looking for? Who is behind all this? Can the cops even be trusted? Will Mayor Thornton get re-elected and continue the candy ban? Just in passing, Thornton's is a brand of particularly delicious toffee in Britain. And most important of all: just what does it mean to be a gum shoe in a candy-apple world?!

All of this and more is answered as this sly romp takes us through the gangster world where the author treats the story just seriously enough to make it even more amusing, and where Nelle proves herself to be one tough cookie. She's as sticky as salt-water taffy when it comes to a case, and she's definitely one of my strong female heroes. I can't say it was a sweet read without getting into trouble with Mayor Thornton, but I will say this book gives a reader lots to chew on, and I commend it highly.

The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn

Rating: WARTY!

You know there was nothing outright bad about this novel, but there was nothing great about it either, and in the end, that was the problem. It was bland to the point of pointlessness. I read it very nearly all the way through - all except for the last few pages and by then I had begun to seriously resent the time I'd wasted on this when I could have been reading something more memorable and engaging. As it was, it was not even really a story; it was just a meandering ramble that really had nowhere to go, but downhill.

The problem was that it so quickly became perfectly obvious exactly what was going to happen, who the mysterious visitors were, and where everyone would end up. If you're going to tell such an obvious story, then you at least need to spice it up a bit with some misdirection and red herrings. The author never did. I don't know if she was foolish enough to believe that no-one could see the glaringly obvious truth (in a novel where 'truth teller' is part of the title!), or if she understood that and simply didn't care, but the fact that it was so painfully obvious to the reader, and yet not a single one of the three main female characters even had a clue, tells me that this author evidently delights in writing about truly stupid female characters. Why female authors do this to their characters I do not know, but it happens a lot and it always pisses me off.

The story is set in a sort of medieval world where there are three kinds of gifted people, all of whom seem to be female for some reason. One of these kinds is the wish-granter. She has the power (so-called) to grant any wish, but since we later learn that she has no power to choose which wishes are granted and which are not, it rather neuters her power, and renders it completely random.

The other two kinds of people are represented by the mirror twins who are the main characters. That is, they are identical if one is seen directly, and the other seen in a mirror reflection. The have the palindromic names of Adele and Eleda - something that was again obvious from the start, and while the reader has the advantage of seeing the names in print which makes it a bit easier than if we'd simply heard them, it's not impossible to figure it out. Yet no one ever does! Maybe it's just that the whole city is stupid?

One of the twins is compelled always to tell the truth. She has the power to discern truth about a person and typically cannot prevent herself from speaking it. The other has the seemingly pointless power of never revealing a secret. It's quite literally impossible for her to tell a secret that's been shared with her Again, that power seems a bit dumb, but because she is so similar to her sister, there is the quirk that sometimes someone who thinks they're sharing a secret that will never be passed on, makes a mistake and speaks it to the truth-teller. This plays such a small part in the story that it seems pointless, but it does again illustrate how dumb these people are.

That was the whole problem with this: the pointlessness of it. There really wasn't a story here to tell. There was never any adventure, never anything at risk, never any great revelation, never anything unpredictable, never any thrill or danger, and never any real romance or heartbreak for that matter. It was bland to the point of being tasteless and I cannot commend it as a worthy read. It's the middle book in a trilogy. I hadn't read the first, and it's not necessary; they're stand-alones it would seem, but I'm done. I have no desire to read any more of this trilogy or or any other Sharon Shinn novel. This is the second work of hers that I've been disappointed with and the thought of reading anything else by her now just leaves me cold.

Greta Thunberg by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Anke Weckmann

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I've adored Greta Thunberg (the 'h' is silent) ever since I first heard about her, and this book tells a fine and inspiring story of the difference a lone young girl can make if she has a cause and some determination.

At the age of fifteen - just two short years ago - and after learning about the sad state of the environment, Greta began a lone vigil outside the Swedish parliament with a sign, 'Skolstrejk för klimatet' (School strike for climate), and her vigil caught on, becoming a major movement.

She reached a point of notoriety where she was able to cross the Atlantic on wind and solar-powered boats (she refuses to fly because of climate impact) and speak to world leaders about how climate change was going to impact hers and future generations.

This book is a great introduction to what one person can do and to what might happen if we all don't do something. I commend it as a worthy read.

Jesse Owens by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Anna Katharina Jansen

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Jesse Owens was someone deserving of the sobriquet 'legend' but somehow, he was forgotten far too soon to enjoy it. had he been white, that might not have happened, but had he been white, his blazing trail across the athletic world would carry far less weight than it does.

Something this book doesn't make clear is that his actual name was James Cleveland Owens. He went by 'JC', but when he was inducted into his new school, the person writing down the names didn't understand him and thought he was saying 'Jesse'. The name stayed with him ever since.

He grew up in a large family - ten children, which is far too many for poor parents to support, but had he never been born he could never have made the impact he did. He was notable for his running speed even at an early age, and his gym teacher was so impressed with him that he allowed him special training privileges so he could fit his athletics in alongside his work - work that was necessary to help support his family.

He became renowned in his own lifetime after he set three world records and tied another at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, something that's been described as "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport" and which has never been repeated by anyone.

Perhaps his biggest triumph was sticking it to Adolf Hitler at the 1938 Olympics. While the dictator of the Aryan race, who considered black people to be inferior, sat and watched, Owens won four gold medals. Hitler couldn't even take pride in the fact that in an early case of sponsorship, Owens was wearing German running shoes made by the founder of the Adidas athletics-wear company!

This was an intriguing and educational book for young kids, and I commend it fully.

Jean-Michel Basquiat by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Luciana Lozano

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I've read a good many of these mini-biographies for children, and enjoyed nearly all of them. This one is no exception. It tells the story of this renowned American artist of artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent.

Illustrated nicely by Lozano, the book covers the growth of the artist from his early days drawing at the age of four, through his introduction to human anatomy via a book he read when he was sick one time, to his rebels years, and his later collaborations with Andy Warhol. Even someone who died tragically young can have a lasting influence on what comes later.

Mountains by Charlotte Guillain, Chris Madden

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

It's unfortunate to be reviewing this when a soldier is missing, not many miles from here at Fort Hood, who shares a very similar last name to the author. The book though is nothing to do with the military. It takes an interesting idea and runs with it with great success.

The perspective of the environment and wildlife as viewed from the summit and environs of some of the world's most impressive mountain ranges is a good one, and it's pleasing to see that this book doesn't forget, as so many do, that there is, believe it or not, a vast world outside of the borders of the USA.

Illustrated beautifully by Madden, the book begins in the Himalayas, a name taken from the Sanskrit meaning simply, the abode of snow. We learn as we visit each new locale, how it quite literally arose, and what lives there, and how magical the engagingly differing coloration is between the animal life, the plant life, the water sources, and even the very rocks themselves. We also learn what climate change is doing to all this planetary glory.

From there we move to Iceland, land of ice and fire, and thence to the Alps, home of a poisonous salamander! We zoom across to the Andes, which are on the end of the Wristies...just kidding. But we do visit the Andes and say "Hi!" to the vividly pink flamingos and the superior-looking if slightly lazy appearing vizcacha. From there it's on to Japan and the majestic Mount Fuji.

Afterward we visit the Rockies and the amazing assortment of birds as well as the beautiful blue of a glacial lake. If you find this stunning, then prepare to be over-stunned when we end up at the rainbow rocks of northwest China, which is, I have to say, is perhaps the only environment that the artist does not do justice to. Although, to be honest you'd have to be a candy manufacturer to really do justice to the amazing rainbow rocks.

The book was entertaining, educational, beautifully written and illustrated, and a fine introduction to these widely-varying slices of life and environments on Earth. There's also a heart-rending appeal at the end from the author to protect our mountains. While the mountains are solid and seem in no need to protection from anyone, the environments they support are fragile. I hope everyone feels the way the author does, or will soon come to do so. I commend this as a worthy read.

Love Your Body by Jessica Sanders, Carol Rosetti

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a great book about body positivity for young women. The illustrations by Rosetti were exquisite and the text was positive, affirming, and smart. I would have liked to have seen something about exercise and diet in here, but it really didn't go that far. And by diet, I do not mean idiotic and ultimately useless schemes to 'lose pounds'. I mean nothing more than healthy eating.

One of the most crucial things about body positivity is taking positive care of your body regardless of how you feel about it or what shape it's in when you decide you're finally going to take charge of your life. An important part of loving yourself is taking care of yourself and I wish more books of this nature would make that point more forcefully.

That's my only complaint though. That and maybe a warning about mega-corporations owned by old white men who think they are somehow gifted arbiters of how young women ought to look, dress, shave, think, and make-up their faces!

Everything else about this book I loved! The illustrations made it clear that everyone was included, no matter their height, weight, skin color, religious beliefs, body shape, or physical abilities. It offered useful suggestions on how to approach those negative thoughts we all have from time to time, and ways to combat them, and it offered some contact information in the back in case you need it. But the real message here is that you got this! You're in charge. You can do it. And I believe that. I commend this book as a worthy read.

Mini Chibi Art Class by Yoai

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Chibi is Japanese slang for 'short' and it can be both endearing when used with a loved one, or an insult when used inappropriately, so be careful how you employ the term! Here it's used to signify a particular type of art which appears in Japanese manga.

This book sets out to teach the techniques and in my opinion it succeeds. It begins with a brief survey of art materials, and gets quickly onto the basics - designing your character's pose and setting out proportions, and capturing motion. Later it covers lighting and blending colors.

It covers facial features: eyes, nose, mouth, as well as hair design, before leading into specific character creations one for each month of the year!) which you can follow along and draw your own version. It covers even more fantasy-like characters under 'chibi beasties' and it has a section on clothes, props, and accessories.

This was a great book with some really good art, and invaluable instruction for anyone who wants to get into this kind of illustration. I commend it as a worthy read.

Learn to Draw (Almost) Anything in 6 Easy Steps by Rich Davis

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a great little book for anyone who's nervous about even getting started with drawing. This literally does what it says and will show you how to get up and running in drawing simple cartoon figures of (almost) anything. The figures are so simplified and laid out in such easy steps that anyone can do it.

The sections cover dogs, cats, cows, turtles zebras, dinosaurs, birds, fish, flowers, buildings, machines and people, so there's something for every situation, and once you get the hang of these, you can doubtlessly invent your own techniques for anything that's not covered here. I commend this as a useful tool and a worthy read.

Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces by Amarilys Henderson

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a pretty neat book solely dedicated to drawing and coloring faces and hair. I loved the title! The faces are varied, amusing, and interesting. They're not photo-realistic, nor are they caricatures or cartoonish. They're somewhere in between, and the book shows how to create them and what techniques to use.

It begins with materials - paint, ink, pencils, brushes and paper, and moves on to a consideration of facial shapes and proportions, and where to place the features, and not only for a face looking squarely at the viewer, but for faces at assorted angles. There are several pages devoted to eyes and eyebrows, and how to place the highlight in the eye. There are several more pages on noses and mouths, and more on developing facial expressions. In short there's a lot to learn and nothing missed, with lots of tips and good advice along the way.

I commend this as a useful and worthy read.

Craft Lab for Kids by Stephanie Corfee

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was another fun crafts/art book for young kids, with over fifty projects in it, ranging from from a secret fake book treasure stash, to faux embossed leather cuffs, marbled paper note-cards, photo-transfer memory box, shrink plastic charm bracelet, jiggly soap, sleep mask, hand-tied art journal, painted positivity pebbles, pressed flower stickers, DIY stress balls and apple backyard bird-feeder.

Each section gives step-by-step instructions each with a photographic illustration on how to perform that step. More complex work, such as the mini-wall weaving have even more detail, so you can't go wrong. The book was interesting, literally packed with ideas, and quite engaging. I commend it as a worthy read.

Backward Science by Clive Gifford, Anne Wilson

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

The title to this book is rather misleading in two ways because for one, there's nothing backward about it really. There are almost thirty sections which deal with advances in science or, mostly, with inventions. They begin with asking what life was like before the discovery, and how the change came about and was developed. The other way is that it's less about science per se, than it is about invention.

The chapters are short but fascinating, and they cover a wide variety of topics, from smart phones and DNA profiling, to assembly lines and gunpowder, and textiles and steam trains. The book doesn't shy away from naming the inventors, so we see, unusually, several women mentioned as well as some people of color. Unfortunately people of color do not appear in the illustrations very much. Those consist mostly of white folk. I'm not sure why.

Some of the inventors might not seem familiar to you, for example if you think that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb (nope!), or that William Hoover invented the vacuum cleaner. Nope. Had the original inventor of a practical home vacuum cleaner not sold everything to Hoover, we might well be spangling the rug today, not hoovering it!

This book was fun, knowledgeable, and nicely-illustrated by Wilson. I commend it as a worthy read.

Art Workshop for Children by Barbara Rucci, Betsy McKenna

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book's aim is "to Foster Original Thinking with more than 25 Process Art Experiences," 'process art' being the work itself rather than any specific end result. Art for art's sake, you might say. The book was smart and fun, with a lot of images to illustrate the text and some of the cutest quotes from the young children who participated in various activities.

The book begins before any children are on the scene, discussing the kind of area that works best for the artistry to take place in, and the kind of supplies and materials that might be needed or useful, including the indispensable art cart!

Next up is the detailing of the 25 or more art projects which include frame paintings, muffin tin prints, cotton swab mini watercolors, self portraits where you paint the kids face and then slap paper on it, peel it off, and see how it looks...I'm just making that up! There's not such thing in this book! It does cover self-portraits though, along with paper bag collage painting, still life with a donut (I am not making that one up!), paint mixing, folder paper art, cardboard box robots, milk carton houses, tree branch painting and a host of others.

The projects don't have a specific end point. They're about the doing, the experience, the learning. Of course there is an end result, but whether or not the result is what was aimed at is far less important than the journey there - working with the paint and materials and enjoying the trip.

This book was fun and educational, and it has some really good advice about process art, and kids just plan having fun in a stimulating and fruitful environment. I commend it.

Nasla's Dream by Cecile Roumiguiere, Simone Rea

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

When I was a kid, me and my younger brother slept in bunk beds, with him on the top one. One night I was lying awake when something dropped to the floor, and I reached to pick it up thinking it was one of his plush toys that had fallen down, but the thing reared up. It freaked me out until I realized it was the cat which had evidently been up there on his bunk and just jumped down. Way to weird out a young kid!

Nasla has a similar problem and she never does discover what it is, but in this book aimed at reassuring young children that the things which might give them some cause for fear at night are not really fearful at all, some equally strange things take place.

Lying in bed in the dark and decidedly not going to sleep, Nasla is concerned about this little yellow circle of light on top of her wardrobe, which is where she keeps her old toys now she's feeling grown up. So is this light coming from her elephant? Her broken hippo? Is it somehow caused by moonlight? The more Nasla contemplates it, the more fantastical are the images that go through her mind and her ideas about how she might ease not her own fears, but those of her toys.

Eventually, of course she does fall asleep and that's when we readers discover what it was. I enjoyed this book, and the imagery, artistry, and imagination that went into creating it. I commend it as a worthy read.

Thank You, Miyuki by Roxane Marie Galliez, Seng Soun Ratanavanh

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Charmingly written by Galliez and illustrated beautifully by Ratanavanh, this children's book - apparently part of a series - has Miyuki finding her grandfather exercising with Tai Chi in the garden. Being an inquisitive child, she immediately peppers him with questions.

He answers them all patiently if not always directly, and when he moves on to meditation, Miyuki is anxious to join him - if only she can figure out what it is. Her grandfather patiently leads her through the garden looking at various things and contemplating them. In doing this he is showing her how he meditates rather than explaining it to her.

Miyuki's grandfather's idea of meditation is evidently not so much of the transcendental kind as it is of the kind promoted by Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius when he wrote: "Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature?" In doing this she learns a greater appreciation of the natural world and learns to look around her and discover for herself rather than simply seek pat answers from others.

I found this book delightful and relaxing, and I commend it as a worthy read for young children.

One Foot in the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

Rating: WARTY!

According to wikipedia, One Foot in the Grave is volume two of the 'Night Huntress' series, being preceded by Halfway to the Grave by six months, but according to the listing in the novel itself, the first volume is OFitG, with HttG following. I'm confused. Actually, I'm more confused by the titles: what, pray tell, is the practical difference between having one foot in the grave and being half-way to the grave? Isn't that the same thing with different wording?! This is a big problem with a novel series - how the heck do the newbies know where to start unless there's a volume number on the cover? Yeah - dig inside, I guess, but what a nuisance. Oh well, best foot forward - to the grave....

I started this novel out fresh from the excellent Dead Until Dark which means that Jeaniene Frost isn’t getting perhaps as fair a deal as she ought in the comparison, but what really hit me strongly in the first hundred pages was how 'young-adult' this novel seemed even though it isn’t a YA title. That's not to say that YA titles are bad per se, but picture the worst YA instadore you ever read, and that's what I'm getting at.

The main character is Catherine Crawfield, who goes by Cristine Russell and is known as the Red Reaper by her vampire enemies because she has red hair. She has dyed it for anonymity in this volume, but I don’t see the point of that given that vampires have heightened senses and can tell who she is regardless of her hair color! That's not the problem though. The problem is how sickeningly on pretty darned near every page, we’re treated to Cristine's desperate pining for her ex-vampire love, "Bones", who I shall refer to as Boner from this point on because this isn't about love, it's about sex, period. I can understand that she was hot for him, but she left him, not the other way around, and although she did it unwillingly, it has been well over four long years. This is a woman who is in serious need of urgent medical therapy.

That aside, the story hasn't been too bad (and it's hard to put aside when the stench of it is rammed under your nose on every other page). Cristine works for an offshoot of the Homeland Security Agency which is tasked with keeping the vampire population under control, so yeah, it’s the vampire hunter trope. Except she's described as a 'huntress'. I'm not quite sure how to rate the potential genderism in employing the feminine form there. This is a writing problem. Do we say both genders are equal and therefore use only the one term, so as not to 'discriminate' against women by using a specific feminine term for them, or do we go the other way and argue that employing what has been hitherto the masculine form is actually a form of insult to the woman so depicted?

I've tended towards the former option: employing the masculine term universally, but this is really something each writer has to decide. Look at it this way: what if we employed exclusively the feminine form, even to describe the male? So for example, if this novel had been about Cristopher Russell (instead of Cristine) we would call him a vampire huntress. How many people would find that strange, and doesn’t it say something awful about our society that such would be the case? It’s worth a thought or few.

At the start of this volume, Cristine is tasked with bringing down an ancient and powerful vampire. Cristine FYI, is literally half-vampire/half-human in that her mother was impregnated by a freshly-turned vampire who evidently had viable sperm flopping around in his resurrected testicles. This gives her enhanced powers which is how she came to be hired by the HSA. How that works is something quite literally never discussed in vampire stories: have you noticed? They supposedly have no heartbeat, so by what means does the nutrition from the blood they drink get to their cells to keep the vampires looking so young?! Osmosis?! In Cristine's case, how did that sperm become genetically changed in order that it could both still match up to the mother's genetic complement, and confer upon Cristine the vampire traits she garnered? This suggests that vampirism is genetic: that the dying body undergoes a genetic change before resurrecting as a vamp. But no one ever talks about it!

Frost employs some standard vamp tropes, such as older vampires are more powerful, and silver kills them, whilst dispensing with others: her vampires aren't allergic to crosses, churches, or daylight, and the silver knife not only has to penetrate their heart, but it has to be twisted to actually kill them! Thus although Cristine stabs this vampire in the heart, she's in deep conversation with him (another trope: smart-mouth your foe as you beat the crap out of each other - thoroughly unrealistic but sometimes entertaining) and from her conversation, she learns something which causes her to spare his life and let him go free, just as a favor to her ex-lover. Will this come back to, er, bite her? Of course, she then has to stab herself to make it look like he escaped, but it’s fine since she heals very quickly.

Cristine's best friend Denise, who knows all about her, is getting married, and Boner shows up as one of the groom's retinue. Cristine is a complete Mary Sue here. At that point it was patently obvious to we readers that Boner was going to show up, yet Cristine is completely clueless, and then she turns to Jell-O® in church when she sees him. It’s truly pathetic and frankly made me nauseous. This kind of writing stinks, but as I said, other than this tripe, the story isn't too bad at all, so I had planned on trying to stay with it. That plan failed!

I was very roughly halfway through this and as I said, finding parts which were interesting, but it was so hard not to drop this in the recycle bin because the "romance" was so awful, so tedious, and so uninteresting I honestly didn’t know how much more of this I could stomach, especially since I finally had some more library books, every one of which was calling to me far more strongly than Frost's 'amateur masturbation for teens' tome was. Parts of her effort did continue to be really interesting; that wasn't the problem. The problem was Cristine's dishrag-to-a-bull act which had continued to travel beyond merely sickening and into heaving stomach convulsions and projectile vomiting.

The hilarious irony is that Cristine was so angered at being such a limp dick in Bones's company in church that she hared off to the next gig her team was supposed to undertake (so to speak!) alone! Yeah, she's that kind of moron. There was a nest of vampires hanging out at a dance bar, so rather than go there immediately to deal with it, the team evidently had decided to let the vampires kill a few more innocents before they took them down; they planned to raid the place the next night, but Cristine decided to do the job herself like the dimwit loose cannon that she is.

She killed a bunch of vamps, and Boner (the walking hard-on to Cristine's slavishly gushing pussy) showed up and killed one more, but there were still three to go, so naturally, Boner takes Cristine dancing while they wait for those vamps to show because, god forbid they should actually go outside and wait for them! The other vamps turned up (their vamp instincts evidently having failed to warn them) and these three were also rapidly dispatched. Boner then raped Cristine; not sexually, but vampirically. Cristine had no problem with this - she limply let him have his way as he sucked heavily on her blood, preparing herself to die. I told you she needed therapy.

This so-called hero of the novel is nothing but a toy for a guy who has no reason whatsoever to be attracted to her other than that she evidently is a moist location in which to keep his dick when he doesn't need it free for urinating. Cristine hasn’t even an ounce of self-respect or feminine strength to her name. She's no hero. She's no one to look up to. She has no spine. Why is this essentially always the case in vampire stories? Why is it all-too-often the case with female so-called heroes in novels in general? Are we not to even expect a feminine main character in a vamp story who isn’t an invertebrate when she finds herself within smelling range of some hot vamp's blood-engorged brain-dick? Can nobody come up with a better way to tell this kind of story than this god-awful whiny, clingy, needy, co-dependent drivel? And what does it say about the women who enjoy this garbage?

The problem today was that I was stuck at work and this was the only lunchtime reading I had, so I gave it another half-hour, and it continued in the same - er, vein! Or maybe vain? If I could just excise the mindless teen-romance trash, I could enjoy the novel because I'm interested in the overall plot and where this will go, but I'm not coping well with Jeaniene Frost's depraved wallowing over what is, let’s face it, an abused woman. The problem is that the plot is increasingly taking a very distant back seat to the endless nymphodore (that's the same as instadore, but where the relationship is exclusively sexual) "romance" which doesn't even feign a weak pretension towards actually being romantic!

A quick word about the English language: it's not still four hundred years ago! No one calls women 'poppet' or 'kitten'. It seems that Frost has seen one-too-many Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And I don't care if she tries to argue that the vampires are old and still using the lingo they heard in their formative years, because then she's arguing that they cannot or do not change no matter what era they're from, and her own writing gives the lie to any such claim: clearly they do change. So please, "pop it" in the trash unless you intend upon including a barf bag with each novel you sell.

As if the rape wasn't bad enough, Cristine was kidnapped by Boner and woke up lying in bed with him. As a result of this, she decided to get back together with him! Is this what we want to set out as an example for young women* that if your lover persists in stalking you and in doing things you didn’t invite and have no control over, then the best solution to this dilemma isn't to kick the son of a bitch in his balls and report him to the authorities, but to get back with him and let him have what he wanted all along? Let's face it, this relationship has nothing whatsoever to do with companionship or with being with the right life-partner. It has entirely, solely, and exclusively to do with sex. There is no love or romance here.

* yeah, she's a teenager: though she's twenty seven, Cristine apparently has the body of a nineteen year old! Again, there's no explanation for how that works. If she ages so slowly that her life expectancy might be double or more what your common-or-garden human gets, how did she mature so rapidly that she looks even nineteen now? Shouldn't she look like she's three or something? Of course, then the thing with Boner would be entirely inappropriate. Not that it's any more appropriate to have a hundred year old vampire dating a nineteen year old woman....

Moving right along now.... Despite my desire to find out what happens in the rest (i.e. the non-brain-dead portion) of the story, I'm going to ditch this one and move on to something more intelligent, or at least more entertaining and far less tedious. Perhaps I will hold onto the novel, and maybe try and get back into it at some other time. Maybe if I skip the gooey parts completely and just read the other bits, I can still read it to the end and enjoy it insofar as that goes. Unfortunately, in order to do that, I'd still have to dig through the goo to find the good! For now, this is warty!

The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age by Conrad Wolfram

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

At one point in this book, the author writes, "When I started this journey, I thought there would be a huge amount of straight hostility. So far, I've found confusion predominates instead." Having read a substantial portion of it before giving up on it, I can only agree.

The book is written by the younger brother of the creator of the Mathematica software, and given that this very software is mentioned more than thirty times throughout the text, I had to wonder if this really is nothing more than an extended sales pitch for said software. The truth is that I honestly cannot say because despite the book being billed as "a groundbreaking book that exposes why math education is in crisis worldwide and how the only fix is a fundamentally new mainstream subject" I could not for the life of me, despite several searches throughout the book, discover what it is that the author proposes to replace traditional math teaching with.

That said, I must confess that I gave up on it about 25% of the way in. The book really dragged. Instead of launching into the new ideas from the outset, the author requires that we spend fully a quarter of the book listening to him waffling on about the problem without really telling us anything. I agree with him that the math we teach these days has little to do with most people's real-world experience of or need for it. The simple solution to that is to teach less of it and more of what people do need!

The language of this book is a bit high level, too. I wasn't sure who the author's intended audience was supposed to be, but given the college-level language he uses, it's definitely not the stereotypical 'man (or woman) in the street'. I didn't have too much trouble understanding most of it, but the writing was very dense, and quite academic in tone. I listened to it (read by my iPhone's Voice Over software) on the commute to and from work each day, and on the morning I decided to give up on it, and the reason I quit was because I realized that I had not understood a single word he'd written in some twenty-five minutes of driving.

This was not because I was too focused on traffic. The streets are largely devoid of traffic when I drive in to work, and I typically have no problem driving safely and hearing what my book or novel of choice is all about as I drive. That morning was a huge fail in this regard, and it's solely because of the high-falutin' language he used.

I read scores of books of all types, and have college-level education, and while it was not wholly impenetrable, this book was far too dense for my taste. He could have eased this quite readily by employing more everyday language, but his attitude seemed to be "why use 'used' when you can write 'utilized'"?! I can't take anyone seriously who regularly writes 'utilized'. For a book that claims to be clearing the cobwebs out of mathematics, perhaps his first step should have been to clear the cobwebs out of his writing, and write at a level that's easy for your average reader to grasp? Just a thought!

Just so you know it's not only me, I pasted the first 600 or so words from the first chapter into an online readability app, and these were the results:

• Flesch Reading Ease score: 39.1 (difficult to read)
• Gunning Fog: 17.2: (difficult to read)
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 14.1 (College)
• The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 (College)
• The SMOG Index: 12.4: (Twelfth Grade)
• Automated Readability Index: 15.6 (College graduate)
• Linsear Write Formula : 17.3 (College Graduate and above)

So: not aimed at Jo Average! But it wasn't just the level of the language, it was the jargon employed. The word, 'computational' for example appears over 400 times. Here are a few examples, and no, I did not bookmark these at the time (driving!) I just went to random places in the book, and swiped a page or two in one direction or another, and sure enough there was a phrase right there. It's not hard to find them:

"Nor do they provide an appropriate structure for so doing, though in some cases they're complementary outcomes lists and can usefully coexist with outcomes for core computation."

"...that's nullifying the point of having a machine do it instead..."

"...indeed, that the rationale is not orchestrated for practical application distinguishes the discipline..."

"One of the drivers for this is the aforementioned problem of traditional outcomes listings being per maths tool, where our outcomes map instead reflects a distillation of substructure..."

"...not pre-abstracted calculation problem segments..."

"...with respect to a a (sic) core computational curriculum change..."

If only some of this had been rendered into more everyday language it would have improved readability immensely. But this was not the worst problem for me.

The real problem I had was that I really wanted to know what his alternative was, and beyond a vague idea that it seems to involve using computer software, I could glean no idea from the opening portion of the book, and nothing from skimming through and doing some reading in later sections to see if it's explained anywhere at all. I confess it's entirely possible, not having read the whole thing, that I could well have missed it, but I could not for the life of me find anywhere where the author says, 'this is what I propose' or words to that effect and lays out a summary of the new plan. The fact that this book has no contents page did not help in my forlorn quest to get to the 'core computation' (to use a phrase of the author's) and find out what he would like to see as the future of math education. To me that was a serious failing.

Given how tedious it was to read this, and how the author himself seemed curiously loathe to share his plan with the reader, I can't in good faith commend this as a worthy read. The problem seemed to be that he was preaching to the choir for the first quarter of the book. If the language had been simplified a bit, and he'd ditched that first 25% and launched right into it, assuming his readers were interested not in the sorry history of math education, but in discovering what his new proposal was, he would have made a better impression on me. But if his only plan is to sell the Mathematica software to every student at eighty bucks a year, then this seems a little self-serving to me. Maybe he had some other plan; I can't say because I couldn't find out what his plan was!

Copy Boy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I made it about fourth-fifths the way through this. In the end I was driven away from it for several reasons, not least of which was because the story seemed to drag, and it went frequently off at inexplicable tangents that always made me feel like I'd missed something, somewhere in the text.

It started out a bit confusing and a bit boring frankly, in a chapter that dragged on for twenty pages or so. To me it felt like that part ought to have been told in brief flashbacks or better, in brief flashes of memory of earlier events, triggered by things the main character sees and does in the present. I'd rather that than have had all these pages devoted to it. I'm not a fan of flashbacks at all, nor am I a fan of prologues, and this felt like a too-long prologue.

Despite this disappointment, I decided to press on because the premise of the story appealed to me, but though I stayed with it and it improved to begin with, it went downhill again, and then picked back up, and so on, so for much of the novel it felt like I was riding a reading roller-coaster in terms of how much the novel alternately engaged and bored me. I liked it best then the main character was interacting with "Sweetie" and "Rivka" the two girls Jane, aka Benny, lives with when she first arrives in San Francisco. This part of the story was far too quickly over with for me.

This frequent readjusting from one locale to another was part of the story, but it made it feel a bit disjointed, like it was more than one story about more than one person. Paradoxically, despite this, we got little sense that Jane had moved from the country to a big city. There was no real world-building to speak of, so the action could have taken place anywhere, and Jane adapted so readily to big city life and taking cabs, handling money, and drinking with the boys, and so on, that it felt completely unreal. Everything came far too easily for her.

Jane started out as a strong character, who was interesting and who was someone I wanted to root for, but at other times, and increasingly, she made stupid decisions for no good reason that I could see. She also had a lot of sheer luck in the investigation she was pursuing - far more than was reasonable, which stretched credibility too much for my taste. In the end she became an unpredictable loose cannon doing things which made no sense to me at all, and she quickly lost me as a fan. She came off as really flighty and I lost interest in reading any more about her.

For most of the story she's disguised as a young man and pursuing a career such a young man might pursue, and it seems like too quickly she forgets she's really a girl, so we get very little of her insights into how her life differs now compared with what it was before, and given her impoverished roots and the superficial change of gender on top of that, there were such huge differences between how she had grown up and how she was living now that it didn't make sense she would have so few observations to share about it. There was a major disjunction between the two lives she led, and her serious lack of any real reaction to it felt completely wrong.

Things in her life seemed to fall into place without any real effort on her part, and the story she pursues at the newspaper doesn't always make sense to the reader. At least it didn't to me. I mean, the overall story made sense, but the details of how she put it together seemed completely haphazard to me. It feels like successful leaps are being taken in her investigation without the author sharing much about how she makes those leaps. Either that or I wasn't following the story as well as I ought to have been for one reason or another.

Jane wasn't the only one whose life made little sense though. Both Sweetie and Rivka are two of the other characters who could have been really interesting, but their behavior didn't seem to follow any rational trajectory, and neither does Mac's. He's Jane's too-easy route into the newspaper business. Additionally we seem to have Robert Oppenheimer - the nuclear physicist - introduced into the story for no good reason! How or why that came to be I know not. In the end then, this story had too much and not enough and I could not enjoy it, so I cannot commend it as a worthy read.

The Nut That Fell from the Tree by Sangeeta Bhadra, France Cormier

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a fun children's book written in sweet rhyme by Bhadra, and illustrated with color and flare by Cormier. Based on the pattern set up by Randolph Caldecott in his 1878 children's picture book The House That Jack Built, this could almost be a prequel to it. It's also reminiscent of the 1952 song, "I Know an Old Lady" by Rose Bonne and Alan Mills.

This book begins with a nut which fell from a tree - an acorn to be precise - which passes through the possession of several forest critters such as a rat, a blue jay, a goose, a raccoon, a bear, and on until it finally comes to rest in a place it can grow, where the grown tree provides a nifty site for a tree house! I enjoyed the rhymes and the beautiful illustrations and I commend this as a worthy read.

The Campaign by Laurie Friedman

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Errata:
“never-a-hair-outof-place” is missing a hyphen.
"555 feet 51/8” five and one eighth looks like 51 eights!
“Mom spears a chunk of kung pao chicken” followed by, only one page later, “They’re both eating mu shu chicken with chopsticks”
My shu pork is Northern Chinese dish. Kung Pao chicken is a Sichuan dish from southern central China! Not really the same thing.

This book felt like it wasn't sure where to go and so took the safest, most predictable path from start to finish. It felt like a heavy-handed lesson on the Mount Rushmore presidents, but the face it offered was just as cold and stony as that edifice to presidents who were certainly not the best examples of humanity we could have chiseled into a rock face.

Amanda Adams (yes, that's her name) decides that she wants to run for class president, all without discussing it with her best friend who she expects to run as her VP; then she irrationally gets miffed when she discovers that her best friend is also running for the same office. Once again the book description was apparently written by someone who seems to have little clue what's going on in the book and is just trying to make it sound sensational, which it really isn't. We're told that "Politics is in her DNA" but she clearly does not have any such DNA, and she makes one gaff after another in a poorly-conceived campaign despite having grown up with a Congress person as a mom and a political strategist as a dad. Nor do we ever get any sense that Amanda has a real clue what she's doing. Quite the opposite.

All of this really undermines her credentials and make me wonder why she was running at all. She seemed to have no motivation or plan. The book might have been more engaging had Amanda been a rebel who was, for example, determinedly resisting her parents' efforts to push her into running for this office, but finds herself motivated to do it anyway because of some cause which stirs her. This book wasn't written for me, but it didn't seem like it would appeal very much even to its target audience as it stands. It was obvious from the start which running mate Amanda would end up with, but the real problem with it was that she'd had this idea of running for president for some time but had given zero thought to lining-up her running mate. And this is the girl who has politics in her DNA? Na-uh! Not even close.

We got an Amanda who ran into trouble getting the support of her soccer team because they all irrationally felt that she'd spend all her time campaigning and neglect soccer games and practice, but we're given no reason why they would think that of her. Didn't they know her better than that? It's no spoiler to reveal that her team loses an important game, because it's that kind of a color-by-numbers novel.

What's shameful is the approach to the game, treating it like it was a major 'take no prisoners and slaughter the enemy' battle in an ongoing war rather than with any kind of sportsmanship. I found these rallying cries offensive. Clearly they were taking their cue from the USWNT in the last soccer World Cup when, in their first game, they were lording it over a clearly inferior team instead of being professional about their scoring bonanza. Amanda is given the baseless perspective of a goalkeeper who thinks she and only she is entirely and solely responsible for keeping the ball out of the goal. I guess her team has no players on defense, with every other member of the team is playing on the forward line. It was entirely unrealistic and unbelievable.

Now you can argue that this girl is in seventh grade and may well think like she does because of that, but Amanda is supposed to be the hero of the story with politics in her DNA, and who takes life lessons from the Mount Rushmore community. The problem is that she never seems to learn anything from these mini-bios of the presidents that she bores the reader with, and the story becomes nothing more than jingoism, repeating the tedious and clichéd mythology without actually examining it at all.

Rather than break new ground and find presidents who led exemplary lives which would merit examination and emulation, the author took the road most trampled and trotted out Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts. The book was just starting in on the womanizing John Kennedy when I quit.

Why take this trite and easy route? Why not dig a little and find presidents who were not land cheats, as Washington was; not slave abusers, as Jefferson was; not overseeing one of the biggest land-grabs from the Navajos and Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico as Lincoln did; not supporting waterboarding as Teddy Roosevelt did, or dishonorably discharging African American men of the 25th infantry Battalion (the Buffalo Soldiers) on unfounded charges as he did; and finally, not sanctioning the unjust imprisonment of Japanese Americans in World War Two as Franklin Roosevelt did.

There have been 45 presidents in the US, and while the present one is a dangerous, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and scientifically ignorant clown, not all of them have been like that. Some - like Clinton and Kennedy - have been reprehensible womanizers, but others, like Obama, have been a beacon. Could the author not have found some like that? Apparently not.

I can't commend a book like this at all.

Black Women, Black Love by Dianne M Stewart

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Errata:
"Repeating Laura’s name like a mantra, he ensured her" - I think maybe 'assured' her?

"Thirty-three-year-old Mary and her husband, Hazel “Hayes” Turner..." is fine, but the way Kindle mangled this book, 'Turner' was on the next page and indented like it was a new paragraph! Amazon will do that to you. That's why I don't do anything with them. Clearly Amazon's intention here was to split Mary and her husband, thereby making the author's point! LOL!

"T his severing of Black families..." - the gap after the 'T' was in the text. It may have been because the book had drop caps. That's a big no-no when Amazon is going to kindle your book. I use kindle in its original sense. Amazon can only handle plain vanilla text with any reliability - and forget pictures!

"h isTorically, The fear of..." - again mangled by Kindle. Several words had the letter 'T' capitalized for no apparent reason other than this is what Kindle does to your work. This one also had the initial letter not capitalized!

"...but never laid eyes on her husband after the county sheriff and two accompanying police officers first courted him off to jail." Hardly courted! I suspect the author meant 'carted him off'.

“due to the unanimous feeling on the part of the staff and board that there were more work 107 opportunities for Negro women” - the number 107 is actually a page number that Kindle integrated into text

“T he deleTerious impacT” - Another exmaple of Kindle mangling the text.

“taking long-distance trips to see her fianc[é] through a glass.” I don;t understand the use of the square brackets. This was perhaps another Kindle mangle. Kindle sucks, period.

This book was hard to read and not because it was academic or because it uses a lot of big words - it doesn't, nor because Amazon had done its usual job of dicing and julienne-ing the text, but it does tell horrifying stories of how the African American community has been treated through its all-too-often tragic history on these shores. It's a history that both continues in far too many ways today, and can be understood from the roots it has, which extend all the way back to the forcible capture and enslavement of free Africans.

Further, it extrapolates from that long history and puts in perspective the fact that "more than 70 percent of Black women in America are unmarried." Reading this book will remove any surprise you may have as to why that is. Slavery wasn't the only oppression. There has been a history of suppression and oppression, of keeping people down and of treating people unfairly, and the heaviest burden of all of that has always fallen on the black community.

The book explores slavery, the Reconstruction, the Great Migration north, nd the continued history of abuses right up through modern times. It talks about welfare under which - and contrary to disparaging lies that are spread about it - the African American community seldom fares well, and which rather than encourage couples to marry and take joint responsibility for children, it very effectively mandates "that women remain single in order to receive government support." It discusses the modern repercussions of this unfair and unequal treatment including what the author labels "the prison-industrial complex," which unfairly targets people of color and thereby removes them from the pool of potential partners for black women.

Well-researched and unfortunately full of disturbing anecdotes from the people who have been abused by these various systems, this book tells a horrifying tale, but one that needs to be heard and internalized. I commend it fully.

Goodnight Mind for Teens by Colleen E Carney

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Erratum:
"Same’s alarm sounds at 6 a.m." - presumably this was intended to read 'Sam's alarm'
There were also some oddities such as bullet lists starting with a lower case 'y' instead of a bullet, and also an odd sequence of five screens with an alternating full screen line of text followed by half screen line. The last line of all this had ‘morphine’ by itself after a half screen line

There is a book by this author called "Goodnight Mind" and this one is evidently the teen version of it. I haven't read the first one, but this is a useful book which asks, "Do you have trouble getting to sleep at night?" I don't and I'm not a teen (I don't even play one on TV!), but I am the parent of two teens who seem, during this unprecedented home isolation, to be turning into, what was it Dracula called them in Bram Stoker's novel? "Children of the night. What music they make"! So I do understand this issue with sleeping problems even though I personally have very few nights where I have trouble sleeping.

This short book offers explanations for behavior, and suggestions, hints, and tips for working on getting one's head down and actually sleeping. It includes URLs for downloadable checklists to help focus on what exactly the problem is in each individual. The author is Dr. Colleen E. Carney, an Associate Professor and also the Director of the Sleep and Depression Laboratory at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. She packs the book full of ideas, techniques, and suggestions to identify what your problem is, because there is no solving it until you understand it, and then she goes after the problem on several levels with multiple techniques, and without getting all academic about it. I commend this as a worthy read.

#VERYFAT #VERYBRAVE by Nicole Byer

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book pretty much does exactly what it claims it will do: presents a brave and frankly not-so-fat Nicole Byer in a bikini - and then another, and another. And another! And she looks great in most of them, a bit weird (and usually intentionally so!) in the rest, although my personal favorite was the picture at the very end of the book where she was laying down in a simple dress, and looked awesome. The fact that the author has the cutest face does not hurt these images one bit. I don't know how old she is, and it doesn't matter; all I can say is that whatever age she is, she looks half that age because of her face.

This book had no intention of offering advice on diet or healthy eating, and maybe it ought to have. That clearly wasn't the author's intention, but part of having a positive body image - of loving your body - is knowing that you're not only comfortable in your own skin, but that you're taking care of that skin and whatever's in it whether you're #VERYFAT or #VERYTHIN or anywhere in between. In a study of almost 6,000 Coronavirus patients, ones with poor outcomes nearly always had underlying conditions, and 41% of those fatalities were at least in part because the patient was obese. Body positivity is the only smart way to go, but that doesn't mean becoming willfully blind to health considerations.

But this book is unashamedly about bikinis, how to buy them, how to wear them, how to mix and match tops and bottoms, with a few hints and tips about getting the best fit, and handling idiots who think it's their duty to comment uninvited on others, but mostly it was a string of photos of the author sporting various items of clothing, nearly all of which were varieties of bikini (but not string bikinis!).

There were some oddball instances of confused text, most notably when I read: “...sliding her vagina down my face” but this isn't what happened. I promise you it was her vulva she slid down Nicole's face, not her vagina. It was sad that Nicole was grossed out by this, but not by the possibility of garnering an STD from this stranger with this uninvited sexual contact.

I could have done without so many four letter words, so be warned there are multiple ones in here, and I'm never comfortable with the use of the word 'bitch' which can strangely e both and endearment and an insult, so for me, that was over the top, but apart from that I think this is an amusing book. The author has a great sense of humor. It was fun, entertaining, and educational, and uplifting, and I commend it was a worthy read.

The Witches of Willow Cove by Josh Roberts

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book was a bit too much like the trope clones that came predictably rolling in post Harry Potter. Unless the author is really going to make an effort to bring something new to the table - something different, something original - then really, what's the point? I know this is aimed at middle grade (and read like it was) and I'm certainly not the intended audience, but to have witches waving sticks and chanting in Latin or worse, chanting in rhyming English, is so old and trite now that it's really not worth reading. Making your protagonist a female Harry Potter and doing the same thing with your villain isn't changing it up enough to get close to an original story.

The worst thing about this novel was the Salem angle. The Salem witch nonsense has been done to death and really, does it show any respect for the poor women who were murdered back then on the blatant religious lie that they were witches? No, it does not. It's shameful to keep dragging that out of the closet. For goodness sake let those poor women rest in peace. Even if the story had been brilliant, it would have tedious to read yet another witch story that tries to set its roots in Salem, but the story wasn't that interesting.

I didn't finish this, but the idea seemed to be that of a long-standing grudge, and so the question became: why was it so long-standing? Why didn't this evil witch carry out her revenge three or four hundred years ago? Why now? There seemed to be no answer to that, unless one popped-up in the very latter part of the story, and even if it did, what was the point of this revenge? It occurred to me that unless this person intended to reincarnate those victims from centuries ago in the bodies of her juvenile witch recruits, this revenge really offered her nothing, and even if she was planning on some reincarnation routine, the question of why now - at this time rather than a few hundred years ago still lacked a good answer.

So for these and other reasons, I quickly grew tired of a story that felt like one I'd read many times already, but under different covers and by different authors, so I did not finish it. I can't commend it based on what I read. There were too may tropes and too many clichés.

Feminist City by Leslie Kern

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Feminist City isn't an interesting sci-fi novel, but a non-fiction book about how cities are not designed with women in mind. I agree with that thesis as it happens, having read material on this subject before. This is why I requested this book. It never hurts to learn more, especially if you're interested in female issues and especially if you're a novelist who's always open to ideas for plots or at least ideas for how to make characters who are a different gender than your own seem more lifelike, realistic, motivated, and perhaps having issues to pursue!

This take on cities is a very personal view, and I have to say that the author went off on tangents that for me, didn't serve her main argument well. For example, at one point she devolved into discussing how movies don't tend to represent female relationships. I'm like what? The thing is that after rambling about this and even mentioning a couple of movies that do represent them, the author then got into a prolonged ramble about some TV shows I've never heard of that represent female relationships pretty well. I'm like: are you not undermining your own claim with this?

And what does it have to do with your thesis about cities not being female-friendly? I don't mind it when authors mention stuff tangential to their main thrust, but a digression like this seemed to be an extended reminiscence about her own favorite TV shows rather than anything that materially contributed to her argument. And lest it be forgotten, TV and movies are not reality, even when they're called 'reality shows'. In fact reality shows are the precise opposite of reality. They're as artificial as it gets.

The author lives in Canada so maybe these are Canadian TV shows or maybe they're just shows I never had an interest in. She seems to be forgetting that unless the movie topic is specifically about female friendships, the writer and director had no reason to go out of their way to tell a story about such things because the movie's story is about something else.

Despite her claim, there are in fact many movies that do have female friendship represented in them not as the main plot, but as an included element. Also there are many movies about female friendships. The author, despite writing a book herself, seems to be unaware that there's a whole genre of novels precisely about female friendships! I guess she doesn't read much fiction, but Netflix has a bunch of movies about female relationships and friendships, so I don't get this fruitless digression into fiction when she's supposed to be making a case for a real world issue.

Another thing that struck me as odd in a feminist book was her digression into the topic of the 'Flâneuse'. I'd never encountered this name before, but it's a French word that describes the kind of person who has sufficient idle time on their hands that they can perambulate the city, exploring it and people-watching. I've never been a fan of pretentious French words being introduced into the lingo, but this one is quiet ancient. The original term was Flâneur, and I while I understand that in the ancient past, a term specific to a woman was routinely coined, particularly in a language that absurdly insists that inanimate objects have gender, I don't get why this was perpetuated by a writer of a book like the one under review here. Nor do I see why a woman can't be a Flâneur and leave it at that.

To me it was disturbing to find a female author of a book, and especially a book decidedly aligning with feminism, seeking to employ a female version of the word. If we're about equality, shouldn't one word serve all genders? It's the same case in Hollywood: why actress and not actor for all? We don't call a female doctor a doctrix! We no longer use aviatrix! Why perpetuate the erroneous idea that a female needs to be singled out a special case? Now I'm digressing! I freely admit that this is a pet beef of mine, and fortunately the whole book was not like this.

For me the author was at her best when relating, anecdotal as they were, stories of contending with urban environments while also contending first with a pregnancy and then with a baby on board - that is, onboard a carrier or a stroller. This was in London where the deeply subterranean underground railway, aka 'The Tube' was effectively inaccessible to anyone with a perambulator and pretty much the same even with a stroller. The fact is that the London Underground is a resistance movement: it's antique for the most part, and resists change for a variety of reasons.

Women were largely unseen and herded, back when most of it was built, and while that's no excuse to persist with that idiocy today, it has to be said - given how old the system is - that perhaps it's harder than it might seem to upgrade it appropriately, which is why the inaccessibility problem persists. Not that I'm trying to justify it; it needs to be fixed, not just for moms, but for people who have disabilities. And fear of heights in some London stations (just kidding)! To me it seems that the real problem is that these things cost money, and the will to make those expenditures is lacking among authorities that are largely male, white, and not sporting any differently-abled status. Once that complexion is changed, the rest ought to follow. I hope.

One thing in this discussion of the London tube was when I read (of the author's experience while pregnant): "This was most obvious to me on the Tube, where I was rarely offered a seat during my rush hour commute." While I understand that pregnancy involves carrying around extra weight and fatigue along with a young life, at times the author seems like she's equating being pregnant with being an invalid! This seems as unkind as it is inaccurate. Not every woman feels disabled by her pregnancy. Some do, and clearly there's an issue here, but the wording might have been less ambiguous.

Clearly there ought to be an offer of a seat, leaving it up to the individual to accept or decline as she sees fit. But I didn't see how this was so much an issue with cities not being designed for women. I mean it's always possible to await the next train since they run so frequently during rush hour, and get in there ahead of the crowd to find a seat. To me this seemed much more of a societal issue, with people in general largely being selfish despite attempts by the news media to show how kind we are. If we were truly that kind, it would hardly be a news item now, would it?!

I went into this book thinking it would answer a question that's asked in the book description. I know authors typically don't write these descriptions any more than they design the covers, but it was a question I would have liked to have had answered. The question was "What would a metropolis for working women look like?" and the problem seemed to be that this book isn't an organized journey through the issues, laying out the problems and supplying answers, or at least offering suggestions toward answers. This book is more like a collection of essays and it's a bit repetitive and lacking in substance. It's more like an impressionist painting where I'd have preferred - on this occasion - a photograph, and for me it really didn't get where it ought to have been trying to go - where it suggested it would go.

The problems with cities were highlighted here and there such as for example, the aforesaid lack of elevators on London's underground system, and the sparsity in the design of public toilets (where these can be found and even if they are in good condition). Some of the issues were less about the design of cities and more about societal issues, such as the idea of "A place where women can walk without harassment." No design of any city is going to prevent this as long as men think women are property, possessions, playthings, or people who are to be treated like juveniles. Even the most perfectly designed city will be nightmarish if it's populated by a significant assortment of jerks and dicks.

One of the ongoing problems with cities and one which was not addressed here is that cities are not communities no matter how well they are designed. No matter how much, say, New Yorkers (or alternatively the media) like to pretend their city is a community, it's in actual fact a large, impersonal city and most people are out for themselves, attending to their own plans and business, and with little time to consider others. This is normal in cities.

That's not to say it's right or that it can't be better, but it is the status quo. Something that would improve the situation would be to design cities not as cities but as conglomerations of small communities, wherein the community is more like a village while still being part go the whole, but even Cuomo's fine words about looking toward an improved future, post-covid 19 (assuming there ever is a post-covid 19) are going to lead nowhere without serious infrastructure changes and attitude modifications. Some systems can be improved, but unless you knock down the whole city and redesign it from the ground up, it will never be ideal.

That doesn't mean there's no room for improvements or that we cannot make cities better even as they stand, but the problem is that there are many interests in the city, and cities have grown the way they have because of those interests, most of which are about making money, not about making sense. None of this was addressed in this book, which in the end was much more a collection of personal anecdotes and ideas about problems than it was about how to get there from here.

It was a bit rambling and a bit repetitive, and overall, I was disappointed in it. Thus I'm unable to commend this as a worthy read because it doesn't really deliver on what it promises. It takes one or two interesting steps in that direction, but it's a long journey and this doesn't cover anywhere near enough of the distance there to make for a satisfying read.