The PG Wodehouse Collection by PG Wodehouse

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook collection of short stories and a novel. I'd already heard the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves, in a separate audiobook and liked it, so while I resented having to buy it again as a part of this collection (come on Chirp, think about what you're doing!), I was interested in the short stories. I now wish I had not been tempted because this was an unpleasant mess. The weird thing is that if I'd bought this first, I might never have made it to the novel because I was so put off by the stories preceding it.

Originally, I had listened to the novel with mixed feelings because on the one hand it featured the most appalling snobbery and privilege, but this was offset on the other by the absurdity and humor which softened those harsh edges. In this collection, there was no absurdity and little humor, so all that was left were the distasteful parts, and that didn't sit well with me.

Neither did it help that while Simon Jones, who read the novel I originally had heard, did a great job, BJ Harrison, who reads this collection, is nowhere near as good. Consequently, I was neither amused nor entertained. The stories included are as follows:

• Leave It To Jeeves (1916)
• Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest (1919)
• The Aunt and the Sluggard (1919)
• Death at the Excelsior (1976)
• Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg (1919)
• Jeeves in the Springtime (1923)
• The Man Upstairs (1914)
• Jeeves and the Chump Cyril (1923)
• Jeeves Takes Charge (1925)
• Deep Waters (1914)
• The Man Who Disliked Cats (1914)
• Extricating Young Gussie (1917)
• Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Why they're in that particular order, I do not know. Clearly it's not chronological. The stories seem to have been randomly tossed in there, so there's no flow of anything. Several were not about Jeeves or Wooster. These included Death at the Excelsior which was a boring detective story, The Man Upstairs another boring story about a man and a woman living in apartments one above the other, Deep Waters about a man who fakes being unable to swim to make time with an attractive woman he sees swimming, and The Man Who Disliked Cats about some dude who seeks to have his girlfriend's cat kill her parrot so she'll get rid of the cat, which he dislikes. Those latter two had the potential to be truly funny, but they were not, neither of them.

I was seriosuly disappointed in this collection and do not commend it at all, unless you're getting it solely for the novel at the end, but I can't speak for that having not listened to it in this version.

Lost Animals by Errol Fuller

Rating: WARTY!

This book has about 170 pages of birds, featuring grebes, parakeets, pigeons, rails, warblers, and woodpeckers, and only some 60 pages of other animals, all of which are mammals and there are only seven of those: thylacine, greater short-tailed bat, Caribbean monk seal, Yangtze River dolphin, quagga, Schomburgk's deer, and the Bubal hartebeest. Naturally there are no plants because the title forbids it, but I have to say I was disappointed to see no fish, amphibians or reptiles included.

While this is educational, I think a much better and broader job could have been done. It's like the author just tossed in whatever random critters he happened across and made no effort to diversify at all. What's least shocking is that all of these extinctions are because of humans: hunting, deforestation, other destruction of habitat, and so on. It's the same old selfish, short-sighted, and clueless story, and things are only getting worse with climate change, so while this book does offer some insight into how badly we're screwing our grandchildren - even our children - out of their heritage, it really could have been a lot better, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read as is.

The Influencer by RTW Lipkin

Rating: WARTY!

This was one that was of interest to me because I'm currently working on a middle-grade novel about the evils of social media, but this book which thankfully has nothing to do with anything I'm writing was completely useless as either an inspiration or a caution, and it sadly was not even a form of entertainment, because it was so badly written as I realized when I read, early on, "After a few weeks I got more very used to other things too."

The author uses some nonstandard contractions like "to've" to represent 'to have' and it was just silly, and it felt amateur and and annoying, but that wasn't even the worst part. First person voice, for me, is the most worthless and inauthentic voice you can write in. It rarely works and it's usually annoying. This one was worse because the two characters were so clueless, and unrealistic, and both of them were using their own first person, meaning that the author had to prefix each chapter with the name of the person writing it, which is clunky at best.

I'm like, what, did these two unequal and antagonistic persons collaborate to write this story? How did that ever come to pass? Seriously, I thoroughly detest novels of this type because they are as fake as it's possible to get and when I read, I want to get lost in the author's world, not keep being reminded of how shallow and threadbare it is. I want to buy into it and get lost in it, and this author denies a reader that opportunity.

The story is of Claude, a computer programmer, and Ash, his creation, which is (we're told) an AI designed to pose as an Internet influencer pushing fashion and make-up. What Claude knows about fashion and make-up, and how he knows it is a complete mystery since we're never told (not in the seventy pages I read anyway), but what the author knows about AI's (artificial intelligence) is starkly apparent: very little, if anything.

There were two problems here, the first being, why would the programmer need an AI to do what he wanted to do? He doesm't. He just needs a computer representation of an attractive woman, since he's doing all the controlling and not letting the AI develop on its own. That story was already done in the 2002 movie Simone which was written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol abs starred Al Pacino. Unlike that movie, this story makes no sense and screams that the programmer is an idiot. That diagnosis is further confirmed by Claude being constantly baffled by how his AI manages to learn things. What? Sorry but no, this sucks.

I found myself skimming from very early on because the story, particularly the Claude parts, were so boring and whiny. The Ash parts were hardly better, so it's rather generous for me to claim I 'read' seventy pages, and frankly that was too many. I ditched this DNF and I'm done with this author.

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a charming and unsophisticated novel published almost a century ago in 1924, and it eventually turned into a series. I'm not a series fan and with few exceptions, I usually don't even finish the first novel if I ever start a series, but I was curious about this one because it's so old, and so well-known, and I have never read any of this. There was a revised and somewhat altered version published in the reverse year (42 as opposed to 24), but the one I read was the original '24 version and I think it's better.

The story is of four orphaned children named Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny who take up with a semi-kindly baking family. The kids overhear the family's plans to return them to their grandfather who for reasons unexplained, the kids think is the next thing to evil. They slip out in the night and start hiking down the road, heading into the field to sleep inside a haystack when daylight threatens to expose them. Later they overhear the baker couple passing on the road and learn that they're going as far as a certain village to try and track down the kids, but not as far as this other village, so the kids decide to go to the other village.

Now this story is old and it sure wasn't written for people my age, so I have loosened my criteria somewhat in reviewing this, but I have to say right here that it's a bit simplistic, and a bit of a Mary Sue kind of a story. There aren't any real threats or crises, and everyone behaves perfectly and does the right thing all the time. Henry, the oldest, lucks into a job and finds regular and generous employment with a very kindly family. The man of the house is conveniently a doctor for when one of them gets sick. They luck into finding the boxcar very quickly, and it's conveniently near the village they were walking to, as well as near a stream where they can get water and bathe, and as well as near a dump where they find all kinds of discarded items they can use to furnish their home. A dog quickly shows up injured (a thorn in its foot) and proves to be a very smart and loyal watchdog, and eventually they are all united with a family member who is rich and kindly, and so on!

For me that was a bit much and I have no desire to read more of the same, but I have to add that it was also a charming feel-good story, which anyone can use right now, and I think young kids in particular will probably enjoy the adventure and the kids fending for themselves and making a home in a boxcar. It's also educational in a way with regard to how the children behave and think positively, and find ways to make things work for them, so on that basis I commend it as a worthy read.

Which President Killed a Man? by James Humes

Rating: WORTHY!

James Humes was a speechwriter for several Republican presidents, and this is a book of trivia regarding presidents, vice-presidents and first ladies as well as first, lasts, and pets, so if you're into that stuff, this is for you. It consists of a number of topic sections, each populated with a set of questions and a short answer for each, consisting of a few lines to a couple of paragraphs. I found parts of it interesting and parts boring, but then I've never had this fascination for historical trivia the way many seem to do. I'm not one who finds appeal in the endless books that seem to come on offer about the civil war, or presidents, or World War Two (why is it never World War One, I wonder?!), so maybe this held less appeal for me than perhaps it does for some.

That said, I commend it if you're into this sort of thing. It was interesting for the most part to read once, but it's a better read, I think, as a bathroom book which you can dip into from time to time than for a 'settle down and read it like a novel' sort of enterprise, so on that basis I commend it as a worthy read. Of course it's not up to date. It was published in 2002, so disappointingly, it has none of the soap opera antics of a recent president, but there's still plenty to amuse and intrigue.

Breach by Bronwyn Leroux

Rating: WARTY!

This is described as volume 0.5 of the 'Destiny' series, which is supicious enough, and once again we see it starkly highlighted as to why series are a pile of crap for the most part, and why first person voice typically sucks! I made it through only two chapters before I couldn't stand to read any more of this disaster. The main character, Aiken, who for some reason I thought was a woman at first, is unstable, and we launch into the story right at the point where he appears to be having some form of a panic attack, but he's telling us about it in first person, thereby losing all credibility for me. People don't do that. They can't do that! They can’t both have a breakdown and calmly and logically describe it as it happens. The writing was awful.

The story is about Aiken's life in this nondescript 'community' which seems both modern and ancient at the same time, so that lost credibility for me. The guy is out hunting animals in the forest and later they're talking about having "lunch" - seriously? I read (after he'd sliced a deer's throat open): "It doesn’t take long to sling her carcass over the carrying pole." A carrying pole? The author is apparently unaware of how much a deer weighs. Try 100 - 200 pounds. And he slings it over a pole and carries it along with the other critters he's trapped? Garbage. No wonder he's named achin'! LOL! If there had been two guys, then yeah, maybe they could have carried it on the carrying pole between them, but he's alone! So why even have a carrying pole?

That's when I decided I’d be better off reading something else that was A. intelligently written, and B. not a lousy story. I can’t commend this at all based on my experience of it. This is also my second Bronwyn Leroux encounter and the first was just as bad so I guess I'm done with this author now.

Belle Manor Haunting by Cheryl Bradshaw

Rating: WARTY!

I made it only 50% through this because it just wasn't going anywhere and I grew tired of the flat characters, the bizarre changes in genre and the tedious story-telling. I kept hoping it would take off, but it never did and in the end I resented spending so much of my time on this when I could have been doing other things.

The main character is Addison - she's married to a guy named Luke Flynn and apparently has taken his last name, yet she's referred to frequently as 'Lockhart' rather than 'Flynn' which is weird, except it sort of makes sense given how short shrift her husband is shown here. He's hardly in it, contributes nothing when he is, and seems more like scenery than a character, as does Addison's child for that matter. I don't get the feeling that Addison is actually a married woman and a mother - not from reading the story. It's like we're told this of her, but nowhere is it really shown in the story-telling.

Addison supposedly has had this power to see and interact with the spirits of the deceased since childhood, but now she's a mature woman and she seems like she's only just beginning to deal with it, and is constantly surprised when it happens, which made little sense to me. What has she been doing all these years? Why hasn't she pursued it and learned more? Doesn't she feel bad for all the people she could have helped and yet failed to do so because she's completely incurious about her world? The author makes her look like a shallow and self-centered idiot.

Worse even than this though, was the fact that there was nothing mentioned in the book description about witchcraft, wizardry, or shapeshifting, yet at one point Addison, completely out of nowhere, transforms into an owl and gets into a house to visit this woman who lives there, and then accidentally changes back to herself - sans any clothes. This made zero sense to me because there had been not a whisper about any other powers until this point.

I understand that there have been three previous novels in this series - something I did not know to begin with. Though it offered a somewhat cryptic 'An Addison Lockhart Ghost Mystery' on the cover, there was nothing to indicate where this was in the series. Maybe there were such powers mentioned in earlier books, but there was nothing to indicate it here. The series has four books (as of this volume) and all of them have the same tedious title format: (insert pretentious name here) Manor Haunting. Yawn. I think it's bad manners to have so many haunted manors.

But seriously? Addison is presented very much as an amateur just dipping her toes into the supernatural world, yet she chants a few ridiculous rhyming words and suddenly she's an owl? I've never respected the sort of magic or witchcraft that has a rhyme that makes magic happen any more than I respected the Harry Potter nonsense that one or two words in Latin made magic happen. The short-sightedness in writers who take these simplistic approaches is disturbing, because it destroys their world.

I mean, if you have to use Latin to make magic happen, what does that mean? That magic began with the Roman empire? There was none before then, and no one else outside that world had magic or could do it because they'd never heard of Latin? Or that English rhymes make magic happen so no one who doesn't speak English can be a magician - and there was no magic before English was spoken? I'm sorry, but it's shallow, unimaginative bullshit, and not even fit for middle-grade stories let alone mature ones. Writers need to do better than that.

Addison showed how dumb she was in other ways too. For example, she demonstrates at one point that she can pull this young child who died in a car accident into her presence just by calling her name, yet the real mystery she's trying to solve involves a different girl whose name she also knows. What she doesn't know is the name of the guy who murdered her. So why not call that girl's name out and pull her into the sight and simply ask her who murdered her? Apparently Addison is far too stupid to think of that. This is why these witch detective stories are non-starters for me. If you have magic, you can solve any crime, period. Either that or your magic is garbage and not worth having if you can't simply whip-up a spell to identify the culprit. If you can do so, of course, then there's no mystery so you're beaten either way.

This leads to the same sorts of ridiculous and arbitrary excuses that bad writers make in time travel stories and movies: you can't go back and undo something that went wrong because there are "rules" that prevent you! LOL! They had a time-turner in Harry Potter for example, yet no one ever thought of going back to ambush Voldemort right before his reign of terror began? Another time-travel joke is that you can't let yourself be seen by yourself, yet in the same movie, Harry does indeed see himself and nothing bad happens. Another is that you can't go back over your own timeline because it will mess things up. Why? It's absurd. The same thing applies here in this story although there are no explicit rules laid down - just absurdities caused by poor and lazy writing and with very little forethought employed. I can't commend this shoddy work.

The Lost Girls by DJ Taylor

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a bit of a biography of some young women who hung around with British literary critic Cyril Connolly in the thirties, forties, and fifties. The audiobook is read pretty decently by Clare Corbett, although the introductory part was a pain to put up with, especially since I had no ready way to skip it while driving! Yuk! After that it improved. Subtitled "Love and Literature in Wartime London," the book mostly covers four of these 'girls': Sonia Brownell, Lys Lubbock, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Woolley, but one that caught my imagination was named Diana Witherby. I don't know what it is, but there's something about that name that really captures my imagination. She was a poet evidently who fractured her pelvis in a car accident when it was hit by a military truck on the blitz-darkened streets of London.

But I digress! These 'lost' girls typically experienced a less-than-satisfactory home life, were in at least one case, orphaned, and had to stand on their own two feet. Although they were shabbily treated by the men they associated with, they also learned to fend for themselves and they were survivors. The sad thing is that they seemed to be universally shallow and pretentious and oriented only toward the high life and living off men. Usually that would be the only option for a girl back then, but these women had skills and talents, and evidently chose not to use them.

Sonia married George Orwell late in his life for no good reason - except maybe to live off his earnings once he was gone. Lys was a fashion model who was later Connolly's mistress-cum-servant. Barbara Skelton was briefly married to British literary critic Cyril Connolly (among others!), and Janetta Woolley seems to be primarily known for abandoning her husband and young child. These women were supposed to be quite the lookers in their time and perhaps by standards of that era they were. To me they seemed quite ordinary - neither lookers nor unattractive - just people, so why they had this reputation I do not know. It seems unfortunate that they were saddled with that sort of a credit when they had other qualities, but perhaps if they truly were as shallow as their looks, they were appropriately pigeon-holed.

If this had been a novel I would have ditched it long before the end and probably quite close to the beginning since the women are so uninspiring and the men worse, but it's a true story of real people and the author has dug deep into stories, letters, diaries and such to bring it all out. He did a good job except in that he seemed to dance around chronologically and confusingly, and at one point was comparing one of the four to a character in a novel. I was driving at the time so I could not concentrate sufficiently to follow properly what was being said, and it became annoying so I skipped that chapter rather than let it confuse me on the drive home! Besides, I was much more interested in their less than selfless motivations and their seriously poor choices, and in the life they led, rather than how they looked. This book certainly delivered on that score!

The lives of these women seemed to pivot around Cyril Connolly who sounds to me, from this book like, as the Brits might say, a complete and utter arse. he was a jerk: a needy under-achiever who took money for writing commissions on which he never delivered, who used women terribly, and who evidently was sufficiently charming with his puerile approach to life that these women took pity on him and let him walk all over them. The bigges tproblem seemed ot be how hihgly-strung these people were, constantly at each others' throats and blindly enterign into shallow and doomed relationships. I'm honestly surprised that no-one actually murdered anyone within this dysfunctional group.

I'd never heard of him before except that his name was in a Monty Python song (Eric the Half a Bee), and now, after this, I'll be fine if I never hear of him ever again. Wikipedia's entry on him has this to say at one point about his immediate post-grad situation: "He struggled to find employment, while his friends and family sought to pay off his extensive debts. In summer he went for his annual stay at Urquhart's chalet in the French Alps, and in the autumn went to Spain and Portugal." So while those suckers are digging around paying for his lifestyle, off he goes to the alps and Portugal on vacation. Dick move, Cyril.

But I do have some ideas for characters now that I can use in novels down the line, so I considered this a worthy read, informative about wartime life in the UK, and about how selfish and spoiled some people were while others were living impoverished because of the war and its aftermath. The US doesn't, I think, quite grasp how dire the situation was in Britain, In the US, and apart, of course, from the appalling loss of life once the US entered the war, life pretty much went on as ever. There were no great shortages, no blitz, and no blackouts in cities. In the UK, with food shortages and rationing that continued long after the war ended, with bombs falling, and then the immense work of rebuilding London afterwards, things were very different. This book delivers some of that, but it also inadvertently contrasts it with how spoiled and unappreciative these people truly were.

Escape or Die by Paul Brickhill

Rating: WORTHY!

I've enjoyed two books by Brickhill, who despite these stories covering British World War Two escapes, was Australian, and a WW2 fighter pilot. The first book I ever read of his was The Dam Busters which was excellent. This volume was written directly after that one, in 1952. It tells eight tales of daring escapes in Europe and the middle, and far east.

The stories are these:

• Escape - or Die: tells the story of Charles McCormack Who was stationed in Singa[ore when the Japanese overran the place and he ended up on abrital p[rison camp. Fearing he would be tortured and killed, he made a break for it with several other soldiers and spent five months on the run through the far east jungles luckily, miraculously, and skilfully staying ahead of the enemy until finally he was free.
• Island of Resistance: is about Robert Carson who was shot down over the Netherlands, and managed to eventually hook with the the Dutch resistance until the area was overrun by the advancing British forces.
• The Women Who Took a Hand: James Dowd was shot down over the Germany city of Köln and made his escape to a northern port where he spent some scary and hairy times trying to board a ship so he could gain passage to neutral Sweden.
• The Man Who Would Not Die: Anthony Snell came down over Italy and spent his time hiding out with italian peasants and the local resistance slowly making his way into neutral Switzerland.
• Miracle in the Desert tells of John King who came down in Northern Egypt and spent his time hiking and then driving toward the British lines at El Alamein. He had more than one reversal of fortune until he finally made it out.
• The Man Who Went Prepared: for a man who tried to be completely prepared in case he was shot down, John Whitley hit one problem after another before he even touched the ground, but with the help of locals, he managed over time to make his way to neutral Spain.
• He Rode With the Cossacks: having had two escapes foiled trying to head west to Britain, the third time proved a charm for Cyril Rofe, who decided to head east, the Russian lines being closer than the British. He did indeed ride with Cossacks
• It Feels Like This: Harry Wheeler was reported killed in action because no one saw his parachute come from the Typhoon he was shot down in. He was immediately captured and in pain from schrapnel wounds he was eventually transported to a miserable hospital in Paris where he resisted attempts to transport him further east as the allies moved closer, and was evntually liberated when Paris was.

These were some amazing, inspiring, and daring stories that have already given me a couple of ideas for novels, and I commend this book as a worthy read.

Alabaster Island by MS Kaminsky

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "she was pretty with her long trusses of wavy auburn hair" - I think the author meant 'tresses'! Trusses would be rather weird. He also had post-pone at one point but I don't know if it was written that way with the hyphen, or if it was an artifact of the word processor or the ebook conversion process.

I'm not sure why I began reading this story. It's not very long, but even so, I made it only halfway through before giving up in disgust and in resentment at the time I'd wasted on it. The biggest problem with it was that literally nothing happened in it. I thought that the main character, Marei, would find out she's a mermaid, and maybe she did, but not on the first half of the novel where she found out nothing, did nothing, learned nothing, changed not so much as a millimeter and was one of the most boring characters I've ever read about. Marei isn't very smart and has no imagination, which is hardly surprising since there seems to be zero schooling on the island.

The premise is stupid. Apparently a very limited number of people live on the island and the mayor - a man who lives alone, decides who gets to pair off with who. Why? I don't know. The story is that no one can get pregnant on the island and they have to go off to another tiny island to get pregnant. Why? Who the hell knows? The author isn't telling and no one on the island finds this even remotely strange. The fact is that the reader doesn't know squat about this community because there is zero world-building and not a single person on the island, not even the younger ones, have an iota of curiosity about their life, why they are there, why they have so little freedom, what's elsewhere, off the island, or anything!

At a certain age, they're supposed to note down on a scrap of paper the name of the person they want to 'bind' with, but options are severely limited and the mayor makes the final decision. Everyone is apparently fine with this ridiculous arrangement. Marei encounters a mermaid one day, and isn't even remotely surprised despite mermaids supposedly being extinct. She has no curiosity about this alien being, and the mermaid is one of the most petulant characters worthy of the Tinker Bell Award. There is only the one encounter with this mermaid - at least in what I could stand to read and we learn nothing from it. There are occasional ships that pass the island, but which never interact with it. Why? Who knows. The reader certainly doesn't because the author tells us squat and no one ever questions anything.

The whole story was nonsensical and a waste of my time.

Great Mysteries of the Past by Joseph L Gardner et al

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a Reader's Digest publication with several editors at Gardner Associates contributing, and while it went off the rails on occasion with too much speculative material, some of which was purely fictional, overall it presented a wealth of interesting historical oddities and mysteries. For any writer looking for inspiration for a novel, or even a non-fiction work for that matter, there's a cornucopia of ideas here to whet the imagination.

The book is divided into seven sections, some of which have titles that can be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. I won't go into every item in each section, but I shall list some from each to give a general idea of what's in there:

1. They Vanished Without a Trace This consists of missing explorers, missing children in the Tower of London, missing Nazi gold, the search for El Dorado and Virginia's so-called lost colony among others.
2. Deaths Under Dubious Circumstances This covers European monarchs, African rebel leaders, Shakespeare's rival, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Russian royal family, Descartes, Mozart and Napoleon.
3. Strange and Enigmatic Characters Lawrence of Arabia, Rasputin, Lord Byron, Nostradamus, Heinrich Schliemann, Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Scott, and Rudolf Hess.
4. Guilty or Not Guilty Watergate, Mata Hari, Edgar Allen Poe, the Rosenbergs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Bruno Hauptmann.
5. Half Truth, Half Legend King Arthur, Dracula, Robin Hood, Faust, William Tell, Robinson Crusoe.
6. Unanswered Questions Kaspar Hauser, Pearl Harbor, Shakespeare, the man in the (iron) mask, the sinking of the Lusitania.
7. Fateful Blunders The Spanish armada, the London blitz, the Titanic, Waterloo, Custer, Mussolini.

So: a wide variety of topics, set throughout history, some of which are not as mysterious as this book would like us to believe, but nonetheless interesting stories. I commend this as a worthy read for anyone looking for an interesting read, light entertainment, or story ideas. The chapters on each topic are only three or four pages long, so it makes for a nice convenient read, or a decent bathroom book.

Lost Library by Kate Baray

Rating: WARTY!

My mistake with this book - yet another dumb-ass YA series starter - was to fail to pay attention to the word 'quirky' in the book description. That word is almost always a warning that the novel will be garbage. So, my bad.

The next problem is that the main male character is called 'John'. This is almost as bad as 'Jack', the most over-used action character name ever - and is a sure sign that this book is to be avoided. I don't even recall how this came into my collection. It was just there and I'd evidently begun to read it some time ago, but when I dug back into it I realized why I hadn't continued past chapter six: it was so bad.

Another problem is that this is a shifter book, and with one or two very rare exceptions, I'm not really a fan of those at all. Contingent with this problem is that he's not called a werewolf, but a lycan. This is the same chickenshit approach that you see in fantasy books where the fairies are called fae because the author is too big of a coward to call them what they are. "It might lose me some sales!" Fuck the sales. Tell a story! Write a good novel, for pete's sake!

I read only enough to know this was bad and not worth my time. Other negative reviewers I subsequently discovered have derided the novel as boring, with which I agree, derivative, with which I also agree, and formulaic, with which I also agree! Most shifter books are though, so this is nothing new; the authors of these novels are a very incestuous community. One reviewer mentioned that the main charcter, Lizzie Smith, is a Mary Sue, which is never good.

One reviewer mentioned that the central premise of the novel - which from the description, is that John arrives at Lizzie's house looking for a magical book of power - is quickly shelved in favor of the main female fan-girling over the werewolf. I encountered this as soon as I began re-reading in chapter six, and read: "why was she acting like a crushing teen." Well, it's because the idiot author wrote her that way, duhh!

I about barfed at that and quit reading right there because I could see precisely where this story was going - into the garbage as most of these werewolf stories, all of which are evidently about women who are ovulating - do. There's nothing worse than reading about an alpha male and a bitch in heat, which is typically all that these stories are. Wish-fulfilment much? I'm done with this book and this author. Next please, right this way.

The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason

Rating: WARTY!

This was the last of those seven stories in the Seven Against the Dark introductory first chapter collection I've been reviewing. I ended up not liking a single one of them although the first and the last both captured my imagination for a short time.

The first was about shifters, this last was about vampires. Neither of those are my favorite fictional topics, so it was a long shot anyway, but I really thought this last one might make it until it turned into a pathetic little YA love triangle. This things are so overdone, so tedious, so unimaginative and soooo boring that it almost makes me physically ill when I encounter one of them.

The problem is that all a love triangle like this does is to render the leading female into a spineless and vasillating flibbertigibbet who has no real mind of her own, cares nothing for either guy, in that she's quite happy to keep both of them on a string, or alternately and equally unsavory, she's merely a pawn in the hands of not one, but two men. I can't stand female characters like that and I am no fan of female authors who create such an appaling waste of a female character.

Set in London in the Regency period, which was very roughly the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, the book description has it that "vampires have always lived among them, quietly attacking unsuspecting debutantes and dandified lords as well as hackney drivers and Bond Street milliners. If not for the vampire slayers of the Gardella family, these immortal creatures would have long taken over the world." Really? The world? There are no other vampire slayers on planet Earth, and the secret has been so well-kept that there's not a single person outside of the family and their closest confidants who's aware of the problem, let alone doing something about it? I'm sorry but that is as pathetic as it is irresponsible, and it assumes everybody is stupid.

It's like Trump knowing full-well how dangerous Coronavirus was and doing nothing about it not even when literally hundreds of thousands of people have died. It's also a losing proposition given - from the 60% of this that I read - that vampires are positively rampaging across London. They would need droves of full-time vampire slayers to keep this infestation under control, not one YA chick. None of the premise made any sense.

So anyway, Victoria Gardella Grantworth is the new Buffy. The author freely acknowledges the inspiration, but unfortunately she picks the most idiotic parts of the Buffy story to lay upon her new hero. Although she starts out in fine style and there was even a bit of choice humor (but not enough), the story quickly devolved into every YA cliché imaginable and started going downhill for me. The worst part was when Victoria meets the bad boy, Sebastian Vioget.

This guy is a complete jerk, and a pervert, and yet Victoria lets him get away with pawing her and doing whatever he wants. He has more hypnotic control over her than do the vampires and yet she sees nothing wrong with his constant pawing of her, his demand to see her belly-button, his uninvited touching of her and his stealing one of her gloves. The first time the two encountered each other, I was about ready to ditch this story because I could see exactly where it was going, but foolishly, I decided to give the author a fair chance and I read on only to have my worst fears confirmed.

The second encounter between these two was even mnore ridiculous than the first. This is Victoria, supposedly the champion, and a woman who is raised to interact with the highest of society and behave properly at all times, but who for reason unexplained allows herself to be alone with this stranger, and takes zero offense as this asshole of a letch essentially feels her up? She's a trained vampire slayer who gets an icy chill on her neck when a vampire is close, and has no compunction and very little ineptitude in killiong them, yet she countenances this jerk and his boorish behavior, a man who is the sleazy manager of a club that openly accommodates vampires over which he has no control? It made zero sense.

There was a discrepancy between the freebie version of this book which was offered as part of the 7 volume introductory book that I began reading, and the first volume of this individual novel which I picked up (it's a freebie) when I had thought initially that I might be desatined to enjoy it. In the standalone novel, I read (or more accurately, tried to read!) the following:

"Why do you think it was a vampire attack?" Melly qíììH rniiino hpr pvp<¿ "T nrH Tmsrntt likely got too familiar with Miss Colton"

What it should have read was:

"Why do you think it was a vampire attack?" Melly said, rolling her eyes. "Lord Truscott likely got too familiar with Miss Colton."

The reason I know that is that the compendium version had been corrected whereas the standalone has not.

But I gave up on this in disappointment over the cheesy triangle and the appalling lack of self-respect Victoria has. I thought she was someone I could grow to appreciate as a strong female character, but she is certainly not. She's nothing more than yet another weak and limp YA female produced by yet another female author who should be ashamed of herself for doing this to women. This is garbage, period.

I Promise by Lebron James, Nina Mata

Rating: WORTHY!

This book by yes, that Lebron James, takes a bunch of kids and leads them through a set of promises for their day and their life: promises they can commit to, things they can do, efforts they can make, differences they can bring, and gives an uplifting and positive message for everyone. I promise ain't just for kids anymore! I commend it as a worthy read with a useful message.

Peyton Picks the Perfect Pie by Jack Bishop, Michelle Mee Nutter

Rating: WORTHY!

Payton is a picky eater, but maybe she can learn to like a few more foods if they're nicely baked in a pie? Just in time for Thankgsvgiving, this large format, colorful hardback with illustraitosn by a Nutter and text by a Bishop, takes a tour through sweet and spicy kitchens, and looks at different types of pie and where they came from. I commend it as a fun read to while away that time before the meal or to relax with after you and your kids stuffed yourselves.

Good Morning Zoom by Lindsey Rechler, June Park

Rating: WORTHY!

This hardback large format print book was an amusing take on families confined to home by the pandemic. Aimed at young children, it takes a leisurely stroll through a small family's day, aided by fine illsutrations from June Park and sweetly light text from Lindsey Rechler. I liked it. it might be just the thing to bring your family out of a funk.

Maggie for Hire by Kate Danley

Rating: WARTY!

I've had only one experience with this author prior to this and that was in another story collection which I reviewed about four years ago. I wasn't impressed with that one, and this didn't help my reading relationship with her at all - quite the opposite. So here goes story six in this collection of seven I've been punishing myself reading.

Once again it's in worst person voice and it's a fine exemplar of why 1PV simply doesn't work. The narrator is telling us about a fight she's in - while she's in it. I'm sorry but that's pathetic. The very last thing someone in a fight is thinking - if they're actually thinking as opposed to reacting on instinct, which this person ought to be doing - is describing the fight in supposedly fine and witty prose. Barf. That was enough for me to quit the story right there as being laughably implausible and boring as hell. After I'd been out there and read a few other reviews on it, I was glad I'd wasted no more time on this than I did.

The plot is the usual lame duck bullshit. Maggie MacKay's dad disappeared while working a case and his idiot daughter is following his career. No doubt the author hopes to spin this out as a series arc - finding dad or finding closure. Yawn. In this volume an amorous elf by the name of Killian turns up and he apparently cannot keep his hands to himself, but Maggie has no problem with this. That alone would make me ditch the novel, but reading dialog during this fight like, "Come on, would you just die already?" followed by "You are the one who will die!" from the vampire is seriously juvenile. If there's one thing I can't stand it's these superhero-style comic book fights where they're exchanging quips the entire time. Barf.

So no. Just no. Can't commend this at all. It's warty to the max.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford

Rating: WORTHY!

Finally! I get to positively review a book! This one was great. This is the "Human Story Retold Through Our Genes," and the author knows his stuff. Adam Rutherford has a PhD in genetics from the University College, London, and is a television and BBC radio personality. This book talks about human history looked at through the lens of genetics and is accessible, slyly-humorous (as if you couldn't tell from the title), smart, no-nonsense, and unforgiving of charlatanry.

Starting with our development from earlier hominids, the first section goes into some detail about our relationship to other species and subspecies of humans from early history, covers diseases through the perspective of families in the past including some unfortunately inbred royal families, discusses genetic diseases, influences, and how badly these can sometimes be covered not only in the popular press, but also even by science magazines, and it even ventures into the question of 'are humans still evolving?'.

Part one, called 'How we came to be' is split into four sections: Horny and Mobile, the First European Union, These American lands, and When We Were Kings. Part two 'Who We Are Now' is similarly divided into The End of Race, the Most Wondrous Map Ever Produced by Humankind, Fate, A Short introduction to the Future of Humankind. I have to say I disagree with his comments on race.

The popular scientific positions seems to be that the genome is blind to race, but clearly this isn't true, nor should it be because there are health issues tied to genetics and these affect some ethnicities more than others. On top of that, race, as perceived or self described relaly has a lot to do with how we look, and it's the genome decides this: from the color of our eyes and skin, to the type of hair we have, to the shape of our bodies and faces. It therefore can't be blind to race since racial traits are integral to the genome. That does not of course mean the genome can be used for racist purposes. It cannot and it should not, and I do take the author's point when he makes the case, for example, that something like sickle-cell anemia isn't a purely African problem.

I think the real issue is that the author fails to distinguish between race, and ancestry or ethnicity. Race is misleading and can be used as a barrier when there is no justification for using it that way (or any other way). Ancestry is less problematic. You can't put a genome in front of a geneticist and have them say, "This guy was born in Africa" or "This guy is from Scandinavia," because the genome of everyone is so mixed and diverse these days. You can get a good idea of what a person's ancestry is. This is in fact how those genetic genealogy businesses work - but as the author points out, don't ignore that fact that their assertions can be highly misleading.

To pretend that what are considered racial traits somehow are not represented in our genome in any shape or form is also misleading and problematical if we wish to understand disease. African American women for example, tend toward greater bone density than women from other ethnic groups, but that doesn't mean all of them do and so therefore they never need a bone density scan. Genetic detective work in tracking down who is susceptible to certain traits and possible associated health problems is a form of contact tracing when you get right down to it, and we ought to know by now how important that is in preventing illness.

If you're Asian, for example, you have a 1 in 20 chance of having Alpha-Thalassemia. If you're Ashkenazi Jewish, European, French Canadian, or Cajun, you have a 1 in 25 chance of Cystic Fibrosis, but if you're Asian, your chances improve to 1 in 94 for this problem. Sickle Cell isn't exclusive to those of African ethnicity, but at a rate of 1 in 11, it is notably high. These things are not trivial; they're a matter of health and even life or death. It's not something that can be ignored. Neither is it something that should be used for discriminatory purposes. It's just a fact of life.

I do see Rutherford's point though, and In some ways I understand and applaud it, but methinks his attempt to simplify and even erase it were a little misguided. Besides, living in hopes that everyone will see that the genome is supposedly blind to race, and this will curtail racial issues in society is delusional. Sadly, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than genetics to fix that, and fix it we must. But knowing that ancestry is represented in the genome can be of real value, health-wise.

That quibble aside, I did thoroughly enjoy this book, I liked how accessible it was, loved the humor, and appreciated the non-nonsense approach. I fully commend this as a worthy and educational read.

Justice Calling by Annie Bellet

Rating: WARTY!

I've read and reviewed five previous books from this author and liked them all, but this one? No. I do judge a book by its cover because I've seen so many where the cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the story it conceals. I can't say a lot about this cover model because I don't know for sure, but it looks once again like the cover illustrator maybe got the ethnicity wrong. Maybe. What I can say is that while the cover of this particular volume isn't bad, the covers for this series - from the ones I've seen - are downright exploitative, slutty, and insulting and I refuse to read any further on that basis alone.

The main character is supposed to be an American Crow Indian, so of course she's named Jade Crow like somehow we won't get it otherwise. There are two other American Indians also in the story but they don't get to be called Nez-Perce! Go figure. For some reason they have a Jewish-sounding names. This is the second character named Jade in the first six of these stories, which means there's a problem, and it's not just because of that. It's from the fact that six 'different' stories from six different authors have all somehow ended up sounding largely the same. This is what's known in literary circles as 'a very bad thing'.

So this is number 6 out of an introductory volume of seven stories by various authors. It felt more like number two. It's a shape-shifter story which is far from my favorite genre. The thing began going rapidly downhill from page three when the main male character showed up and was described as what I can only imagine had to be a pre-menstrual fantasy man: "...a Hollywood version of a Norse God. About six foot six with shaggy white-blond hair, features that a romance novel would call chiseled, and more lean muscle than a CrossFit junkie." No. It's you, Ms Author, who described him like this, not some romance author, so why are you describing him like a bad romance author would? I am so tired of this being the standard go-to description. Most guys don't look like this and it's insulting to guys to describe this appearance so consistently, like it's the only guy worth knowing. It's just as insulting as authors decribing women in equivalent shallow fashion.

Despite this and the severe misgivings it induced, I read on, only to have my worst fears confirmed about where this story was going, which was nowhere fast. It turns out this guy is a 'Justice of the Council of Nine'. What's that? The shifter supreme court? These sorts of novels always have councils. It's so tedious. Who gets to be on the council? Is there a shifter election? Or do they savagely fight it out and the alphas get to rule the weak? And why is there one single guy who gets to be "judge, jury, and executioner"? It's nonsensical. Especially given how whack this guy is. He blunders in, accusing Jade of being a murderer based on a vision. Seriously? Is this how he operates? Snap judgments without so much as an investigation? The guy is a dumbass, period. He's the male equivalent of the insulting and stereotypical blonde ditz.

I reached chapter three and read this: "My whole body, all my senses, was aware of the huge, handsome man only inches away from me." Seriously? This is after he unjusifiably accused her of being a murderer, and they'd gone next door to the Leprechaun's junk shop and found a stuffed fox which actually turned out to be the mom to one of Jade's friends. That was freaking hilarious to me, which I'm sure wasn't what the author intended. But after all this, all she has on her shallow mind is this huge handsome man? Fuck that shit. I ditched the novel right there and moved on to the next one in this increasingly sad collection. This particular story is garbage. Period.

Feyland the Dark Realm by Anthea Sharp

Rating: WARTY!

This is the fourth in a collection of seven introductory stopries to urban fantasy topics - and this is mostly shape shifters unfortunately. I guess urban fantasy has a limited meaning to these authors. Note that I skipped numnber 3 because I already (negatively) reviewed it some time ago, having read it - or as much of it as I could stomach, anyway - separately.

This is supposed to be some sort of crossover - not only soft fantasy with hard computer, but also a game with reality. I wasn't impressed. I'm neither a fantasy fan (especially not when the author doesn't have the guts to call them fairies!) nor a computer gaming story adherent, but I was intrigued by this mashup or the two. Unfortunately, I did not like the style in which this was written, nor the tone of voice, nor the endless clichés the story was falling into.

Jennet Carter is fifteen and of course the new kid in school, and of course she hooks up with the bad boy. Barf. That turned me off right there. She needs him to get her going in this new computer game because for reasons unexplained, she needs to re-enter the dark realm and confront the 'faerie' queen. Sorry, but no. Two stories in a row in this 7 story volume and both are about maidens in distress needing a shining knight to save them? Barf. I should have steered clear of this story just because it uses the word 'realm' but I did not and I blame only myself for getting into it when I really knew better. Fortunately I did not waste much time on this.

There appears to be a lot of backstory here that wasn't told. Whether that comes out in pages I did not read, I can't say, but there seemed to be a ton of it and I sure would not be remotely be interested in wading through that in the form of infodumps, flashbacks, and so on. Maybe the author was aiming to bring it all out during extensive and tedious monologuing by the villain later, but that would have been far worse. Based on my experience of this, I cannot commend it.

Dark Angel by Christine Pope

Rating: WARTY!

This is the second of the series of intro books in a collection of seven of them that I've been reading lately, and for me this marks three strikes against this author.

This is a supernatural, urban fantasy, paranormal, whatever kind of a story, which is not something I'm that into, but once in a while I like to stretch and see what’s what in genres I donlt normally habituate. I'm always looking for a good, absorbing story, so while I held out little hope for this one, based on long and sad experience, I was open to something engaging me.

It wasn't this story that woudl do it! It turned me off from the start. First of all it’s worst person voice, and a sad and whiney first person this Angela character comes off to be, too. It made for a dreary and boring read, and I started skimming the pages almost right away. Nothing showed any sign of improving, so after about ten pages of this I gave up on it, and moved on to story three.

The set-up here is that Angela is part of a coven, and she's in her twenty-first year, which is when she's supposed to bond with a 'consort' to set her up for her future as head of the clan. Why a consort rather than a partner or a husband or whatever, goes unaddressed. Why a witch even needs a man at all is left unanswered, apart form vague hand-waving at the idea that this will ensure she comes into her full powers. What - a witch is uselsess without a man to trigger her? Shades of Grace Slick's Across the Board!

Why the 21st year is the magical one also goes wanting an explanation. So Angela is supposed to be this eventual coven leader, and she's a witch, but apparently it’s never crossed her mind, nor one single mind of the generations of witches that came and went prior to her that maybe, being a witch, she can find some spell to point her to her prospect? Apparently despite their witch powers, all of these morons just sit around all day singing "Some day my prince will come" or something like that. I guess. I'm sorry, but that is truly pathetic and I am not interested. Why are female authors so often the worst possible enemy to their female charcters? Wait is that enemy or enema? Does it even matter?

In Angela's case it’s all exacerbated because she's a special snowflake who has this recurring dream in which her man shows up, but she has no idea who he is. He's predictably tall and handsome - in this case also dark - with broad shoulders and all the other studly traits women apparently fantasize about bedding when approaching ovulation. The book description actually says that 'the clock is ticking,' which is even more pathetic. The opening pages were exactly what I’d expect from an author who wants to drag out an average story to wasteful serial lengths: slow, unimaginative, humdrum and boring. I cannot commend this one based on what I skimmed of it, unless you want a non-pharmaceutical means of putting yourself to sleep for the night.

Bloodfire by Helen Harper

Rating: WARTY!

I should say up front that I am not a fan of werewolf or vampire stories, or any of that kind of thing. I've read a few and I've been almost consistently disappointed in them because they're so tedious and so conformal. I know many readers enjoy predictable by-rote stories that retread familiar territory, but I've never been one of those; hence my aversion to series. I quickly tire of reading the same thing over and over again. I prefer authors who do not take the road most traveled.

Initially that's what appealed to me about this story because the author seemed like maybe she was going my way. Yes, she still had the ludricous idea of a pack and an alpha male and all that shit, but this pack had a human member, and although she was a little weird, she was not a shifter. This created problems when trouble arose and the "Lord Alpha" came to visit the local pack. It sounded interesting.

In the British Isles, at least as far as the mainland is concerned, Cornwall is about as far south as you can get, but for me, this is when the story itself started going south. It didn't help that the author seems clueless that Cornwall does indeed get Earthquakes - about one every other year or so. But with regard to the story, I hear you objecting that these are wolves. Wolves live in packs! There's an alpha male. Why is this wrong? Well, it actually is wrong!

Among real wolves, there is not a lone alpha male; there's an alpha couple. This couple does all or most of the breeding, so pretty much all of the pack is related. Despite this, everyone else, while a part of the pack and deriving certain benefits from that, is pretty much out for his or herself, trying to rise up the hierarchy, and packs are not set in stone. Nor are they all best friends all the time. They wil band together to protect their turf, but within the pack, which can number from two to thirty or so wolves, levels of aggression can rise and fall, and pack members can leave and start their own pack.

But there is no Lord Alpha Male (LAM for short! LOL!). Now werewolves are supposed to be different, but for some reason this pack identifty has taken over the mythology and everyone has bought into it. I have no idea why. And the leader is called 'Lord'? Seriously? What is this? Star Wars? It's the same with vampire stories and it turns me right off them.

This story had the makings of an engaging one, but the more I read, the more humdrum and the less compelling of a read it became. Mackenzie, the main character, was first person voice and this is usually a mistake. I managed to read it, but every time she said "I blah blah blah...", and "Hey lookit me!" and "It's all about me!" and "Check out what I did next!" it reminded me this was a story, and I couldn't get lost in it. "Listen to me" is a great Buddy Holly song. It makes for a sucky narration voice.

Anyway, the pack took her in as a child and no one told her why, but because she's been there so long, she's considered by most to be a pack member, even though she doesn't behave like one herself: she's constantly off following hunches without asking permission or sharing what she knows. So much for the pack! Naturally there's the "school bully" which again turned me off. Of course, she has a special snowflake power which is at the root of the story, but when we finally got around to addressing that, the ending was really rather flat and unsatisfying to me, and predictably, she goes rogue. No surprises there.

The introduction of Lord Corrigan, the national alpha male turned me right off yet again, because he's clearly this macho studly teasing flirtatious dominant male. Even as he curses Mackenzie for insolence, he inexplicably lets her get away with anything she wants to do, and he's simultaneously so weak, useless, and stupid, that he cannot even tell shes not a shifter much less a werewolf. So much for his vaunted powers.

At least the author doesn't call them lycans, I guess, so there's that. Calling werewovles 'lycans' just to try and sound special is as pathetic as calling fairies 'fae'. It's chickenshit and authors should be ashamed of it. But, anyway, if he's the capo dei capi, that doesn't automatically make him the capo di tutti i capi, because presumably there are other packs in other nations.

That's one problem with this story - the world-building just isn't there. Naturally no one - least of all me - wants a story bogged-down with backstory, but it doesn't hurt to toss in a line here and there filling in some detail during the course of telling the story. Instead, we get a vague hand-wave about this local pack, considered by the human residents to be a cult, and yet no one finds this odd? MI5, which is the Brit equivalent of the FBI, has no interest at all in this nationwide network of cults? Really? Had this been set in 1820, fine, but in 2020 with terrorism embedded in the landscape it doesn't work.

There's a central authority pack in London, we learn. Why London? If these wolves despise humans as much as they clearly do according to this novel, then why emulate us at all? For that matter, if they're so superior, or think they are, why even tolerate us? Why not wipe us out? Why even use human names and descriptions for themselves? Like I said, 'lycan' is blessedly avoided, but werewolf is still used. It makes no sense to me, yet it's one of those things readers are expected to just let slide.

We're told nothing about how the wolves make a living or pay for food - or even what food they eat, apart from vague allusions to someone's bad cooking. But why do they even cook their food? I'll tell you why. It's because the author wasn't writing about werewolves any more than one-trick pony author Stephenie Meyer was writing about vampires. They're both writing about humans with a gossamer-thin patina of urban fantasy sprinkled over it.

Does this sound like a litany of nitpicking? Too bad! For me a story either works or it doesn't. When a female author perpetuates this nonsense: "much in the same way that women’s periods aligned themselves if they lived together in close quarters for a long time," it's more than nit-picking, because that menses alignment? It doesn't happen! Like werewolves, it's a myth. Real nitpicking would be to mention that when using the app in night mode, the chapters are so pale against the background that it's hard to read them, or pointing out that when the author writes, "you tended to become somewhat inure to nature’s most reliable outcome" she really should have used 'inured'.

Real problems with writing are what turn me off a book. If it's entertaining enough and delivers a good story I can put up with a lot of issues, but if you, as a reader, are constantly pulled out of it by poor writing choices and shoddy or inconsistent world-building, and disappointed by a flat ending, it's not worth reading the story at all, and this one makes me wish I could have the time back so I could have read something else instead.

Andersen's Fairy Tales volume 2 by Hans Christian Anderson

Rating: WORTHY!

Note these are not your childhood fairy-tales. Some are more like horror stories. The Little Mermaid isn't Disney's mermaid, which for me was a good thing because these stories as told by Anderson, have far more originality, heart and substance than anything Disney has ever animated.

The stories are as listed below in order. They're easily looked-up online so I will not detail any of them. For me the most interesting were The Wild Swans, The Little Mermaid, The Pen and the Inkstand, The real princess, aka The Princess and the Pea, but not in a favorable way. Note that chidren's author Sally Huss has a good take on that in her Princess Charlotte and the Pea which I reviewed favorably in September, 2015.

For me the most amusing one was The Portuguese Duck and that was partly because of the story itself, and partly because of the hilarious take on it by the narrator, Eve Watkinson, who read many of these tales (along with another narrator, Christopher Casson). I don't know what accent she was doing, because she used the same one, pretty much, in the very next story set in Scandinavia, but in The Portuguese Duck she had me laughing out loud.

Anyway, here's the list:

• The Flax
• The Daisy
• The Pea Blossom
• The Storks
• The Wild Swans
• The Last Dream of the Old Oak
• The Portuguese Duck
• The Snow Man
• The Farmyard Cock and the Weathercock
• The Red Shoes
• The Little Mermaid
• Buckwheat
• What Happened to the Thistle
• The Pen and the Inkstand
• The Teapot
• Soup From A Sausage Skewer
• What the Goodman Does Is Always Right
• The Old Street Lamp
• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep
• The Drop of Water
• The Swineherd
• The Metal Pig
• The Flying Trunk
• The Butterfly
• The Goblin and the Huckster
• Everything in its Right Place
• The Real Princess
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• Great Claus and Little Claus

I commend this as a worthy listen.

Night Night Norman by Marie Dimitrova, Romi Caron

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is a hard-bound, large-format print book, with thirty pages of full-color, full-page illustrations by accomplished artist Romi Caron, and which is written amusingly by author Marie Dimitrova. The story is of Norman, a large chesnut horse who is cared for by Ellie. She lavishes attention and food on him in the evening and then disappears for the night.

Norman decides that he has to know where she goes, but he doesn't whinny about it. instead, one evening, he sneaks out and follows her - she looking adorable in her dungarees and galoshes, he sneaking around trying to discover where she went. And of course, havoc ensues. Apparently not having much horse sense, Norman gets into places where he shouldn't be - and can barely fit. Is he a whickered person? No, but he is a bit naughty, and he messes with stuff he doesn't really understand. With no one around telling him to "Hoof it," he leaves a mess - and no, not that kind of a mess. Let's just hazard a guess that Norman's middle name is probably 'Disorder'! Once he's back in his stall, he's a bit more stable and reins in his impulses, but is he about to cease these nighttime 'for hays'? In a word: neigh!

Obviously this book isn't written for a guy like me, but I was happy to get saddled with it because it was good for a few horse laughs, and the artwork is beautiful. I happily commend it as a worthy read for children - because of course, it takes the right tack....

Beast by Christine Pope

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum: "that field of expertise was much more nuanced and difficuLieutenant Yes, miracles were still possible, but in order to rebuild, there had to be something left to build upon." Note that the previous sentence is an exact copy of the text from the novella. The word 'difficult' is truncated and mashed into the word 'Lieutenant' and some text is obviously missing here.

This was a really short story, barely a novella. Even so, I made it only about two-thirds the way through, because it was so unrealistic and so poorly-written. It's supposed to be volume zero of some series which I definitely have zero intention of reading after this nonsense.

When I say it lacks realism, I'm not talking about when the female main character Nora Whitaker "retraced her steps, went through the clean room and back out into the main hallway" because that's not how a clean room works. You don’t go through a clean room in your 'street' clothes. You gown, mask, and wear bootees to enter!

This so-called 'clean' room is located in a lab on Neptune's moon Triton. I don't even know why they were on Triton. It made no sense unless the doctor, Raymond Killian, was hoping to escape the 'Copehagen Protocols' by doing his work some three billion miles from Copenhagen, but the author herself tripped up that idea by having Nora raise the matter, implying that the protocols still applied even out there around the most distant planet in our solar system (not counting the several dwarf planets).

Killian was disfigured in an accident and wears extensive prosthetics, including a mask. Whittaker is thrilled to work with him because he's so brilliant, supposedly. She's able to solve a problem for him, but despite months quickly passing by, with the two working together, the author fails to do any work to show that they're becoming closer emotionally. She expects us to take it on faith while the whole time when this happens is essentially skipped-over, which for me was a fail when it comes to making a connection between them. It betrays the events the author goes on to describe later. That was a big part of the inauthenticity problem for me.

At first I thought Killian was actually a robot or a mechanical avatar controlled by Killian while his real body was hidden away behind the locked door to the private part of his lab where Nora never gets to go, but my idea was wrong. Honestly I wish I had been right because it might have made for a better story. At least I have some ideas of my own for a sci-fi novel based on Beauty and the Beast now, right?! LOL!

The lab was a bad venue for any romance because it was so sterile, by which I do not mean clinically (we know it was not, based on Killian's totally inadequate 'clean room' protocols!), I mean it lacked any other people, which rendered it a bit of a stretch that one guy had accomplished all he had with no assistants or assistance. Adding the idiot Trumpian Lieutenant just made things worse, because it rendered Whittaker the helpless maiden in distress and Killian her rescuer, which never goes down well for me, and is insulting to women in general. And why were those people military guys and not just security?

What the author ought to have done is have a couple of lab assistants, including a rival female instead of the lieutenant. That would have made for a better story. Consider this: given that Killian was severly disfigured, where were the people who designed and applied the prosthetics he wore? They already knew everything about his condition; why were one or two of them not working for him at the lab?

It made Whittaker look shallow and clueless that she didn't consider this and wonder about it, and it would have been easy for the author to make up excuses for why others were not there if she truly had wanted this complex lab to unrealistically have only Killian working in it: "Oh the doctor wanted to remain on Earth so he could continue his work in advanced prosthetics." "Oh my previous lab assistants didn't want to move to Triton," and so on. If the author didn't want any humans there, why not mention that he used robots for the work? That would have given Whittaker an opening to deepen the story by having her wonder if Killian himself was a robot.

So in short this is a big fail, an unworthy read and I cannot commend it. Please read on if you don't mind a big spoiler.

One of the biggest problems for me, was when Killian invited Whittaker to dinner in his private quarters with the teasing promise that he had something to show her. The something he wanted to share was a new body, which he had somehow created - built, grown, whatever (the author's a bit vague about it, at least as far as I read this story). Apparently it's a sort of cyborg - rather like the original terminator character from the first of the James Cameron movies. It's not actually a clone of him, so why is there a problem with the Copenhagen protocols (whatever those are supposed to be)?!

His plan is to transfer his consciousness into this new body. Rather than be thrilled for him, and marvel at his brilliance and at this opportunity to help countless others who have a disfigurement or otherwise problematic bodies. All Whittaker does is whine about the Copenhagen protocol and about how he's just fine the way he is - when he clearly isn't. Obviously the author is just doing this so she can maintain the 'beauty and the beast' fiction, but the writing is so poorly done that I just didn't buy it.

There's no problem with someone falling for a person with a handicap or a disfigurement by any means; the problem is that this author didn't do the work to get us there, and when Whittaker, out of the blue, just kisses his crispy lips it felt icky rather than romantic precisely because it felt more like she was doing it for the kick of seeing what it was like, rather than because she had genuine and strong feelings for him. This says nothing of the inappropriate relationship which Whittaker never once questions. Killian is her boss, so it's ethically wrong for him to be involved with her, he being the authority figure and her employer. To have neither Whittaker nor Killian even - at least fleetingly - mention this was bad writing, especially when Whittaker had baulked so strongly at his new body, because it contrevened some vague cloning protcol in her mind.

What did get mentioned was what a scandal it would be if anyone found out they were invovled. Not if they found out about his new body. Oh no - but if they thought she and he were having an affair! Seriously? The lab is sealed - no one gets in or out except Whittaker and Killian, and they always work long hours so why would anyone think there was anything going on - or conversely why would there not be an assumption that something was going on? It made no sense to suddenly, at that moment begin to doubt and quesiton. Again, badly-written, Ms Pope.

Plus it made no sense! If he could grow flesh like this, when why not grow it directly over his existing body? Maybe his body was badly damaged, but clearly it still functioned perfectly underneath the scarring, so it woudl seem that the scarring was, despite being very bad, superficial in important regards. You would think he could have added this new flesh, slowly replacing the scarred portions. We're already doing face transplants. I think it would have made for a better story too - especially if the replacement had gone wrong and this was why he was a 'beast'. But as I said, I didn't buy this. The writing felt lazy and ill-considered, and even as a work of fiction, it felt unreal and ridiculous and I cannot commend it for those reasons.

The Making of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith by JW Rinzler

Rating: WARTY!

This was less-than-thrilling, I'm sorry to report. Let me say up front that I am not a Star Wars fan. I used to be. I thought the fourth and fifth episodes weren't bad at all. The sixth was execrable, but despite this, I watched all three prequels, and I liked the third of those. The first was marred by the little Anakin road-racing garbage and such, but it wasn't awful. The timing was off laughably such that there was a disconnect between the first three and the last three, but I was willing to let it slide.

Then came Rogue One which was forgettable, but okay. The final straw though was episode seven which was quite literally a remake of episode four. I quit watching all things Star Wars at that sorry point. By then Disney had been coming up with zero that was new. They were - and are - simply remaking their old stuff - all their tedious racist and sexist animations as live action, and all their Star Wars as clones of previous releases. It's pathetic and disgraceful. I was so disgusted with Disney's endless raking over its own ancient coals that I have given-up watching all Disney stuff altogether - with the sole exception of Marvel which to me continues to entertain and to bring new things to the screen. I recently saw and enjoyed The New Mutants for example - and in the movie theater yet!

My interest in this book then was not Star Wars, but movie-making itself: the process. How do these guys get this from concept to script to shooting script to action on the set, to creating the models costumes and CGI, and to finishing up with a movie to release? There was some of that in here, but essentially what this was, was a diary - a diary-a in fact since it was so rambling, and I quickly lost interest in the Lucas worship and how he essentially had everything laid out for him.

He's the monarch and he flicks a finger or says and word and "it shall be so!" Great. But I don't care about how lordly he was or how much power he had. That wasn't my interest. So, I skipped and skimmed and read a bit here and there, but mostly I skipped because it was tedious to read. It offered very little of what I wanted to learn - of what I'd hoped for. If you want a rambling diary, then this is for you. It wasn't for me, and I can't commend it.

Inside Dickens London by Michael Paterson

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a print book I picked up some time ago and finally got around to reading. Normally I don't keep these books after reading - instead I donate them to the local community library for others to enjoy, but this is a rare case where this one will go back on my shelf for use as a reference book. Not that I plan on writing anything Dickensian in the forseeable future, but you never know! The title was wrong grammatically in that it needed another 's' after the apostrophe, but I'll let that slide!

The book was well-researched, and packed with information on the era, but note that while it was full of interesting trivia, it was focused on London as the title indicates, where Dickens resided from the age of ten, not on Portsmouth where Dickens was born, nor on any other corner of England. Dickens lived from 1812 - 1870 and there's a lot of interesting stuff to pick up that you might not even have guessed at had you not got this information to hand. I never knew, for example, that it was illegal to get married in the afternoon during Dickens's lifetime! How about that? Weddings were required to be held in the forenoon. Unfortunately, the book doesn't go into why this was.

The information is packed into nine useful categories:

• The Place
• The People
• Shops and Shopping
• City and Clerk
• Transport and Travel
• Entertainment
• The Poor
• Crime and Punishment
• The Respectable

Each of these made for an engrossing (if sometimes disturbing) read and was solid with information, including many lengthy quotes not just from Dickens, but from others who lived in this time and wrote their observations down, so there are non-English perspectives as well as one or two observations from women. I found it interesting and potentially useful as a writer' resource. I commend it.