The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

So here's the one that started it all. Originally published in 1976, the book took a different approach from most books on evolution and started from the perspective of the gene and the genome in general, almost imparting a personality and ambition to genes to propagate themselves at all costs. Dawkins presents it as a sort of a competition, with the most ruthless genes succeeding and weaker ones be damned. In a way it makes sense, but like any perspective on science, it's not the whole story, hence the criticism and controversy this book has stirred up. The fact is though, that it does help sometimes to turn a topic on its head and think outside the box in order to gain a deeper understanding. That's what this book did and why it became so controversial and garnered criticism. I commend it as a worthy read.

A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

This is a collection of Dawkins's essays and is divided into sections containing ramblings on various topics with section headings such as "Science and Sensibility," "Light Will be Thrown," "The Infected Mind," "There is All Africa and Her Prodigies in us" among other topics. The essays, of which there are over thirty, cover a variety of subjects including evolution, fossils, ethics, religion, and as the book cover suggests, "reflections on hope, lies, science, and love." While this is not my favorite of his works, and may be a bit far ranging for some readers, I commend this as a worthy read for anyone who wants a complete collection.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

I've read a heck of a lot of what Dawkins has written and it's hard to believe that I've never published a review of any of his books yet, so that gets set straight right now, right here! The first book that brought him to prominence was The Selfish Gene getting on for a half century ago now, and that's one that also set the precedent for controversy that has followed a lot of what he's done and written since. He's been putting out books every few years and also doing TV documentaries. This particular book came out in 2006.

The aim of it is to undermine religious arguments claiming to establish the existence of a god. The book has been criticized for failing to tackle some arguments, but it was never Dawkins's intention to write a definitive refutation of all religious arguments, especially not the ones he considered have been refuted long before he published this. There are other books for that such as Atheism, the Case Agaisnt God and The Atheist Debator's Handbook which I shall review on another occasion.

This book covers questions of whether any god exists - what the ideas are - what people believe, and then considers the arguments for any god's existence - the so-called religious "proofs" from yesteryear, including Thomas Aquinas's "proofs" and so on. Chapter 4 is titled "Why There Almost Certainly is no God" with Dawkins characteristiclaly taking the scientific perspective which errs on the side of caution rather than stridently staking out a position which is what the creationists and other believers do. He points out that the proposition is so lacking in evidence or support that it's really not worth considering seriously.

In subsequent chapters he discusses morality, why religion isn't harmless (as if that wasn't self-evident), and childhood abuses. The book is a solid refutation of religious belief and dominance in society, and is a good starting point for any atheist to educate themselves and arm themselves with some good solid arguments to refute religious claptrap and bullshit. I commend it.

Evolution and the Myth of Creationism by Tim M Berra

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

The first is Tim Berra's work. At the time he wrote this, he was a professor of zoology at Ohio State university - that is, not some hydrologist or electrical engineer, or some other field entirely unrelated to biology, paleontology, physics, or cosmology like the real scientists are, and the creationists most certainly are not!

Berra's book is simed at open-minded readers (i.e. not creationists!) and laid out in lay-person's terms. It's divided into the following five sections:

1. What is Evolution?
2. Geologic Time and the Fossil Record
3. The Explanatory Power of Evolution
4. The Evolution of life and the Rise of Humans
5. Science, Religion, Politics, Law, and Education

The book is only some 140 pages long, not counting the extensive appendices and other supporting materials, but it competently covers, and in sufficient detail without being exhaustive or exhausting, enough of the basics about how science works to get you up and running. It explains why evolution is not a theory as expressed in everyday use, but a scientific theory, which is a different thing altogether, and it goes into what evidence supports it, giving many, many examples of evolution at work, and how we know what we know. In short, this is a solid beginning for anyone honestly trying to understand evolution, and I commend it as a worthy read.

Moonburner by Claire Luana

Rating: WORTHY!

If this author's name had been Claire Luna that would have been perfect, wouldn't it? Or maybe even better had it been Clair de Lune! LOL! I have a policy never to read books that have words like 'saga', 'chronicles' or 'cycle' on the cover. It did not say that on this cover, so it was only later that I discovered this was part of a tetralogy - or perhaps more accurately, a trilogy with a prequel added as an afterthought (maybe).

But I did read it and as it turned out, despite an issue or two here and there, it was a worthy read! That's not to say I will read any more of this 'cycle' (seriously WTF is a 'cycle'? Could it be called a bike? Maybe I'll write a bike one day. Or maybe I shall write the first Cycle Saga Chronicles?). But I digress. To me, this book was complete in itself, and certainly I feel no compulsion to pursue this story any further, which begs the question: why did the author?

I dunno. I guess there's pressure in the publishing world to write trilogies rather than standalones because they can vacuum up far more money from readers even if you give away the first one for free or at a discount. I will play no part in that. All of my books are standalones and complete in and of themselves, and many of them are free, especially during these difficult times when people are stuck at home so much.

This is because I don't write in any hope of becoming rich or milking money from readers. I write because I have to. I have no choice. If I'm not writing I go into withdrawal! Yes, my name is Ian Wood and I am a creative fiction addict. It's been about a half-hour since my last fix.... So, even if my novels are set in the same world as other stories, they're still standalones - except, that is, for the Little Rattuses™, but that's a children's series and with children's books, the rules are out the window - as indeed were The Little Rattuses....

Anyway, let's focus here. This story is about Kai - a young woman a few months from her momentous eighteenth birthday when her Moonburner powers are supposed to manifest. But it's a problem with Kai because she lives disguised as a boy, in a Sunburner village and they're at war with the Moonburners. This is actually more of a battle of the sexes because women are predictably of the Moon, and men of the Sun.

But of course Kai is outed and exiled. She survives against the odds and eventually is taken in at the Moonburner academy. That's not what it's called, but it's what it is - a special snowflake story with the Harry Potter-esque Kai arriving at Moonwarts. "You're a Moonburner, Harry!" The thing is that it's written well-enough that it doesn't feel trope-y or clichéd for the most part, and I appreciated that.

Why Kai's powers are supposed to manifest themselves at eighteen goes unexplained. There really is no difference between a person on the last day of their seventeenth year and the first of their eighteenth, so it's purely arbitrary and no explanation is given. I was willing to let that go despite that fact that's it's so trope that these powers arrive at eleven, or thirteen or whatever. It's usually an odd year for some reason, and it never really has any justification.

Anyway, the power allows her to utilize the Moon's light to do somewhat magical things. Why the Moon's light is different from the Sun's goes unexplained. Let's face it, the Moon makes no light of its own; it's just really good at reflecting the sun's light, so why are these two - Sunburner and Moonburner - different? That's another thing that's not gone into. Again I let it go.

I didn't get quite why Kai had to be raised as a boy, but maybe it was to do with her hair? I think I missed something somehwere, because on the one hand I thought the Moonburner's hair was supposed to become silver (the Sunburner's becomes gold) on her birthday, but apparently Kai's was silver from birth and her parents had to dye it to hide her true nature otherwise she'd have been left in the desert as a baby to die. This harks back to the ridiculous myth that the Spartans did the same to their children who were deemed unworthy. Maybe I misread or misunderstood something about the hair, but why there was no outrage about this barbaric treatment of newborns is left unaddressed.

Moving along, when Kai starts her classes at the Moonburner citadel, she also begins to learn that things are not what they seem and becomes involved in a literal underground. She also falls for the trope muscled Sunburner dude, which was sad and predictable for me. I don't know whether this is wish-fulfillment from these female authors or whether it's just that these book are conceived while these authors are ovulating, but it's insulting, you know? Anyway, in this particular novel, it wasn't dealt with too badly by the author, so I appreciated that, too.

Overall it was very readable, and I enjoyed it. I liked Kai as a character and enjoyed her gradual rise. It felt natural and organic, so there was nothing forced or magical about how she grew as a character, and that's both unusual in a YA novel and very much appreciated by me as a reader. I commend this novel as a worthy read.

The Grand Inquisitor's Manual by Jonathan Kirsch

Rating: WARTY!

This was a print book I picked up somewhere a long time ago, and just now got around to reading. Frankly, it was boring. Parts were interesting. Many parts were very saddening and even anger-inducing, but that said, it's history and there's nothing we can do about it now except to resolve to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again.

The truly sad thing is that even though we, as individuals, may resolve that and mean it, things are really no better now than they were. No, we typically do not have torture chambers and an organized pogrom against 'others' as we had back then, but people are still demonized, villified and harassed for their beliefs, or their skin color or their sexuality, or their weight, or something else, even in a country like the USA. We've seen this dehumanizing villainy stoked and encouraged by people in positions of power over the last four years in particular, and hatred, division, detestation, and denial have almost become the norm.

With regard to this book, the problem is that it seemed so repetitive. Even as it talked of different locales and different inqusisitors, the talk was largely the same - I mean there was not a lot of variation in how they did this grisly work from one year to the next, or from one country to another. It's the same thing over and over, and the kind of extended exposure to these stories in a book like this seems to serve only to inure and numb people to these horrors.

It saddens me to have to report that I grew bored of it by the time I was about halfway through, and DNF'd it. I can't commend it as a history book unless you're really into documentary detail about the horrific way humans have treated one another through the years, but the religious torture of people still continues in a less organized and less aggressive way.

As I post this, news has just come out of the now right-wing US Supreme Court siding with religious idiots in allowing them to gather en masse - for mass - meaning that Coronavirus, which is already out of control in the US, is now being encourgaged to attack and slaugther many tens of thousands more people than it has already. The fallout from this is going to be horrific. It could be prevented, but selfish, rank stupidity rules this year, it seems.

I don't recall what I was expecting from this book when I bought it, but perhaps my feeling for it has changed since then. Anyway for me, this one was not a worthy read for one reason or another.

Little Red Sleigh by Erin Guendelsberger, Elizaveta Tretyakova

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a sweet book written by Guendelsberger and finely-illustrated by Tretyakova which relates the charming story of the little red sleigh who sets out to find fulfilment in life. It was really well put-together, and I appreciated that nothing was done to try and anthropomorphize the sleigh: it was always a sleigh and always looked like one. It never pretended to be anything different, but still it had a personality which came through to the reader.

I guess if you wanted to be perverse, you could argue that maybe it would have been a better story if the sleigh had been represented as trying to better itself, but that fact is that it was doing exactly that, even as it remained true to its purpose and I liked that. It wanted to be the best it could be at what it was, and that's inspiration enough. I commend this as a worthy read.

Santa.Com by Russell Hicks, Matt Cubberley, Ryley Garcia

Rating: WARTY!

This was an overwrought story about corporate take-over, and modernization, and mechanization, and the heroic elf who rescues Christmas despite his being held as a slavish toymaker! Usually I might get with a story like this, but this one didn't move me at all. To me it was so overdone and confused that I just could not get with it. I can't commend it.

Pete the Cat's 12 Groovy Days of Christmas by Kimberley Dean, James Dean

Rating: WORTHY!

Here's a fun Christmas book (again, it ain't cheap, but it is a hardback) that takes a new riff off the 12 days song, including fuzzy gloves, guitars strumming, and ugly sweaters. It does mention cupcakes which once in a while are fun, but you wouldn't want to eat them every day for twelve days if you know what's good for you! That aside, the book is amusing and well-illustrated, and makes for a worthy read.

The Night Before Christmas by Major Henry Livingston Jr, or Clement C Moore

Rating: WARTY!

Having said that in my previous review, if you're a die-hard traditionalist (see what I did there - got a non-Christmassy Christmas movie mention in my review?!), you can always go get that abominable poem here (for a price - all these Christmas books seen to be expensive hardbacks), and suffer through it with your family. This one ain't bad - it has the poem, and decent illustrations, but it shows santa smoking a pipe, and I wouldn't buy it, nor would I recommend it because the title isn't even the title of the poem! It's actually called: A Visit from St. Nicholas

Dasher by Matt Tavares

Rating: WORTHY!

So it's time for the grouch to review a few Christmas books even though it's not even Thanksgiving as of this post. I'm not a big fan of Christmas, in particular the crass commercialism that starts in friggin' September for goodness sake. For me, Christmas has typically been the chance to celebrate the winter solstice and see some good movies on TV, so if you set me up with a drink, some decent food and a couple of decent movies and then go off and play all the games you want, and try on all the sweaters and pajamas, and slippers you desire, and I won't care! I'll be happy!

You know, I've never bought into those dumb reindeer names that everyone but me seems to have inexplicably embraced, because I never grew up with that abominable poem in my head. I have two problems with it and one is the sheer sexism in the explicit claim that only male reindeer can pull the sleigh. And for that matter, even the rather racist stance that only reindeer can pull the sleigh. One thing I agree on with this author though, is that I always did feel that Rudolf got way more credit than he deserved for the gig, so I applaud Matt Tavares in bringing Dasher (or whatever his real name was) to the fore in this story, which is well-illustrated, nicely-written and tells and decent story.

Mindfulness for Little Ones by Heidi France

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a worthwhile book about encouraging children to be more aware of their surroundings and their inner feelings. It's never a bad thing to bring that sort of awareness to children, and people tend to forget how rich an environment it is for young ones, especially having come into the world inclined to put everything in their mouth!

While that's not a great idea, especially as one grows older, that same curiosity about sight, sound and texture should not diminish as we age, but become more important in terms of staying grounded, and staying in touch with our surroundings.

Environmental awareness isn't just about safety, although a book like this can seriously help with that, and it's especially important to try to remain calm and focused in this age when we we're stressed over a pandemic disease that thanks to the appalling incompetence of leadership at the highest levels, is running unchecked through the USA, on top of racism, LGBTQIA discrimination, misogyny, as well as the poisoning of the planet and our heating of it almost to the point of no return, all of which has gone unchecked, if not exacerbated, over the last few years.

It doesn't hurt to be sensitive to what's going on in the world. It doesn't hurt to know what's going on inside ourselves either, especially when health concerns are growing. I commend this book as a worthy and educational read not just for children but for the adults who might read it to those children.

No Reading Allowed by Raj Haldar, Chris Carpenter, Bryce Gladfelter

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a fun book about the English language and how the same-sounding sentence can mean two different things because of the way the words are spelled. The book has pairs of sentences, some full page, others quarter page, written by Carpenter and Haldar, with fun illustrations by Gladfelter. They include items like: The children scarfed the mousse The children scarfed the moose Beware the sharp turn Beware the sharp tern And so on!

I found this to be an entertaining, amusing, inventive, and educational book and I commend it as a worthy read.

Kamala and Maya's Big Idea by Meena Harris, Ana Ramírez González

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the second of two children's books about Kamal Harris that I read. The author is Kamala (pronounced Kom-a-la) Harris's niece. The book tells the inspiring story of these two girls' struggle to get a children's playground up and running on an empty lot at the apartment complex where they lived.

Despite almost universal apathy by the adults, the two girls were resolute (that's good to be, especially if you're a girl and maybe used to being talked down, dismissed, or diminished). The girls made a plan and stuck to it, and they fought and struggled and made it happen - and there was the playground that all the kids could enjoy. An inspiring story that's true! We're going to need that selfless resolution in the White House to overcome the dire depredations and selfishness left as a legacy by the worst president in US history.

Kamala Harris Rooted in Justice by Nikki Grimes, Laura Freeman

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first of two children's books about Kamal Harris that I read. This one is a biography written nicely for children by Grimes and illustrated elegantly by Freeman. It follows Kamala (that's pronounced Kom-a-la), now vice-president-elect (as of this review) from her childhood, through school, law school, and her various public service jobs up to the point where she became a senator. It's not updated for very recent events - it ends at her run for senator - but it tells an inspiring story and it makes for encouraging reading, and for hope for the USA for the next four years that too many people have become desperate for under the recent cult and dictatorship.

The Night Swimmers by Peter Rock

Rating: WARTY!

This was another waste of money from Chirp with whom I've had some success in garnering audiobooks for my collection. Read less than satisfactorily by Graham Halstead, the book is ostensibly an autiobiographical novel. I'm not sure if that's supposed to reference something Biblical - with the author's name being a twice told 'rock' set in stormy waters - and I really don't care anymore. This is the second novel by this author that I've tried to read and I didn't like the previous one (The Shelter Cycle) either! That novel also contained a creepy character. That was two years ago and unfortunately I'd forgotten I'd disliked his previous effort so much, otherwise I could have saved my money in not buying this one!

The story was set in a wooded area, with cabins, bordering Lake Michigan, but despite that, to me it was boring as hell with the author rambling endlessly into descriptive writing much as he rambled through the woods, but without moving the story forward in inch. He seems obsessed with the word 'shadow', or shadows', or 'shadowy' and after a handful of chapters I gave up on it because I lost all interest in what had sounded, potentially, like an interesting story, but which became an author's obsession with his own love of his own voice. None of the writing interested me in either the characters or the surroundings. It did give me an idea for a story so it was not a total loss, but whether or when that might get written is unclear at this point!

The author tells a story of his stay at the cabins and his other obsession, which was a young widow by the provocative name of Mrs Abel. I immediately suspected her of having murdered her husband (note the name, 'Abel' - another Biblical reference?!), but I lost interest in pursuing the story for the purpose of discovering what actually was going on. Frankly, the way this was written, the narrator (the author if this was indeed autobiographical) comes off as a creep and a stalker. I cannot commend this at all based on what I heard of it.

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.