I realized earlier, I have read one play in the past three years.  This is sad.  I should be reading plays all the time, this is my expertise.  So I decided to start reading plays again.  Simple, right.  I say to myself, "Read a play a week.  That is reasonable."  HA!  I journeyed to our wonderful (insert tons of sarcasm) library to get some plays (and there were six other books on my list).  The few plays they actually have, I've read all but one (I checked it out).  They do have many anthologies (of which I've read most of them).  Grrrr....so much for reading a play a week unless I feel like forking over ten bucks a week to Dramatists. I'm so frustrated with our library.  I realize I live in a small town.  I realize they don't have a lot of money.  What I don't understand is why they can't acquire the items I want through ILL...I just don't get it.

The other six books on my list?  Yeah...they didn't have those either *sigh*  I wish I lived in a town with a real library.  I also went to get some graphic novels...I should have known that was a joke.  I guess I'm just going to have to go in every week or so and request the same books over and over and over and maybe they'll get off their butts and ILL them for me.

Date Finished: 12/31/2006
Pages: 200
Category: Science Fiction
Rated: B
Cover: Paperback
From: My collection
Reason for Reading: Classic Sci-Fi

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  Perfection must be maintained at all costs.  Constantly reminded me of Hitler in the beginning of the book. 

My take
Very cute.  Can't wait to read the rest of the series.  Very easy read.  Read it in one evening.   The end of the Earth and the mice are mad.  The Vogons ruined everything by blowing Earth up.  Oddly enough, the whole towel thing is never really answered, or addressed other than in the beginning (unless I missed something).

Synopsis

Don't leave Earth without this hilarious international bestseller about the end of the world and the happy-go-lucky days that follow...about the worst Thursday that ever happened and why the Universe is a lot safer if you bring a towel.

My take
Hysterical as always.  There were too many unanswered questions in this one though.  Was Sandy really Santa?  Who or what REALLY was Diesel?  This one just seemed to be rushed, but there were many many moments when I had to laugh out loud.  Stephanie Plum is just hysterical.

From the Publisher

It's five days before Christmas and things are not looking merry for Fugitive Apprehension Agent Stephanie Plum. She hasn't got a tree. She hasn't bought any presents. The malls are jam-packed with staggering shoppers. There's not a twinkle light anywhere to be seen in her apartment-and there's a strange man in her kitchen.

Sure, this has happened to Stephanie Plum before. But this guy is different. He's mysterious, sexy-and has his own agenda. His name is Diesel, and he's on a mission. The question is, what does he want with her? Can he help her find a little old toy maker who has skipped out on his bail right before Christmas? Can he survive the Plum family holiday dinner? Can he get Stephanie a tree that doesn't look like it was grown next to a nuclear power plant? These questions and more are keeping Stephanie awake at night. Not to mention the fact that she needs to find a bunch of nasty elves, her sister Valerie has a Christmas "surprise" for the Plums, her niece Mary Alice doesn't believe in Santa anymore, and Grandma Mazur has a new stud muffin. So bring out the plastic reindeer, strap on your jingle bells, and get ready to celebrate the holidays-Jersey style.

Excellent book.  Extremely funny (not sure if that was his intention or not, but it was).  I love the way Simak took ordinary things, like bowling balls and dolls and dogs, and turned them into things not so ordinary.  The book flows completely from beginning to end (although the end is rather abrupt).  Parker and Joy almost made alien hunting seem fun!

My take
Thank god I'm not part of this family.  I enjoyed the story, but found the character development to be lacking and the ending just basically sucked.

From the Publisher

It couldn't happen to a family like the Greys. Surely, Dan and Sally's troubled five-year-old daughter could not have been molested as the doctor claimed. She was too well guarded for anything like that to happen. But she was destroying their home and their lives. Meanwhile, the family business was tottering, threatened by dissent from within. The pressure was on to sell family land to foreign investors, a move that divided the Greys and threatened Grey's Foods and the small upstate New York city it fed. Oliver Grey, the handsome silver-haired patriarch, bowed out, leaving the business to his sons, Ian and Clive, and Dan, the orphaned nephew he reared as his own. Ian was ready to sell to the highest bidder to buy off his mistress and save the marriage he couldn't afford to lose. Clive, the brilliant misfit, gave his life to the business until he, too, met a woman. Amanda, Dan's estranged sister, had the knowledge, the power, and the motive to destroy them all: an unspeakable secret that would link her to a little girl and a silver carousel.

My take
This was a fun book to read.  However, it infuriated me the way Hannah was so STUPID in dealing with Louis.  Why she put up with him and his crap is beyond me.  The book did show me that I have no desire at all to become a PA in the glamourous world of Hollywood.  I'll stick to being the one with the PA!

From the Publisher

Here are the three most common lies women hear in Hollywood:

"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"I'd like to put you in my next movie."
"I think I'm falling in love with you."

If anyone has heard it all, it's Hannah. As the daughter of celebrated actor Leo Fairchild, she can easily recite the bald-faced lies you'll hear out of the mouth of almost any A-list leading man.

When Leo has a fatal heart attack while making love to a nineteen-year-old starlet, Hannah's world goes out of orbit. Not only has Leo's conniving fourth wife frozen her trust fund, but the grieving widow has also been having an affair with Hannah's indie producer boyfriend!

Faced with a credit card bill that rivals the national debt, Hannah is forced to put her one passion -- astronomy -- on hold while she takes the job of personal assistant to international hottie Louis Trollope.

Louis is just as egotistical -- and yes, irresistible -- as her father had been. Which is why she's determined to keep him -- and his super-model girlfriend, bad boy entourage, and over-sexed agent -- at arm's length. Besides, she's falling in love with his best friend, screenwriter Mick Bradshaw. But Louis loves a challenge. And he's decided that convincing Hannah that he loves her is the role of a lifetime.

My take
This book just didn't hold my attention for very long.  Parts of it would and then it wouldn't.  It took me forever to read because of it.  Overall, it was an enjoyable story.  I loved Vida Winter's story, but couldn't stand the story of the narrator.  The reason I kept reading was to get to the end of Vida's story.  I felt the ending to be completely contrived and didn't feel there was a point to it.  The end just kind of annoyed me.

From the Publisher

A compelling emotional mystery in the timeless vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling.

Margaret Lea works in her father's antiquarian bookshop where her fascination for the biographies of the long-dead has led her to write them herself. She gets a letter from one of the most famous authors of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter, whose popularity as a writer has been in no way diminished by her reclusiveness. Until now, Vida has toyed with journalists who interview her, creating outlandish life histories for herself - all of them invention. Now she is old and ailing, and at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to Margaret is a summons.

Somewhat anxiously, the equally reclusive Margaret travels to Yorkshire to meet her subject - and Vida starts to recount her tale. It is one of gothic strangeness featuring the March family; the fascinating, devious and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline.

Margaret is captivated by the power of Vida's storytelling. But as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction, and she doesn't entirely trust Vida's account. She goes to check up on the family, visiting their old home and piecing together their story in her own way. What she discovers on her journey to the truth is for Margaret a chilling and transforming experience.

Excerpt from The Thirteenth Tale:

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions. Just so long as they don't start on about storytelling and honesty, the way some of them do. Naturally that annoys me. But so long as they leaveme alone, I won't hurt them.

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succour, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are
the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

My take
This is an extremely touching book about two friends, laotong, and the many struggles they have.  It was slow at the beginning, but then I was unable to put it down.  It makes me feel extremely grateful I have the wonderful friends that I have today.

From the Publisher

Lily is haunted by memories-of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.

In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu ("women's writing"). Some girls were paired with laotongs, "old sames," in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.

With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become "old sames" at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.

My take
I thought this book was extremely cute.  A boy's love of giving to others created magic in his life as well as the lives of others.  The journey taken in the book was quick and fun.  Santa's weight issues and his sensitivity to them are hysterical!  I want very much to believe the story is true.  I'm not a person that enjoys the holiday season very much, but reading this book has helped me.  Santa, if you read this, thank you.

Barnes and Noble
For seven centuries, Mr. Claus toiled in his toy workshop, never succumbing to unceasing publisher requests for a potboiler celebrity autobiography. Steadfastly refusing offers from ghostwriters and co-opted Santa's helpers, he pressed on with his selfless holiday mission. Eventually, though, silver-haired Saint Nick realized that his story of ceaseless generosity might itself be a good deed, an inspiration to others. The Autobiography of Santa Claus confirms our best thoughts about a well-traveled fellow who continues to resist low-carb diets. 

My take
Excellent quick read.  Makes me wish the pods would show up and replace some people I know LOL

Annotation

This classic science fiction thriller tells the story of the residents of a small town who are being imperceptibly taken over by alien creatures without individual personalities or feelings.

My take
Absolutly mental.  I loved hating all the characters.  A very quick and fun soap opera read.  Affairs, money, secret lives, death and destruction...what more could a person ask for?

From the Publisher

Do you really know the person you love? What warning signs are you willing to ignore? What can you forgive? In her smashing debut novel, Millenia Black puts a daring new spin on modern family drama by exploring its secrets and lies-as the perfect man comes undone by the consequences of a double life.

Let a new battle of the sexes begin.

I enjoyed this story.  It was easy to read and was quite fun at times.  The only problem I had was the amount of exposition...not a fan.  I enjoyed the ending quite a bit.  Makes me hunger for adventure.

My take
I found this book amusing.  Not as funny as I would have thought and there was way too much repetition.  But a good book for light, entertaining reading.

From the Publisher

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and then deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous "smart" house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the keys to quashing a robot mutiny.

From treating laser wounds to fooling face and speech recognition, besting robot logic to engaging in hand-to-pincer combat, How to Survive a Robot Uprising covers every possible doomsday scenario facing the newest endangered species: humans. And with its thorough overview of current robot prototypes—including giant walkers, insect, gecko, and snake robots—How to Survive a Robot Uprising is also a witty yet legitimate introduction to contemporary robotics. Full of cool illustrations, and referencing some of the most famous robots in pop-culture, How to Survive a Robot Uprising is a one-of-a-kind book that is sure to be a hit with all ages.

My take on the book
A cute little story about two boys sent away for "re-education."  They find a clandestine stash of books from Four-Eyes which they steal and their love of reading blossoms.  Very enjoyable, quick read.

From the Publisher

In 1971 Mao's campaign against the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend, Luo, distinctly unintellectual but guilty of being the sons of doctors, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be 're-educated'. The kind of education that takes place among the peasants of Phoenix Mountain involves carting buckets of excrement up and down preciptous, foggy paths, but the two seventeen-year-olds have a violin and their sense of humour to keep them going. Further distraction is provided by the attractive daughter of the local tailor, possessor of a particularly fine pair of feet.

Their true re-education starts, however, when they discover a comrade's hidden stash of classics of great nineteenth-century Western literature - Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and others, in Chinese translation. They need all their ingenuity to get their hands on the forbidden books, but when they do their lives are turned upside down. And not only their lives; after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, the Little Seamstress will never be the same again.

Once I got used to the dialect (Scottish), this book was quite easy to read.  The story is about several generations obsessed with money and inheritances.  It is an interesting study of human nature and how obsessed we can become.  It still sends a message today.  At times, the book was extremely comical.

My thoughts on the book
Personally, I think this would make a better b-movie than a book.  I didn't much see any point...there was no conclusion.  The title didn't make much sense either.  HOWEVER, I did enjoy reading it.  It had a gross out factor that made my butt pucker on several occasions.  I would love to see it as a movie though (think Tremors!).

The Barnes & Noble Review
The adjective on the cover of Scott Smith's wildly anticipated sophomore release (after 1993's A Simple Plan) says it all: "Unputdownable." The Ruins, an amalgam of psychological thriller and literary horror à la Stephen King, follows a group of four young American tourists vacationing in Cancún and chronicles the horrors they uncover when they help another tourist search for his wayward brother among isolated Mayan ruins.

Best friends and recent college graduates Amy and Stacy and their boyfriends, Jeff and Eric, are thoroughly enjoying their summer vacation in Mexico. In a few weeks the quartet will begin new chapters of their lives -- but until then, the group is partying with fellow travelers from all corners of the globe. One tourist, a German named Mathias, tells the four about his brother, who disappeared with a seductive female archaeologist working at a dig near Cobá, one of the oldest Mayan settlements on the Yucatán Peninsula. The four Americans agree to accompany Mathias in his search but the journey quickly turns into a waking nightmare…

Like works by H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and the aforementioned King, every page -- every sentence! -- of The Ruins is shadowed by a sublime sense of foreboding, an unsettling awareness that, at any moment, some completely unanticipated monstrosity is going to suddenly emerge and wreak bloody havoc on the characters. What were the lost archaeologists looking for? And what did they find? What ancient life form lurks in the labyrinths beneath the ruins? Discerning fans of literary horror will categorically venerate this disturbing tale of wanderlust gone wrong. Paul Goat Allen

From the Publisher

Eerie, terrifying, unputdownable-Scott Smith's first novel since his best-selling A Simple Plan ("Simply the best suspense novel of this year-hell, of the 1990s"-Stephen King). The Ruins follows two American couples, just out of college, enjoying a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico as, on an impulse, they go off with newfound friends in search of one of their group-the young German, who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig.

This is what happens from the moment the searchers-moving into the wild interior-begin to suspect that there is an insidious, horrific "other" among them . . .

I've been sick this week and did a bit of reading.

My take
Excellent book. Dead bodies being hacked up by a psycho who stabbed Stephanie's grandmother provides much entertainment in the gun running world.

Book Description
The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive.

My take
I was not really all that impressed.  In fact, it was quite boring.  Deals with infidelity (mutual) and the troubles it caused.  It also didn't help that it was riddled with punctuation errors and a several grammatical errors.  I'm glad the library had this one so I didn't shell out money for it.