Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

I've been hearing about this book for years and finally picked up a copy. And it's just as good as I'd been told. There's a long series, of which this is the first.

It's told through diary entries by fourteen-year-old Georgia Nicholson, and it's very, very funny. Georgia goes to a girls' school where they have to wear berets as part of their uniform, she has a huge cat named Angus who keeps trying to eat the neighbors' poodle, and she's crazy about a boy whose name she will eventually find out.

The story consists of small events, nothing earth-shaking, but they add up to a hilarious, surprisingly realistic account of a few months of Georgia's life. Her attitude is mostly what makes the book so funny. She's horrible in a relentlessly self-absorbed, can't-be-bothered way, but she never comes across (too much) as a jerk. That's a neat trick for the author to pull. It's a fast read, too; in fact, I read most of the book in the bath while I was getting over a cough, and I laughed so hard I coughed myself into a headache. But it was worth it.

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A Rum Affair by Karl Sabbagh

Who would have guessed that the world of academic botany was such a seething cauldron of intrigue?

Karl Sabbagh, his interest sparked by an unusual line in an obituary for the noted botanist John Heslop Harrison, starts a quiet investigation of the man in order to assuage his own curiosity. What he finds shocks him: an unpublished report of an investigation into Heslop Harrison's findings, complete with allegations of fraud. In other words, some of the rare plants Heslop Harrison discovered on the Scottish island of Rum showed evidence of having been planted for the sole purpose of being "discovered."

The book is a careful, quiet account of Sabbagh's research into the allegations. He looks at the main players in detail, Heslop Harrison himself and his accuser, amateur botanist John Raven, and at the atmosphere of the time, early to mid 20th century Britain. It's not a bombastic book at all; rather, it's filled with a low-key wit.

While it's readable and interesting, it's not exactly riveting. It would have been easy to put the book down and never pick it back up. I'm glad I didn't, though.

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I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

It took me a while to get around to this one because the Tiffany Aching books have never been my favorite Discworld series. But I was really surprised with this one. Maybe because Tiffany's older in this one (sixteen, I think, or almost sixteen), the book has a darker, more sophisticated tone.

Tiffany Aching is the witch of the Chalk, the only witch in the area. The people are still getting used to having a witch, and Tiffany's still coming to terms with the workload and the lack of help. When the old baron dies, Tiffany volunteers to go to Ankh-Morpork to notify his son, who's gone to the city with his fiancee and her mother. But people in the big city are strangely hostile toward witches, and Tiffany keeps seeing a monstrous vision of a man without eyes--a man who hates witches and seems to be following her.

The plot isn't particularly unusual if you've read a lot of Discworld books. It's well-done, though: entertaining, funny, touching, interesting, and funny (I put funny twice because no one's more consistently funny than Pratchett). The wee free men are of course part of the story, although without as central a part as in the earlier books. And while Pratchett often has his other major characters do cameos in other characters' books, there was a lot of that in this one, including one character I was very surprised to see (no, not Death. He's in all of them).

I think this is the last Tiffany Aching book, from what I've heard. I liked this one so much that I hope I'm wrong. I'd like to see what Pratchett does next with the character.

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Gemini Bites by Patrick Ryan

Kyle Renneker used to be best buddies with his twin sister, Judy, until their parents separated for a year and took one of the twins each. When the family got back together again, Kyle wanted to be friends with his sister again, but she no longer seemed to like him. Now, at sixteen, the two are constantly at each others' throats. It doesn't help that they have five other siblings, all vying for their parents' attention. When Kyle announces to the family that he's gay, he's annoyed when his sister promptly announces that she's a born-again Christian.

In reality, Judy doesn't give two hoots about religion. She's just interested in getting to know a cute football player who runs a Bible study--and it doesn't hurt that she can needle Kyle with her new-found religion. But then their parents take in high school student Garret Johnson so he can finish the school year after his parents move, and both Kyle and Judy crank up the competition. Garret is a mysterious loner who says he's a vampire. And both twins are interested in him.

I think this is what you might call the highest of all high concept novels. It's a lot of fun, too. The story is told from both twins' points of view in alternating chapters. Kyle is a nice guy, and Judy is not very nice at all--but she's an oddly sympathetic character. And Garret is fascinating.

The book is sometimes funny, sometimes sad. It's not terribly deep, but it's a sweet, fast read. The Renneker parents are a little too good to be true, though, and the last chapter wraps everything up so neatly I found it kind of unrealistic. But I really like that Kyle is so okay about being gay, and in fact is better-adjusted than his sister. The way the twins use Garret to further their own agendas is clever and funny; the way Garret uses the twins in turn is even cleverer.

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Cryptozoology, ed by Chad Arment

This is a collection of essays about cryptozoological animals: animals that are unknown, or presumed extinct although the occasional unverified sighting still occurs, or known only to locals and not to scientists, etc. I love well-researched books about cryptozoology, and since Karl Shuker hasn't published anything new recently, I was pleased to find this book.

The subtitle is "The Investigation of Lesser-Known Mystery Animals," which particularly appealed to me. Who wants to rehash bigfoot over and over when you can learn about bioluminescent spiders and possible new habitats of coelacanths? (Blogger's spellcheck is freaking out at this post.)

The essays tend mostly to the scientific and are well-researched and with citations and foot/end notes, although a few that are more informal in tone. It's all readable, though, and all fascinating. The last chapter is an interesting mishmash of reprinted articles from old newspapers that need to be verified by researchers. As the editor points out, journalists from the late 19th/early 20th century sometimes made up stories of strange animal sightings to fill space. He gives tips on how to spot phony articles.

I enjoyed the book very much. If you're at all interested in cryptozoology (and why aren't you? It's fascinating!), this is a great addition to the more readily available bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster books out there.

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Beyond the Grave by Mara Purnhagen

This is the last book in this series, which consists of three actual books and two novellas that take place between the books' events. I didn't read the second novella, since I found the first one weak.

I have read the other two books, though. I really liked the first one, Past Midnight, and was disappointed with the second, One Hundred Candles. Beyond the Grave has been out for a while, but I didn't buy a copy until recently because I had lost interest in the series.

The problems that I saw in the second book are still present in this one, unfortunately. Charlotte is still passive and doesn't make connections between events/people that are glaringly obvious to the reader. There's not as much of the goofy new age crystal beliefs, but there's a character who's not-a-guardian-angel-but-really-he-sort-of-is, although I think he's actually called a protector. The plot is all about Charlotte being pursued by a demonic entity (not-a-demon-but-really-he-sort-of-is).

I got really tired of Charlotte waffling back and forth about her boyfriend Noah. Noah lies to her, has stopped attending school and bathing, and admits to chronic insomnia and severe bouts of sleepwalking. He has a non-healing bruise on his neck from where the demon from the last book touched him. Yet Charlotte only worries about him intermittently, and when they're together, she convinces herself that everything's okay. This is one girl who is all ready for her first dysfunctional adult relationship.

Part of the plot concerns Charlotte's mother, who is in a coma after the events of the previous book. Charlotte's grief and uncertainty about her mother, and her relationship with her father, is more compelling than anything else in the book, eclipsing the rest of the plot and frankly making all the woo-woo ghosty stuff seem frivolous. There's also a subplot of two characters getting married, which got way too much page-time.

I like Purnhagen's writing, though. I'll be interested to see what she does next. I hope it doesn't include crystals.

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How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber

I'm trying to teach myself Irish Gaelic from language CDs, so I'm after any help I can get. I don't know if How to Learn Any Language will actually end up helping me, but it made me feel better about not retaining much of the languages I studied in high school and college.

The book is a quick read, breezy and upbeat. My edition is a bit dated (1991) and talks about language cassettes and Walkmans, the surge in people needing to learn Russian, and things like that. But the basic information is still current.

While much of the book is a cheerful insistence that anyone can learn another language, there's a lot of solid advice. While Farber says grammar is important to learn, he also stresses that having fun is even more important. Grammar shouldn't overshadow the fun. He gives lots of suggestions of methods that will increase both comprehension and enjoyment, like getting a newspaper or magazine in the language you're learning--meant for native speakers, not students--and learning the vocabulary and grammar to read the first article as a major goal. He also suggests a multi-prong approach to learning: not just listening to tapes or doing paper/pencil lessons, but making your own flashcards to study during down times, using travelers' pocket guides of phrases for quick mastery of useful phrases, and making your own language tapes (not as practical these days--one thing about cassettes, they were really easy to make recordings on without special software or equipment).

There's also a section on various major languages of the world and how difficult they are to learn and how they help you learn other languages that are similar. Farber definitely wants everyone to learn a lot of languages. Just not Celtic languages, because although there's a huge long list of the Principle Languages of the World in the back that goes on for eight pages, it doesn't list any Celtic languages. Not even Welsh. So I guess I'm on my own.

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Detection Unlimited and Penhallow by Georgette Heyer

You knew I'd be back to reading Georgette Heyer's mysteries soon. I had a couple of them on my shelves and wanted some comfort reading. Not the best choice, as it happened.

I picked up Detection Unlimited first. It was a slight, mostly fun read, just want I'd expected and no more. It's very much a typical Heyer mystery, although I wouldn't say it's close to her best. It has the usual motley cast of characters, jaunty dialogue, and baffling crime. I did guess the murderer, but not why the murderer did it; in fact, I was overthinking it, and the murderer did it for a very obvious reason. So, kind of disappointing plot-wise, but the characters were worth the read.

Then I picked up Penhallow, and my goodness was that a mistake. I wish someone had warned me. First of all, although it's marketed as a mystery, it's not. We get to witness the murderer doing the deed, and we know why and how. And it doesn't even happen until around page 300 (457 pages in my edition--a very long book). Even though by then I was baffled and annoyed at the wordiness, the grim tone, the relative lack of dialogue (jaunty or otherwise), and the slow pace, I still held out hope that Heyer would pull a twist--that the murderer would turn out to be mistaken, that Penhallow would have turned out to be murdered in some other way. But there is no twist.

The first 300 pages of the book are set-up on how monstrous Penhallow is, Penhallow being the bitchy, controlling head of the Penhallow family, and how much everyone hates him. Then he's murdered, and the remaining 150 pages are about how the family members react, and how surprised they are that they're not actually happier now that he's gone. Whee.

It's a good thing Penhallow wasn't the first Heyer mystery I picked up, because I would have missed out on a lot of her fun books.

Detection Unlimited B&N link
Penhallow B&N link

Night of the Living Deed by E.J. Copperman

I'm a sucker for ghosts, apparently. In this one, Alison Kirby has recently bought an old Victorian house and has started restoring it herself. She plans to make it into a guesthouse, and she and her nine-year-old daughter Melissa will live there too. Melissa claims that someone died in the house, which Alison chalks up to her daughter's imagination. But after an accident with a ladder and a bucket of joint compound leaves Alison with a concussion and the ability to see ghosts, she has to face the fact that her daughter's right: not one but two people died in the house--recently, in fact. Last year. And they were murdered.

Alison is a likable character, often funny and always spunky. I hate the word spunky, but she is. She's just not annoying with it. The plot is pretty good and I didn't guess the murderer, mainly because I thought I'd figured it all out early and refused to change my mind despite evidence to the contrary.

The ghosts are the weakest part of the book, actually. I found them kind of annoying and not much help with the plot. I think there was supposed to be a little bit of a spark between Alison and the male ghost, but I didn't feel any chemistry between them. Alison's relationship with her daughter feels much more natural and realistic. I'm happy to see that there's a second book available and a third book about to come out. I'll probably read both.

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Rats by Debbie Ducommun

This was an impulse buy and I don't intend to get any pet rats. On the other hand, if I did want pet rats, I'm set because this book is very thorough. It covers everything from nutrition and vet care to teaching tricks and showing rats. The pictures of rats (and people) are adorable, and the book is well written and nicely laid out for easy reading and quick reference.

The only thing the book doesn't have, surprisingly, is a section on different types of rats. Different breeds are touched on during various sections of the book, but I really wanted a page or two with pictures of different types of rats and some description of each.

Now I kind of want pet rats. To stop myself, I may have to glance through the section on rat diseases again.

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Specimen Song and Wolf, No Wolf by Peter Bowen

Last summer I read the first book in this series, Coyote Wind, but before I could review it my mother had a stroke and I stayed in the hospital with her for a month--which is why the review, when I was able to get around to it, was so perfectly awful. I did really like that book, and I want to emphasize that now because I'm about to dump on the next two books.

Actually, the second book, Specimen Song, isn't that bad. I mostly wasn't happy with it because I picked out the murderer so easily. Basically, the murderer is the only named character who wasn't around in the first book. It was still atmospheric and I enjoyed the unusual setting: partly Montana, partly dense Canadian riverland. Main character Gabriel Du Pre is a French-Indian brand inspector who plays the fiddle and sometimes helps the sheriff out as a part-time deputy.

Then I got to the third book. I really hoped the plot would be better, and at first it seemed to be. Two extreme environmentalists are killed after cutting fences and shooting cattle, and Du Pre is depressed to think the murderer is probably someone he knows and likes--and someone he'll have to help arrest. Then more people are killed after environmentalists release wolves into the nearby mountains, and Du Pre is worried there's a serial killer around.

Unfortunately, the plot bogs down into a confusing mess. I've never read a murder mystery where, at the end of the book, I still wasn't clear on who the murderer was. It was that problem that has finished the series for me--I won't bother to read the next book--but I wasn't very happy with the writing either. The books are rather stylized and spare in style, but by the third book it was already starting to feel overdone. And on top of all that, I wasn't all that impressed by the anti-environmentalist message in the book, which bordered on the offensive at times.

It's disappointing that a series that started out so strong fell apart so quickly. I should have stopped reading after the first book.

Specimen Song B&N link (used book)
Wolf, No Wolf B&N link (used book)

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

This plot is awesome. The whole book is awesome, but the plot just takes the cake. It reminds me more than a little of a modern Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with eccentric adults and a competition that's far more than it's advertised. But...well, just look at this plot.

Liam Digby is only twelve, but he's unusually tall and has premature facial hair--just a little of it, but enough to make him look stubbly. He doesn't love being called Wolverine or being treated like he's older than he really is just because he's tall (and stubbly), but the worst part is when his mother decides he needs to make friends. He points out that he has "loads of friends. I've got twenty guild members just waiting to do my bidding" (p. 27), but his mom means real life friends, not World of Warcraft.

So Liam's sent to Little Stars drama club, where he's stuck playing the giant alongside his classmate Florida. But a funny thing happens when they hang out at the mall after the meetings: people think Liam is an adult, and Florida is his daughter. Naturally Liam pushes this as far as a Porsche test drive; but when he's mistaken for his own father and wins a competition for great dads where he's one of four dads invited to a brand new adventure park in China--and since he has to show up with a "daughter," he convinces Florida to come with him.

And that is just the beginning of the book.

Liam is smart, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and likable. He applies what he's learned in World of Warcraft to real life--with generally good results. He wants to travel and is frustrated that he lives in a town named Waterloo in Britain when he could live in the Waterloo in Sierra Leone or somewhere equally exotic. Of course he's going to head to China the first chance he gets.

What I love most about the book--and it's a hard choice, because this book is freaking hilarious as well as entertaining--is how it quietly explores what it means to be a dad. It's charming and funny, and the plot zigzags from absurdity to absurdity without anything feeling stupid. My only complaint is the crappy Americanization of Mum to Mom and football to soccer--jarring, halfassed, and needless, since I don't think there's a kid in America who would be confused by the original terms. Other terms, like crisps instead of chips and biscuit instead of cookie, aren't changed.

Anyway, I loved this book so much I may reread it pretty soon just to make sure I caught all the jokes. I also know what book I'm giving my oldest nephew for his birthday this year. Incidentally, the science in this book is good too. It's all good.

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The Exiles by Hilary McKay

I first read this book about a decade and a half ago, checked out from the library, and remember being utterly thrilled by it. In fact, I remember cracking myself up repeatedly by saying the line "Must have wurrums!" over and over. And I was in my twenties then, so just imagine how utterly hilarious I would have found it in my teens.

The problem was, I forgot the title of the book (and its two sequels) and I could never find it again--not until I discovered a copy at a recent library sale. I reread it and...well, I guess I'm just an old fogy now.

The four Conroy girls are looking forward to a long summer of reading and doing pretty much nothing else. The two older ones are training the two younger ones to be independent-minded, which to the rest of the world translates to "having no manners." Their parents are definitely not looking forward to the summer, so when Mr. Conroy gets an unexpected five thousand pounds, he and Mrs. Conroy plan a kitchen remodel--and take Mrs. Conroy's mother up on her offer to civilize the girls while they stay with her in the country.

I'd mainly forgotten what little shits the girls are. They really are horrible. I wanted to smack them, even though frequently what they were doing was very funny. I don't recall feeling that way when I read the book before. But their behavior does slowly modulate during their stay, without being saccharine at all. The girls have adventures--like hunting for badgers, exploring a cave, cooking over a beach fire--that sound like they could come right out of Disney but which are given a savage (and hilarious) twist by the author: for instance, the youngest girl, six years old, decides to crawl into the badger hole to see if they're home. None of her sisters stop her.

By the end, I'd remembered why I liked the book so much originally. And the line "Must have wurrums!" really is funny. But I just couldn't warm up to the book as much as I wanted to, which means I probably won't bother to read the sequels again.

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The Unscratchables by Cornelius Kane

Here's one of those weird books that don't fit into any real category. It's a hard-boiled mystery peopled (ahem) entirely with cats and dogs. Intelligent ones. That wear clothes and carry guns and walk on their hind legs and wear shoes. No, I couldn't quite get my head around it either, but the book is surprisingly fun.

Max "Crusher" McNash is a detective bull terrier who doesn't like cats--especially not Siamese, after his experiences as a prisoner of war. But when a feral cat slashes and kills two rottweilers, then follows the murders up with the bloody murder of a guard dog, the chief of police has no choice but to call in the Feline Bureau of Investigation. Crusher is assigned to work with Cassius Lap, a Siamese whose delicate, pussy-footing attitude gets right up Crusher's nose. But Cassius soon turns up evidence of a conspiracy that goes far beyond a mere serial dog killer.

As I say, the book is fun. The author obviously had a blast inventing dog-and-cat stuff for his world. I had difficulty suspending my disbelief--I mean, dogs and cats just can't walk on their hind legs very comfortably, and they can't manipulate things like gun triggers very well with paws, and why would a dog need to wear shoes anyway? But if you can get past that, the mystery is pretty good, the characters are interesting, and the writing is solid.

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Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf by Wendelin Van Draanen

I admit it took a while for me to really get into the book--a third of the way in, actually. I almost put it down a few times. I liked the mystery of the missing dog, but I hated the tense changes (which are constant and which I found super distracting). Then the book took a few twists and suddenly I was hooked.

The twists didn't have anything to do with the mystery, which I figured out as soon as the guilty party was introduced as a character. Instead, they had to do with the sudden addition of Sammy (Samantha) Keyes thinking about her mother, her 72-year-old friend, and her mean neighbor in a way that turns the book from a run-0f-the-mill preteen mystery to a thoughtful exploration of the meanings of friendship and loss. Yes, really.

Thirteen-year-old Sammy never intended to get mixed up with the Christmas parade, she just promised to help a friend who was part of the dog calendar float. But she gets stuck taking care of the star dog, a Pomeranian who jumps through a hoop--in this case, a wreath. Everything's going well until three people dressed as Wise Men toss angry cats at the float. The dogs go crazy, and when the dust settles, the Pomeranian is missing. While searching for it, Sammy discovers an elf--okay, an eight-year-old girl dressed as an elf--who's also been missing. But the dog is long gone and its owner holds Sammy responsible, especially after the first ransom note is delivered.

Sammy is full of energy, and outgoing without being obnoxious. Although she takes some risks, I never had a "no, Sammy, don't do it argh I can't believe you're being so stupid" moment. She's smart, too. But what I like most is that she's less interested in finding the dog to get herself off the hook than in solving the mystery of why the elf keeps running away from home. And when her mean neighbor falls and breaks an arm, Sammy becomes mixed up in the moving story of the woman's life. I like the way Sammy handles herself with someone who has never been nice to her but who needs her help--and not tangible help, but the sort that requires Sammy to think about her own motivations and those of others.

I haven't read the other books in this series, but I really liked this one. I'm glad I kept reading.

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Trillions by Nicholas Fisk

One of my favorite books as a middle-schooler was Monster Maker by Nicholas Fisk. I must have checked it out of the library a dozen times, and I was thrilled when I found my own copy years ago. But that was the only Fisk book the library had. A few months ago I went looking for more of his books, and the only one I could find was this one, Trillions.

I expected to love it. It's science fiction, about millions--trillions--of tiny aliens that land on earth. As far as I could guess from the text (which is not clear on their size), the trillions are about the size of a grain of sand, and while they can move and interlock, they don't do anything else. They heap up in drifts like sand dunes, occasionally join together to imitate nearby structures, and are gathered by children because they glitter prettily in different colors. The book introduces four children, two boys and two girls, and I was looking forward to seeing what Fisk would do with such a fascinating concept.

The answer: not much. The book was published in 1971, which explains (I suppose) why the boys are the ones who do things while the girls make bracelets out of the trillions and act babyish. It doesn't explain why the entire world in this book thinks banding together to obliterate the trillions with nuclear weapons is a good choice. Remember, the trillions don't actually hurt anything. There are a few small examples given of the trillions imitating rockets (although they aren't rockets) and inadvertently causing an old man to have a heart attack, and the entire world except for one schoolboy thinks that makes them enemies. There are lots of scenes of generals shouting about taking ACTION against the trillions--which do nothing, keep in mind. Also, English children are required to leave school so they can shovel up trillions into wagons and dump them in a big pile, overseen by soldiers. This continues throughout the whole book and doesn't make any sense. Nothing much makes any sense.

The main character, sort of, is a boy named Scott. Through a combination of telepathy and handwavium, Scott learns how to communicate in a limited way with the trillions. He doesn't share this information with anyone, and although I read the damn book I still don't know why he doesn't. But that's the problem with this book: it's just got an axe to grind about people ruining the environment, and the army being, I don't know, evil or something and too ready to set off those nasty nuclear weapons--which cause some fish and birds and trees to die, but don't seem to hurt people (or the environment).

Even if the plot did make any sense--and really, it doesn't--the writing is awful. The book reads like an outline, an overview. Not only that, not much happens--and when it does, it's really too late. Why didn't Scott act sooner? Well, if he had, Fisk would had had to work out an actual plot to go with his idea.

B&N link (used book)

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

I haven't been a close follower of Kate Beaton's online comics, although I love them whenever I happen across a link. Now there's a collection of a whole bunch of them.

Beaton's a historian so a lot of her comics are about historical figures or times, but some are based on books or are just for the hell of it. They're very, very funny even if you don't necessarily know what the source material is. What's best, though, is Beaton's artwork--skillful, beautifully rendered, and funny in its own right. Her ability to convey emotion (especially fury or disgust) through expression reminds me a bit of Nicole Hollander's Sylvia comics, but with a swifter, cleaner line.

This is a good big collection. I went to bed early last night with the book, half a candy bar, and a can of Coke, and was deliriously happy.

B&N link

How to Wash a Cat by Rebecca M. Hale

In the real world, if you find human remains you're supposed to let the police know about it. But this isn't the real world, it's a book world where reality has nothing to do with anything. Oh, and the author gave the main character her same name, middle initial and all.

So, two great big strikes against the book. Third strike: it's badly, badly written and its plot is a mess and the characters are all obnoxious. That's several extra strikes, actually. I have no idea why I read the whole book.

When her Uncle Oscar dies, the accountant who goes unnamed until the very last line of the book inherits his business: an antique shop full of junk. She also inherits a key shaped like a tulip. Almost immediately, she-who-was-not-named-until-the-end starts discovering weird discrepancies about her uncle's death, including the discovery that the "preliminary autopsy" was never performed on her uncle, several people showing up suddenly to give her clues left recently by her uncle "in case anything happens to me," and several other people showing up to give her veiled threats. Oh, and she has two cats.

The plot is a godawful mess, but the characters are worse. I hated all the characters; they're all over-the-top without a smidgen of likability among them all. (Well, the cats are cute.) I especially hated the nosy neighbor Monty, who fancies himself a sleuth trying to uncover the mystery of an old tunnel rumored to be on the property. I hated Monty with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns. The main character isn't any better, though. She's a real wimp, totally without gumption. She's always having dizzy spells, or feeling faint or woozy or frightened or weepy or otherwise having to sit down and plunge into a flashback. She never does anything else and she's dumb as a stump.

But the writing! My god, the writing is bad. There are so many adjectives and adverbs in every sentence that it's hard to figure out what exactly is going on. Characters fidget around constantly while they talk. If the fidgeting and the adverbs/adjectives had all been edited out, the book would have been 50 pages slimmer--and it still wouldn't make any damn sense.

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Chelsea Mansions by Barry Maitland

Chelsea Mansions is the eleventh book in the Brock and Kolla mystery series, and now that I've read it I'm caught up. It was published a few months ago. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it also ended up being the final (or next to final) book in the series.

When an elderly tourist is deliberately thrown in front of a bus after leaving the Chelsea Flower Show, it seems like a motiveless murder. Then a rich Russian expat is stabbed to death in the house next door to the hotel where the woman was staying. There's no obvious connection between the two, but Brock and Kathy both want to dig a little deeper and find out what's really going on. But Brock is sidelined by a bout of what seems at first to be the flu, and Kathy finds herself butting up against MI5.

The plot is only okay, certainly not one of the best plots in this series. The subplot of the nosy Canadian scholar who pushes his way into the investigation didn't do much for me. I won't spoil who he turns out to be, but let me just say that I definitely thought of Cousin Oliver being introduced on the Brady Bunch in a lame attempt to improve viewership. It didn't work for the TV show either.

I'm very glad I've caught up on the series. I'll still continue to read Maitland--and it looks like he's got another mystery out, one not part of this series, which I may chase down eventually. But I'm not all that into his books like I was at first. When I find myself thinking repeatedly, "Well, this book isn't the best in the series," it's not the individual book, it's the whole series.

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Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick

Although Shelf Discovery is tagged "The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading," the books featured are about half middle-grade and half young adult (middle grade being for younger kids, pre-teens and tweens, in case you're not familiar with the term), although a handful of books for adults are included too. It mostly consists of book reviews--not reviews focusing on the quality of the books, but on the things girls like about the books and what the books offer to girls.

And the book is exclusively for girls--or, rather, the women the girls have grown into. Almost all the books featured were published in the 1970s and 80s. I just counted, and there are 73 books featured (unless I miscounted, which is entirely possible). I was a voracious reader as a kid, but I've only read 18 of the books featured here. The selection is skewed strongly to the V.C. Andrews and Lois Duncan readers. Except for Madeleine L'Engle, there aren't many truly speculative fiction books included.

I was surprised at the omissions. Naturally there's a limit to how many books can be included in a project like this, but why cover Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret but not include the third book in that trilogy, Scout? Is it because Scout has a boy as the main character? I loved it as a kid. And why do Laura Ingalls Wilder, Judy Blume, Lois Duncan, Madeleine L'Engle, and a few other authors get so many entries--added up, those four authors probably account for a quarter of the books covered.

So the book is basically a list of books the author liked (actually, there are seven contributors to the reviews, but there's a reason these reviews were chosen from the Jezebel.com "Fine Lines" column). It's certainly not a comprehensive look at different types of teen girl reads, and not meant to be. I was disappointed that there wasn't more I could sink my teeth into, though. But the reviews are entertaining and breezily written, and I did enjoy reading about some of the books I'd nearly forgotten about. I even found a few books that I want to read for the first time.

B&N link