Ms. Margie

Anne Lamott writes so personably. She brings us in close, shares a cup of tea with us, and invites us into her world. And it's a wonderful world to be part of. She writes about her faith journey from start to struggle. She's real, and also filled with faith and joy in her faith.

I'm not Christian, so I appreciated her focus on God rather than Christ.

It's really a good book. I recommend it.

Yesterday I got an email from the library saying that one of my holds is now available. Last night during the wee hours (thanks, insomnia!) I finished [b:The Snowman|9572203|The Snowman (Harry Hole, #7)|Jo Nesbø|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355881478s/9572203.jpg|2697052]. This morning when I was getting my things together, including books to return to the library, I thought, "Oh, good, I can check out another [a:Jo Nesbø|904719|Jo Nesbø|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1313316680p2/904719.jpg] book!"

I almost had to slap myself. I was teetering on the brink of becoming addicted to this series. This book is like crack in that sense. Beware.

The book is really, really good. Edge-of-your-seat exciting, red-herring filled, and easier to relate to than the last Nesbo book I read. In [b:The Devil's Star|498389|The Devil's Star (Harry Hole, #5)|Jo Nesbø|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328611163s/498389.jpg|968931], detective Harry Hole was trying to drink himself to death. It was really hard to stomach - one doesn't want one's protagonist to be someone we want to slap. In this book, Harry is sober. I wouldn't say that he's likeable, but he's much easier to ride along with.

There's some gore (it is a murder mystery), and a lot of characters to try to keep track of, but gosh I enjoyed it. If you liked the [a:Stieg Larsson|706255|Stieg Larsson|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1246466225p2/706255.jpg] books, you'll likely enjoy the Harry Hole series. I recommend it.

Good clean fun. Would make an excellent beach/plane read. Fluffy, but fun.

Three and a half? Four minus?

It's good fun for those who love books, and parts of it are quite suspenseful. The ending was unsatisfying, though, and I felt the need to go back and start compiling a list of characters, as it got rather confusing.

I would have had a difficult time following the story if not for the fact that I read it quite quickly, over just a few days.

Recommended with the above caveats.

What I'm really interested in is Sum It Up.

They may have thought us terribly naughty, but we didn't mind.

It sort of sums up Lady Annabel. Bad behavior and serial adultery are the name of the game in this book. And believe me, it's the glossed-over version.

Lady Annabel is fascinating, in a train-wreck-I-can't-believe-I'm-staring kind of way. Almost unimaginably rich, pregnant by her lover while still married to her husband, very proud of her bosom and her tan; just an absolute hot mess. You will come away from this book somewhat stunned, but also not fully informed. She glosses over a lot, which is somewhat flabbergasting given how much she does cover. And she covers things that are pretty awful, yet described with a very devil-may-care attitude. Just simply awful behavior.

There are many sources of further (juicier) information about Lady Annabel. One way to start is to read the article below, and then google all the names you find in the article, and then in the wikipedia links you'll likely come across. It's a sordid rabbit hole to fall into, which could take weeks (and as Mark noted, almost requires a white board and a map).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1094341/Their-105m-feud-But-Annabels-nightclub-dynasty-peace.html

This is a fun book of math, logic, and philosophical puzzles. The joy for me came from Smullyan's ability to channel Lewis Carroll. He used the characters, humor, and story lines from Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to great effect.

This is not, however, a math, logic, nor philosophy book. The answers are given in the back, along with a brief explanation of how the answer was reached. It doesn't explain the math/logic etc. I would have liked to have had more of an explanation of how to set up the problem-solving. Because I'm that kind of a nerd who doesn't understand higher math.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley.

4 stars for the story, 2 minus stars for the editing.

In 1993 much of eastern Nebraska was flooded. Spring ice jams caused a massive amount of flooding, causing a great deal of damage. June was then the sixth wettest month on record. In addition to causing additional flooding, the rain resulted in additional damage to structures that had not yet been repaired. Construction crews were overwhelmed with repairs after the spring floods; many buildings had not yet been repaired by the time the rains came in June.

On July 8 a tornado hit Lincoln. Most residents knew that Indian lore (in the book it's referred to as "Indiana lore") had it that tornadoes couldn't hit Lincoln. Some believed tornadoes couldn't jump the tracks on the north side of town. In any event, it was a bit of a shock. Trees were downed all over town and a number of roofs were torn off.

July was then the wettest month on record. It rained every day. Every day. The construction crews were still overwhelmed from the spring floods, so buildings that lost roofs in the tornado then took on a month's worth of rain.

I will never forget the smell after the tornado. Tree chippers operated all day. Huge piles of chipped wood, two storeys tall, appeared in school parking lots across the city. Freshly cut wood smells good when you catch a whiff of it periodically. When you have to smell it around the clock for weeks, it becomes sickening.

The Great Flood of 1913 makes the '93 Lincoln tornado and flood seem like a picnic in a park by comparison.

Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever tells pretty well. I thought the story flowed rather well. I would have liked maps of both the total flood (over many states) and also of Dayton, the site of the worst damage. I also would have appreciated a list of major characters. Some people are discussed throughout the book, while many are introduced just before they die, and of course do not reappear in the book. A list of those who do reappear would have helped me to keep track.

These are very minor quibbles, though, compared to my complaints about the editing. The run-on sentences make much of the book absolutely incomprehensible. I was absolutely shocked that the publishers would want the book to go out under their imprint in this state. They should be embarrassed.

Information on the Nebraska flooding:
http://www.dnr.ne.gov/floodplain/PDF_Files/FloodUpdateStory_Rev3.pdf

Information on the Dayton flooding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dayton_Flood

I received a free ARC of this book via NetGalley.

I enjoyed Sam Avery's book about the Keystone XL pipeline. He's a solar installer and environmentalist, but is also pragmatic about our dependence upon fossil fuels.

Avery travels the length of the proposed pipeline, interviewing folks along the way. He talks to people who are extremely concerned about the environment, people who are concerned about property rights, people who think the pipeline is a good idea - people all over the spectrum. He asks all of them what they think about the environmental impact of the pipeline.

That's the "pipeline" of the title. The other part of the book discusses the environmental versus economic way of looking at the world; the paradigm from which we view the pipeline.

I appreciated the balance Avery brings to the book. He comes with a definite opinion (he writes about taking part in nonviolent protests against the pipeline), but treats his interview subjects, and their opinions, with respect.

Recommended.

You must go out and read [b:84, Charing Cross Road|368916|84, Charing Cross Road|Helene Hanff|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1287338794s/368916.jpg|938626], and then read this. Both are excellent, and this is a wonderful follow-up to the first. Do not read them out of order.

Helene Hanff sounds exactly like one would want one's maiden aunt to be, unless one wanted someone a bit more madcap, like Auntie Mame. She's witty and interesting and is absolutely head over heels in love with London. I got such an appreciation of the London of literature from this book. She is deeply reverent of what she sees, and makes us feel part of that reverence.

Highly recommended.

Absolutely delicious. I must get my own copy. Preferably from a used bookseller. Better yet, from a bookseller in London.

I've known of the title for years and years, but didn't know anything about it other than the title until quite recently. After a year-long delay/lost book/mix-up with getting the request from the library, I finally got it through LINK+, and devoured it in one sitting (it's just under 100 pages). Now I want to read it again. Instead I'm reading [b:Duchess of Bloomsbury Street|125035|Duchess of Bloomsbury Street|Helene Hanff|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347557346s/125035.jpg|1200187] and loving it, as well.

These people are Readers with a capital 'R', the way some people are Christians with a capital 'C'; those who will be saved during The Rapture. It's literary and witty and warm.

Highly recommended.

I received a free ARC of this book via NetGalley.

For many of us in the West, we know little of Tibet aside from the Dali Lama. If we're studying Buddhism we might have read something by a Tibetan, but most of us have had no experience of regular Tibetans. Kunsung Dolma has written a book which therefore represents a seldom-heard and important voice.

The book details her childhood in Tibet, her flight from Tibet to India, and her eventual arrival in America. It's a harrowing journey, and Dolma describes it movingly.

The story is told in a very straightforward manner, which seems to fit well with what she tells us about herself and about Tibetans generally. I was fascinated by the portrait she paints of the differences between Tibetan and Western cultures. That aspect alone would be enough for me to recommend the book.

I had a few complaints about the book, but they didn't detract from the value of the book. The longest single section concerns the many frustrations she and her husband faced while trying to get her a passport and visa while in India. It was a gruelling process. Unfortunately, by describing so many of the run-ins they had with corrupt officials, lawyers and judges, I eventually became a bit numb. Which, of course, made me feel like a horrible, heartless person. I would have preferred to have read some fewer examples of the corruption, along with information about how long the process took, rather than a rehash of every encounter. Which leads to one of the next problems I had with the book.

Dolma tells us early in the book that Tibetans don't have much use for things like calendars; she's not sure when, exactly, she was born. The lack of time reference becomes quiet apparent throughout the book. We learn that some waits or journeys take a a month or whatever, but there's very little overall mention of time. It would have been easier for me, a Westerner, to relate to if I had a better sense of how much time was passing in total, for example that the entire passport/visa debacle took a total of X months or years, or the age at which she left Tibet. This lack of time reference brought home for me the difference between us in terms of our attention to the passage of time, and as a result I felt that I had a better understanding of Tibetans. But since the book seems to be aimed at Westerners, it might be a more palatable with more information about the passage of time.

I never thought I'd want more foreshadowing in a book, but I did with this one. As I mentioned, it's very straightforward, and her life story is told in chronological order. I was intrigued by her story and wanted to read more, but I noticed that even a little bit more foreshadowing would have kept me reading more avidly. When she left her mother in Tibet, if she had said, "It would be twelve years before I saw my mother again," I would have been anxious to find out what went on in the intervening years.

This might be an overly critical review. It's certainly a book well worth reading, and I recommend it.

This book addresses a hugely significant event in American political and judicial history. Bugliosi wrote an article, "None Dare Call It Treason," about it for The Nation, published on February 5, 2001. The article "drew the largest outpouring of letters and email in the magazine's 136-year history." The editors asked Bugliosi to expand upon the article, and the result is this book.

The book contains the original article, "amplifications" (endnotes) to the article, a summary of the legal proceedings, and amplifications to the summary. About 150 pages altogether.

I love the way the endnotes have footnotes. DFW would be proud.

What I didn't love was Bugliosi's tone. His bellicosity and vitriol diminished his credibility. He calls himself a moderate, but has only scathing things to say about Bush supporters, calling them "human mutants," "barons of buffoonery, sultans of silliness, (and) dukes of duncery." He writes, "It is unlikely that the collective IQ of these people was higher than room temperature."

I wish he had written a more straightforward analysis of the stealing of the presidency by the Supreme Court. It might have been drier, even perhaps more boring, but still could have been a valuable, important book. I read almost all of it, but just couldn't get through the last bit.

I'm going to repost here my review of [b:Basin and Range|19894|Basin and Range|John McPhee|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311988469s/19894.jpg|1665814] because it's pretty much exactly the same for this book. I liked this one a bit more because so much of was about the Bay Area, but I'm guessing it would be somewhat incomprehensible to people outside of the Bay Area.



I very much wanted to love this book. It's been recommended to me multiple times by multiple people, even long before I started working with geologists, long before I held oolites in my hand, or saw an angular unconformity, or got to know Walter Alvarez.

Although I'm not an earth scientist, I'm familiar with most of the ideas in the book, and recognized many of the words. I'm interested in geology. So I was presumably in the target audience - a well-suited reader.

Yet I found much of it incomprehensible. Poetic and interesting, but not understandable. It's too technical to be fully engaging for non-scientists, but doesn't include enough maps or diagrams to be illustrative/educational. And it's probably too travelogue-ish or narrative to be of interest to scientists.

I'm glad I read it. Overall, though, I'm disappointed.

I wasn't one of the sci fi/fantasy geeks. But I was there, in the library, reading as much as possible, immersing myself in whatever I was reading. Not a different world, perhaps, or one with robots or magic, but early 19th century England and mid-19th century New England were almost as removed from my reality as to be different worlds.

But not having read [a:Anne McCaffrey|26|Anne McCaffrey|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1323715139p2/26.jpg] or [a:Robert A. Heinlein|205|Robert A. Heinlein|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1192826560p2/205.jpg] doesn't mean I can't relate to this book. There are elements of being a nerd readergirl that cut across genres. I know there will be people who complain that they don't like this book because they aren't familiar with the many (many!) SF/F books and authors who are mentioned. But true readernerds will be able to relate to the joy of discovering interlibrary loan, sympathetic librarians, like-minded readers, and pocket money for buying books.

There's definitely an element of magical realism to the book, but not much more than in [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348992192s/227571.jpg|3332231], which I wouldn't consider to be of the fantasy genre. Midwestern Protestant magical realism is quite a different kettle of fish to Cymraeg magical realism, but it's the same lovely permeation of story with just enough magic to draw one in. So the big turn off, for some, will simply be their unfamiliarity with the authors and titles mentioned by this girl who loves books. They should get over themselves.

The book will appeal to book nerds, readergirls, SF/F fans, people who have felt different, people who hang out in bookshops, angsty preteens, people who love books but don't like coffee, and girls with Cymraeg names (cough*Ceridwen*cough).

But darling, you simply must read [b:Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade|187060|Auntie Mame An Irreverent Escapade|Patrick Dennis|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320515457s/187060.jpg|2248207]. Even 60 years after publication, she is still so very au courant, so moderne.

The version I read had an afterward by Patrick Dennis's son, Michael Tanner, which was very nice. The book itself, though, is simply divine.

One can't ask for a more lively, fascinating auntie than Mame. Her madcap adventures, true love for her nephew, and combination of ditz and moral backbone make for a fabulously fun book.