Wednesday, July 28, 2010

DECEPTION by Jonathan Kellerman ****

Always a good read from this author, it's Dr. Delaware and Milo Sturgis the detective teaming up to solve a murder of a woman who accuses people of abuse but she really has quite a few sexual misadventures of her own. The background is an LA prep school with lots of teacher misconduct etc.

Have fun, it's a good read and flows nicely, great descriptions, some amusements here and there. Who dunnit murder mystery.

There were some places I got bored with the 'what if's'. They're too distracting and internal character thoughts = Do. Not. Like. Last book of his I read was better.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

BLIND PANIC by Graham Masterton ***

OMG what a frickin difference from the last book. Hits you in the face immediately. Sucked in like a whirlpool.

Has a good lead but later gets bogged down in repetition. Over and over again with the car and plane accidents; people going blind chapter after chapter. Over and over. The two heros are self-proclaimed fortune tellers. One has 'real' power. She knows every conceivable chant and language from the Sioux, the Santeria, the old ghosts, witches, probably Hells Angels and the Mafia, etc, etc. We have too much technology and the ghosts of Christmas past wants America to revert back to cowboys and Indians on horseback. Other protag is a scammer of old ladies. So the mean old ghost is blinding everyone and pretty much in each chapter you have to put up with people dying or being blinded or planes crashing due to pilots going blind. Somewhat on the monotonous side.

BTW Inktomi the spider is IKTOMI the spider but I suppose it could be spelled other ways due to Lakota not being our language. In any case the two whites will eventually solve the Indian ghost issues and all will be well with the world. I'm about 3/4 thru it. I skip over some of the boring repetition when people meet each other for example we go over the whole enchilda yet again. You do need something to fill pages with I suppose but I'm totally bored with the peat and repeat blindness and President being chastised by the ghost and whatever. You could just write: "world in chaos- people all going blind" and I wouldn't have to read so many boring pages and pages of it.

The basic premise is kind of strange. Our technology suddenly irritates an old ghost who wants us all to live off the land but he goes around blinding everyone? WTF? Have a beer for every exclamation point -you'll get pretty drunk.

I'm very disappointed because this started out so awesome. I was really into it but it got boring at about chapter 9 and went down as fast as one of the planes.

Friday, July 23, 2010

HARDBALL by Sara Paretsky *

Just started this frickin crap. I used to really like VI Warshawski novels.
There are so many proper nouns she must have worn the caps key down to a nub. Just in 14 pages: Johnny Merton aka the Hammer, Lamont Gadsden, Miss Claudia, Sister Frances, Tess aka Ms Reynolds, Petra, Brian Kruma, Peter and Rachael, Mr. Contreras, Harvey a special agent, Hatfield, Kelsey Ingalls, Alito, Bobby Mallory, Derek Hatfield page 16 add: Elton Garinger, Sister Frankie page 18: Morrell Gabriella, Mosielio, Iphigenia, Pitigliano...geez. I'm tired. I skipped pages hoping to seek some relief in chapter 4. Jesus I swear with the city names, people names, aka names, last names, churches and streets I've had it. My pet peeve is drowning me in proper nouns. HATE IT. Warshawski the VIP name dropper -what a beast. All names, first, last, nicknames, akas....even in Chapter 4 I got more to memorize: Lotty, Elton, Karen Lennon, Max Lowenthal, Miss Ella. We are very serious about our make-believe characters....very serious.

Someone needs to remove her cap key and/or stop name dropping.

I may not make it past chapter 6 I'll give it my best shot because I'm outta books. I need the library ASAP and can't get there till tomorrow she said as she tore her Medium Brown hair from her head. NEXT DAY: DID get there today.

Continuing on, if you just start reading at chapter 4 you may be ok because chapter 1 is chapter 12. Don't ask. I think chapter 2 is chapter 11. Past, present and future are a gigantic blur.  Blahblah and in 1967 she didn't talk to him about that...and now we're eating dinner with so and so but in 1967 we wouldn't do that and so and so is a big politician and back when Warshawski knew him in "the day" he was nobody. Back and forth, back and forth. I'm dizzy.

There is sort of a story in there if you can ignore the political b.s. the sports b.s. the city of Chicago b.s. Good luck, it's a lot of work and I'm thinking I don't really care about that fathead and now I have 3 other books.....

Dazed and confused, reeling from the excess names and of being repeatedly and forcefully yanked back and forth thru time zones -I reach for another book....Buh Bye!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

ONE SECOND AFTER by William R. Forstchen *****

Not a bad read at all. A little unemotional and coarse lead character, or he has a stick up his ass but the story is a good fiction read. It's about a EMP (electro magnetic pulse) and I may have this wrong but it's an atomic explosion out of the atmosphere over an area that cripples all electronics below that point. The USA is pretty reliant on technology, electronics and electricity so you can imagine the country trying to survive months without it. This is about a large southern town and how they're coping. Written by a southern conservative- no doubt.

The protagonist-almost a General has a couple kids and his mom-in-law with him in his house to protect. He also has 2 Goldens. Dogs saved the family by barking a warning to looters. One dog gets shot and protagonist actually has more feeling about the dog than any people he's killed. He does send the body down the road for someone's dinner--see about the unemotional? Cold. Cold. Very chilly.

One issue I have is with names: John, Jen (MIL), Jennifer (kid), & Ben-rhymes-with-Jen. Washington whom I keep thinking we're moving to DC for the next paragraph. Otherwise good story telling. Not too much detail to jam up the progression of the story and a realistic scenario which is pretty frightening. He doesn't need monsters -just take out our electronics and we are totally FUCKED. For real. Make sure you have a gas grill, maybe a tent, a coleman lantern, um...lots and lots of water! Yeah...fer sure....and grow some veggies for heavens sake. A good page turner. Watch out for when they break out the Yankee Doodle Dandy shit more than once. I don't know what's truly different (re:bad) between cannibal societies, saviors and followers, debbil worshippers, cults or the self righteous over-patriotics in this and FYI 'Never Forget' belongs to Israel.

Note to self:
Grow some veggies



GHOST WALK by Heather Graham **

I got this paperback at a yard sale or something and read it (slowly) when I'm at the beach. Another NY Times selling author. Big Whoop. I just noticed I read her before and commented. Apparently she writes ghost romances?

A male mixed Sioux Indian sees ghosts and meets up with our hero Nikki who has been seeing them as well. Her friend Andrea died and is trying to warn her about something. Nikki the wuss keeps seeing her and screaming, she also screams for palmetto bugs...naked...in the shower with the Indian in the next room....conveniently also naked. Back to the point of the pointless story. So I'm on page 260 something and Nikki has seen plenty of ghosts without ONCE. ONCE asking "why are you haunting me?" Someone even warns her she's in danger and the moron is cock-obsessed and that's about it. Getting laid is priority one and so far she's not doing badly but we still don't know why she's being frickin haunted.

If you like romances...fine climb aboard it's somewhat shallow. If you're looking for something with a touch of reality keep looking. Poor trees. I feel bad for the slaughter of all the trees.

DEEPER THAN the DEAD by Tami Hoag

Wouldn't give it any stars. Don't waste your time on this #1 NY Times best selling author unless you are in like 7th grade. Is that who reviewed it for the NY TIMES some underdeveloped personality?

It takes the point of view of some children for about half the book expediting this to BORING in a blur. Not 'deeper than' superficial. I had to focus and refocus and finally realized how repetitive and childish it was.

There are a few adult points of view but I didn't want to wade thru the children's crap like: What's daddy going to do now? Will I be punished? Do I have to go to school? See a psychologist? Can I still ride my bike to school? Crap like that. Underwhelmed. I'm not into reading all the mindless thoughts of a 10 yr old. Or pretty much of anyone. Keep your boring internal angst to yourself thanks very much.

Friday, July 16, 2010

BURN by Ted Dekker & Erin Healy **

About some total bitch who has a money fixation. She lets her family and friends die so she can make a deal with a mass murderer (the debbil). The murderer is a counterfeiter. So she wants to trade a fake million she stole and holds for ransom in order to get a real million (all bills under 50 bucks). That's more than a few suitcases but what this dolt is too stupid to realize is if the counterfeiter HAD A MILLION he wouldn't be mass producing bills. Sherlock-writer.

It seems to be written ok but is often confusing. One stupid thing was hair blew into her face and I get a sentence telling me she didn't brush it away. Really? Do I care?

So onwards I plod and I saw on the cover; Fiction/Christian/Suspense. Starts off with gypsies and I suppose I'll be bombarded with some religious hocus pocus before this is over. Too true.

Ok..so the DEA supposedly copied the serial numbers of the bills so they can...what...prosecute people later for dealing drugs? What the writer is unaware about counterfeiting is the numbering of the bills. They all have the same number it's way too costly to print fake bills with all different serial numbers. Impossible even. (Not that I like, spent more than a year or so pondering this very issue as a graphic artist.) So soon as the DEA began recording the ONE serial number they'd know the money is fake. End of scenario.

Halfway thru it's like 15 yrs later or something and the cast of 3 important people are about to confront each other after everyone in their families were killed over this fake million by a bad guy now 'fake' dead.

This evil villain Sanso has been in love (or something like that) with this insane person Janeal, aka Janice aka Janet, aka Katie. I'm to understand that god split her in pieces for this story so she can perform multiple roles. Sanso after 15 years gets to kiss her but is supposedly mindlessly in love with her. ROTFLMAO
"AKA" as I shall refer to her has a sore throat when confronting her old friends or enemies I'm not sure which cuz she hates everyone so much. But changes eye color, hair length and color and has the convenient sore throat so no one's the wiser as to whom she is which is fine with me cuz I don't know and she don't know and no one in the story knows either. WTF???

Anyone know what this means? "She looked down the throat of another sleepless night?" Any tonsils involved? Then AKA sees her mom's ring on someone else's finger but I get this crap that is unfathomable. Tell me reader, are the stones on the ring or not? "Six diamonds glinted as if they were living things blahblahblah it represented a cruel contradiction of reality, in which five of the six stones....pried out of settings and crushed underfoot while the sixth stubbornly remained...blahblahblah." So what the FUCK? AND you cannot crush a DIAMOND underfoot, they cut GLASS FOR CRYIN OUT LOUD hardest stone known to mankind! What color is the sun on your confusing planet? The same planet that splits people into parts and has them meet later????

You need your aluminum-wrap hat to read this one. I am not kidding.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT by Lee Goldberg ****

Just starting it and Lee is back to funny. Right away "....unless you'd prefer a slow, miserable death." Monk: "I've been doing that since birth." ME TOO!!! and on money set aside for emergencies "We can't afford emergencies either." Same here. It's all over the place like a disease.

The story is current with the sucky economy and Madoff scheme and I like the anger in there. The teenager sarcasm is on the money.

I liked the story, lots of funny stuff. Of course and it's hard not to read it while picturing the actors from TV moving behind the scenes in your head. So what happened tho to the teenager working at the car wash, would have liked to see more on that. The dog stuff was cute.

Monday, July 12, 2010

DOG BLOOD by David Moody *

It's another end of the world novel, Sci Fi. Apparently this author gave away his first book 'Hater' and has an internet following or something. They don't have gourmet taste buds. It seems to be about zombie-like people vs normal people. How to tell the difference? Got me! Clueless. How they tell one from another? Got me! Clueless. But they can spot each other half miles away.

What I don't like is that writer changes stream of consciousness from one person to the next sort of randomly and sticks dreams in where-ever without any warning. I need chapters like "Bob's thoughts" but a more experienced writer would be much better. Because this is disruptive.

There is no actual difference between monsters and normal people so I don't know what the bloody war is about. They all run around with weapons killing each other. Who has the biggest pile of dead bodies. BIG WHOOP. It reads like a bad killer video game. My interest level in turning pages is pretty low. Actually the 'zombie' people have more personality, more thoughts and interactions, more talking than the 'normal people' do so that also makes this indigestible. So far not impressed. Shall plod onwards.

As for the "change" which author means from normal to wanting-to-kill-everyone (thus; Hater) he shouldn't call it "THE change" cuz I'm equating these fake zombies as suffering post menopausal symptoms. They're bitchy, hot headed and have no interest in sex....sound familiar????

David could use some math classes. People in the story drive half way into town and use half a tank of gas. Say that's about 5 gallons. Say the car gets 25 miles to a gallon. That's about 125 miles and that's a big fucking town buddy cuz it's only HALF WAY into town. You want the car to get 10 mpgs you say? That's still 50 miles halfway into town. Big fucking town. More on that: His daughter who is skeletal from being tied down and starved acts like Bride of Chuckie by killing everyone in her path. Which would be mildly funny if the average 5 yo didn't weigh about 40 lbs and this one is SKELETAL..hell I could take her. She's a monster who kills everything in her path. Inserted unintentional comedy for your pleasure.

What an illogical piece of shit. Bribed publi$her? The 'zombie' non-caring-about-anyone people has one zombie-guy touchingly devoted to finding his little 5 yo daughter not his two sons-pedophile could care less about them. The normal mother of the kid has her hidden and taped up for what...months? on tranqs asleep. Any food? Who knows. Does mammy know babby daddy (reference FARK) is searching for him's wittle girly who killed her two brudders? Meanwhile "unchanged" people think they're turning zombies into real people. Confused yet? They're supposed to be blending in while getting ready for a war. Skip over any narrative b.s. if you're bored (which happens a lot) and this will end the nightmare quicker for you. Very boring, nothing going on, pages and pages of nothing. The bloody cover is the most interesting thing about this book.
El Crapp-holio

Saturday, July 10, 2010

BEYOND 2012 The OMEGA POINT by W. Strieber***

Well typical Whitley, sort of off beat. Beyond UFO contacts we have end of the world sci fi. Super nova disrupting the sun. Solar storms- End of days. Basically difficult to wrap your mind around because it's not a simple concept but it gets even weirder. People creating gold paint to enter a painting and go into the future of a world that's destroyed. If the world is destroyed maximally how far into the future must they go? Why assume it's anything similar to the world as it now is which is the premise used here. If stars collide, oceans are burned off or moved and ice caps are gone why is the painting resembling the same planet with grass and trees? I'd rather have the story delve more into that world than it did.

I'm having difficulty following the concepts. Too many different ones are combined, like heaven, hell, all the Greek myths, Roman ones, Stonehendge and Christian ideas flowing as one. I mean COME ON. People who are crazy but sane? Dreams or reality? People think they're sleeping/dreaming yet not? WTF? At least TELL ME. I can't follow how incoherent the ideas are. Too many, too fast, too mixed together. For such a small novel the ideas are much too cumbersome to make any sense and throw in some 'good' guys who you can't even discern, and some 'bad' guys tagged with devices to follow them who then escape detection is all overboard.

This is like reading a skeleton of a larger more in depth story that is being lightly brushed over because the concepts are really too flimsy to carry it anywhere.
But that's just my thoughts. Help yourself to Whitley fine dining with linen napkins, Taco Bell for dinner made inside chinese egg rolls....and you're OFF!!


I didn't mind the author's note at the end, found it an interesting bit of reading. You may want to skip to this ending, read that first, then go read the rest and maybe it'll help with some of the strangeness found in the rest of the novel. Definitely sci fi.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

U IS FOR UNDERTOW by Sue Grafton *****

I picked this up at the library but have already read it, probably six months ago or longer. Treat to read, easy flowing style. Great descriptions. I like Kinsey Millhone and even after all these years of reading these stories feel like she's a real person.

Wish she'd just write a little faster. C'mon takes less than a week to read can't you pump em out any quicker?? :P

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The ELEVENTH VICTIM by Nancy Grace ***

Good writing and I like the book. The style is easy-breezy. There are some issues like I don't think the supposed prosecutor who is now being stalked by someone she had convicted is terribly bright. If she knew the last murder wasn't like the others should she not have opened her big mouth and said so? How'd she get 100 convictions being so outright stupid? I don't like that sort of inconsistency.

I don't watch the writer on TV and am not a fan. But this book isn't too crappy. Good descriptions and narrative without interfering with your sense of forward motion. No thousand name memorizations. It's the personality-sense of grandiosity that's sort of strange. Everyone has such a high opinion of themselves and the killer who KNOWS he's a killer is over irate at the prosecutor who was merely doing her job. I mean come on. He gets out of jail by some accident and immediately HAS to implicate her in murder? How many times has this happened IRL? How many?

If killers all chased after their bimbo lawyers years later I'm sure I would have heard about that on television. Or are they all hiding out in their bomb shelters? I don't know. A little realism is ok, ya know? Just cuz it's called fiction no reason to stray into the outer limits with it. He loves jail? Can't wait to get back in his cell? Haha...he should be booking for S.America.

Ok I really am enjoying the story. I think it's basically well written but again I'm stuck having to say this: Reality. It bites...right? Hailey, our hero, is trying to hide evidence. She goes into a restaurant bathroom, lifts one of those cheap flimsy cardboard ceiling tiles that rest on flimsy fake metal grids right? Then she proceeds to crawl around on that. Which is in itself impossible. Those tiles/metal gridwork messes can barely keep themselves up there never mind some 100 lb chick crawling around on it. Also: How frickin filthy would it be in there? Writer even admits....FILTHY, dirty, disgusting, dusty etc. Our hero crawls from bathroom tile up there to kitchen, drops something into a sink by moving aside another tile (not even sure that's possible lifting it from above?), then crawls back to the bathroom up there, and diddy bops out innocent as strawberry pie. Well fine! But let me just say that Hailey would be completely filthy, crawling with spiders and have dead roach parts covering her frickin little city jogging-wear. Some Wall Streeter entering the bathroom barely glances at her. OK. DONE. Wish I didn't have to say how much that sucked because basically I like the story. Get some REALISM involved here, Nancy, crawl up there yourself and crawl into another room, lift a tile. Not gonna happen. You would, first off, fall out on your ass immediately. If you impossibly make it two feet you'll need to decontaminate yourself for three days with bleach before your next meal.

Sorry bout that. Like the writing but it's not sci-fi ...right? AND the ending. Not satisfied. Left killer Cruise running loose for another book. Pet Peeve #2.