Confessions: The Paris Mysteries

Confessions:  TheParis Mysteries by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro, 293 pages

Tandy and her brothers are living in Paris in the Grandmother Hilda’s house.  She has left them a great deal of money, providing they don’t embarrass the family name.  Tandy even managed to reconnect briefly with James, whom she loves.  However, their grandmother’s house holds secrets about their dead sister, Katherine, and there are people who don’t want Tandy to find out those secrets.  They will stop at nothing to prevent her finding out the information she’s looking for, not even murder.  This is a typical Patterson story, kind of predictable but fast paced and pretty fun.  Teen fans of the series will like this new addition.

Everyone Dies In The End

Everyone Dies In The End by Brian Katcher, 252 pages

Although I didn’t think this was quite as good as Katcher’s last two books, I enjoyed this story.  Sherman is determined to become a journalist.  He has a plan and is taking a course at Mizzou over the summer before his senior year.  His plan is to find a story that will make his professor take notice, so that he can get great recommendations for scholarships when he applies for schools.  Sherman finds his story, one that seems to involve murder and mysterious disappearances.  The only problems are that the story is decades old and there may be more to the story than he wants to know, especially after being assaulted and nearly killed, more than once.  Despite these clear warnings, Sherman decides to try and uncover the whole story.  He just hopes it doesn’t cost him his life.  This was a pretty good supernatural thriller for teens.

Through The Woods

Through The Woods by Emily Carroll, 208 pages

This graphic novel starts with a young person reading at night and follows with what is, presumably, the stories being read.  All of the stories were suitably creepy but my favorite was probably “The Nesting Place” about monsters that burrow inside you and eat you from the inside out, and the girl who stumbles across them.  Teens who like horror will definitely like this, especially if they like the graphic format.

Backlash

Backlash by Sarah Darer Littman    326 pages

When Lara and Bree were in middle school, they were best friends and neighbors. They still live across the street from each other, but now that they are in high school, they barley acknowledge each other.  What happened?

 In middle school, Lara suffered from depression and was thirty pounds overweight. A target for all the snide comments and vicious nicknames. Bree, tired of listening to Lara whine, found new friends when they graduated to high school. But Lara got help. Now she’s thinner and prettier, but is still extremely sensitive. Bree is now jealous of her former friend.

 Although their parents monitor their Facebook activity, it isn’t hard for the girls to circumvent prying eyes. When Christian friends Lara, she can’t believe someone that good-looking would be interested in her, and despite all her parents’ warnings, she accepts his friend request.

They flirt, they laugh; Lara falls hard for Christian. He’s even hinting around that he may ask her to his school’s dance. Lara starts looking at dresses. Then the proverbial rug is pulled from under her feet. Christian starts to call her names, laughs at her, and even goes as far as telling her the world would be a better place without her in it. Devastated, Lara takes his last words too seriously. Bree’s reaction to Lara’s attempted suicide is horrifying.

 Backlash is told from four perspectives: Lara, Bree, Lara’s younger sister Sydney, and Bree’s younger brother Liam. What happens to Lara and Bree affects not only them, but their siblings as well. Short chapters make the action increase. It’s heart-pounding, non-stop action that pulls readers in from the first page and never lets go. This ripped-from-the-headlines should be mandatory reading for all seventh graders.

Odd Thomas

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, 399 pages

Odd Thomas is just an ordinary guy who works as a short order cook at the local grill. The only thing that is remotely different about Odd, aside from his name, is that he can see ghosts, which he tries to help pass into whatever the next life holds for them. Occasionally Odd's powers help him to prevent tragedy from striking the small town that he calls home. When a mysterious man comes into town Odd senses something very wrong with him, first off he is being followed by shades that feed on suffering, and he just happens to have a cabinet full of research on the world's worst murderers. The most disturbing thing though is the page ripped from a calender for August 15, leaving Odd only twenty four hours to figure how to avert a catastrophe that could leave hundreds of people dead.

 The main reason I picked up this book was because I thought the movie adaptation was pretty good, and wanted to see if the books were just as good. That being said I think the book was easily as good as the movie, possibly a little bit better in some parts. I enjoyed this book and am now looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series, as I am hoping they are just as good. 

Literary Converts

Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief by Joseph Pearce, 445 pages

Literary Converts is a somewhat vague title, but it is simpler than Literary British Men and Women of the Twentieth Century Who Converted to the Catholic Church (or Very High Church Anglicanism, If Your Name is Eliot, Lewis, or Sayers).  While this latter title is more descriptive, it still fails to convey the breadth of the stream of literary Britishers to Rome chronicled here, flowing through the twilight of the Empire, beginning on the deathbed of Oscar Wilde in Paris and continuing through to the burial of George Mackay Brown at Stromness in the Orkneys.

Pearce, himself a convert (Race With the Devil), has written at length on the lives of Roy Campbell, Wilde, Lewis, Tolkien, and Schumacher, and this book sometimes resembles background notes to more focused biographies, or even one of Tolkien's appendices.  What it lacks in focus, however, is more than compensated for by the skill with which Pearce manages to illuminate the lives of the better known subjects, while simultaneously calling the readers attention to a galaxy of intriguing lesser talents, mostly forgotten today.

Dictatorship of Virtue

Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's Future by Richard Bernstein, 346 pages

"Multiculturalism" is a fighting word.  To its advocates, it denotes an openness to new ideas and the lived experiences of others.  To some of its detractors, it represents a dangerous denial of key values which built and sustain Western civilization.  Bernstein, a journalist with long experience in China, has a deeper criticism - he asserts that "multiculturalism" is itself an ideology rooted in Western thought, an ideology that is, in fact, just as closed to alternatives to itself as any other.  What multiculturalists see as a refusal to privilege any particular culture, Bernstein sees as an opposition to all cultures, an anti-culture.

Starting from his own generally conventionally progressive worldview, the author explores an impressive taxonomy of thought crimes through an extensive collection of anecdotes.  In the twenty years since this book was written, the term "multiculturalism" has been largely replaced by its successors, "diversity" and "inclusion".  At one point the author mocks a scholar who dredged up a stale outrage from an old magazine, now many of the outrages catalogued appear in the same stale light.  Yet Bernstein's central critique remains not only perceptive, but prophetic.

Shadow Study

Shadow Study by Maria V Snyder
410 Pages

"Once, only her own life hung in the balance... Oddly enough, when Yelena was a poison taster, her life was simpler. But she'd survived to become a vital part of the balance of power between rival countries Ixia and Sitia. Now she uses her magic to keep the peace in both lands-and protect her relationship with Valek. Suddenly, though, they are beset on all sides by those vying for power through politics and intrigue. Valek's job and his life are in danger. As Yelena tries to uncover the scope of these plots, she faces a new challenge: her magic is blocked. She must keep that a secret-or her enemies will discover just how vulnerable she really is-while searching for who or what is responsible for neutralizing her powers. Yes, the days of tasting poisons were much simpler. And certainly not as dangerous..."

Snyder states in the afterword that she was done with the series but fans kept asking her for another book so she wrote this one.  I think  her lack of enthusiasm shows in this book which really doesn't add anything to the series.  I did enjoy learning Valek's back story but we didn't really move much plotwise.

The Dark Side of the Road

The Dark Side of the Road by Simon R Green
217 Pages

"Ishmael Jones is someone who can't afford to be noticed, someone who lives under the radar, who drives on the dark side of the road. He's employed to search out secrets, investigate mysteries and shine a light in dark places. Sometimes he kills people.Invited by his employer, the enigmatic Colonel, to join him and his family for Christmas, Ishmael arrives at the grand but isolated Belcourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard to find that the Colonel has mysteriously disappeared. As he questions his fellow guests, Ishmael concludes that at least one of them - not least Ishmael himself - is harbouring a dangerous secret, and that beneath the veneer of festive cheer lurk passion, jealousy, resentment and betrayal.As a storm sets in, sealing off the Manor from the rest of the world, Ishmael must unmask a ruthless murderer before they strike again. "


This novel is very much like Green's other series.  A few mildly humorous jokes and set in a place where things that go bump in the night are all too common and real.  The only drawback I found in the book was that it got very repetitious in Ishmael Jones explaining why he couldn't tell anyone about himself.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, 403 pages

The year is 1866 and newspapers across the globe are reporting stories of a terrible monster haunting the worlds oceans, and is believed to be responsible for the sinking of multiple ships. Professor Pierre Aronnax,  his servant Conseil and the master harpooner Ned Land, board the U.S. Abraham Lincoln and begin the hunt for the monster. When the three are thrown overboard during an encounter with the monster they discover the beast is actually the Nautilus, a submarine built and designed by its mysterious Captain Nemo. After being captured and imprisoned aboard the mysterious vessel they are taken on a journey through the depths of the world discovering secrets of the worlds deepest depths and terrifying revelations about their mad captain. 

This was an interesting book, and while it takes awhile to get going it, however once it gets going it isn't too bad with only the occasional slow spot between action. Probably my only real complaint about this book was the almost constant use of Latin classify of marine life, which I understood why it was done that way, but it felt like I needed a degree in marine biology to figure out what kind of sharks, fish, and whales they were talking about. Overall though I feel that this book is definitely worth reading if you enjoy science fiction.

Not That Kind of Girl

Not That Kind of Girl, by Lena Dunham, 265 pages

Lena Dunham can be a pretty polarizing figure, especially among women I hang out with.  She does a good job at representing what her and her friends are like- it's just that it's incredibly difficult to relate to if you are not from a privileged, upper-class, white NYC household, yourself.  So I started reading this with a great deal of skepticism- how much could we really have in common?  And the answer is- well, not a whole lot; but the more I read it, the more I thought of her as a younger sister who makes bad decisions, and then owns up to them; she also has a strong sense of self and is constantly learning her worth.  And as the reader, I just shook my head in exasperation, but kept reading- because her heart is always in the right place and you can see real growth.  And for the many issues I take with her work, I respect what she's doing. So if you like celeb-memoir type books (think: Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?), this may be worth reading.

Magic Lantern

The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague by Timothy Garton Ash, 167 pages

When the world changed in 1989, Timothy Garton Ash was there.  In June, he was with Solidarity leaders in Warsaw on the night of the first free elections in Poland since World War II, then he was in Budapest to witness the funeral of Imre Nagy, the hero of the 1956 revolt against Soviet domination.  In November, he walked across the space in Berlin where the Wall once stood, then sat in on strategy sessions with Vaclav Havel in the Magic Lantern Theater in Prague.

It is in the Magic Lantern that the book not only gets its name but its theme.  The peaceful revolutions of 1989 were largely made by intellectuals, but, in Ash's view, were remarkably free from new ideas.  The "revolutionaries" brought down their governments by holding them accountable to their own standards and the standards of their Western neighbors.  With the use of naked force declared illegitimate by the national governments and (even more importantly) the Soviets, the communist system was exposed as an empty fortress.  This is very much an eyewitness account of the drama as it unfolded, seen from the best seats in the house, written while the echoes were still ringing off the walls.

Witches Protection Program

Witches Protection Program by Michael Phillip Cash          238 pages

I’ve read two other novels by Michael Phillip Cash (The After House  and Stillwell: A Haunting on Long Island) and loved them both. With Witches Protection Program Cash moves from the paranormal/thriller genre to the suspense/comedy genre.
 

Wes Rockville is a police officer in Manhattan. Not sure if he is federal or local, but itreally doesn’t matter. He has blown his first case and is now being re-assigned to a top-secret governmental agency, The Witches Protection Program. This organization has been in existence for 232 years. Its job: to protect the good witches who live among us.
 

At first, Wed was reluctant to believe in witches, good or bad. He reports to Alastair Verne, a man who knows a thing or two about protecting the good. His first assignment is to help Alastair uncover a plan by a wealthy cosmetic mogul, Bernadette Pendragon, (a bad witch) to achieve world domination. He also has to protect Bernadette’s niece Morgan (a good with) from her aunt’s evil plans.
 

Cash spoofs the whole witch’s genre with his clever plot. Very well written with well-developed characters. Also, there wasn’t a whole lot of over-the-top witch weaponry used. One thing I didn’t like was the way Cash tacked on how Wes blew his first case. I sure hope this is the first in a series.

 I give Witches Protection Program 5 out of 5 stars.

 

 

The Truth According to Us

The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows   512 pages

From the co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society comes a novel rich in secrets, eccentric characters,, charm, and an un-put-downable story.

It’s autumn 1938. Hotter ‘n a coon dog. In Washington, D.C., socialite Layla Beck has decided that she doesn’t want to marry Nelson, the man her father cherry-picked for her. Senator Beck is outraged and cuts off the young woman, going to far as to have her put on relief and gets he a job with the WPA.

The WPA sends Layla to Macedonia, West Virginia, to write the small-town’s history. This seems odd as the reader is not given any indication that Layla can write a book however brief. Layla settles in at the Romeyns home.

There she encounters the household: 12-year-old Willa (who reminded me of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird); Willa’s younger sister, Bird; Aunt Jottie, Aunts Mae and Minereva: and Willa and Bird’s father, Felix. Nearby lives another uncle, Emmett.

Willa has reached an age where her perceptions are starting to heighten. She decides that she wants to attain the virtues of the town’s founder, General Magnus Hamilton: ferocity and devotion. In her new found qualities, she is keenly aware of the sparks, or something, flying through the air between Aunt Jottie and Mr. McKubin.  

Layla, a beautiful young woman, attracts the attention of most of the men in town, but especially that of Willa’s father, Felix. He comes and goes in their lives like a ghost. Felix begins to show her around, while she is conducting her research. Layla is determined to do a good job.

As Layla digs into the town’s history, Willa practices ferocity and devotion and begins to uncover some interesting things about her family

.

The story is told in alternate chapters between Willa and a third-person omniscient narrator. I was quickly pulled into the story. Even at 512 pages, the story flew by and I had trouble putting it down. It’s the perfect read for a lazy, hot summer weekend.

I give The Truth According to Us 6 out of 5 stars.

Secret Lives Of The Tsars: Three Centuries Of Autocracy Debauchery, Betrayal, Murder, And Madness From Romanov Russia

Secret Lives Of The Tsars: Three Centuries Of Autocracy Debauchery,Betrayal, Murder, And Madness From Romanov Russia by Michael Farquhar, 349 pages

This book chronicles the lives of the tsars in the Romanov dynasty from Michael through Nicholas II.  It includes chapters on the more well-known tsars such as Peter I (the Great), Catherine II (the great), and the last tsar, Nicholas II, but also the lesser known (at least to me) Anna, Elizabeth, and Paul.  The book’s introduction details how the Romanovs gained power after Ivan IV’s (the terrible) reign ended and several years of political unrest followed before the first Romanov, Michael, was elected tsar.  This was a pretty good book.  It was easy to read, gave an adequate amount of information for people who are looking for an overview of the Romanov history and was pretty interesting.

The Penderwicks In Spring

The Penderwicks In Spring by Jeanne Birdsall, 339 pages

For fans of the Penderwicks, this book takes place a few years after the previous book, with a new sibling, Lydia, who is 2.  The books focusses on Batty, previously the youngest Penderwick, who now has not only Lydia, but younger brother, Ben, as well.  Lydia is now in fifth grade and missing Rosalind, who is in college, and Jeffrey, who isn’t always welcome because of his crush on Skye, and Tommy, who also stays away since he and Rosalind broke up, and also Nick, who is in the armed forces and away fighting in the war.  Batty finds out near the end of the school year that she can sing.  She concocts a plan to surprise her family with her newly found voice at her birthday party, which is a few weeks away.  This plan means that she needs to talk to Jeffrey, which should be easy since he’s supposed to come for Skye’s birthday, but could be more difficult of his crush interferes with his visit, and also means she needs to hatch a scheme to make money for voice lessons since it’s supposed to be a surprise.  In the midst of all of this, there are several minor crises and one kind of large crisis but in true Penderwick style, all is resolved in the end.  I love the Penderwicks and would give this to any kid who likes stories about everyday life.

Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story by David Levithan, 200 pages

This is written as though it were a musical, chronicling the life of Tiny Cooper from birth through high school.  Tiny is a very large, very gay teen.  He is out and proud but desperate to find love.  The first act is about his younger life and the second act is mostly high school, and about all of the boys he’s dated.  There is a lot of humor along with a lot of universal truths in this story.  A lot of teens will probably like it, possibly even reluctant readers, because it is fairly short and has a lot of white space so it’s a pretty quick read.

The Fallen

The Fallen by Charlie Higson, 533 pages

Even though this series is well written and the story is good, I have to say that I’m going to be glad when it ends.  It’s one of those series that I really want to see resolved in some way before I stop reading but all of the death and heartache is really starting to get to me.  This particular book takes place at the same time as the events in the previous book, The Sacrifice, and details what is happening to other groups of kids in London, which is basically more kids traveling to different locations and being eaten by the diseased adults.  Higson does a good job of making you care about the kids in the story and then letting them die.  This book seemed a lot worse for the lack of hope and it made me kind of tired of the whole series.  I’ll probably read the next book, but unless there’s a change in tone, I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the series after that.  Teens who like horror will probably still like this addition to the series though.

UnDivided

UnDivided by Neal Shusterman, 372 pages

This is the final book in the Unwind series.  In the not-so-distant future, teens can be unwound and their body parts used as donor parts for other people that need them.  Connor, whose parents signed the order for him to be unwound and has been on the run ever since, has been working to bring down the laws about unwinding teenagers, with the help of his friend, Risa.  Recently the two have been hiding and have discovered an organ printer.  The technology was abandoned years ago as not being feasible, but now they have proof that it works.  If they can figure out how to make the knowledge public this will be their best chance at ending unwinding once and for all, but many people would rather see them dead.  The final book was one of the best in the series, very exciting and lots of action, with enough explanation and a satisfying ending.  Teens who like dystopian fiction will want to read this series.

Audacity

Audacity by Melanie Crowder, 389 pages

Clara is a young Jewish girl whose family has escaped the Russian pogroms in the early 1900s and come to America.  In Russia, Clara was interested in learning but her family felt that education for a girl would be a waste of time.  Clara’s role was to learn to be obedient and to find a good husband.  Clara hopes that in America things will be different.  She wants to become a doctor.  She realizes quickly that nothing will change how her family feels but that she may be able to make her own decisions.  Forced to work in a factory sweatshop, Clara still finds time to attend classes but also realizes that she is interested in the unions that some of her coworkers are trying to organize to create better working conditions.  Despite her family’s objections, Clara becomes instrumental in the organization effort.  Told in a series of poems, this book is loosely based on the real life of Clara Lemlich, a young Jewish woman originally from Russia, who fought valiantly for the worker’s rights and the establishment of the unions.  Although books in verse are still not really my thing, this was a good story and a lot of teens will like the fact that, because of the format, it is a quick read.