Dave Barry Rocks!

So, last week I corralled the parents and we went to a library book signing featuring Dave Barry. I had worked an event with him back in my bookstore days, so I knew it would be a good time.

The place was packed. I was lucky enough to order my tickets the day the event was posted online- one of the librarians told me that they'd had to change the venue twice to accommodate the large number of people who wanted to attend. I took 4 hours off from work that day to go. Mom & Dad were supposed to get there early and snag some good seats. We actually got there at the same time, but still got really good seats. They were selling copies of the new book and Mom was kind enough to buy one for me since I was still 9th in line for the library copies and payday wasn't until Friday following the event. Dad took one look at the title- YOU CAN DATE BOYS WHEN YOU'RE FORTY- and told me that I am still not old enough. Hah.

Dave took the "stage" and the laughter started immediately. Here's how funny this man is- my father, who rarely gives more than a dry chuckle at things that amuse him, ACTUALLY LAUGHED OUT LOUD. MORE THAN ONCE. I jokingly told my mother that Dave seemed to be talking to our aside of the room more than the other. She said she thought he was just talking to me because it seemed to her that he was looking right at me most of the show. My friends Susan & Frank, who were seated toward the middle, echoed Mom's theory. (Frank actually stood up for a second to see what was over on the right side, sat back down, looked at Susan and said "Mickey is directly in his path of vision.")

Because I picked our seats toward the right front side of the stage, I wound up being the 6th person in line to get my book signed. I'm not sure if Dave actually remembered me from the bookstore event years earlier or if he just flirted with all the girls, but he grabbed my hand, said "Well, HELLO there" and talked to me for 5 minutes before signing my book....which he made out to "Mickey, the goddess" without any prompting from me. Susan, bless her, snuck up and got a couple of shots of us talking.

All in all, it was a fun evening. And, Dave? If you're ever single again, call me. :-)

Vader's Little Princess- Jeffrey Brown

Darth Vader is back and this time he's coping with the challenges of his little girl as she goes from adoring 5 year old to rebellious teen. Unless you are some kind of ridiculous Star Wars purist, you can't leaf through this book without smiling!

I Can't Complain- Elinor Lipman

I like essay collections. This was my first experience with Elinor Lipman and now I'm going to try her novels. This collection contains essays on every subject from birth to death and in between.

The Ghost & Lady Alice- Marion Chesney

This was a fun little romp with a few screwball elements. Alice is a scullery maid on a ducal estate, mistreated, and desperately wanting a better life. She ventures upstairs one night after everyone has gone to bed and sees a portrait of her employer's ancestor- a man who was a known rake & libertine, but who treated his servants fairly and with kindness. The nearly broken Alice wishes out loud that he could come bck and take her away from her miserable existance.

Gervase, the 8th Duke, is quite startled to find himself summoned back into existance after his death nearly a century before. He is amused by the little scullery maid who has unwittingly brought him back and decides to help her. It takes a while to put his plan into motion, but he eventually spirits Alice the scullery maid away and manages to bring her into society as Alice the French Countess.

The plan is to find Alice a titled husband and give her the secure life she'd dreamed of. Of course things NEVER go according to plan...after a disastrous series of engagements, Alice and her Ghostly Duke realize they've fallen in love. Now how do they get their happily ever after?

Serengeti Spy- Anup Shah

Anyone want to guess why I read this? LOL. The lion pictures are my favorite by far, but the shots of other wildlife are equally stunning. One of my non-lion favorites was a herd of elephants gathered around a dried out pond, watching in amusement as a baby elephant gleefully rolled in the dust. Wll worth looking at, and if you want to pick up a copy, Amazon has this $40 book on sale for $16. (as of the time this is written)

Cirque du Soleil- Worlds Away

I love Cirque du Soleil. I've seen several of the live shows and own several more DVD performances. I picked this one up at the library and was a bit disheartened to see that James "Egomaniac" Cameron was involved in it. Luckily, the performances made up for a lot. It seemed kind of disjointed at first, and then I caught on to what I was seeing. They filmed sections of the various shows that are currently running in Vegas and turned it into a movie. I enjoyed the bits from "O", which I have seen. There were some scenes from Ka & Mystere, which I want to see. Then they went into Viva Elvis & The Beatles tribute show and I almost turned the damned thing off because I loathe the Beatles. (this came about after being forced to listen to them ad nauseam at the bookstore  for 5 years) But I stuck it out and was rewarded with an aerial ballet at the end that made the whole thing worth it. For the record, the aerial ballets are my favorite part of any Cirque show.

Here I Go Again- Jen Lancaster

This is Jen's second novel and quite a hoot to read. The main character is Melissa "Lissy" Ryder. Lissy was a high school homecoming queen/cheerleader/leader of the mean girls posse/snotty witch. You know the type- think Mean Girls meets Heathers. She spent her high school years running roughshod over everyone and the following years coasting on what she believed to be her past glory.

Then the proverbial rug gets yanked out from under her feet.

Suddenly Lissy finds herself broke, unemployed, single, and fat. And living with her parents. Things can't get worse, right? Wrong. She gets an invitation to her class reunion.

Thinking she can relive her glory days, and praying that her former classmates all have wretched lives, she goes. Things don't go the way she'd hoped. Most of her former victims are amazingly successful. Her ex-husband is there with a Sofia Vergara lookalike. People are lining up to take metaphorical jabs at her and her BFF has given up and walked away in disgust.

Only one person takes pity on Lissy- Deva, formerly Debbie, who has become a New Age practitioner. Deva took all the negativity heaped on her from Lissy and channeled it into something positive. She feels truly sorry for the girl who made her life hell and offers to help her by giving Liss a potion. "Only take one drop a day!"

Liss makes her way home and thinks Deva is a nut. Why be nice to someone who was so rotten to her? But it's not like she has anything to lose at this point, so she tries the potion. It doesn't taste too awful, so she has some more. And some more....and then she falls asleep...

...only to wake up in her old room. Nothing shocking there- she's had to move back in with her parents. Then she realizes that she's not just in her old room- she's in her old body! That's right...Lissy Ryder is 17 again. Now maybe she can right the wrongs of her past and have a brighter future!

Well, almost. She changes the past, and winds up with the kind of future she dreamed of. The problem is, she kind of screwed everyone else up in doing it, but is enlightened enough to care. So now she has to find Deva, get more of the potion, and try again. Does she succeed? Does she get a Happily-Ever-After without ruining it for everyone?

You'll have to read it for yourself. And if you're like me, you'll wind up digging out your old Whitesnake recordings.

"I don't know where I'm going...but I sure know where I've been..."

Fifty Shades Of Chicken- FL Fowler

Bwahahaha. Someone finally took the concept of food porn seriously. This is a cookbook parody of the supremely lame 50 Shades series. The recipes look doable, the writing leading up to each recipe is much better than the books it lampoons, and overall this wasn't bad at all.

Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn

I wasn't going to read this one because I don't like following the rest of the sheeple in the world, but several authors I like (with similar tastes to mine) had put it on their recommended lists, so I thought I'd try it.

Wow, are these characters screwed up! The story starts out normally- boy meets girl, boy & girl get married. Then boy & girl both lose their jobs in NY, her parents go broke and have to take the money from her trust fund to pay debts, his parents are dying, and they move back to his childhood home in Missouri. She's not happy about it, but is trying to stay positive. He uses the last of her money to open a bar with his sister and thinks everything is peachy...until he comes home on their anniversary to find signs of a struggle and his wife missing.

Then it gets interesting.

The police ask the usual procedural questions. Her parents come to help with the search. Friends and neighbors start looking for the missing woman. And parts of the story don't quite add up. Neighbors paint a different picture of his life than the one he gives the police. Weird things show up, and the 'hero' is shown to be hiding things from the world...things that don't put him in a good light and make matters worse...like the affair he's been having...

Now he's accused of killing his wife and hiding her body. And while the police are trying to find evidence to put him away, the husband is trying to prove that his wife set him up to look like he killed her. As he grasps at straws to save himself, the reader is shown how the missing wife isn't quite the sainted angel she's been cast as.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that it wasn't entirely satisfying, but in a way, most of the characters got what they deserved.

Jamie Oliver's Great Britain

I've never been a big fan of Mr Oliver's, but I thought I'd give him one more try since this is supposed to be his take on classic British dishes. Bleh. The non-recipe pages are hard to read with their multi-colored print, and the recipes themselves are crammed onto their pages with small print. And the smugness I've always perceived from him just flows. I agree with Gordon Ramsay- "Every time I see him, I just want to hold him down and give him a good wash!"

Reading it was an interesting way to spend a few hours, but I wouldn't want to cook anything from it. (for the record, as much as I like Gordon, I don't want to cook any of his recipes either)

My Ideal Bookshelf

This was a fun read where people from various walks of life are asked what books would be on their ideal bookshelf and provide a brief narrative explaining their choices. Artist Jane Mount then draws a lovely image of what the shelf would look like, and she captures the real covers of some of the books VERY well.

Celebrate- Pippa Middleton

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! She got paid HOW MUCH for this?!? At least she admits in the forward that people mainly know who she is because of her sister,  her brother-in-law, and her butt.

Ok, let me find something positive to say: The pictures are pretty.

The Casual Vacancy- J K Rowling

I can sum this book up in one word: Blech. Rowling succeeded at one thing- this book is nothing like her Harry Potter series. I didn't expect it to be and was quite hopeful when I heard it described as dark humor. There was plenty of darkness, but very little humor.

 The premise is that a man drops dead unexpectedly and leaves a vacancy on his town council. The surviving councillors are engaged in a war for supremacy for their group's views while trying to get a replacement. The story focuses on their internal warfare and the crumbling relationships with their children, class war, and how people cope with loss.

There wasn't a single likeable character in the book. Not even the teenagers were tolerable. I was slightly amused at them taking metaphorical potshots at the adults around them, but overall, this thing left me cold. One character is vaguely interesting- the sterotypical bad girl who has a horrible family life but is recognized by an adult as a diamond in the rough. The problem is that the adult in this case drops dead at the beginning of the book, nobody else cares enough about this girl to try to keep her going, and she winds up committing suicide at the end.

I'd like to thank J K Rowling for one thing. It's said that all fiction has a base in fact. If life in a British village is that dismal, with politics that pervasive, I am changing my future retirement plans to live in a flat in London!

The Liddabit Sweets Candy Cookbook: How to Make Truly Scrumptious Candy in Your Own Kitchen!

I saw this listed in the new books section on my library website and requested it, not expecting much of anything. Cookbooks lately just haven't appealed to me at all.

My reserved copy came in and I sat down on the couch with it. WOW. Jen & Liz have done a great job with this book! They don't just assume that the reader knows how to do things, but they also don't dumb their insructions down to the point that you feel your intelligence has been insulted. There are clear step-by-step instuctions for various techniques, tips for how to save failed attempts, and suggested variations on nearly every recipe.

My favorite section of one of the baking classes I took in culinary school was the one where we made candy. We mostly did chocolates, and I had hoped to get a chance to try other things. Sadly, that didn't happen, but this book has rekindled my desire to give it another shot. I've placed an order for a copy of my own and suspect some of my officers are going to be my guinea pigs as I try a few recipes out...

A+++

You'll want to give this one a shot.

Craft-A-Day: 365 Simple Handmade Projects

I was really hoping for more than I got from this. I sporadically get bitten by the craft bug and decide it's my mission in life to make goofy stuff. The projects included in this book are cute and definitely simple, but it's rather repetetive. This would be a good book for parents with small children who need indoor projects on bad-weather days, teachers, and others of that ilk. I needed just a little bit more.

I will admit that the cat, lion, and bird projects were all tempting, despite the repetition. I may give a couple of them a try.

I Could Pee on This and other poems by cats- Francesco Marciuliano

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....THUD.

That was me laughing so hard I fell out of my chair. The poems in this small collection aren't epic works, or highbrow enlightenment. What they are is almost exactly what I would expect a cat to say if it could write poetry. The following two exceprts are from the book and not by any means my own work. I suspect, however, that my cats had a hand in writing them.

Kubla Kat

“On the edge of a laughing teacup

Did Kubla Kat decree

The the corn fritter festooned with medals

Shall make the brownies free

And so the walls turned to water

To let our sorrows drown

As the chairs burned themselves for warmth

So they need not face the clown

Then the spoons burst into song

And all the forks they understood

As I stared at my talking claws

Becasue this catnip is just that good”       and   Busy, Busy   “It's 8a.m. and time to rest

It's 10a.m. and time to relax

It's noon and time for repose

It's 3p.m. and time for shut-eye

It's 6p.m. and time for siesta

It's 9p.m. and time to slumber

It's midnight and time to snooze

It's 4a.m. and time to hang upside down from your bedroom ceiling, screaming.”

God Save The Queen- Kate Locke

God Save the Queen, and lord help everybody else. This was a thumping good mashup of alternative history with a dollop of steampunk and a lot of supernaturals. Xandy, the heroine, is a half-vampire daughter of a vampire aristocrat, and a member of the Royal Guard serving the undead Queen Victoria. She's just been told by the Goblin Prince that her younger sister has been committed to Bedlam. Her other siblings relctantly confess that they knew, and as they plan to go visit, they're told that their sister has committed suicide in her cell. Xandy refuses to believe it and digs into the circumstances. What she finds shakes her world to the core.

Did I mention that her mentor/would-be lover is Churchill? Yes, THAT Churchill, only he's a vampire. And the Scottish Alpha werewolf (who has a mutual hate on with Church) has taken to courting her? And the goblins are fascinated with her, for reasons that only become clear at the end of the story? Heh.

Fans of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series will probably enjoy this one as well. It's a bit grittier, but still a good read. Can't wait for the remainder of the trilogy to come out!

DVD- Disney's Tangled

Ok, as you may know, I LOVE fairy tales. I actually meant to go see this in the theater and never got around to it. (we all know this is probably a good thing) Then it kind of passed out of mind until I noticed it on the Library New DVD page. I've been trying to be good and not buy a whole lot of stuff, so I've been checking the library for movies fairly regularly and been pleased with some of the things I've gotten.

This take on Rapunzel is hilarious. A spunky princess (even if she doesn't know it), a charming rogue, and a horse & lizard who seem to know more of what's going on than their human sidekicks do, make for a good time. From Rapunzel's initial encounter with Flynn (watching her try to stuff his unconcious body in a wardrobe is priceless) to the Rogue's tavern singalong to the frying pan/sword duel ("This is probably the strangest thing I've ever done"), I laughed until I cried at the first half of this movie.

It got a little darker as the tale unfolds, and the final battle for Rapunzel's freedom from the wicked Gothel was VERY dark (funny how Disney throws traumatic events into all thier kiddie movies), but it all led up to a very HEA. Well worth watching, and try not to shoot Dr Pepper through your nose like I did when the little lizard tries to wake Flynn up. You'll see....

A Surrey State of Affairs- Ceri Radford

I liked this one. Mind you, it was slightly predictable, but it was a fun light read. Especially for those of us with a fondness for British chick lit.

Constance is a middle aged woman whose life revolves around her family and her bell-ringing society and the blog where she records the goings on. She battles with her Lithuanian housekeeper, and makes several attempts at match-making for her children and acquaintances with spectacularly bad results. She doesn't understand her son at all, and her daughter drives her to the brink of despair by joining the cast of an awful reality show before running off with her husband's best friend.

The affair with the father's friend sends Constance's life into a major tailspin. Her husband becomes the target of a police investigation, admits to an affair, and they separate for a time while on a South American vacation. Constance throws caution to the wind and has the adventure of a lifetime traveling by herself for a time, and there is an ultimately happy ending.

Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery - Chrystle Fiedler

Ok, I get it. The author is REALLY into natural cures, etc. That must be why the entire book read like an advertisment for the naturopathic industry with a plot that was rushed at the end to wind things up. There was an awful lot going on for not much of a payoff.