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I have always enjoyed Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow mystery
series. The books are light hearted and
amusing and the characters are eccentric enough to satisfy anyone. She continues her excellent work in The Good, The Bad, and the Emus. In this book Meg is roped into helping the
private detective her grandfather hired look for her missing grandmother. A murder is then stumbled across followed by
a flock of missing emus that need to be tracked down and recaptured followed by
more murder. This series is not one
that requires you have read previous books to enjoy so feel free to pick this
one up and start with it. Then you can
track down her previous titles.
This week’s
question was what was a previous name for Ballast Point? - - - with bonus points for saying where it was
located?
The Arroyo Book Club will be reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein in September. In this
book Enzo, a dog, reflects on his life as he reaches its end. He recalls all that he and his family have
been through. Since I have yet to read
the book let me provide you with The Library Journal’s Review…
Sergei Lukyanenko adds a new title to his Night
Watch Series with New Watch. Anton is still working for the Night Watch
and in this tale his path intersects with a boy who is a prophet. This encounter leads him to more dealings
with the work of prophets and the consequences they bear for the Twilight. This book is as good as the previous titles
in the series (pick them up if you haven’t already) & I would recommend it
to anyone with a taste for fantasy.
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter continue their “Long”
series with The Long Mars (see 7/9/13
entry for Long War). The book picks up
where the last left off and continues the story in odd little jumps across time
and character. In this book we follow
the arrival of a new species of human who call themselves the “Next”, track
some adventurers who take advantage of a gap in the “long Earth” to make an
easy step off to Mars which they discover is also long, follow a government
sponsored group that steps along a quarter billion Earths in a vast exploration
and more.
Andreas Steinhofel gives us the portrait of a
teenage boy in The Center of the World. Phil has an eccentric mother, a drifting,
disengaged twin sister, and no father that he knows of. In this story we nominally follow Phil in
his 17th year but we flashback to earlier scenes in his life often
(& without warning). This is a
straightforward slice of life novel and is fairly interesting for its
characters and setting. I would
recommend it to people who like to read stories about ordinary (& not so
ordinary) people.
I was just rereading Last Watch by Sergei
Lukyanenko and it made me remember how much I love this writer. The Last Watch is part of the Night Watch
series that has currently had 5 of its volumes translated into English. The series is one of those fantasy world
interacts with the real world books but it is made more interesting because it
reflects a Russian worldview. So just
when you find a trope you’re used to from your general American or English
writers it will spin in an unexpected way.
It doesn’t hurt that the writer is good too. If you haven’t run into the series before I would recommend
picking up the first --- Night Watch.
This week’s
question was which is the most successful group of vertebrates? Fish are the most successful with over
25,000 species that can be found in both freshwater and saltwater habitats.
The Thing with Feathers is a very
approachable book about birds (as I’m sure you guessed) by Noah Strycker. It is definitely for the beginner and
Stryker makes far more associations to humans then you would expect. I think he is trying to keep a novice
audience interested by relating bird observations to human experiences. The technique works though it does mean that
this is not a book for an expert in the subject. The book is broken up into chapters that each address a different
aspect of body, mind, or spirit by reflecting on a particular aspect of a
single bird. So, for example, one
chapter focuses on navigation by looking at homing pigeons while another looks
at aggression by focusing on hummingbirds (did you know that about
hummingbirds?) and yet another looks at romance by examining the family life of
the albatross.
Rachel Bach finishes up the series begun in
Fortune’s Pawn & continued in Honor’s Knight with Heaven’s Queen. The story winds up satisfactorily which is
always a plus in a series. I’ll admit
that I didn’t like this book as much, principally because the relationship
between Devi & Rupert is finally a thing and the author is way too saccharine
about it for my taste. However, if you
read the first two books you’ll definitely want to grab this one and finish off
the series.