We are a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library located in Highland Park. Keep yourself updated on our doings here...
The Arroyo Book Club will be reading the book All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot for our December meeting.
This memoir of the early career of an English country veterinarian is
filled with humor & warmth… just what we need for the holiday season.
“Consommés are exceptionally rich in flavor and are crystal clear, an effect achieved by combining a high-quality stock or broth with a clarification mixture. To assure a high-quality consommé, the chef must choose ingredients carefully, keep the clarification mixture very cold until it is time to cook the consommé, and monitor the temperature of the consommé as it cooks at a slow simmer. Once the consommé has developed a rich flavor and color, it must be carefully strained and degreased to produce a crystal-clear soup, with no traces of fat, and an intense and satisfying flavor.”
Adaptation by Malinda Lo is a sci fi-esque book that begins with a mysterious bird strike
event that brings down numerous planes, moves on to road trip nightmare, and
winds up in experimented on by the government territory – and that’s only in
the opening chapters. Once our heroine
is safely back home she must figure out what exactly happened & that is
what she proceeds to do. The book
supports the conspiracy theorists actually know what’s really going on
worldview a bit too much for my taste (which should clue you in on what the
experiment involves) but other then that it is an interesting read. I would recommend it to someone who likes
lighter science fiction.
In a Fix by Linda Grimes is
a book I definitely do NOT recommend.
The premise is interesting enough --- our main characters can read the
auras of people and then sort of project them so that to outside observers they
become the person they are projecting.
Our heroine has used this ability to create a business for herself where
she becomes her client and solves their problems for them, a really weird
version of life coaching where the client doesn’t really learn anything. The real problem with the book is the
characters. The heroine is the most
inane character I’ve run into in a long time.
She seems to take no action on her own, only reacts to the action of
those around her. The male characters
are egoistical, domineering, do as I say types that would make me vow to never
speak to another man in my life if I believed men were actually like that. I put the book down without finishing it
& suggest that you steer clear of it.
I actually enjoyed the Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (pseudonym of J.K. Rowling) quite a bit. It is a straightforward mystery with a hard
boiled detective, a helpful secretary, and an assortment of suspects. The mystery centers on the suicide (or
murder?) of a young supermodel. Our
hero is hired by the supermodel’s brother to find out what happened. The author does not really play fair with
the clues by which I mean the detective learns things that the reader does not
so it’s not really a book where the reader is supposed to be involved in the
solving of the mystery. It is however
an interesting and enjoyable read.