Monthly Archives: January 2011

Mailbox Monday is a place to celebrate the new books that take up residence in our houses.  It is currently touring, and Rose City Reader is the January Host.  Next month, it moves on to Library of Clean Reads.

I had one book arrive in my mailbox this week:
Fatal Error by J.A. Jance (Ali Reynolds #6)

Ali Reynolds begins the summer thinking her most difficult challenge will be surviving a six-week- long course as the lone forty-something female at the Arizona Police Academy—not to mention taking over the 6:00 AM shift at her family’s restaurant while her parents enjoy a long overdue Caribbean cruise. However, when Brenda Riley, a colleague from Ali’s old news broadcasting days in California, shows up in town with an alcohol problem and an unlikely story about a missing fiancé, Ali reluctantly agrees to help.

The man posing as Brenda’s fiancé is revealed to be Richard Lowensdale, a cyber-sociopath who has left a trail of broken hearts in his virtual wake. When he is viciously murdered, the women he once victimized are considered suspects. The police soon focus their investigation on Brenda, who is already known to have broken into Richard’s home and computer before vanishing without a trace. Attempting to clear her friend’s name, Ali is quickly drawn into a web of online intrigue that may lead to a real-world fatal error.

When I received an e-mail asking if I’d be interested in reviewing this book, I jumped on it enthusiastically. The description hit a couple of keywords guaranteed to catch my attention: “Arizona” (my home state) and “on-line intrigue” (I worked in IT, and computer security was one of my specialties many years ago. I’m still interested). More than even those was the author.

I enjoyed J.A. Jance’s Joanna Brady books. I’d read the first 9 when the series had a crossover with her other well-known series, the J.P. Beaumont books.  So I went and read those.  All 15 of them.  More or less in a row.

I don’t do that anymore.  I haven’t really read J.A. Jance since then.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the books.  I’m willing to abandon a series that isn’t working for me.  It’s just that it was too much of a good thing.

I’m past that now, and I’m enthusiastic about returning to a much-liked author.  I was enthusiastic enough not to notice this is book 6 in a series that I don’t think I’ve read (the first book sounds vaguely familiar, and I have a rotten memory, which is one of the reasons I started blogging, so I can remember what I thought).  I’m not fanatical about reading in order.  If I enjoy this as much as I’m expecting to, I’ll add the first in the series to my list of books to find.

Any new books at your house?  Tell me here (or point me to your blog), then go and check out the Linky at Rose City Reader!

Pretty new books this week!  Woo Hoo!  I love books!

Arrived for tours with TLC Book Tours

Moonface by Angela Balcita

From the pages of the New York Times’ Modern Love column comes one woman’s moving and uproarious story of how love and laughter rescued her from life-threatening illness. Angela Balcita’s cathartic memoir of finding love while wrestling with kidney failure will strike a chord with anyone yearning for a poignant, true-to-life romance…with a real fairy tale ending.

Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser

This is the book that has come in for me recently that attracted the attention of my 12 year old daughter.  When I finish reading it, I’ll see who wants it next, my daughter or my husband…

Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos- confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove how essential education is to urban success and how new technology actually encourages people to gather together physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only 25 percent higher in L.A. He pinpoints the single factor that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link. He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to New Orleans can “shrink to greatness.” And he exposes the dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both cities and the entire country.

Other books for review

The Mistress Of Nothing by Kate Pullinger

Lady Duff Gordon is the toast of Victorian London. But when her debilitating tuberculosis requires healthier climate, she and her lady’s maid, Sally, set sail for Egypt. It is Sally who describes, with a mixture of wonder and trepidation, the odd menage marshalled by the resourceful Omar, which travels down the Nile to a new life in Luxor. When Lady Duff Gordon undoes her stays and takes to native dress, throwing herself into weekly salons, language lessons, excursions to the tombs, Sally too adapts to a new world, affording her heady and heartfelt freedoms never known before. But freedom is a luxury that a maid can ill-afford, and when Sally grasps more than her status entitles her to, she is brutally reminded that she is mistress of nothing.

The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher

Welcome to a future where water is more precious than gold or oil-and worth killing for

Vera and her brother, Will, live in the shadow of the Great Panic, in a country that has collapsed from environmental catastrophe. Water is hoarded by governments, rivers are dammed, and clouds are sucked from the sky. But then Vera befriends Kai, who seems to have limitless access to fresh water. When Kai suddenly disappears, Vera and Will set off on a dangerous journey in search of him-pursued by pirates, a paramilitary group, and greedy corporations. Timely and eerily familiar, acclaimed author Cameron Stracher makes a stunning YA debut that’s impossible to forget.

Bought for myself

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare

I’m not going to include a summary here, instead I’ll explain how I bought 3 copies of one Shakespeare play in one week.

I volunteer twice a week in my daughter’s 7th/8th grade classroom.  On Tuesdays, I’m one of 4 lit parents.  On Wednesday, I’m one of 3 science parents.

The class decided to take a 4 day field trip to the Ashland (Oregon) Shakespeare Festival (they’ve done this for several years now).  They will be seeing 3 plays, including Measure for Measure. They are now preparing for this trip.

The parents that are leading the discussion groups got copies of the books a week before the students.  Then we had to give them back.  I wasn’t quite done.  OK, I wasn’t really that far in– I wasn’t familiar with the play at all.  So I ordered a copy of the same version the class is using, from Folger’s Shakespeare Library.

This had not yet arrived when we left town a week ago Thursday.  We were returning Monday evening, and the discussion of the first act was to take place Tuesday morning.   I could continue to share my daughter’s copy, and I decided to get an audio version we could listen to (I guess this should have gone into last week’s MM post!).

Between my daughter’s rhythmic gymnastics meet and playing tourist in Las Vegas, neither of us picked up the printed or audio version of the play (she got her other homework done, though).  I figured we could do so on the plane.  All was well until we sat down to wait for boarding, and I realized I’d packed the printed version.

I pulled out my Nook, she pulled out our Ipad, and we bought and downloaded another version from B&N.  We shared a set of headphones on the plane (we each got one ear), and we each had an electronic version to follow along with.   We made it through Act I, even stopping to discuss it a few times.

This weekend, we took the same approach.  Since we were home, we used my computer and the speakers, and (since my printed copy arrived while we were gone) we both followed our own paper version.  We’re both prepared to discuss Act II.  Three more acts to go…

What was in your mailbox this week? Share your thoughts on your books and mine, and then head to Rose City Reader, this month’s host for Mailbox Monday.