Books I've Read
Books Listed by Author
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Rose
The American Blair looks for a missing cleric in a coal mining town in Victiorian England. Sort of a romantic mystery. Not really action filled, but interesting. Three maps!! 364 p.
Read:
9/2001
Stalin's Ghost
Arkady is chasing down vision of Stalin, some black beret soldiers, a chess-playing runaway, and his main squeeze, Eva.
Words I Had To Look Up::
Shostakovich's "Tahiti Trot" (pg. 295) -- Tea for two, eh? Interesting.
Read:
11/2009
The Siberian Dilemma
Arkady goes to Siberia and bearly survives.
Read:
2/2020
Three Stations
Arkady helps a fifteen-year-old prostitute to find her stolen baby. He brings a woman back from the dead, and (later) has sex with her. Near the end of the book he guts a guy.
Read:
12/2010
Wolves Eat Dogs
Renko ends investigating a death in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Words I Had To Look Up:
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7/2012
Elephant Run
Teen returns to Burma to live on his father's logging plantation, only to have the Japanese invade. Oh, yeah, it's World War II, kids. Very good story, learned a bit about elephants, too.
Read:
2/2008
Fly Girl
Ida Mae joins the WASP during World War II.
Read:
12/2012
The Teahouse Of The August Moon
I saw the movie, now I've read the book. It reads a bit slow at first, but picks up after while. I need to slow down and appreciate stuff more. I need a Japanese garden. I need a tea ceremony!
Words I Had To Look Up:
highbinders (pg. 241) -- Since they aren't professional Chinese killers, it must mean swindlers.
Read:
5/2009
The Secret Mark: An Adventure Story For Girls
Lucille is a student and works in the college library. She observes someone stealing a book, and gets caught up in finding who and what and why. Pretty good story.
Read:
7/2022
On Hummingbird Wings
A woman returns to her hometown to take care of her ailing mother, and must reassess her life choices and decide what is important. A nice story, but there is way too much mention of coffeemakers! As the genre is Christian women's fiction (romantic), there is no cussing, just a bit of good-night kissing. I read the Advance Uncorrected Proof edition.
Read:
3/2011
The Bad Beginning
The unfortunate Baudelaire siblings meet the awful Count Olaf. Very nice story!
Read:
7/2002
The Reptile Room
The orphans go to live with their uncle, the snake scientist. He dies. How unfortunate!
Read:
8/2002
Blind Man's Bluff
"The untold story of American submarine espionage". Excellent book with amazing stories. 100 pages of appendices!
Read:
12/2000
Help Wanted
Twelve short stories. Nicely written, but they are the kind of story with no conclusion. My favorite was "Raider Nation". Glossary at end, which I discovered AFTER I finished the book. Thanks, publisher!
Read:
12/2012
Living Up The Street
Another weeded copy because no one has checked it out it quite a few years, we got more copies, man, and the paper is turning brown. Time to go away, oh paperback. I enjoyed reading the stories. This is my third Gary Soto read.
Read:
2/2014
Summer On Wheels
Mando and Hector decide to ride bicycles from East L.A. to Santa Monica. Seven page glossary at the end.
Quote:
Hector explained that they could bike five or ten miles each day, sleep over at a relative's house, look around like tourists, and bike some more when their welcome wore out. In five or six days they would be in Santa Monica on a beach crashing with a roll of white-tipped waves. -- (pg. 5) And I thought I was slow! : )
Read:
5/2009
The Choice
With some foreboding, we are told how the romance between Travis and Gabby develops from anger over a pregnant dog to a motorcycle ride. Not a lot further along we jump to the present, where SOMETHING AWFUL has happened. When we FINALLY find out what that is, not a lot further along SOMETHING WONDERFUL happens!
Not terribly complicated plots, if I can figure out what is coming, but I guess that isn't the charm of these romantic love stories.
Words I Had To Look Up:
1983 Honda Shadow (pg. 129) -- He RESTORED this? A faux Harley? Any bike is a good bike, I guess, but I thought it was a rather boring choice. I guess the author needed something with a low enough seat for a chick to learn to ride.
a new Leapster (pg. 220) -- A hand-held educational game console.
Read:
9/2010
Tisha
The author's novelization of a young woman coming to Chicken, Alaska, to teach in 1927, as told to the author by Anne Hobbs Purdy.
Read:
9/2013
Salt Water Guns
Christopher, a teen who is rather a jerk, is sent off to be a cabin boy during the revolutionary war. Lots of action.
Read:
12/2012
Endless Blue
Expedition to find where spaceships are disappearing to when they hyper-space jump finds a Sargasso of space.
Read:
7/2012
20 books displayed
[Saberhage - Scalzi] [Scalzi - Schonborg] [Schumacher - Scottoline] [Scottoline - Shames] [Shames - Sijie] [Silver - Smith] [Smith - Spencer] [Spiegelman - Stark] [Stark - Stephenson] [Stern - Stross] [Stross - Swanson] [Swee - Sweeney]