Books I've Read
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Dogsbody
The Dog Star Sirius is sent to Earth, in dog form, as punishment. He become the pet of an Irish girl who is living with her awful English aunt while her father is in prison. One of the best books I have ever read, of its kind! I am still choked up an hour after finishing it.
Words I Had To Look Up:
viridian (pg. 1) -- A chrome green pigment that is a hydrated oxide of chromium.
Zoi (pg. 2) -- Probably an invented term, refers to an object of power. Possibly inspired by borzoi dogs?
effulgence (pg. 2) -- A state of being bright and radiant, splendor, brilliance..
eughky (pg. 12) -- "I still have dry and (a very technical term) eughky ends" from http://www.archive.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=70034
sloven (pg. 18) -- A coarse obnoxious person.
quaint and knowing (pg. 52) -- Marked by beauty or elegance. I figured the author was using a different meaning!
sluttish (pg. 54) -- A saucy girl. Yet another different meaning..
couchant (pg. 129) -- Lying on the stomach with head raised with legs pointed forward.
empyrean (pg. 255) -- Of or relating to the sky or heavens.
Melpomene (pg. 260) -- The Muse of tragedy.
Quote:
He remembered that his Companion had tried to use the Zoi on him. (pg. 169) Wait, what??
Read:
3/2009
House Of Many Ways
The sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, it says. I thought that other book was the sequel. Charmain goes to house-sit for her magician uncle while he gets cured by the elves of a mysterious ailment. Sophie and Howl show up eventually.
Read:
7/2010
Howls moving castle
Sophie is turned old by a wicked witch, moves in with wizard. Just when you think you know where the story is going, everything changes.
Read:
2/2007
The Acorn People
The author writes of his time as a summer camp counselor for handicapped children. Short, but moving.
Read:
9/2013
Starship Titanic
In the introduction Douglas Adams tells how he came up with the Starship Titanic idea, but didn't have time to write the novel as he was involved with the video game.
So anyway, this big space ship lands on a rectory on Earth and picks up three people (and leaves one being behind), and there's a bomb on the spaceship, and alien/human sex, and the "f" word. And everyone is pretty happy at the end.
Quote:
"I mean a transportation system with an average speed of just above stationary is not really a transportation system at all!"..."It's more like a storage system!" -- pg. 225
Read:
9/2011
The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry
An elderly man (A young fella, around my age) uncharacteristically goes on a walk the length of England to visit a dying co-worker that he has not seen in many years. A whole lot of weeps at the end.
Quote:
"I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone, but I still keep looking. [...] It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and you keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk around it." -- page 210
Read:
12/2014
Death Of A Nightingale
With Agnete Friis. Nina Borg #3. Wow, this was a sad story, but I found some good quotes!
Quote:
"I'm sorry, I s peak only Russian, not Ukrainian," said Soren.
"My friend,"..."When you have sat in a chair for almost twenty-four hours without being able to say anything but 'Hello,' 'Thank you,' and 'Where is the toilet?' there suddenly is not as much difference between Ukrainian and Russian as there usually is."Quote:
"What the hell makes you think," she said in her most glacial voice, "that I am anybody's victim?"Quote:
"Are you having a nervous breakdown?" she asked out loud in English.
Why she was speaking English to herself she didn't know.Quote:
What was the matter with this case and these people? Couldn't Søren turn his back for one second without someone else disappearing?Read:
7/2023
Invisible Murder
With Agnete Friis. Nina Borg #2. Terribly dark story, with a couple of, perhaps ironically, funny lines. Radiation poisoning, sex trade, including under-age, violence, death.
Quote:
Just when exactly had he stopped calling the shots in his own life?
Maybe he never had. Maybe free will had been an illusion the whole time, the biggest scam of all.Read:
7/2023
The Boy In The Suitcase
With Agnete Friis. Nina Borg #1. Translated from the Danish. Good mystery story, surprise climax, to me!!
Spoiler!:
Quote:
Read:
7/2023
The Considerate Killer
With Agnet Friis. Nina Borg #4. Helping at a disaster in the Philippines leads to someone wanting to kill Nina. She's done it again!
Read:
7/2023
Cover The Butter
With a pastel-ly cover I knew this was going to be a chick book. Good story of a woman in the UK recounting the travails of growing up, her love/hate relationship with her mother, and her relationships with men. Good thing she learned how to cook, it turns out. Good reviews on Amazon, too.
Read:
6/2011
Cracker! The best dog in Vietnam
Rick joins the army and becomes a dog handler. His dog was donated to the army by a young boy named Willie. Rick and Cracker are sent to Vietnam. Good story, I was in tears for the last third of the book. I'm glad the book has a happy ending, because for most of these animals, it was not.
Read:
11/2009
Blood and rubles
Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and an FBI agent investigate a kidnapping.
QUOTE:
"Why do you like doing this?" the girl asked as they put the tools away and cleaned up the mess they had made.
"This is very simple. The work I do as a policeman is very complicated," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I must deal with people, and people are seldom simply good or bad. It is rare for a policeman to be able to fix a problem. One problem creates another one. It doesn't end, and when it does, the end is not simple and the system is not working any better. Does this make sense?"
"A little," she said. "It's like what happened to my grandmother."
"Yes," said Rostnikov. "When I fix plumbing, I search for the problem, find it, repair it, and receive the gratitude of those who live with the system. Like this leak."
Read:
7/1999
People Who Walk In Darkness
Rostikov heads to Siberia to investigate the murder of a Canadian geologist in a diamond mine. Other members of the team are in Kiev, and of course, Moscow. Diamond smuggling is the theme.
Words I Had To Look Up:
...permafrosted to a depth of 4,760 feet. (pg. 110) -- I didn't know permafrost went down that deep. Wow!
...whether she was twitting him. (pg. 178) -- To taunt, ridicule, or tease, especially for embarrassing mistakes or faults.
Read:
8/2009
Smart Moves
P.I. Toby Peters is hired by Albert Eistein to find out who his threatening him and Paul Robeson.
Read:
8/1998
Terror town
Abe Lieberman looks for the killer of an African-American woman, Bill is being stalked by a crazy guy.
Read:
3/2006
You Bet Your Life
P.I. Toby Peters is hired by Chico Marx to find out who is trying to rip him off.
Read:
8/1998
A Whisper To The Living
What may be the last Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov book as the author passed away in 2009, I find. There's a serial killer in a park, and there's a boxer accused of murdering his wife and his sparring partner. Elena and Iosef get married!
Read:
2/2013
Always Say Goodbye
Fifth of the Lew Fornesca series. Lew leaves Florida to go back to Chicago to find out who killed his wife several years ago. Good stuff.
Read:
8/2007
Bright Futures
Lew Fonesca is hired to prove that a teen didn't kill a guy everyone hated who was trying to shut down the local high school for gifted students. The Dairy Queen is closed; Lew moves AND buys a car for sixty-six bucks. Victor goes home, too. A small quibble with "twelve hundred years" and "twelve hundred centuries" on page seven, but I'll get over it.
Quote:
There were consequences, but there was the promise of windmills. (pg. 146)Read:
8/2010
20 books displayed
[Abadzis - Akers, pseud.] [Akers, pseud. - Anderson] [Anderson - Arngrim] [Arnow - Avi] [Avi - Baen Publishing Enterprises] [Baker - Barnard] [Barnard - Barnes] [Barnes - Barr] [Barr - Beanton] [Beanton - Beaton] [Beaton - Beaton] [Beaton - Bennett] [Benrey - Block] [Block - Block] [Block - Bosch] [Bosch - Breslin] [Brillant - Bryson] [Bryson - Bujold] [Bujold - Butler] [Buzzell - Card] [Card - Carr] [Carrere - Chambers] [Charles - Clancy] [Clancy - Coben] [Coben - Cole] [Coleman - Collins] [Collins - Connelly] [Connelly - Connelly] [Connelly - Cook] [Cooper - Cornwell] [Cornwell - Crais] [Crais - Crichton] [Crichton - Curry] [Curry - Cussler] [Cussler - Davis] [Dean - Dionne] [Disilverio - Dowd] [Dowell - Duncan] [Duncan - Elkins] [Elkins - Evanovich] [Evanovich - Fairstein] [Fairstein - Ferris] [Ferris - Flanagan] [Flanagan - Follett] [Ford - Fox] [Francis - Francis] [Francis - Francis] [Francis - Freedman] [Frey - Gantos] [Garcia - Gidwitz] [Gidwitz - Gores] [Gores - Granger] [Granger - Greenleaf] [Greenleaf - Grimes] [Grisham - Haddix] [Haddix - Hall] [Hall - Hallinan] [Hallinan - Hassman] [Haugaard - Heinlein] [Heinlein - Heller] [Heller - Hepler] [Herbert - Hess] [Hess - Hiaasen] [Hiaasen - Hobb] [Hobb - Hoose] [Hopkinson - Huff] [Huff - James] [Jemisin - Jones] [Jones - Kaminsky] [Kaminsky - Kellog] [Kellog - King] [King - Klise] [Klise - Kowal] [Kraft - Lampman] [Landry - Lawrence] [Lawrence - Lee] [Lee - Lescroart] [Lescroart - Linsdau] [Linville - Lowry] [Lowry - Lynch] [Lynch - Magnuson] [Maguire - Marshall] [Martin - Mass] [Mass - McBain] [McBain - McCrumb] [McCrumb - Mcmanus] [McNab - Mikaelsen] [Mikaelsen - Moon] [Moon - Morressy] [Morris - Myers] [Myers - Nimmo] [Niven - Novik] [Novik - O'Brian] [O'Brian - Oppel] [Oppenheim - Paretsky] [Paretsky - Parker] [Parker - Parker] [Parker - Patterson] [Patterson - Paulsen] [Pavesi - Perez-Reverte] [Perez-Reverte - Piper] [Piper - Poyer] [Poyer - Pratchett] [Pratchett - Pratchett] [Pratchett - Pronzini] [Pronzini - Pynchon] [Pynchon - Reeves] [Reeves - Ringo] [Ringo - Rohmer] [Roll - Rucka] [Rucka - Rylant] [Saberhage - Scalzi] [Scalzi - Schweikher] [Science Fiction DAW 30th Anniversary - Scottoline] [Scottoline - Shapero] [Sharenow - Silverberg] [Silverberg - Smith] [Smith - Spinelli] [Spinelli - Stead] [Stead - Stewart] [Stockett - Stross] [Stross - Tapply] [Tapply - Thurber] [Thuy - Turtledove] [Turtledove - Van Draanen] [Van Draanen - Veglahn] [Villasenor - Weber] [Weber - Wells] [Wells - Westerfeld] [Westerman - Westlake] [Westlake - Willis] [Willis - Wodehouse] [Wodehouse - Yates] [Yates - Zusak]