SPOILER:Crazed chick wall-rat possessed by the spirit of a woman with Altzheimer's disease who was left to die in the Arabian desert (I think it was the Empty Quarter) cuts the rope of the woman's husband while climbing El Capitan in Yosemite. He dies.
The climbing technical stuff was interesting, the story, though, just kinda built into something weird.
Words I Had To Look Up:
Ayurvedic (pg. 87) medicine is the most ancient of the six recognized Indian Systems of Medicine to the Indian subcontinent. From the Wikipedia article.
Little Fearless is in some kind of juvenile hall/prison after she is taken away from her mother. A kind of 1984 sort of story. Good story, but the resolution kind of happens REALLY quickly!
San Diego Onion Tribunal columnist writes about his love, fly fishing. Meet all sorts of interesting people around the U.S. I personally think fishing is more boring than watching grass grow, but I enjoyed this book very much. .
In 1903 England, Petronella's uncle starts eating bugs, and she becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of Dame Carruthers and Generalissimo Reyes-Cardoza of Panama.
Crippled Kira is lucky she has a valuable skill, else she would have been tossed on the trash heap, as it were, when her mother dies. Good story of a cruel world.
An old woman tell about the events of a year when she was a young girl and the tragedy that ensued. Very good story. I like it when a charactor is a reader and the books she likes are mentioned, I become interested in reading those books too.
A parody of all those too-sweet orphan books. A splendidly useful glossary of words such as odious, obsequious, glutinous, and lugubrious is included, along with summaries of novels about "pitious but appealing orphans."
Quote:
"They are dolts indeed," Nanny said. She stared at the postcard and murmured, "I myself am Presbyterian."