Books I've Read

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God Save The Mark

Westlake, Donald
A guy who falls for every con-man's scheme inherits a tidy sum from his con-man uncle. Originally published in 1967. Not a great story, but hot a bad one either.

Read:

7/2004

Humans

Westlake, Donald
God decides he is quite bored with humans and so sends the angel Ananayel to arrange for the humans to bring about their own destruction.

Words I Had To Look Up:

scrofulous fleas (pg. 123) --
milk and mell (pg. 156) -- It is explained in great detail two pages farther. It's honey.
mezuzahs (pg. 191) -- A small piece of parchment inscribed with biblical passages that is rolled up in a container and affixed by many Jewish households to their door frames in conformity with Jewish law and as a sign of their faith.
marplot (pg. 251) -- An officious meddler whose interference compromises the success of an undertaking.
vassalage (pg. 272) -- The condition of being a vassal.
schismatic (pg. 271) -- One who promotes or engages in schism.
hospodar (pg. 272) -- 1. A Slav. word meaning lord, master. 2. A title borne by the princes or governors of Moldavia and Wallachia before those countries were united as Rumania.
rustling claque (pg. 273) -- A group of persons hired to applaud at a performance.
quasistable (pg. 334) -- More often used with a hyphen between quasi and stable, a term formerly (before the discovery of charmed particles) used for elementary particles that cannot decay into other particles through strong interactions and that have lifetimes longer than 10-20 second. Also known as semistable elementary particle.
subsumed (pg. 337) -- To classify, include, or incorporate in a more comprehensive category or under a general principle.

Quote:

Like Hans Brinker himself, he could skate with aplomb over the occasional patch of thin ice, such as plant safety or disposal of contaminated wastes, awing and distracting the populace with the grace and assurance of his arabesques. (pg. 129) First Hans Brinker simile I've ever seen. Loved that book!

Read:

9/2010

Levine

Westlake, Donald
Six stories about Detective Levine of the NYPD, who is rather concerned about his heart that skips beats. Very good stories, sad ending.

Read:

12/2005

Memory

Westlake, Donald
Another Hard Case mystery. Dude gets into a fight when he is caught with another man's wife. In bed. Loses his memory. The ending was happy (sorta)/sad.

Read:

8/2023

Money for nothing

Westlake, Donald
Josh gets a check each month for seven years in the amount of one thousand dollars. He doesn't know who or why. Read again in 2010, THAT'S why it sounds familiar!

Read:

7/2006

Read:

9/2010

Put a lid on it

Westlake, Donald
Meehan, a thief up on a Federal beef, is recruited by the CREEP to steal some incrimidating materials. LATER: Read it again, still good!

Read:

4/2003

Read:

7/2006

Sacred Monster

Westlake, Donald
A very strange recounting of the life of an actor, told in strange flashbacks. The crime is revealed at the end, never fear.

Words I Had To Look Up:

crapen neck (pg. 30) -- Does not seem to be a "real" word. Is crapelike at dictionary.com.
steep hills serving as the only redan against the proles of the Valley (pg. 69) -- A v-shaped projection from a fortification.

Read:

7/2010

Smoke

Westlake, Donald
Freddie gets turned invisible, which has its good points, as he is a burglar, and its bad points, as it freaks out his girlfriend. And then there all those people who want to use him for their own nefarious projects... With a cigarette company playing a central part in this story, one would think there would be some good Smoke Quotes.

Words I Had To Look Up:


Oriel -- A bay window projecting from an upper floor. (pg. 98)
Boniface -- The keeper of an inn, hotel, nightclub, or eating establishment.(pg. 107)
Ferslugginer -- Confounded, darned, wretched.(pg. 118)

Quote:

It was a thirty-gear bike, a virtual thesaurus entry of power and speed, adaptable to any terrain known to man; there was probably a gear for going across ceilings. (pg. 354)

Quote:

Around the curve he went, shifted into the good-level-road gear, and hit forty-five without working up a sweat.(pg. 358)

Read:

1/2008

The Axe

Westlake, Donald
A downsized-man commits murders to elimate possible job competitors.

Read:

12/2004

The Comedy Is Finished

Westlake, Donald
Published after the author died, but written in the 80s. Radicals kidnap a popular comedian to get prisoners released. Things go wrong.

Read:

7/2012

The Hook

Westlake, Donald
A famous writer without a book with a bad divorce going on runs into an old friend who is a writer with a book and no publisher. Good story.

Read:

3/2001

The Hot Rock

Westlake, Donald
Well, I've seen the movie several times, I've read the book AT LEAST once before, at least, but I guess it was before I started this data base. Great story, five stars!!

Quote:

Afghanistan banana stand.

Read:

10/2023

The Road To Ruin

Westlake, Donald
The Dortmunder Gang tries to steal a collection of valuable cars.

Read:

9/2004

Thieves' Dozen

Westlake, Donald
A collection of Dortmunder tales, mostly. I can't have too much Dortmunder!

Read:

4/2010

Watch you back!

Westlake, Donald
Dortmunder saves the O.J. and tries to burgle a penthouse.

Read:

6/2005

What's So Funny?

Westlake, Donald
Dortmunder steals a gold chess set. Very good.

Words I Had To Look Up:

pied-à-terre -- A secondary or temporary place of lodging.(pg. 247)

Read:

1/2008

What's The Worst That Could Happen?

Westlake, Donald
Dortmunder goes to Las Vegas to get his ring back. Very funny! But no cigarette jokes this time!

QUOTE:

...Tiny was in the process of explaining to a panhandler why it had been rude to ask Tiny for money. "You didn't earn this money," Tiny was saying. "You see what I mean?" The way Tiny was holding the panhandler made it impossible for the fellow to nswer questions, but that was okay; Tiny's questions were all rhetorical, anyway. "For instance," he was saying, for instance, "the money I got in my jeans this minute, where do you suppose I got it? Huh? I'll tell you where I got it. I stole it from some people uptown. It was hard work, and there was some risk in it, and I earned it. Did you earn it? Did you risk anything? Did you work hard?" ..."Get a job," he said, "or get a gun. But don't beg. It's rude."

Read:

7/1999

Empty

Weyn, Suzanne
An image of a gas gauge on "E" illustrates the book jacket. Ten years from now the world is running out of petroleum, and this is how it impacts the lives of high school students in a small valley in New York state.

Not great reader reviews on Amazon, and I agree with their points. I was thinking, "No one has heard of solar cell phone chargers?". And some of the tech seems sketchy, especially that wonderful perpetual motion generator.

Read:

2/2011

Janet Hardy In Radio City

Wheeler, Ruthe S.
Published in 1935, this is about some girls who are acting in a movie western. They have a hot time while doing so! Then they go to Radio City in New York City to do some promotional radio work for the movie. A mystery is solved in the climatic finish. It is NOT, however, about amateur radio.

Read:

3/2023

Listening for lions

Whelan, Gloria
An orphaned English girl (who was born in Africa) is forced to impersonate a girl who died of influenza, so the dead girl's parents can get hold of an inheritance. Really good.

Read:

4/2006
20 books displayed
[Abadzis - Adams] [Adams - Albert] [Alcott - Anderson] [Anderson - Arngrim] [Arnow - Auxier] [Aveyard - Baen Publishing Enterprises] [Baen Publishing Enterprises - Barnard] [Barnard - Barnard] [Barnard - Barr] [Barr - Baum] [Baum - Beaton] [Beaton - Beaton] [Beaton - Beattie, editor] [Beauman - Birney] [Bishop - Block] [Block - Bloor] [Bloor - Bosch] [Bosch - Breathed] [Brenaman - Bruère] [Bryson - Bujold] [Bujold - Bujold] [Bujold - Cameron] [Cameron - Card] [Card - Carter] [Castle - Chandler] [Chandler - Clancy] [Clancy - Coakley] [Coben - Cohen] [Cole - Collins] [Collins - Collins] [Combat - Connelly] [Connelly - Constantine] [Constantine - Corey] [Corey - Correia] [Cottrell - Crais] [Crais - Crime] [Croke - Cushman] [Cussler - Dash] [Dashner - Delaney] [Dexter - Doctorow] [Doctorow - Dorsey] [Dorsey - Dozois] [Drake - DuPrau] [DuPrau - Emerson] [Emerson - Evanovich] [Evanovich - Fairstein] [Falkner - Fielding] [Finnin - Fleischman] [Fleischman - Ford] [Forester - Fox] [Francis - Francis] [Francis - Francis] [Francis - Freedman] [Frey - Gaiman] [Galli - George] [Gerber - Goldman] [Goldstone - Grafton] [Gramazio - Gratz] [Graves - Grennan] [Griffin - Grimes] [Grimes - Haddix] [Haddix - Hall] [Hall - Hallinan] [Hallinan - Harris] [Harrison - Heinlein] [Heinlein - Heinlein] [Heinlein - Henry] [Henry - Herriot] [Hershon - Hiaasen] [Hiaasen - Highsmith] [Hillerman - Hobb] [Hobb - Hornung] [Hornung - Huff] [Huff - Jacobs] [James - Johnston] [Jones - Kaminsky] [Kaminsky - Kelley] [Kellog - Kienzle] [King - Kirby] [Klass - Korman] [Korman - L'Engle] [Lackey - Laughlin] [Laurimore - Leckie] [Leckie - Leitch] [Leon - Levine] [Levine - Lippman] [Lippman - Lovelace] [Lovelace - Lutz] [Lutz - MacPherson] [MacPherson - Marcinko] [Marcinko - Martini] [Martini - Mayor] [Mazer - McCammon] [McCammon - McCullers] [McCullers - Meier] [Meloy - Miller] [Miller - Moon] [Moon - Mortimer] [Mortimer - Mysterious Press] [Nance - Nimmo] [Nimmo - Norton] [Norton - O'Brian] [O'Brian - O'Faolain] [O'Nan - Palahniuk] [Palmer - Paretsky] [Paretsky - Parker] [Parker - Parker] [Parker - Patterson] [Patterson - Paulsen] [Paulsen - Penny] [Perez-Reverte - Pinkwater] [Piper - Poyer] [Poyer - Poyer] [Prager - Pratchett] [Pratchett - Pronzini] [Pronzini - Pullman] [Pullman - Quinn] [Quinn - Reeve] [Reeve - Riggs] [Riggs - Robinson] [Robinson - Rothfuss] [Rothfuss - Russell] [Russell - Sagan] [Salzman - Savage] [Savin - Scalzi] [Scalzi - Scott] [Scott - Sebold] [Sedgwick - Sherlock] [Shetterly - Sixth] [Skloot - Snell] [Snelling - Spoor] [Springer - Steinhauer] [Steinhauer - Strahan] [Strahan - Stross] [Stross - Tapply] [Tapply - Thorp] [Thurber - Turtledove] [Turtledove - Van Draanen] [Van Draanen - Varley] [Varley - Watkins] [Watson - Weber] [Weber - Wells] [Wells - Westlake] [Westlake - Whelan] [White - Willis] [Winchester - Wolff] [Wollheim - Zahn] [Zahn - Zusak] 

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