2006 50 Books II

Category: 50 Books

 

Once again, i failed to read 50 books this year. in fact, i read less books this year than i did last year. i blame this on the knitting. i’m hoping 2007 will finally be the Year of the Fiddy. It should, seeing as how i’ve got a job at the library.

38. Horsemen of the Esophagus by Jason Fagone
Obviously I checked this one out because of the title.
This is a nonfiction book about competitive eating and the people who participate. I’ve honestly never given a thought about eating competitions (other than something like, “why is this on the news?”), and I’ve REALLY never thought of it as a sport. After reading this book I’m still “meh” on calling it a sport, but i now see the completely human side of the whole thing.

The author follows around a few of the more popular eaters to see how they live. Not surprisingly, they’re all very normal people. What was surprising to me was how serious they take it. Some of them are so serious about competing that they ignore serious health problems…just to defend their title.

The book was more emotional than I thought it would be because the author does a supreme job of making the eaters very human and very relatable…even though I’ve never wanted to eat more than 3 hot dogs at a sitting. Most of the American eaters are regular blue collar workers who just want a little bit of fame. Which is what they get….a sound bite on local news casts. It’s good that most of them have great senses of humor. Oddly, it’s the foreign eaters that are treated like gods in their countries. Anyway it’s a wacky bit of culture that I don’t get, but the book was really good and easy to get into.

37. They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat by Lewis Grizzard
This is a very old Lewis Grizzard book (I think it’s from ’82 or ’84) and I didn’t really enjoy it. It was laying on a table at work and between deposits I would read it and wonder how on earth he was such a famous writer. Famous might be an exaggeration, but everyone I know has heard of him so, there you go. I don’t remember reading any of his newspaper columns so maybe those were better, but this book sucked like a bucket of ticks. He’s not very likable, I think that’s why I didn’t enjoy it. The book itself is about him having to have heart surgery and him being a pain in the ass about having to have heart surgery. The only good thing about this book is that it’s short.

Perhaps his other books are good? Maybe I’ll give another one a shot.

36. Foxfire 9 edited by Eliot Wiggington
The Foxfire books are, of course, nonfiction. These books are written by high school students in north Georgia. All of the articles are about how the Appalachian people lived in the “old” days. The oldsters they interview are amazing people.

The ninth book talks about general stores, doctors, remedies, ghost stories and several arts and crafts things. It was a very enjoyable read that just kind of sucks you into it’s charm. Several of the “scary” true stories were about panthers and how they killed people and babies. The people call them panthers or painters, but i’m not sure what they’re talking about ‘cos i thought that panthers weren’t, y’know, indigenous to the US, so I’m thinking that they’re talking about pumas (aka mountain lion, cougar). anyway, after reading those tales i was shocked really, because I’ve never thought about what a huge deal it must’ve been to live right there where mountain lions were such a threat to people’s lives. I also didn’t know that the panther makes weird sounds (meows? growls?) that sound like a child or baby screaming.

There was also several stories about mad dogs and cats. I remember in school learning about rabid dogs and that you should never pet a strange dog or a dog that was acting weird and stumbling. And then they would say that if you were bitten by a rabid dog you’d have to have 80 shots in your stomach. Or something like that. But way back when, they didn’t have shots. If you got bit by a mad dog, you’d go mad, and then you died. Of course, today, if you don’t get treated in time, you go mad and then you die. Hey, check out this chart. So anyway, vaccinate your pets, yo.

I’ve said it before, but you know me, I say the same things over and over: everyone should read a Foxfire book. Just one. They are fascinating and charming and they really make you appreaciate things like medicine, central heat and air, cars, shoes, etc. This book gets 0 Jose Cansecos ‘cos it was so damn enjoyable.

35. Ghosts of Albion: Accursed by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden
Back to fiction. This was a flash series and now they’ve made some books. This was a good novel but I didn’t really enjoy it. The characters are pretty good, except William, I didn’t like his character, too milktoast. It’s a continuing story of a brother and sister who become the Protectors of Albion (England) when their grandfather dies. They’re kinda thrown into the whole thing and have to learn magic and talk to ghosts and save the world.

I liked the whole part about how the ghosts of famous people helped the duo. But I don’t really enjoy the Victorian Age very much, and I think that was the major turn off for me. The writing was good, the story was interesting, but I just don’t like reading about manners and protocol. I would read another one if it took place in another time.


34. The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer by Philip Carlo
This is a really great read that sucks you in, and you can’t put it down, and you feel really weird about not wanting to put it down, and you feel ashamed for being so interested in this serial killer.

What’s interesting about the killer is that he killed more than 200 people and HIS WIFE AND TWO KIDS HAD NO IDEA HE WAS A MURDERER!
i know!

The killer’s name is Richard Kuklinski, and he grew up in New Jersey. He had a shitty childhood and he grew up and killed tons of people. He didn’t just do mafia hits, he also killed people who pissed him off. Sometimes he’d even kill homeless people. He claims to have been in on the Jimmy Hoffa murder.

It was a good book. The only thing that bothered me was twice the author used the phrase “no shit, Sherlock.” Which was really unnecessary and also kinda immature. I mean, he says this when he tells about Kuklinski in prison and the prison psychiatrist says that Kuklinski is psychotic….and the author then writes, “no shit, Sherlock.” Which, ha, yeah, some dude kills a bunch of people in horrible ways it doesn’t take a genius…but also? The guy’s in prison and he has to undergo a psych test…and the test has to have a conclusion made by a doc…and the doc was just saying what the test concluded…no need to make the doc look like an idiot for doing his job, douchebag. No need to be a dick, Mr. Carlo.

Anyway, interesting read.

33. The Black Dahlia Avenger by Steve Hodel
This is a true crime nonfiction book. And as those kinds of books go, it’s really easy to get into. It’s never boring. And it’s descriptions of old Hollywood and LA are really neat to read.

Basically the story is this: Steve Hodel goes through his dead dad’s things and finds pictures that his dad took of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. He finds this curious and so he investigates further (he’s a retired LA policeman and now works as a PI) and he finds what he believes to be oodles and oodles of evidence that his dad not only killed Ms. Short, but several other woman in LA in the 1940’s.

So like I say, an interesting read. However, I gotta say that I wasn’t really convinced. Oh sure, his father, Dr. George Hodel, was an egomaniac, womanizer, pedophile and all around major fucking asshole, but all the evidence that pins the Dahlia murder on him is circumstantial (i guess it’s circumstantial…if there’s a word that would be one level lower than that it would be more accurate.) and since it happed more than 50 years ago…I’m sorry, but I’m gonna need actual proof before I believe Dr. Hodel killed her.

But who knows, maybe he was the serial killer. It’s possible. The parts I really enjoyed were the gossipy Hollywood parts. It seems Dr. Hodel knew lots of famous people like John Huston and Man Ray and they would have these crazy drug and sex parties. Like, all the time.

If you like true crime you’ll probably enjoy this book. I enjoyed the book.

32. At Risk by Patricia Cornwell
What is this? Something new?

This is a new novel by Ms. Cornhole. It’s not part of the Scarpetta series nor is it part of the awesomely funny Andy Brazil series. It’s something new, in a new town and with all new characters.

Unfortunately it’s not that great. It’s not even good, really. And that’s a damn shame because I’ll admit Ms. Cornwell is a fantastic writer and this book is total blah. Honestly, it’s like they published the first draft or something. The flow of the book was choppy and confusing, and some sentences just didn’t even make sense. I would read them over and over and think, “Am I going nuts? Why am I not getting this?”

And true, most of the characters are not that likeable (kinda like in the Scarpetta series, hm? WHY? WHY DO YOU MAKE THEM SO SHITTY?!) and you find it hard to even care what’s going to happen to them (shallow, shallow, shallow!) and I can’t stand that, HOWEVER, even when she writes those shitty characters it’s still written well.

But not this time.

In fact, I doubt she even wrote it. I think someone else wrote it like a parody of her work or something. Only not a good parody, just a bad detective book about emotional cripples who work with law enforcement. And it mentions a Hummer and a helicopter, which are musts in a P. Cornwell novel. The only good this about this book is that it’s short.

31. The Patient Nurse by Diana Palmer
This book…
I can’t bring myself to say anything good about this book. I’ll just go ahead and tell ya, it’s a romance book. And perhaps that’s why it sucked like a bucket of leeches. But honestly, just cos a book is slapped with the romance genre doesn’t mean it has to suck so hard it gives my brain a hickey.

The only reason I read this book is cos this old lady at work said, “This is the best book I’ve ever read.”
“Really?” I asked, “This book, right here, is the BEST book you’ve EVER read?”
“Mmhmm,” she nodded.
Now, she’s 900 years old right? So I figure that she’s probably read…let’s say, half the books ever written so it’s pretty good odds that the book is going to be a pretty good book. Right?

Of course not, I mean, look at the cover and read the premise. It sounds ridiculous. But, it was short and had very large print and I figured it was worth an evening of my time to read it and pad the numbers.

The Wacky Premise:
The dude is a heart surgeon. He’s Latino. So his name was…something like Rico or Mario or something. He was very handsome. But also, he was sad because his snobby, evil, gorgeous wife died two years ago of pneumonia. He loved her so much because she was beautiful and perfect. Except she was a total shallow bitch.

The girl is an orphan who grew up living with the bitch wife. They were cousins. She is meek and nice. The bitch wife and the Doctor have always made fun of the orphan girl. Her name is something like…Nancy? She is a nurse.

The problem is when the bitch wife gets sick, the doctor has to go to Paris for some kind of doctor meeting and she wants to go. But the doc says no she can’t go because she’s sick. He asks Nancy to watch the bitch wife while he’s away, since she’s a nurse and all.

Well, the bitch wife with pneumonia gets so mad she sits out in the rain to “show him”. That is so fucking stupid. Anyway, she gets way sick and starts to die and needs to go to the hospital. BUT! Oh Mah Gah! It turns out that Nancy is also very sick! She has a weak heart! And while rushing to the phone to call for the ambulance she has a heart attack and nearly dies!

The bitch wife does die.

Everyone, the doctor and the bitch wife’s family who took Nancy in as a kid, hates her now because they blame her for the bitch wife’s death. And she never tells them about her having a heart attack while trying to save the bitch.

So present day. The doc and the nurse don’t get along and try to avoid each other at work. Nancy needs to have some kind of heart proceedure done but she can’t afford to not work because she is a poor nurse. She gets sicker and sicker but still works everyday because…poor. And, she finds a kitten and takes it in even though she can’t afford cat food and she’s not allowed to have pets. So noble, that Nancy.

Blah blah blah she has a heart attack on a bus and ends up in the ER and the doc does the surgery (not knowing, of course, that it’s her he’s doing the surgery on, because you’re not supposed to perform surgery on people you know or whatever.) and he’s mad at her for not having the surgery done before because obviously she knew she had a problem and why not come to him since he’s THE BEST HEART SURGEON IN THE WORLD. Cos sure, of course she’d go to the guy who hates her guts. God, this story is so stupid.

Anyway, they still hate each other. But! Oh hell! She has to go live with him in his apartment while she recuperates. What? I know. Eventually the doc finds out what really happened with his bitch wife and he falls in love with Nancy. And Nance, being the complete milktoast that she is, loves him back. I mean, let’s see, she falls for the guy who hated her for years and who ALWAYS made fun of her. Perfect.

This was the BEST book you’ve EVER read?


 

 

30. California Demonby Julie Kenner
This is the sequel to Carpe Demon which was part of last year’s fiddy. This book was just as good as the first one, however, I must pick on one thing because it’s one of those things that COULD SO EASILY BE CORRECTED BEFORE PUBLISHING THAT IT DRIVES ME CRAZY.

It’s redundancy…I hate it.

How many times do you think it should take to get the point across that the heroine, Kate, loves her family and wants to protect her family from the demons that she has to hunt? Hmm? How many times do we need the character to get mad and say something like, “Demons? At my daughter’s school? NOT ON MY WATCH. THEY BETTER STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY. I LOVE MY FAMILY. I’LL DO ANYTHING TO PROTECT THEM. EVEN IF I HAVE TO LIE TO THEM. BLAH BLAH BLAH.”

She says this like, three or four times…IN EACH FUCKING CHAPTER. Does no one proof read for things like that? Or am I an idiot and books are supposed to go throught the Department of the Redundancy Department? Hm? Just me? My own pet peeve? I’m the only one going insane from having to read the same sentence over and over throughout the book?
Okay.

Other than that one little thing, the book was very enjoyable. The way Kate has to juggle her family life around killing demons and keeping it all a secret is hilarious. And the way she deals with missing her first husband (who was murdered) and how she loves her second husband is a really interesting, um…thing? Sorry, I can’t think of a word.

Okay, but the best part (hee, not really “best” but, hee!) is her picture in the back of the cover. Holy Shit. That CAN’T be real. I think, or rather, what I’d like to think is that it’s a joke, like an inside joke between her and her friends…they were all sitting around (as friends do) talking about her book about to be published (as they do) and there was some drinks (as there is) and one of her dear friends said, “OH MY GAH! Do  you KNOW what would be SO FUNNY?!”
“No. What’s that?”
“You should TOTALLY have one of those publicity photos taken and put on the back cover! But only, make the picture REALLY CRAZY DUMB!”
“Okay!”

Anyway, you should read this book. Well, read the first book then read this book.

29. A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews
Last year I read her other book A Complicated Kindness, and I loved it to pieces. In fact, it was so good I gave it 0 Jose Cansecos. This book is just as great, but I found one of the main characters, Hosea, so annoying that I hated it when I would get to one of his parts of the book. He wasn’t a bad character, just a little crazy. And I kept thinking, “yes, he’s crazy, we get it, now let’s get back to the better characters.”

There’s basically two storylines, the one with Hosea, the mayor of the smallest town in Canada, and Knute a young mother who moves back to the small town with her daughter. Since this is Canada’s smallest town there are of course hilarious small town characters: Combine Jo, the town drunk who gets smashed and rides her combine over her dead husband’s grave. Mr. Dranger, the asthmatic fireman. and there’s also Bill Quinn…a stray dog.

So the novel is a slice of rural Canadian life. Which, believe it or not, is a lot like a small town in the south. I guess small towns everywhere are probably a lot alike. But it was a bit of a shock to me to think that way because it’s Cananda. It’s a different country. I, being the Stupid American Pig Dog, would’ve assumed a small rural Canadian town to be all frozen and Eskimo-y. So imagine my surprise when I’m reading this fantastic book and laughing at all the crazy goings on and thinking, “wow, what a bunch of rednecks!”

See how we learn when we read? It’s like my tiny world just gets bigger and bigger.

Definitely read this book, and also read A Complicated Kindness if you haven’t already.

I give this one Canseco because Hosea was so weird.

28. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This novel took me two weeks to read. I don’t know why. This was a great book as you probably know because you probably had to read this when you were in school. I didn’t. I’ve no idea how I escaped reading this book in school as I remember that other reading classes had to read it.

It’s a “delight” to read because it’s told from the perspective of the little girl, Scout, and it’s funny to read what she thinks. That was the main thing (to me) that made the book so enjoyable. The racial part of the book was weird to me. Not that I don’t get it, sure, I got it, the kids were the least racist and they didn’t understand why “folks” can’t just be treated like…folks. And of course adults complicate things and bladdy bladdy bladdy.

But it seemed to me that the black people in the book weren’t trying to change anything either. it was like, thank God for the white folks to save the black folks so…that was the part that i didn’t get. But maybe that’s cos i’m mean and cynical.

Maybe that’s not what Ms. Lee was going for right? but there’s a piece of the book that’s like that. But the story is really enjoyable. The ending is abrupt.

 

27. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
My friend Lenola let me borrow this book 2 years ago. I’m a total shitheel for not reading it before now.

I’d reccommend this book to everyone. This novel was fantastic! If you’re a lover of anything Wizard of Oz (as i am, beit books, movies whathaveyou) then you will NOT be disappointed at all. Mr. Maguire stays true to the characters and to OZ.

The best part of this book (to me, of course) is all the sex and fart jokes. Lots of bawdy humor. Hee, I said bawdy.

The worst part of the book is the very beginning where it talks about Elphaba’s (the Witch of the West) parents. It’s really slow and draggy and it doesn’t need to be. But as soon as Elphaba gets to college it picks up, and I hated to put the book down.

It’s a really smart book and it touches on MANY surprising themes. I say surprising because it’s not just about the witch being a bad witch. It’s about women, animal rights, religion, politics, sexuality, and individuality. It’s incredible how the book touches on all these things…some in great depth while still being an easy to read enjoyable novel.

It gets one Canseco because really, it’s just fan fiction.
Hee.

 

26. Velocity by Dean Koontz
My friend Debbie is keeping me busy with Koontz books.

This book was quite the page turner. That was understatement.

HOLY SHIT. While reading this book I kept thinking, “Wow, I’ve never had a bad day in my life.” The poor guy in this book, Billy, has one of the worst weeks ever. It all starts when he finds a note on his car saying something like, “If you go to the police I’ll kill an old lady. If you don’t I’ll kill a young school teacher.” Thinking it’s a sick joke he doesn’t go to the cops. Next day? Dead school teacher.

So you’d think that okay, now go to the cops. But the bad guy, he keeps planting evidence that will lead to Billy on all the murders. In fact, while Billy’s at work one day the bad guy kidnaps a lady and kills her in Billy’s house. BAD DAY. And he can’t go to the cops. OH MY GOSH WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN A SITUATION LIKE THAT?!

I had a stomach ache the whole time I read this book. Surprisingly, the book has a happyish ending. I didn’t think that would be possible.

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