Prayer Request Tuesday

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my leetle brahther is having another surgery tomorrow. please keep him in your prayers. the dude needs some healing. his name is Justin, in case you’re new around here.

thanks, you guys.

Prayer Hats: Activated!

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Prayer Request Monday

Category: Uncategorized

hi guys, would everyone please pray for my friend Florrie? she’s having her first chemo treatment today. it’s supposed to help her MS. please pray for her and her healing and for her family.

thanks, you guys are the best!

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19. Columbine by David Cullen

Category: 50 Books

19. Columbine by David Cullen

This book was great. Don’t get me wrong, it was a tough read. I cried more while reading this book than any other book I’ve ever read. But the writing was great, and that doesn’t often happen in true crime books, and it seems even more rare when a journalist writes a true crime book.

Mr. Cullen, God bless him, has managed to take a horrific story and not only make you see the humanity of all sides of the story, but he also shows you loads of facts, and he somehow does that without bogging down the reader.

Lots of times if I read a book and there are too many characters in it I’ll get confused and I can’t enjoy the book. Mr. Cullen somehow takes the huge amount of people, makes every one of them important, and through his great writing and wonderful pacing does not lose a single character, no one slips through the cracks.

It’s an amazing piece of work. It’s not slipshod or hackey. In fact, as weird as it sounds it comes across as a labor of love. I mean, who would want to cover that story for 9 years? Most reporters would go and get the news and then move on to the next gig.

A lot of the book was about how the media got most things wrong (the boys weren’t bullied, they were bullies, it wasn’t the heavy metal music that made them do it, they had actually planned it out for a year. etc.), how the sheriff’s dept. covered up a lot of things, and how the survivors handled things and moved on. I think the book also does a good job of showing that the parents of Dylan and Eric had no clue that their sons were capable of such violence.

I was also glad that there were no pictures in the book. In lots of true crime there will be a section in the middle with gory pictures of crime scenes and such, and I’ll admit it, usually I’ll look at the pictures before I even start reading the book. I bet all true crime nerds do. But this book wasn’t like that, it didn’t need pictures. The book was well researched, had excellent writing, perfect pacing, very informative without being boring or dry. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes true crime, any parent/guardian of a teenager, and anyone who works at a high school. I’m not saying that those people should read so that they can prevent this from ever happeneing again. I think they should read it to see how improbable it would be to prevent that from happening.

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books, books, books

Category: dribblings

i’m reading Columbine by David Cullen. i’ve never wept from reading a book before. oh sure, i’ve cried from a book. i’ll admit it, that last Harry Potter… there was a moment there where i poured buckets of tears (and it’s probably not the part you cried buckets about). at the end of The Blue Place i cried a bit.

but this book? i’ve cried, teared up, and all out wept so far, and i’ve only read 100 pages. the tears have been consistent.

i have a couple of books i want to read, but i’m going to try to finish out Columbine first. my reward for finishing this one is a Patty Hearst book.

this begins my summer of true crime books.

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18. The Last Gig by Norman Green

Category: 50 Books

18. The Last Gig by Norman Green

Spoiler Alert. But I’m doing you a favor.

This was a hardboiled mystery, and the protagnoist is a twenty year old Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. You can imagine how over the top it goes from there. I was going to cut it some slack because I really like female protagonists, and I want them to succeed, but this was just too much.

Where the book first lost me (and I promise, I really wanted to love this book. I like hardboiled fiction and I like heroines! I wanted to be able to recommend this book to people at the library!) was when Martillo gets beaten up really bad and the doc is all, “you need to stay in bed for a week.” and instead after two days Martillo is back on the street, and the doc sees her again and is all, “I’ve never seen anyone heal so quickly.” And I swear I said aloud, “What the hell? Is this fan fiction?”

Martillo has a huge chip on her shoulder about having a crappy childhood and being poor and that’s great and all, I get it, but it’s mentioned roughly 40 times in the book.

The Redundancy Dept. called. They want their plot device back.

Dear Authors,

Quit beating readers over the head with the same shit over and over. WE GET IT.

Love,

Jaimie

Seriously, it’s okay to have a character with a chip on his/her shoulder. It’s even okay for that chip to be about his/her upbringing. And? It’s even more okay to have the chip about the upbringing be about how he/she was poor and/or wrong side of the tracks whathaveyou. However, if you’re going to mention this more than three times in a 300 page book it’s obviously REALLY important. And if it’s REALLY important IT NEEDS TO GO SOMEWHERE. 

FOR INSTANCE, it can be used as a tool, which I think is how it was in this book. (like a, “hey, i was raised in the ghetto of brooklyn, i know not to park my car over there.” kind of thing.) But if that’s all that it is then it doesn’t need forty mentions. On the other hand, if the heroine realizes that hey, having a chip on your shoulder about things you can’t change is actually a weakness, and you can benefit and be stronger if you work through all of this, then yes, I can see how it would get mentioned a bit more. Especially if this is learned at the end and all, but this is not the case with this book.

In fact, what she learns about herself is far more disappointing. Basically, she thinks she could just be happy if she could just find a nice guy who will let her know that everything will be okay. And that’s what she gets. Well bullshit on THAT.

The Cliche Dept. called and… I don’t even have to say it.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if maybe a tough-as-nails young lady, who’s made it by on her own for lo these many years, who by the way, not only solves the mystery, but also gets to kick a little ass, also got to feel great about herself at the end? That maybe she could’ve learned that she’s actually awesome and that despite of her upbringing, despite of the odds against her (being living week to week, no formal higher education, dangerous job etc.), tht maybe she completes herself? And then, learning that she completes herself she can then go find a guy (or girl) and go have fun or have a meaningful relationship or whathaveyou? Is that so impossible? Is that so fucking impossbile that that can’t even happen in a FICTION BOOK?

No, some weenie gets to save her with a bottle of whiskey and a hug.

 

I did like the parts about the music business. Those parts seemed really knowledgeable and were generally interesting.

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meaty ocher.

Category: dribblings

i’m sure the song Lifeline by Papa Roach has been out for 20 years by now, so no need to tell me how far behind the music scene i am, hokay? but anyway, i’ve heard that song a couple of times and EVERY time i hear it i can’t help but think that it sounds nothing like a real rock song at ALL, but instead it sounds like a broadway song that is supposed to sound like a rock song.

what i mean by all that is, it sounds like it’s from Rent. http://www.skreemr.com/results.jsp?q=lifeline+papa+roach

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17. Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin

Category: 50 Books

17. Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin

This book won the Swedish Academy of Crime award for Best First Mystery Novel. It deserved the award.

This book was a fantastic thriller/whodunit. The whodunit  takes place in the mid-1990s on an island called Öland in Sweden, while the crime itself happened in the early ’70s. So of course, any new “evidence” that turns up is sort of actually just rumors and speculation.

As with most Swedish crime fic (I’ve read so far) there’s a desolate mood to the book, but it still manages to be exciting and page-turning. The mystery deals with a missing/murdered/drowned? child and the mother 30 years later. I’ll not give any of the plot away because it has loads of twists and turns. The ending was fantastic!

I’ve noticed with this one and also with the Åsa Larsson books, there’s an element of the supernatural in the stories. What’s amazing is that this tiny bit of “wait, is that a ghost?” doesn’t actually help the solving of the mystery, and yet it doesn’t get in the way either. And? It’s really mostly glossed over, almost as if it’s a hint of the paranormal. It’s like, “of course there’s a ghost. it’s over there. now, can we get back to the mystery at hand?” It works really well, especially with the melancholy feel the books have.

Wonderful book it gets 0 Cansecos, that’s how good it was.

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confessions of a very geeky library worker.

Category: dribblings

at work we have these carts. they aren’t the standard Library Cart, you know the ones, they have bookshelves built into them on both sides? i mean, yes, we have those as well, but these two carts are just Rubbermaid rolly carts.

<tangent> damn, i found some pictures but i can’t use them because my hard drive crashed last week and mr. fleegan did fix everything however, he didn’t set up my ftp thing and i’ve no clue on that. so now i’m limited. i hate that. oh well, not a thing for it. instead of me posting pictures you’ll just have to make it up in your mind.</tangent>

these two carts roll really smooth. and it’s these two carts that the library uses to move books to and from the booksale. Joanie-balogna is our awesome cataloguer. so when people donate books that we don’t need in our collection and/or we’re weeding shelves of old books, it’s Joanie who cancels them out of the computer and places them on a cart. then when a cart is full or full-ish, i wheel the cart out to the booksale shelves, unload the books, and return the empty cart back to Joanie. not always mind, but i try to do it for her. she’s busy.

so, like i say, those rolly carts roll so smooth. and they’re very light when not loaded down with books. so on my way back from the booksale (and this is so geek that it’s nearly too shameful to confess, but that’s what this is about so anyway…) i pretend that i’m… okay, remember in Empire when they’re in Cloud City and they’ve been tricked by Lando and Han ends up in carbonite? but then at the last second Lando turns the tables and they get away and then they see Boba Fett and some stormtroopers and also those guys in uniform (i don’t know what rank those guys are. they’re in either black or navy unis.) are pushing the chunk of carbonite in front of them, but it’s not on wheels, it’s just hovering? remember that?

that’s what i’m pretending every time i’m returning with an empty booksale cart, that i’m pushing the hovering Han in carbonite.

BOOSH. i am well geek and isn’t mr. fleegan lucky?

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16. The Black Path by Åsa Larsson

Category: 50 Books

16. The Black Path by Åsa Larsson

The third book in the Rebecka Martinsson/Anna-Maria Mella series. I don’t know how to talk about this book without mentioning possible spoilers. So if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, read no further.

When last we left Rebecka she had sort of… lost her mind. In book three she mostly gets it back. She has a stay in a mental hospital, which is really glossed over. Then she goes back to Kiruna or Kurravaara or some place like that. She ends up working there as a special prosecutor. So now, finally, we see Rebecka and Anna-Maria working together professionally. They work well together. It’s nice to see two women working together with no weird competition thing going on.

The mystery in the book is fine. The murder has nothing to do with Rebecka, finally. However, I think that the whole Kallis Mining arc was WAY TOO DETAILED. The only way this will be forgiveable is if they come into play in the next book. If they don’t, more than half of this book is a waste of time. Parts of it seemed redundant. How many times do we need to flashback to Muari and Diddi in business school? Twice, maybe, if you want to do one from each point of view. Ms. Larsson writes very well, you can get the point she’s trying to make, and yet, she goes on and on about some of the things.

It might be that she goes into so much detail because she doesn’t want you to hate the bad guys? Because most of this story revolves around the bad guys. She goes into so much of their history. Maybe she does this so we don’t judge them too harshly? Because obviously they didn’t have the best family histories. I’ve noticed this in most of the Swedish crime fiction I’ve read, it seems like the victims, the bad guys, and the heroes all get equal time in the books. It’s just in this particular book the baddies seem to get way more time.

 And what about Ester? She seemed like such an interesting character, is she wasted too? If so, this bugs me.

And then the Rebecka/Mans love? I mean, throw me a friggin’ bone. I tread through hundreds of pages of business fraud/family histories/Ugandan warlord shenanigans and you only give me four pages of Rebecka and Mans? Are you kidding me? They’re treated more like an afterward than any sort of real part of the book. And it’s not that I want hot, juicy, sex scenes, okay? I just wanted something with more substance.

The author does mention that there will be more books in the series. It’s just they are not published yet. So I guess I’ll get a break from Rebecka for a bit.

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15. The Blood Spilt by Åsa Larsson

Category: 50 Books

15. The Blood Spilt by Åsa Larsson

This is the sequel to Sun Storm. This book was much darker and moodier and it really felt different. Almost like it was written by a completely different person. There was a mystery to solve, but this time Rebecka Martinsson was not all that involved. Although she does manage to get herself in danger. Wouldn’t be exciting otherwise.

I will say that although my first thoughts upon finishing the book were, “Are you KIDDING me?” (because of the abrupt ending) still, i did not think the ending was over the top. I also sort of like where the author is taking Rebecka. On one hand I want to be annoyed by it, but really, she’s not a police person. She’s not an investigator. She’s a normal person and when she ends up in these gruesome situations she does not handle them very well, mentally I mean, and really? Who would? So while I’m sad that she seems to be disconnecting from the world, I’m also not surprised. It seems a likely thing to happen.

I thinks it’s awesome that Ms. Larsson was able to take the character who was murdered, Mildred, and make her a character who was still very active in the story. That was brilliant.

However, although I did understand the parallels between the women in the book and the she-wolf, Yellow Legs,  arc in the book, I was very annoyed by the parts with the she-wolf. I felt those parts slowed the story down. That could just be the impatient American in me talking though.

I was going to take a break and read something else before reading the third book, but with this ending! d’oh! I HAVE to read the third one. Right away!

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