The Readin Roos

Well, folks, all your happy old blog posts have been copied over to the new server, so you can revisit them anytime! Photos of book covers have been added for a visual reference. All the old posts have my name as the author, so they are each credited with a "Reviewed by" tag at the bottom of the post and the reviewers full name has been used as a tag. I've done my best to standardize tags as well, but if you find any flies in the ointment, just let me know!

Thanks, and happy reading!

Absolutely stunning. I savored every single word, which is unusual for me as I speed through so many books. This one, however, like a superbly crafted meal, invited me to linger and taste the nuances of every flavor on my literary palate. It cast a glorious spell over me. I was so sorry to see it end, and that is also a rarity for me.

The visualizations in my mind were crystal clear. The descriptions of physical things and people were so explicit and rendered in such fluid language that the circus truly lived in my imagination.

Chester definitely has his own way of doing things, and his friend, Wilson, loves tagging along. All goes well until Lilly, who also has her own unique way of doing everything (talking backwards, cutting sandwiches into shapes, etc), moves into the neighborhood. My daughter loved this picture book and others by Kevin Henkes when she was young, and I sure loved reading it to my 4 year old niece recently. Kevin Henkes does a great job of both writing and illustrating this book!

This is the first in Stephen King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, in which Roland, a gunslinger in a world that has "moved on" undertakes an epic quest to find the Dark Tower, which sits at the nexus of time itself. In this volume Roland barely survives a trek across a desert wasteland in his search for the mysterious Man in Black. This book is an interesting fusion of epic fantasy, post-apocalyptic literature, and Sergio Leone westerns.

Reviewed by Buddy Pennington

Thomas Dunlap's book presents a history of birding through the context of field identification guides. By examining the interests of birders over time, and the symbiotic relationship between birding as recreation and birding as a spur for action on conservation, he shows how guides changed to reflect needs for greater sophistication in identification, better understanding of where and when species can be found, and the importance of ecosystem beyond individual species survival.

Jake Marlowe discovers that he is the last werewolf on the planet, and sets out to put his affairs in order before WOCOP, the secretive organization that makes it their mission to kill supernatural entitites, hunts him down. As he does so, we ends up getting tangled up with vampires (yep, they exist too) as well as a young woman who holds the key to the survival of his species.

Reviewed by Buddy Pennington

This massive, but massively-entertaining, book tells the story of Aomame, a fitness instructor who moonlights as the occasional assassin, and Tengo, a writer and part-time math tutor, who find themselves in an alternate Japan in 1984. The first clue, things are not normal? There are two moons in the sky. As they both attempt to understand the changed world around them, the story becomes one of loneliness and the power of human companionship, culminating in a satisfying conclusion as the two find each other after decades of separation and vow never to let go again.

I HOWLED the whole way through this short book. Seeing the world through the eyes of 10-year-old Italian boy Felix Funicello (third cousin to the former Mouseketeer) is absolutely magical. The hijinks of the 5th graders at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Catholic School are priceless and read as if they were truly memories instead of made up stories. Rosalie Twerski, Felix's nemesis, is just as real a girl as if she'd lived in my hometown. I haven't laughed this hard at a kid since Dave Barry last wrote about his childhood hinjinks at Harold C. Crittenden Junior High in Armonk, New York.

A Man of Parts is a very interesting look at the life and ideas of H. G. Wells. It does dwell quite a bit on his sex life and Lodge is probably pretty guilty of sensationalizing things.

I am not hugely familiar with Wells' writings, but it did mention quite a few things that I'd be interested in reading. This book is also a good illustration of how people's reputations change over time. Until reading this book, I had only known of Wells as the guy who wrote The Time Machine (etc.), not as a radical socialist and proponent of Free Love.

Lewis Black can pretty much always make me laugh. This was absolutely perfect to read while sitting in the airport waiting for the crew to get the plane's computer fixed so that I could make it back home.

I do like Christmas, but (like most people) I've got some issues with it. Lewis Black is great at finding those issues and making them hilarious. The usual caveats about his humor do apply. He's an angry, foul-mouthed man and that may not put everybody in the Christmas spirit, but it works for me.