New Links

I finally put some links on my blog. These are blogs that I enjoy; there's a little bit of everything. There are some other sites pertaining to books (I Love a Good Mystery, Gay and Lesbian Books); humor (Whoopity Doo, Digital Doorway, Wasted Blog); Personal Diaries (No Bravery, A Rich Tapestry of Barbara-isms, She Talks to Angels, All Things Jennifer, Championable: Fatherhood, Politics, Kids); politics (The Martian Anthropologist, Princess Wild Cow). Anyway, check them out.

Book Review--Case of Lies, by Perri O'Shaughnessy

Nina Reilly is one of my all-time favorite characters. I tend to like legal thrillers, and Reilly is an amazing lawyer who actually has a heart.

Nina's latest case comes her way when her massage therapist, Chelsi, asks Nina to talk to her uncle. Chelsi's aunt, Sarah had been murdered nearly two years previously while she and Chelsi's uncle Dave had been staying at a motel. It seemed to be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sarah had been shot while some other motel guests were being robbed. Even more tragically, Sarah had been pregnant with her first child at the time.

The shooter has not been found, and the Dave's civil case against the motel for negligence, having languished for two years, is about to be thrown out. Dave is broke, but Chelsi and her father are willing to pay the bills so that the case can go forward.

Nina has to race against the clock to gather more evidence before the judge tosses the case out. She searches for the robbery victims who were also witnesses to Sarah's murder, three brilliant MIT students who came to Tahoe to gamble. The students, master card counters, had won a lot of money the night they were robbed. The IDs they had provided were fake, so Nina has to figure out who and where they are, as well as try to find the shooter.

The student most central to the story is Elliott, a brilliant but unstable mathematician who is working on solving the mystery of prime numbers (numbers that are divisible only by one and themselves, such as 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. As yet, no one has discovered a formula for predicting the location of prime numbers. This means that really large composite numbers cannot be factored, due to the difficulty of finding the prime numbers of which they are composed. Interestingly, encryption based on this fact is the best method of encryption on the Internet at this point, thought there are other possibilities such as quantum encryption. These other possibilities will have to be further explored when someone does figure out the formula for locating prime numbers.

Anyway, that's what I like about O'Shaughnessy's books; they are highly readable, but I learn a lot. In reading this book, for example, I learned more about math, while in another I learned a more about Russian history. The only thing I regret is that they can't write and publish faster; I'm always so anxious to read their next book.

Book Review--Peach Cobbler Murder, by Joanne Fluke

I love books in a series that feature the same character/s. Once I've gotten to like a character, I want to read more about them. This book is Fluke's fifth Hannah Swenson mystery. Hannah owns a small bakery called the Cookie Jar and is an amateur sleuth.

I will admit, one does have to suspend disbelief with these amateur-sleuth-type mysteries. For one thing, amateur sleuths in these books tend to do things in the course of investigating that I would think a private citizen would have difficulty doing. Also, these books tend to take place in small towns, and if there is at least one murder per installment of the series--well, that would make the murder rate in a town of 5000 people or so alarmingly high.

It doesn't matter, though; I always really enjoy these types of books. In this book, Hannah faces a serious threat to her business when a new bakery opens up right across the street. The new bakery is operated by two sisters, one of whom, Shawna Lee, is after Mike, Hannah's sometime-boyfriend. Since Shawna Lee is a rival of Hannah's in both business and love, she is a prime suspect when Shawna is murdered. So let's just say Hannah has a strong incentive to solve this particular case.

I really like all the characters in this series, but my favorite is Hannah's cat. He is far more intelligent than I think a real-life cat could probably be (not that my own little darlings aren't brilliant :-), but he has the greatest personality (cat-ality?). This is a cat who doesn't like Hannah's mother and so will puff up like a porcupine and hisses when her mother calls, even before Hannah answers the telephone. He also refused to kill a mouse in Hannah's mother's house, as if he just couldn't stand doing her a favor. On the other hand, he loves Hannah's other sometime-boyfriend, Norman, and will do anything Norman asks, including allow Norman to put a harness on him. The cat has strong opinions about people.

Each installment also has lots of recipes to try, mostly desserts. I haven't tried any yet, but, well, they all look really good, so these are a bonus that you get with each book.

Movie Review--North Country

One thing I can definitely say about this movie is that it gives one perspective. Anytime that I think that I hate my job, I'll just think about what it would have been like to work in the hellhole portrayed in this movie. I think working in a mine would be bad enough, never mind working there when one is subjected to daily harrassment. I'm talking feces smeared on the walls of the women's locker room, sex toys in their lunch boxes, ugly rumors and name calling, and generally having to go to work every day in fear.

The movie is inspired by a true story involving a class-action sexual harrassment suit against a mine in 1989. It centers on a character named Josie (Charlize Theron) who moves back to her hometown with two kids in tow when she leaves her abusive husband. She moves in with her parents and gets a job washing hair in a beauty salon, but one can't exactly support oneself and two kids on those wages. A female mine worker and union representative suggests that Josie get a job working for the mine, which pays six times what she makes washing hair.

Josie's dad also works for the mine, but he is far from supportive. And from day one, Josie is subjected to an incredible amount of harrassment, as are the other women who work for the mine, who are outnumbered 30 to 1 by men. Most of the women try to brush it off, but Josie has a much harder time doing so. The final straw occurs when she is attacked by one of the men. She gets a lawyer (Woody Harrelson) and sues the mine.

Theron does a wonderful job as Josie. The character is an amazing person, someone who has really been through a lot and is amazingly strong. Since the movie is "inspired by" a true story, I am not sure how much of her character is based on an actual person, but the real life women in this case must have been incredibly courageous as well, to take on the mine like that and make history.

I'm glad I saw the movie, because it is really good and it portrays an important piece of history. However, it was really intense and hard to watch in places, so I'm not sure it's the kind of thing I'd want to see again. Not a good date movie, that's for sure. It's the type of movie to see with someone capable of providing good emotional support.

Book Review--Mercy, by Jodi Picoult

I've mentioned before that I love Jodi Picoult. I love the way she writes about pressing social issues and the way she treats them with such sensitivity and depth.

Mercy is about a mercy killing. A man, Jamie, kills his wife, whose body is riddled with cancer, by smothering her with a pillow. He confesses immediately to the police chief, who happens to be his cousin, Cam. Cam then has the difficult job of arresting his cousin, and then aiding in his prosecution.

Meanwhile, Cam's wife, Allie, is doing her best to help Jamie. She seems to feel a kinship with him in that they both have or had an extraordinary devotion to their spouses. Allie is impressed that Jamie loved his wife so much that he would go so far as to kill her when she asked. But while Allie helps Jamie and Cam helps the prosecution, the distance between them grows. Complicating matters further, Cam finds himself thinking about Allie's new assistant, Mia.

Did Jamie really agree to kill his wife because he loved her so much that he only wanted to end her suffering? Or was it because it had become too hard for him to watch her suffer? Or was it because she had changed from the person he had loved so much into one he no longer wanted to be around? These are the questions that the book raises. As with her other books, Picoult provides no easy answers, but compels the reader to consider the questions.

Book Review--Your Cat's Just Not That Into You, by Richard Smith (Illustrations by David Sipress)

I always thought my cats were pretty into me. They greet me at the door. They sleep with me at night. Sure, they're a little friendlier when I'm trying to eat dinner in peace, but for the most part, I thought they loved me unconditionally.

Clearly, I was living in a dream world.

Last night I was at Hastings, looking for an audiobook to rent, when I saw Your Cat's Just Not That Into You. Feeling sorry for people who clearly have settled for a less-than-optimal cat-human relationship, I picked it up and thumbed through it.

It's always a shock when you think everything is perfect in a relationship and then reality hits you in the face.

I was reading about myself and my cats.

Being all sweet and cuddly and then suddenly bolting away? My cats do that! Separation anxiety if I close the bathroom door and then ignoring me when I open it, clearly meaning that they are only into me when I am not there? My cats do that! And forget about coming to me when I call them. Then of course there is the physical abuse. They are always supposedly "just playing" when they scratch me, like they didn't realize their claws weren't retracted.

I sobbed for hours.

Dramatics aside, the book is hilarious. It is of course a take-off on He's Just Not That Into You, that book which helps women face the truth about their jerk boyfriends. From what little I've seen of that book, this one is laid out in the same way, with letter from people and advice. It's a must-have for any cat-lover.

Movie Review--In Her Shoes

Another great movie. In Her Shoes is about two sisters who are complete opposites. Rose is an uptight lawyer, very responsible and good at her job. Her younger sister Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is beautiful, irresponsible, can't hold a job, and mooches off of Rose. The sisters lost their mother when they were young. They don't always get along, but they are close.

However, their relationship is severely tested when Maggie sleeps with a man who is sort of Rose's boyfriend. Rose kicks Maggie out of her apartment. Fortunately for Maggie, she has a place to go. She has a tendency to snoop through other people's things, looking for cash to steal. It was when she was snooping through her father and stepmother's things that she discovered the whereabouts of her maternal grandmother, with whom their father had cut off contact years ago.

Maggie goes to visit her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) in Florida for the first time in her life. Her grandmother is delighted to meet her granddaughter at long last, but less happy about her granddaughter's mooching tendencies. When she discovers Maggie looking through her things for cash, she strikes a deal with Maggie: Maggie can stay with her, but she needs to get a job. Maggie's grandmother promises she will match the money Maggie earns through her job in order to help Maggie go to New York so she can study acting.

In staying with her grandmother and developing a relationship with her, Maggie begins to gain a sense of responsibility. Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, Rose is learning to loosen up. She takes a leave of absence from her job and takes a job walking dogs. She starts dating a new man (not the one who slept with her sister). But she and Maggie miss each other terribly. In Florida, their grandmother (whom Rose has still not met) encourages Maggie to contact Rose. Meanwhile, their father doesn't even know that Maggie is no longer in Philadephia.

The sisters have to come to terms with their relationship and their past. They are both lost in their own way and need to find themselves.

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I love chick flicks. I also like movies about the relationship between sisters; the dynamics are really interesting to me. In this movie, Shirley MacLaine is great as the grandmother, but then I always like both her and Cameron Diaz. I highly recommend this movie.

Book Review--The Mystery of Breathing, by Perri Klass

Dr. Maggie Claymore is at the top of her profession. A neonatologist, she works with the smallest and sickest premature babies, ones so ill that other doctors might give up on them. She is fiercely devoted to the babies, sometimes to the point where others thinks she tries to save babies whose chance for any kind of decent quality of life is very small. However, she is a very talented and dedicated doctor, and she is in line for a promotion at work. Personally, she doesn't have kids, but she has a terrific husband, also a doctor. Life is pretty good.

But Maggie's life starts to unravel when she gets an anonymous letter, one saying, among other things, that she harms her patients and that the doctors she trains hate working with her. And the harassment doesn't stop with one letter. Maggie and some of her colleagues keep getting increasingly hateful letters, and finally the accuser goes public and puts up posters around the hospital, warning parents to avoid allowing Maggie to treat their child. Worst of all, the letters and posters blame her for the death of a toddler who died in the hospital the previous year.

You'd think someone would notice a person putting up posters around the hospital, but no one does. Investigator Donna Grey asks Maggie about any possible personal relationships with coworkers, talks to her husband, and investigates all aspects of her life, but the perpetrator leaves scant evidence.

The book alternates between what's happening in Maggie's life in the present and different times in her past. The interludes from the past are supposed to provide a deeper insight into Maggie's identity, but while they were usually interesting, I didn't always feel that they added a whole lot to the story. Also, I sometimes felt that they interrupted the flow of the story. Things would be getting really interesting in the present, and then the next chapter would abruptly switch to some time in Maggie's past.

The other thing that frustrated me about this book was that it simply left too many loose ends. I don't want to give too much away in explaining exactly how. It was probably more true-to-life than many other books in that regard, but I would have preferred a tidier resolution.

Book Review--Seizure, by Robin Cook

I have read most of Robin Cook's books, and really like them. I liked this one too, but not as much as I've liked some of his others. The main problem I had with Seizure was that there was simply too much clutter in it. It took around 400 pages to get to the part in which I was most interested.

Dr. Daniel Lowell has invented a new technique in stem-cell research, one that promises to save many lives. He and his partner (personal and professional) Stephanie D'Agostino, have their own biotechnology firm, and with it they hope they will save lives and reap huge financial benefits.

However, the biotechnology firm faces a serious threat. Senator Ashley Butler, an extremely conservative Southern Democrat (he seemed more like a right-wing Republican), has introduced legislation to ban Daniel's technique. Daniel and Stephanie go to Washington, D.C., to testify in a subcommittee meeting in which they attempt to explain the procedure and emphasize that it does not involve the dismemberment of human embryos. They fail to convince the senator, however, and are frustrated by the biased hearing.

A few days later, however, they are contacted by Butler's Chief of Staff for a top-secret meeting. The senator has a progressive form of Parkinson's disease, and he wants Daniel and Stephanie to treat him for it using Daniel's new technique, though they have yet to try it on a human. The senator demands absolute secrecy, as he doesn't want knowledge of his illness to threaten his political future, which he hopes will include someday becoming president. In exchange, Ashley promises that the bill he is sponsering banning the procedure will die in subcommittee. If the bill dies, the financing for Daniel's company would come through.

Ashley has one final demand. The procedure requires the DNA of someone who does not have Parkinson's disease. It doesn't matter who the person is, since there is no tissue matching involved, the way there would be for an organ transplant. He wants the DNA to be obtained from a blood sample taken from the Shroud of Turin, which is thought to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, though this is controversial. Ashley believes it to be real, and he wants this bit of "divine intervention."

Here is where it starts to get really "cluttered." Ashley greases the wheels so that Daniel and Stephanie are able to get a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They make a trip to Turin to obtain it and nearly get arrested. They get away but have to leave all their luggage. They then go to the Bahamas, where the procedure has to be done in order to avoid violating any FDA rules. They have to be there several weeks before Ashley, as there are things they have to do before they will be ready to do the procedurel. The clinic where the procedure is to be done, Wingate Clinic, was featured in a earlier novel of Cook's (Shock). The clinic was in Massachusetts, until the directors moved it rather suddenly to the Bahamas rather than face the consequences of being involved in the disappearance of two female Harvard students and unethical practices related to infertility treatments and illegally removing ovaries from women without their consent. Stephanie had to reluctant to go along with treating Ashley in the first place, and she is not happy about dealing with the Wingate Clinic and its directors, Dr. Spencer Wingate and Dr. Paul Saunders. She does some snooping, hoping to find evidence of wrongdoing which she can turn over to the authorities once they are done treating Ashley. She manages to get into their "egg room" and gets caught by their thug of a security guard, who puts her into an actual jail cell in the clinic's basement. To get her out, Daniel has to sign some sort of confidentiality agreement, basically stating that if he or Stephanie blows the whistle on the clinic, the clinic will blow the whistle on them.

An additional side plot is that Stephanie's family has mob connections, and her brother and some of his associates are not happy about their investments in Daniel and Stephanie's biotechnology firm being in jeopardy. They cannot understand how Daniel and Stephanie can be trying to save the firm in the Bahamas and send a thug down on two occasions to communicate their displeasure.

Now, the book is called Seizure because the procedure causes Ashley to have bizarre seizures. So, I figured that the procedure would be done relatively early on in the story, and that the story would focus on that more. But that's not what happens. Ashley doesn't have the procedure done until almost the end of the book, and very little time is devoted to actually dealing with the complications. The ending, by the way, is quite bizarre.

So anyway, the book was still pretty interesting, but it had too much clutter and too many side plots for my taste. Some side plots are fine; they make a book more interesting. And it wasn't that these subplots weren't interesting or even that they were hard to follow; it's just that there were too many.