Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

It seems like I'm always behind on my books now. This book came out in February and I'm just now getting to it. Normally, I would have dropped everything else, but for some reason I was wrapped up in other things. Maybe I was waiting for the immediate sequel that came out the next month or maybe I was werewolfed out with all the Patricia Briggs I had been reading, but I didn't pick it up until now.

KITTY AND THE DEAD MAN'S HAND is almost a trifle of a book. Compared with the previous novels, this one has the lightest plot. Kitty is heading to Las Vegas to get married and encounters some nice and not-so nice people. And that's about it. It is more of a set-up for the follow-on book and thus acts more as a step than an independent story. I enjoyed reading it, but really wanted there to be more.

All that said, I am plowing right into the next book, KITTY RAISES HELL. I expect it will be wonderful.

One last note - my wife saw the cover and thought it was smut. It's probably good that she never took a good look at the Patricia Briggs books I got from the library and just reaffirms my position that the publishers should be able to find a slightly different motif for urban fantasy covers than half-naked, curvy, tattooed women.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Almost simultaneously, I decided to get this novel as an audiobook and my friend told me I needed to read this book. Fate was now sealed. I would read the book with my ears.

The story built a little slowly at first. It took some time for the audio to pull me into the story. I had no real frame of reference to the action or location and my mind needed time to build the pictures in my head. But once I was about an hour in, the story shaped up and I was cruising through it.

I truly liked how this book was structured and how it involved more than just a murder. My main criticisms of mystery novels are that they focus almost exclusively on who was murdered and why. There are plenty of other crimes out there that can be equally as fascinating. If I did have a complaint, it was that the murder shaped up into a fairly typical presentation in modern stories. Also, I sussed out the main mystery rather early on. But unlike other novels, there was more to the story than that one point - a true saving grace. Some of these points did come out as a true shock and made perfect sense in their revelation.

This is an all around well-written novel. The characters are interesting, the plot comes together well, and the setting is new and intriguing. I wonder what the written experience would have been in comparison to the audio version.

On the audio version, Simon Vance is a well known name in the business. He's the primary reader on the version of DUNE that I am listening to now and I see that he read TIGERHEART by Peter David - I'll have to pick that one up. He does a very good job, but his women do sound very similar, so that when they are together it is a little hard to distinguish them.

Audiobooks require a little more discipline than written books. It's hard to stop mid-chapter and pick up again - you can't just back up a few sentences to figure out where you left off. You also need to store the character voices in your memory so you know who is speaking. Finally it seems to take longer. This book was around 17 hours in length. I probably would have taken just as long to read it, but I can't listen to the book on my iPod while also trying to interact with people or at work. This limits my listening time to commuting, walking the dog or working out. I could listen at home, but that would also require me to ignore my wife and daughter and be somewhat rude.

Still, I was impressed enough to get the recently released follow-up novel. I'll get to this one after I finish the next section of DUNE. I also need to read some books too. I'm getting woefully behind there and audiobooks seem to suck up my literary oxygen preventing me from focusing on anything else.

Free-Range Kids

Now that I have a daughter, I read the mandatory child-rearing books. This is one I particularly like. I cannot say I agree with everything, but I do agree with the premise - that kids are too restricted by rules, parents and fear. To this end, I am trying to raise my daughter to be smart, intuitive, adaptable and fearless (or at least less fearful).

FREE-RANGE KIDS primarily uses a concept called risk management - know what the risk is and how significant it may be. Don't be afraid to take the chances where necessary, know how to mitigate the possibilities of failure, and know how to learn from your failures. Life is not without risk, but if you completely avoid it you will succeed far less often than you would like.

It will always be a challenge because people will insist that it is a different world, (It is in that there is more of everything, but not because anything fundamental has changed.) or that it just isn't safe anymore, (see the above more not different line) or that kids just need to be protected.
Of course kids need to be protected, but by arming them with knowledge, insight, and other tools to make the right decisions or how to learn from the wrong ones, they can help to protect themselves. We all want happy, healthy kids, but smothering them will not help them grow into fully-realized adults.

I cannot guarantee that my daughter will be the person I want her to become, but I can try to help her become the best person she is able to be. Thus I will try not to overschedule her, hover over her every action and try to trust her to grow and learn and do the right thing.

I think most parents should read this book and learn a little themselves about how to manage the risk and enjoy their children's childhood.

Star Trek Destiny: Lost Souls

Since the previous novel moved so well and I was nearing the time I would have to return these books to the library, I pressed on with the third book in the Star Trek Destiny series, LOST SOULS.

The concluding chapter of the Borg invasion, this book wraps up everything mostly in the way I imagined. But unlike the television show, there was no cosmic reset button. The Trek universe is evolving and growing. The characters we know and love are not exactly who they were when the respective shows left the air. And for once, the storyline is living up to its expectations. If I haad any grip on the Borg storyline, the books made almost no mention of the Borg-corrupted USS Einstein. This vessel was a new evolution in the Borg hierarchy and could prove to be a greater long-term threat than the classic Borg. (Although I see now this was addressed in another book.)

Sure, the plot devices can be a little simplistic and the solutions too easy, but that doesn't mean there aren't ramifications from, the events depicted. I just saw in the bookstore the next installment that continues from what just occurred. I may read it when I catch up with everything else in my queue.

With the exception of a slow start, these books were fun to read and had to be read together to fully understand what was going on. I especially like that this was advertised as a trilogy and that I waited until all were published before I read them. I don't mind series, but I am increasingly impatient and would rather read the whole thing than wait months or years before reaching the conclusion.

Star Trek Destiny: Mere Mortals

I finally got around to reading the second book in the Star Trek Destiny series. I was afraid that this book would be a place holder - neither advancing the story nor adding anything relevant. In some ways this was true - a tacked on battle with the Hirogen in the Delta Quadrant, but mostly the book keeps the story going. We learn more of the fate of the USS Columbia and their captors along with the devastation of the Borg invasion.

This book moved much better than the first because of the lack of introductions, but there is no way it could be read independently of the rest of the series. At least the creators were honest from the get-go about this being a trilogy.

My main complaint is the telegraphing of certain outcomes. This is not difficult reading and neither are the plot developments cleverly concealed. Not that I mind too much, but I do like to be surprised a little as I read. For Trek fans and if they are planning on reading the whole trilogy, this is a fun read.

Your Movie Sucks

I made it all the way up to Be Cool before I came across a movie that sucked which I have watched. But then I found twenty-five more I wasted my time on. Of those, there are only a couple I would watch again: Constantine and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. The former is a decent representation of the DC comic Hellblazer and the latter is fun if very unrealistic. There are also many which I have seen snippets of on television, but none upon which I wasted my hard-earned dollars - even the ones I thought I wanted to see.

That said, I completely agree with all of Mr. Ebert's reviews or at least I understand why he ranked them so low. The usual problem is poor writing. Without a good, logical script, movies must overcome many hurdles to be good or great.

One thing I did notice in this collection was the recurrence of names - be they directors or stars - and themes - video games we are looking at you - throughout the book. While I avoided many of the movies made by these individuals, I now know them to be indicators of wasted time and will try to avoid them in the future.

This book would be a good primer for students of film to know how to try and avoid the pitfalls of bringing a good story to screen and how to spot the clunkers before wasting money on them.

Finally, here is my list:

13 Ghosts

Be Cool

Behind Enemy Lines

Blade: Trinity

Charlie’s Angels

Christmas with the Kranks

Constantine

Elektra

Fantastic Four

Final Destination 2

High Tension

Hoot

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

Life or Something Like It

Men in Black II

Mr. Deeds

Pearl Harbor

Reindeer Games

Resident Evil

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Rush Hour 2

Scary Movie 3

The Girl Next Door

The Grudge

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The Legend of Zorro

The Skulls

The Village

Gone Tomorrow

Here we are again - another Jack Reacher novel. Our protagonist wanders his way into a terrorist plot in New York, bulldozes his way through them and then wanders his way out again. Nothing shocking or surprising in this book other than a certain bleak tone that distinguishes it from other entries in the series. Child also goes with the first person narrative again - I can think of only one other that used this device.

On the whole, I'm a little tired of characters getting involved in plots that are way out of their leagues (The latest Harlen Coben suffered from this problem as well). The lone individual taking down the terrorist organization seems rather passe and kind of boring. I'm also getting tired of the national security apparatus seizing and holding people indiscriminately. It's been done and unless you have a fresh perspective on it, move on to a different plot device.

Overall, GONE TOMORROW is a nice lightweight summer read, but like most snacks, I won't remember the greater details much past the time I post this commentary.