August Rejects

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I try to give each book at least 50 pages, but with so many great books out there (and two book clubs a month), I want to spend my time reading books I actually enjoy. I'd rather not spend time writing full reviews on books I Did Not Finish. This list includes the books I picked up and rejected in August:


Fourth Sunday: The Journey of a Book Club by B. W. Read Summary (from the back of the book):"Over two years, the women undergo a number of trials within their own lives as they confront divorce, illness, romantic highs and lows, sexual experimentation, and career challenges. Throughout the good times and bad times, their book club family provides support, encouragement, laughter, and love." I thought our book club was so unique and special when we each wrote one chapter from our memoirs and then compiled them in an anthology. We were too late in thinking we created another stunt genre because a book club based in D.C. wrote their own novel. Unfortunately, it's terrible. B.W. Read stands for Because We Read. The book was written in a James Patterson style: lots of short chapters, leading/hinting sentences and immediate back story.

May Rejects

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I've been reading - and discarding - a bunch of books lately. I try to give each book at least 50 pages, but with so many great books out there (and two book clubs a month), I want to spend my time reading books I actually enjoy. I'd rather not spend time writing full reviews on books I Did Not Finish. This list includes the books I picked up and rejected in May:

Lord Foul's Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever) by Stephen R. Donaldson
Summary: A leper is the hero who travels to a new world and fights some bad guy there. 
The "hero" is a leper and a rapist. Ick! The bad guy is named Lord Foul, yawn. Couldn't understand why this is so popular and influential since I barely read a few pages.

A Billion Reasons Why by Kristin Billerbeck
Summary: Katie returns to New Orleans to sing at her ex's brother's wedding and to get her grandmother's ring so her soon-to-be- fiance can propose.
Implausible from the very beginning, Katie is asked to fly back from California to sing 1940s style torch songs at the wedding of her ex-boyfriend's brother in New Orleans. Katie has never gotten over proposing to Luke in front of hundreds of people and having him turn her down, so she decides to prove once and for all that she is over Luke, by teasing him, flirting with him and dancing with him. Yeah, like that's gonna succeed. She leaves behind a solid but boring boyfriend, who likes her but doesn't "get" her and goes home to New Orleans. Too many things didn't make sense. Did her father commit suicide or was he murdered? What? How has she never met her stepfather before? Throw in a few references to sustainable farming practices, the BP oil spill and references to God and you have a jumbled mess.

August Moon (Murder-by-Month Mysteries, No. 4) by Jess Lourey
Summary: A woman solves a murder in a sleepy Minnesota town.
I love my Minnesota mysteries. Hanna Swenson, Mars Bahr, The Monkeewrench crew, but this one just fell short. The writing was dull and the relationships implausible.

April Rejects

Please note: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price. So buy and read now!

I've been reading - and discarding - a bunch of books lately. I try to give each book at least 50 pages, but with so many great books out there (and two book clubs a month), I want to spend my time reading books I actually enjoy. I'd rather not spend time writing full reviews on books I Did Not Finish. This list includes the books I picked up and rejected in April:

Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by Martha Beck
Summary: Memoir of a scholar who confronts the abuse she suffered by her family, while relating it to the Mormon faith.
I love HBO's Big Love, but seeing abuse and family disfunction within the Mormon Church dramatized is much more appealing that reading about it - unless it's written extremely well. This was not and reminded me of a typical Oprah Book Club novel. Turns out - Martha Beck is a frequent contributor to Oprah.com and refers to Oprah as The Big O. Apparently, Beck lost her faith and made Oprah her God. Ugh. I do feel sorry for her, obviously I do, but not every abuse survivor deserves to be a published author.

Hot Springs by Geoffrey Becker
Summary: A woman who gives her child up for adoption kidnaps her back at age five.
This book was terrible. There was not a single sympathetic character in the book, including the mother of the kidnapped kid. The plot was ridiculous and seemed very random. Again, this book left me wondering why - and how - some book even get published.

Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez
Summary: The life and struggles of a coffee plantation family in El Salvador.
I grew up on a coffee farm and love the smell, the taste, the ritual of coffee. What an interesting novel, I thought. From the very first line: "The parakeets ascended in a rustling roar of wings from the amate and primavera trees. Chattering rowdily, they hailed the rising sun" I was reluctant to continue. Then when a mother and her teen daughter find a headless corpse (!) in the first ten pages, I gave up.

March Rejects

Please note: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price. So buy and read now!

I try to give each book at least 50 pages, but with so many great books out there (and two book clubs a month), I want to spend my time reading books I actually enjoy. I'd rather not spend time writing full reviews on books I Did Not Finish. This list includes the books I picked up and rejected in March:

Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong
Summary: A ex-cop turned assassin tracks down a serial killer.
This book was so disappointing. I adore Kelley Armstrong and could have sworn that I would love anything she wrote. This book (apparently first of a series) was slow, with cliched characters and no plot impetus. The trainee assassin falls in love with her mentor, aging mafia men send out a hit on them, red herrings here and there. I kept trying, but couldn't stick with it.

Waiting for White Horses by Nathan Jorgenson
Summary: The long friendship between two Minnesota men is tested and strengthened.
The woman who lasers my bikini line recommended this book to me, but reading this book was like getting zapped in my brain instead. It's a novel about the friendship between two men who met in dental school. It's based in Minnesota and I hoped I could appreciate it for that. I've also been looking for a novel that my husband and I could read together and both enjoy. This is NOT it. There are many scenes about duck hunting, with very specific references to blinds, decoys, equipment and breeds of ducks. The characters seem so similar despite the author's valiant attempt to make them unique from each other. Perhaps that was because the writing is full of pronouns and I never knew which character he was referencing within the same paragraph. Their lives change when one of them gets a phone call from the President of the United States. I didn't care enough about the characters to read beyond that.

The Seven Year Bitch by Jennifer Belle
Summary: A unhappy stay-at home mother hires a nanny, has an affair and gets pregnant.
Enough already with the married moms who have affairs! I'm so sick of this as a theme. While it's true that a majority of women file for divorce first, it's the men who have the affairs. So in some sort of twisted version of feminism, women authors think it's okay for their women characters to have affairs - as if it will make them equal to men.  The character's name is Isolde Brilliant. Puh-leeze. A tragic old-fashioned first name and a sparkling last name do NOT an enjoyable book make.

The February Rejects

Please note: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price. So buy and read now!

I've been reading - and discarding - a bunch of books lately. I try to give each book at least 50 pages, but with so many great books out there (and two book clubs a month), I want to spend my time reading books I actually enjoy. I'd rather not spend time writing full reviews on books I Did Not Finish. This list includes the books I picked up and rejected in February:

The Pumpkin Muffin Murder: A Fresh-Baked Mystery: by Livia J. Washburn
Summary: Retired school teacher Phyllis Newsom solves another murder, this time based around her pumpkin muffins.
I just couldn't connect with the characters, and the squabbling and rivalry between Phyllis and her boarder Carolyn comes off as tiresome. The recipes - with the exception of Mocha Pecan Pie - didn't seem special either.

Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat, and Freaks by Lisa Lampanelli
Summary: A comic shares her memoirs and jokes.
It started out as a funny comic memoir, but was too crude and insulting for me. She calls herself the "Queen of Mean" and it's true, amongst all the vulgarity. Not an enjoyable read.

Chocolate Secrets by Zelda Benjamin
Summary: A romance between a nurse and a fire fighter is guided by their horoscopes.
Bored me to tears. Immature writing and characters who seemed caricatures. But I'm sure you noticed the chocolate theme here. Too bad they were both disappointing.

The False Friend by Myla Goldberg
Summary: A married woman tracks down the girls she bullied as a pre-teen.
I've read books with unsympathetic lead characters, but this one was the worst! Celia came off as a sociopath, in that she seemed to have no emotional connection to people around her. And then to have a missing girl be part of the plot? I just got disgusted. Girls do go missing, but not frequently enough to base a book around it.

The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert
Summary: Who cares?
The writing style seems old-fashioned and affected. Couldn't get into the Miss Havisham-type characters and fussy writing. Really don't understand why this is a series.

The Last Ember by Daniel Levin

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Summary: An antiquities professor uncovers a mystery, a historical cover up, and a relic of history that governments and fanatics would kill for.

My hormones are responsible for me picking up this book. I admit, the author photo of Daniel Levin sucked me in. Isn't he a hunk?

Unfortunately, this novel frustrated and bored me with all the complicated characters and angles. It's an ambitious novel, an attempt to combine the best of Indiana Jones (archeology made sexy) and a Jewish version of The Da Vinci Code (revisionist religious history) but based in Rome. Evil American lawyers, devoted religious fanatics and experts, Italian scholars and researchers, earnest antiquities police and a lost love from the past.

I couldn't finish this book, but here's a summary from the author's webpage:

Jonathan Marcus, a young American lawyer and a former doctoral student in classics, has become a sought-after commodity among less-scrupulous antiquities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome to examine a client’s fragment of an ancient stone map, he stumbles across a startling secret. The discovery reveals not only an ancient intelligence operation to protect an artifact hidden for 2000 years, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing all remnants of Jewish and Christian presence from the Temple Mount.

Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lise Haines

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Summary: When her best friend Jane runs away, Mattie steps into her life.

Mattie is left to tell Jane's family that Jane has driven off in her dead grandmother's Jaguar. So she walks into her best friend's house early in the morning and observes her best friend's husband sleeping in the nude.

I made a ring out of my left thumb and forefinger and fitted it around his penis.

What? Gack! Gag!

Mattie had always been jealous of Jane's life: her wealthy, adoring grandmother; her handsome husband, her two daughters, and Jane's easy, care-free life. And while Mattie feels overwhelmed trying to explain to Jane's girls that their mom is just taking some time off, Mattie is secretly thrilled to be living with Mike, the long-lusted-after fantasy husband. And Mike and Mattie actually start having sex.

Normally I adore switcheroo books, but this one struck me as creepy and disturbing, which is why I couldn't finish it. The sex scenes were not sexy, but instead clinical and overly-detailed, so that when combined with the adultery, just really soured. So many other better books to enjoy.

Blue Diablo: A Corine Solomon Novel by Ann Aguirre

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Summary: A psychic tracks down her ex’s missing mother.

Corine Solomon has a gift. Or maybe it’s a curse. She can tell the history of an object by holding it in her palm. That’s the reason why her hands are so scarred and burnt and also why she’s been hiding in Mexico for the past two years.

But when her ex-boyfriend Chance tracks her down and begs her to save his mother, who was the primary mother figure in Corine’s short, rough life, Corine knows it will hurt her both physically and emotionally. She agrees to use her powers as long as Chance helps her hunt down the people who killed her mother. A spell cast at the moment of Corine’s mother’s death actually gave Corrine her powers. Corine grew up in isolation and loneliness until Chance and his mother became the closest thing Corine had to a family, after years of abuse in foster care.

Chance and Corine once made a great psychic team, but Corine left after feeling used by Chance’s greed. He would take lucrative cases using their talents, but Corine would be traumatized physically and emotionally. After one particularly tough case (where they didn’t find the missing girl’s body), Corine runs away. She’s made a pretty nice, if boring, life for herself in Mexico. Until Chance comes walking back in. When he offers her revenge, Corine can’t refuse.

The writing in this book was sometimes laugh out loud funny and sometimes just quirky and crude:

“What he would have said, I’ll never know because his cell rang. Looking apologetic, he answered (he’d once taken a call while receiving a particularly artful blow job). That too was vintage Chance and I scurried like a nervous gerbil back to the kitchen, where I occupied myself washing up the few dishes I dirtied."

or

“Nice face, I decided, if scruffy and unshaven. Frosting the hunk cake was a tousled mess of tawny sun streaked hair.”

I just like the sound of a frosted hunk cake.

During the investigation, Corine starts to meet people with extra talents and you’ll feel encouraged when you feel like she won’t be alone anymore. But when their friends’ bodies are taken over by some mind control trick and they are helped by a wheel-chair bound psychic in Britain, I just lost interest.

One Foot in the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 2) by Jeaniene Frost

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Summary: A half-human/half-vampire is employed with Department of Homeland Security.

The premise is promising, exciting even. A half-human/half-vampire named Christine (her alias) who was formerly known as Cat, is employed with Department of Homeland Security, carrying out midnight raids against vampires who break the law.

Just to clarify, since I was curious how one can be a half-human and half vampire – Cat/Christine’s mother was raped by a newly turned vampire and somehow his sperm was both human and vampire at the time of the rape, so Cat’s mom was impregnated. I know, right? But if you’re going to believe in the existence of vampires, and that they work for Homeland Security, little details like infertility in vampires requires only a minor suspension of disbelief.

Cat is tough and brutal, but haunted by her separation from her vampire lover, nicknamed “Bones.” It was Bones’ tutoring that trained her as a fighter and she can still hear his voice in her head, encouraging her during her fights.

I felt like the writing and Cat’s action were deliberately bold and shocking.

“Ruthlessly I kicked the cadaver to send more blood downward, and Juan forced Dave to swallow.”

Ugh.

But the way the plot unfolded was weak. Bones comes back into Cat’s life, because someone has taken a contract out on her life (she’s a vampire hunter, remember?) and together they will uncover the plot against her.

But Cat/Christine seems tough and disconnected to her life. I couldn’t feel her pain or her passion. She just seemed grumpy.

“Felicty took one look at the half-empty pilsner glass of gin I returned with and gasped.

“Christine, can’t you keep a lid on your drinking? This is my cousin’s wedding for heaven’s sake!”

Her prim tone made me squeeze my glass so hard to avoid slamming it over her head that it shattered. Gin spilled on the front of me, and my palm started to bleed.

“Motherfucker!” I shouted.”

I stopped reading when her vampire ex-boyfriend Bones keeps calling her “Kitten.” It sounded so close to “sex kitten” and Cat (Yes, I do get the Cat/Kitten reference) is not the cuddly delicate type.

I think Laurell K. Hamilton is to blame for creating ass-kicking female vampire hunters who have extreme violent sex.

I recommend Blood Oath if you're looking for government vampires. Can this really be a category now? Vampires who work for Homeland Security?

I Was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley

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Summary: Essays from a recent college graduate about growing up Jewish but not practicing, dating and sex, work and friendship. 

Sloane Crosley writes of her first publishing job after college graduation:

“The hours I logged in there were some of the more useless of my life. Which is really saying something. I remember almost nothing of my experience except for the tray of inexplicably unwrapped cherry frosted Pop-Tarts in the office kitchen and the one article they allowed me to write all summer: a two-hundred word reportage masterpiece on a teen fashion show at Macy’s. In it, I attempted to explore the seedy underbelly of thirteen-year-old runway models, all of whom had better skins and better social lives than I did. What came out went something like: Shoulder pads. All bad?”

The minutes I logged trying to get through the painfully dull and self-absorbed stories of another whiny New York college grad can never be repaid.

Now I know why so many other aimless twenty-something have novels out, because this ridiculous book got published. Do you know who’s reading it? All the other aimless twenty-somethings who have no jobs but think they are brilliant. This is what helicopter parenting leads to, folks: liberal art majors who think they can write and are owed a novel about how awkward it is to have sex or date or play band or have any other NORMAL experience people have.

Funny title, but even though this was a collection of essays, I couldn’t bring myself to finish even half of them.

The Blonde Geisha by Jina Bacarr

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Summary: A blonde Englishwoman is left in a tea house and trained to become a geisha until her father can rescue her. 


I’m sure my husband would like it if I referred to his penis as “honorable penis” but it’s not much of an erotic novel if I keep giggling thru it, is it?


Not only is the writing ridiculous, but the plot was even worse. When Kathlene's father is threatened by a Japanese prince, her father stashes her in the tea house owned by his mistress who is herself a geisha. 


Kathlene resists her geisha training, but enjoys titillating men, without realizing that as a geisha, she might have to have intercourse with someone she's not automatically attracted to. Lots of touching and playing with the gardener boy, but no actual penetration. 


Then Kathlene's first client is a brutish general (of that same evil prince who threatened her father). She and her best friend concoct an elaborate plot where Kathlene's friend, who was flunking out of geisha school anyway, takes Kathlene's place. Then they will race and take Kathlene to the English embassy in order to keep her safe.  Wait! You mean the embassy was an option all along? She didn't really have to live in the tea house all this time?  Puh-leeze. I quit reading before I found out if Kathlene's father was alive after all. 


This book gets prominent pacing on Barnes & Noble's shelves, but doesn't deserve it.

You're Teaching My Child What?: A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Can Harm Your Child by Miriam Grossman M.D.

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Summary: The emphasis on all sexual behavior being normal leads to high rates of STDs.

Say what you like about abstinence education (Bristol Palin would be the first to tell you it doesn't work), but when you bash Planned Parenthood on page 4, you've pretty much lost credibility with me.

I understand the author's point - that making any kind of sexual deviancy seem normal actually harms children and their sexuality.

Experimenting with multiple partners, S&M, same sex intimacy when a child is NOT gay, all of this behavior can lead to sexually transmitted diseases, the potential for infertility and emotionally unhealthy adult relationships.

I am not unsympathetic to the author's concerns over STDs, but the blind anger against Planned Parenthood and other sites about teen sexuality do not do much to solve the problem.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

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Summary: A history enthusiast revisits sites relating to presidential assassinations.

It saddens me when people make history boring. History is fascinating but, told in the wrong way, can totally turn people off. I enjoyed Take the Cannoli, but was terribly disappointed in this travel monologue.

"I embarked on the project of touring historical sites and monuments having to do with the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley right around the time my country iffily went to war, which is to say right around the time my resentment of the current president cranked up into contempt. Not that I want the current president killed. Like that director, I will, for the record (and for the FBI agent assigned to read this and make sure I mean no harm-hello there), clearly state that while I am obsessed with death, I am against it."

This is the funniest line of the book and you have to read carefully to get the rest of the humor in the book. It's the kind of humor that NPR is known for, and why Nascar fans rarely listen to NPR, as the author makes fun of southern cooking and themes with the hubris of an East Coast elite education.

What disturbs me most about this book is that if I hadn't gotten married, I likely would be Sarah Vowell. The over-eager aunt giving inappropriate presents to her nephew and dragging family members and friends to historical sites that bear only the slimmest connection to assassinated presidents.

Real Vampires Hate Their Thighs (Glory St. Clair, Book 5) by Gerry Bartlett

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Summary: Vampire Glory St. Clair, in her never-ending quest for beauty, secretly meets with her lover's arch-enemy in order to lose 20 pounds. 


Real Vampires Hate Their Thighs  - funny title, right? Stupid book. 


Glory St. Clair is over 400 years old. She's got a moderately successful vintage clothing business, a gorgeous fake-fiance, a gorgeous authentic and rich vampire lover, and she's still obsessed about losing 20 pounds. Seriously? 


She's planning clandestine meetings with her lover's arch-enemy in order to lose 20 pounds that nobody else minds except for her? I couldn't believe it - and I read plenty of unbelievable books (werewolves, vampires, witches, dystopian fiction with monsters and killer animals). 


A 400-year-old vampire would have been alive in the 1960s. Ever heard of Twiggy? I have. Skinny and famous. Glory would also have been alive in the 1920s, where women bound their breasts to look as flat as possible.  So today's standards of beauty don't seem any more onerous that in previous eras. But suddenly living in LA requires that Glory lose 20 pounds. The vampire weight loss expert also promises that Glory can target her weight loss to focus only on the areas she wants to lose - and Glory believes it. How could a vampire this stupid live for 400 years without being staked by now?


And the writing was just weak. 

"I was sure my blonde hair had been blown into a fright wig by the change for my bat flight. Then he checked out my snug jeans in a size twelve (oh, how I wished for a six!). Hmm. Back up north again, he lingered on my double Ds which I'd love to slip into a C cup. I could only imagine the joys of having to shop for new bras and to actually buy colorful pretty ones."

And Jerry, also known as Angus Jeremiah Campbell III, thinks Glory is perfect. In fact, he'd willingly marry Glory and support her. He could even use his millions to buy Glory sexy, colorful bras to hold those double Ds. 


I couldn't finish this book. There are so many good funny chick-lit vampire books out there, you don't need to waste your time with Glory St Clair. Try Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs (Jane Jameson, Book 1) by Molly Harper.

Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by Chris Stewart

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Summary: An American buys a house in South America and wants to live there while maintaining American standards. 


Lacking the charm and delight that A Year in Provence had, this book seemed comically stupid. I couldn't finish it because I didn't care enough about the author to hope anything turned out for him. The last thing we need is an American buffoon mocking the traditions and slower-paced life of other countries.