I’ve been a fan of Dick Francis since being introduced to his work in 1987. I was at a friend’s house, and I was saying that I like horses, and horse racing, and her mom suggested that I might really enjoy his books. Normally I’m not a big fan of mysteries, but I was sucked in from the start. That first book was Break-In, after which I had to read Bolt, which had the same characters. Luckily, Francis had been writing for years, so I had a large library to go back and read. Francis and his wife were a team. Their mysteries did most often center around the world…

I’ve joined the throngs and read the Millennium Trilogy, by Stieg Larsson, otherwise known as “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo“, “The Girl Who Played With Fire“, and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest“. From the publisher, quick blurbs. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pieced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and…

Commenter CJ stopped by the other day and said that she had found an old mutual bloggy friend of ours, Wendy, who is blogging again, which I had not known, and was glad to find.  Then my friend Theresa from My Fairbanks Life stopped by, and it looks like she’s blogging again. Yay to both! I gotta get motivated and back into it myself. Soon. After I fix my sidebar, I guess, and fill it in with all of your blogs again. In CJ’s comment, she said she liked my book reviews, so in her honor, here’s my review of my most recent read, The Lost Dog, by Michelle de…

In an alternate reality Europe, the early 1900s are filled with two very different cultures; the Clankers, and the Darwinists. The Clankers have built amazing machines that can walk and fly and even run. They distrust the Darwinist mightily, and feel that they have made some ungodly discoveries. The Darwinists have taken the discoveries of Darwin, (alternate reality Darwin has discovered DNA, and how to manipulate it), and have created living beasts that serve as machines. A whale that flies, like a giant dirigible, but one in which the passengers ride inside of, rather than beneath. It is 1914, and Aleksandar is the prince of Austria. When his parents are…

I have a secret. And everyone knows it. But no one talks about it, at least not out in the open. That makes it a very modern secret, like knowing your favorite celebrity has some weird eccentricity or other, or professional athletes do it for the money, or politicians don’t actually have your best interests at heart. Sprout is the story of Daniel Bradford, a kid who decides that if he can’t fit in, it will at least be on his own terms. He’s a gifted writer, something that his English teacher figures out pretty quickly and moves to hone in time for the state essay-writing contest. The teen years…

KarenMEG recommended The Help over on her blog, so I thought I’d put it on hold at the library. I did, but then I found out I was number 258 in line for it, and decided that maybe I’d buy it myself. So the next time we were at the bookstore, I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it in the fiction area. I asked the helpful person behind the information desk, and he said they should have it, they had 5 copies an hour earlier, but it was downstairs on the ‘Best Sellers’ shelf. Down we went, where he scooped up the very last copy and handed it…

For the first time ever I hoped there was no Baby Rachel.  I don’t know what happened to Dad and Lisa, if the baby was ever born.  It must be so hard now to have a baby.  Lisa could have miscarried or had a stillborn baby.  Horrible though that is, it might be for the better. I tiptoed out of the sunroom and through the kitchen to the bathroom.  It smells of fish and bedpans and ocean breeze air freshener.  I curled up on the cold tile floor, and I rocked back and forth, glad it made my body ache even more, like I deserved the punishment for what I’d…

“On the morning of August the twelfth, eighteen hundred and fifty something, on the day she was to be married, Pell Ridley crept up from her bed in the dark, kissed her sisters goodbye, fetched Jack in from the wind and rain on the heath, and told him they were leaving. Not that he was likely to offer any objections, being a horse.” Pell knows far more about horses than she does about men, or women, or the workings of the human heart. She understands horses, can look at a horse and see into its spirit, and know whether it will be a good worker, a good companion, a safe…

I know how it sounds when I call him my son. There’s something a little precious about it, a little too wishful to be taken seriously. I’ve noticed the looks on people’s faces, those dim, indulgent smiles that vanish in a heartbeat. It’s easy enough to see how they’ve pegged me: an unfulfilled man on the shady side of fifty, making a last grasp at fatherhood with somebody else’s child. That’s not the way it is. Frankly, I’ve never wanted a kid. Never once believed that nature’s whim had robbed me of my manly destiny. Pete and I were an accident, pure and simple, a collision of kindred spirits that…

Ren is a twelve-year old, one-handed orphan, living in 19th century New England. He was left at a Catholic orphanage as an infant, pushed through a wooden door in the gate one rainy night, and spends his time wondering who his parents are, why they left him here, and if he will ever be adopted. The gate was hinged to open one way – in.  When Ren pushed at the tiny door with his finger, he could feel the strength of the wooden frame behind it.  There was no handle on the children’s side, no groove to lift from underneath.  The wood was heavy, thick, and old – a fine…