"It's Hard To Please Both Sides When You Have To Eat"

Hello from Michigan - where I am visiting The Family for the holidays. My fears of falling into a snow bank and freezing to death might have been exaggeration on my part (Me? Exaggerate? Never!) The weather has been downright mild. Temps in the 40s with most of the snow melting to the point of extinction.

My reading time here as been largely nil, but I did wrap up one book on the flight out - The Charade by Laura Lee Guhrke. I normally enjoy Guhrke's work (Breathless and To Dream Again were both keepers), but this one fell flat. I suspect because it is set in colonial America, which is a "hard sell" for me and the fact that both characters were spies. Spies have a tendency to lie - a lot. And frankly with a heroine torn by both sides (spy for the British or for the hero), it's hard to see a love match. But it's well written (typical of Guhrke), so if you go for spies and colonial settings this one is worth a look.

I'm taking a break from fiction at the moment and am working on a biography - Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood by Jill Watts. I saw a review for this somewhere, and having loved McDaniel as "Mammy" in Gone With The Wind, I thought I'd give this one a go. While it's a bit dry in parts, it's interesting reading.

As one would suspect, McDaniel took a lot of heat for her roles in white Hollywood. What Watts points out is how McDaniel took those stereotypical mammy/maid/servant roles in early Hollywood and transformed them into quiet social commentary. What I always liked about McDaniel's work (she also did a fun movie called China Seas with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow that is work catching), is that this is a woman with a lot of pride. She exudes it. It pours off the screen. And in fact, the way she portrayed Mammy in GWTW is truly exceptional. Mammy is the only character in that movie who has got everybody's number. She sees through Scarlett's manipulations. She knows Rhett is a rogue. In fact, Rhett strives to earn Mammy's respect - even stating, "She is one of the few people I know whose respect I'd like to have." In real life Clark Gable and McDaniel were good friends.

Especially enlightening is the life of McDaniel's father - a former Tennessee slave who fought for the Union cause and spent the rest of his life with debilitating war injuries. The treatment he received from the US government (he fought for years to get a meager veteran's pension) was deplorable, but sadly all too typical. How Hattie, her father, and her family didn't turn completely bitter is beyond me - instead the family believed in hard work and sacrifice. In fact, Hattie got into the entertainment industry (she was also a blues singer) largely because of the Depression. Domestic work dried up, and the family had to eat.

One suspects the author had to really scrounge for her research. McDaniel probably never figured on anyone being interested in her life, and given the amount of heat she took from the black community, it's amazing that Watts was able to dig up what she did. It's been a thought provoking read so far - especially when one considers the question - could the black stars of that era done more to change white Hollywood?

I'm On My Way

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be boarding a flight to spend the holidays with my family in Michigan. Assuming I don't fall into a snow bank and freeze to death, I'll be there for about a week. Not sure how much blog posting I'll get done during this time, but I'll try not to neglect you all too much.

I've been a crazy woman all this week trying to get everything set before I leave town. After work tonight I still have to do some laundry and pack. I also need to bite the bullet and decide what books I'm taking with me. This is usually a process I have mapped out well ahead of time, but my reading mood has been so iffy lately I'm having a hard time making decisions.

This would be a prime time for me to dig out some books that have been in my TBR for an obscene amount of time. For that reason alone, I know I'll be taking The Charade by Laura Lee Guhrke with me. Besides, a colonial setting sounds pretty good to me right now.

I'm also going to try not to think about work. I worry when I take a vacation and leave town. But as my adult services librarian told me, "Wendy, if a crazed gunman comes in we'll just say, 'I'm sorry, my manager is gone until next week could you please come back then?'"

No Life

My reading tear continues having started and completed Comfort And Joy by Kristin Hannah yesterday. This was my first read by Hannah, and I rather enjoyed her writing style. I might have to think about picking up more by her (suggestions welcome).

Comfort And Joy is one of those hard cover "gift size" books and clocks in at about 240 pages. It tells the story of Joy Candellaro, a woman who is not having a very Merry Christmas. She's recently divorced. Her husband left her for another woman. Bad enough, but that other woman is Joy's younger sister and Joy caught them in bed together. Joy's bed. The bed in the house she shared with her husband.

So Joy is obviously not a happy woman. Then dear old sis stops by and tells her that not only is she marrying Thom, but she's pregnant!

Joy flips out. She leaves her sister standing in her driveway, hops in her car and drives for the airport. There she gets a seat on a charter plane heading to a tiny town in British Columbia called Hope. Joy wants to hide, and Hope seems like a good place to do it.

Minor problem though - the plane crashes. Joy miraculously walks away and comes across The Comfort Fishing Lodge. A very attractive Irishman named Daniel is fixing up the place to sell it. His ex-wife used to run it, and when she was killed in an accident, Daniel found himself the sole custodian to their son, Bobby. Bobby misses his mother desperately, and does not have a good relationship with his father. Bobby checks Joy in as a guest, and she is soon a big part of their lives.

Comfort And Joy only works if the reader is willing to go with the Hallmark feel of the story. Suspending your disbelief is required quite a bit. But if you're looking for a Christmas-y read featuring holiday magic - then this is your book. I highly recommend it as a Christmas Eve read, and I'm sort of sorry I didn't save it for then. Oh well.

The only thing that doesn't work for me is the sister and husband stuff. This is an uplifting story, and given it's holiday setting, the forgiveness theme shouldn't come as a shock. Still, they're sisters. Sisters do not "steal" each others' husbands. It just ain't done. Frankly, Joy is a better person than I am - because I just can't figure out how she can get past it. I even have two sisters of my own and I still couldn't understand how Joy could forgive her. We now have proof - Wendy is an awful person.

But I liked this story. It's very women's fiction-y, but it has a happy ending - so it goes down easy for the romance reader in me. It's gotten mixed reviews over at Amazon, but I found my first Hannah experience quite enjoyable. She can certainly write.

Something A Little Different

I finally got around to reading This Dame For Hire by Sandra Scoppettone after having my name on the request list at work for 3 months. I can't remember why I originally wanted to read this one, but I suspect it's because I read a review somewhere. It's the first in a new series, and while I had some issues with it, it's a cute read.

Think back to all those movies made in the 1930s and 1940s that featured fast-talkin' career gals. If she wasn't the lead character, she was most certainly the lead character's best friend. This Dame For Hire takes the My Girl Friday and gives her her own story.

Faye Quick is a private detective, a career she did not aspire to. She took a job as a secretary, and figured typing for a private detective would at least make for interesting reading. Then the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and her boss is called to war. He asks Faye to keep the home fires burning. Um, not those home fires - he just wants her to run the agency while he's gone. He wants a business to come back to after he's done dealing with the Krauts.

So our girl Faye is a private detective in New York City in 1943 - a town devoid of eligible bachelors. When she literally stumbles over the dead body of a murdered college girl, she finds herself taking her first murder case. When the police can't solve the crime, the parents hire Faye to look into it. However these uptown people aren't terribly happy with the ugly truths that downtown Faye uncovers.

There's a lot to like here, mainly the original premise and setting. I also really enjoyed how Scoppettone writes about the war. Between young man dying, ration stamps, USO dances and the fact that Faye cannot get a decent pair of nylons, it's all great stuff.

The writing style here is very different, which I suspect will annoy some. The author writes in the vernacular. Faye is a New York gal, so there are lots of "yas" instead of "yous" and she's constantly dropping her g's. It's somethin not something for instance. There is also a lot of period slang, which I enjoyed because it adds some flavor to the setting. However readers bent on proper grammar (and if you are why are you reading my blog?) may find this all a bit old after a while.

My big quibble with the story is the introduction of a pyschic character, a friend of Faye's. Frankly it just plain bothered me. I suspect because I read too many romance novels and in Romance Novel Land when you shake a tree about 25 pyschic heroines fall out of it. It made the mystery too easy, and by the time the pyschic hits on the something it kind of blows it out of the water. I knew. And I knew too early. A shame since there are a ton of suspects.

The ending is a little on the abrupt side, with sort of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am conclusion. But it's all wrapped up fairly neatly, and Faye solves her case. She also lands a date, and in a city not overrun with men that's saying something for our girl.

All in all a very nice read. I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

Better Than I Expected

I wrapped up Patricia Cornwell's Predator over the weekend and have to say it was better than I expected. A lot of the novel has a been-there-done-that quality to it, but the author ends on a strong note, and this has got to be her tidiest ending in years.

Reviews over at Amazon are pretty much all in the "I hated it with a burning passion" camp, but I'd probably rate it around average. I really liked the ending, and the resolution to the mystery, but the rest of the story was a bit on a flaky side.

Many suspense authors deploy the formula of introducing two seemingly different stories in the opening of the novel, but by the end both trains converge. Plot threads the reader thought were unrelated are really tied together. Tess Gerritsen has employed this effect very well in novels like The Sinner and Body Double.

Cornwell though gets rather loosey-goosey with the method. There's lots of stuff going on in Predator, and as the reader I know they are likely all related, but very little attention is given to much of it. Benton is interviewing a serial killer in a pysch hospital, Scarpetta is working on the disappearance of a family, and Lucy is trying to figure out if a doctor killed himself or was murdered. Marino sort of floats between Lucy and Scarpetta - all the while there is office sabotage going on. Again

Honestly, I think Scarpetta has dealt with back-stabbing office sabotage in every book in this series. Frankly, I'm having a hard time believing that that many people are out to get her.

But the last 100 pages really work, and the resolution is very well done. All in all, an average read. I'm glad I didn't buy it in hard cover, but I'm not sorry I read a library copy.

On a final note, the Marino character needs help. The direction Cornwell gives him in the first half of the novel pretty much ticked me off - but he shapes up in the final chapters. Dare I hope he gets himself a girlfriend?

Maybe I Need A Rest

I wrapped up Good Girls Don't by Kelley St. John this morning, and I'm sorry to report it didn't improve for me.

I can't believe I'm going to type this, and I'll probably deny this later on - but I found all the focus on sex really boring after a while. I know, I do read some pretty trashy erotica - so that statement escaping my lips doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

I think it's because the author was supposed to be selling me a romance. In fact, she was supposed to be selling me three of them. Instead, all the characters seemed to talk about or do was sex related. No real emotional connections. No meaningful conversations. No "getting to know you outside of boinking our brains out" moments.

The worst of it was St. John teases the reader with hints of something deeper. Almost all the characters have some past baggage that is mentioned briefly, but never explored. I wanted more dagnabit.

Even more shocking - I actually agreed with an RT review for once. They gave this baby 2 stars in their December issue.

Next up is Predator by Patricia Cornwell - the latest in her Kay Scarpetta series. I'm wondering if I should start whining now? I've been underwhelmed by the last few books in this series, and in particular am pretty pissed off with what she has done to the Pete Marino character. Once a cantakerous bad ass, he's been reduced to puppy-love adoration of Scarpetta. Bleck. Why can't this poor guy get a woman? I think he needs to hook up with a white trash honey who thinks Twinkies are a delicacy and watching pro wrestling is foreplay.

But that's just my opinion. At least she's gotten the Marino character healthy by having him lose weight in the last book. For a while there he was one step away from a heart attack.

Too Much Of Everything

So I'm reading a debut novel right now, Good Girls Don't by Kelley St. John. As a general rule, I like reading debuts. I've had a lot of success with them, as I've read very few outright duds. I think because most authors spend a lot of time on the debut. Reworking it, rewriting it, and fine tuning it for submission. So by the time it gets published it's fairly well polished.

I'm trying to jog my memory here, but I don't think I've ever read a debut that would rate below an average grade on my scale.

So far, Good Girls Don't is hanging out in Average Land. I'm about halfway through it, and I'm trying to clarify my thoughts on why I'm not enamored with it thus far. Here it goes:

The heroine lies for a living. She works for a company called My Alibi, which helps it's clients (many of them cheaters) keep up the lie they told to whomever. As a favor to her sister, the heroine takes on a new client who wants to hide the fact that she's away for a romantic weekend with a guy who might be The One. She doesn't want her overprotective uncle/guardian to find out.

Turns out the uncle/guardian is an old friend of the heroine's. An old friend who has had the major hots for her for years. And now, she's reconnected with him by lying. Uh oh.

I have this issue with lying characters. They bother me. Possibly because it reflects badly on their moral fiber and I just don't "like" them very much. Or maybe because half the time they have no good reason for lying in the first place. That's just me though.

But the heroine seems torn and conflicted, so the lying isn't even that big an issue. No, it's the suspension of disbelief the reader must buy into for this plot to make any sort of sense. Here's a running list of the kitschy-cutesy-over-the-top stuff that's going on:

• Heroine lies for a living
• Heroine's sister designs sex toys for a living
• Heroine's biggest problem at start of novel is a boyfriend who can't find her G spot
• Hero's niece thinks "The One" is a biker dude named Butch
• Lots and lots of sex talk. Not a whole lot of meaningful conversation going on
• Hero giving heroine orgasm while driving 80mph down an Atlanta freeway

Add it all together in the same plot and my head begins to swim. One of these things is fine - I can go with it. Even 2 or 3. But all of them? Isn't it just a bit much? And I'm only about halfway through, so I'm sure there will be more.

In the meantime, I'll keep on reading. It's a review book folks....

Cue Twilight Zone Theme

Saturdays at the library are always a bit of a crap shoot. You never know what is going to walk in through the front door.

I just had the most disturbing conversation with a patron and all I could think about was, "How am I going to call the cops without setting this woman off?"

It started out simply enough. Her wallet had been stolen and her library card was inside. I told I could give her a replacement card for X amount of money, but since she was obviously homeless that wasn't a good option. That's when I said, "I could just mark your card lost that way no one can use it."

Well that was no good for her because if she gave me her name that would bring the solicitors calling. Then she said that "Burt" was trying to get inside her head and he stole her bag that also had a license plate in it. She also kindly informed me that our computers with "this sticker on the side" (the serial number) were very harmful and were damaging her teeth. Also, could I please turn down the microphones? They were really loud.

Ohhhhhh-kay

Now I deal with all walks of life day in and day out on this job, but this woman seriously creeped me out. I never know what to do with people like this, so I usually smile, nod and talk in a reassuring voice. Sometimes that sets them off. Luckily, this was not one of those times and the woman left the building shortly thereafter.

I had never seen her around here before. I hope to not see her again. Is that wrong of me?

Happy Shiny Library Story

I tend to bitch a lot about my job and this is normally where I would dig up a happy library story to share with you all. Unfortunately, I don't have one. So I'm going to tell you about something that happened to another librarian I know.

This group of sweet little kids came into her library recently. They had had a lemonade stand and wanted to donate what they earned to the library: $38 and some change.

Now their parents probably put them up to it - but repeat after me

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Isn't that just about the sweetest thing you've ever heard of?

This librarian then proceeded to take their pictures and wrote up an article for the local newspaper. I hope they print. Of course it will probably be on page 18 buried under the local police report, but still......

Bring On The SS

Yesterday I had a library patron, who was naturally upset about my rigid Internet policy, compare me to a Nazi and a Communist.

My mother will be so proud. So will all those Jewish guys I dated in college. Gee, ya think that's why our relationships didn't work out?

I'm not an unreasonable person. I just think that people should use their own library cards. Not their neighbors, boyfriends, sisters, brothers, former college roommates. Seriously, is this too much to ask? I'm really curious what you non-library-working types think. And is it too unreasonable of library staff to boot someone off the computer when we discover they aren't using their own card?

I need to find my Happy Place - because honestly this crap isn't worth me getting upset over.

My latest column is up over at Romancing The Blog. Go forth! Leave comments!

In reading news, I'm almost blissfully finished with Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It by Lucy Monroe. How can I describe this book? Think Harlequin Presents with about 250 more pages attached to it. This one not only has an Alpha hero scarred by his illegitimate birth, but a once virginal heroine who sold his company secrets (hey, her younger sister needed experimental medical treatment for a rare blood disorder) and had his baby. And of course the baby is a secret baby! So he's pissed because she sold out his company and left town without a word. She's pissed because she loves him and all he ever wanted from her was s-e-x with no commitments. And golly, she can't tell him about his baby because then he'll try to take little Aaron away from her! Never mind that she was never prosecuted for her crime. Seriously the courts don't rip babies out of their mother's arms without having good reasons and our heroine is certainly not a crack-addicted prostitute knocking over liquor stores. No, she just can't open her mouth and actually communicate with the hero. In her defense, he can't talk to her either. Actually these two couldn't talk their way out of a paper bag.

The writing is good though. The plot and characters make me want to ram my head against a wall - but it's only taken me 2 days to finish it. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I think it does say that Monroe can write. She's just written a book that's driving me criminally insane.

I'm obviously having a bad week. Maybe it's time to consider Prozac...

3 Martini Lunch

Some days I wish I owned a gun, because if I did I would take all my public Internet computers out in the parking lot and shoot them dead. Seriously.

People scream and yell at me at my job for two reasons:

• Overdue fines they feel they shouldn't have to pay
• My rigid Internet policy

I had an older woman ream out my children's librarian on Saturday because we caught her (once again) using a family member's library card to get on the computers. OK, I don't think I'm being wacky here. Honestly, what is so hard to understand about "You must have and use your own library card." This is a repeat offender. I've talked to her about this before and in fact put a stop on the offending card. She proceeded to mutter unpleasant remarks about me under her breath. However, another library reinstated the card, so now I'm back to square one. She's supposed to come in a talk to me this week. I can hardly wait. In the meantime, I've fired off an e-mail to the new manager at that other library.

Today, one of my regulars complained because the computer wasn't working to his satisfaction. He left in a huff when I couldn't fix it right that second and ordered me to do something about it. What I wanted to say was, "Sir, these are public computers. They do not have the latest bells and whistles. It's bare bones only. If you don't like it maybe you should get your own computer at home."

Instead I said, "I'll work on it."

Don't get me started on the autistic guy who talks like Rain Man and has a crush on me, or the older woman who came in today and sang to herself the entire time.

I take that back, I don't want a gun. I want a drink. A stiff drink. Something that burns my throat for about 30 minutes after I knock it back. No. Wait a minute. I want both.

How To Make A Librarian Happy

Almost two years ago I took my current job and knew that my first order of business was library furnishings. The upholstry on the chairs was non-existent and in many instances shredded to the point of embarrassment. It looked like a small army of cats (I'd guess about 1000 strong) had been sharpening their claws for the last 5 years. Stuffing was falling out, and in many cases bare wood exposed.

I was able to fix the immediate problem by scrounging up surplus chairs at library headquarters. Some of them weren't high end, but they were light years ahead of what I had.

However, that only went so far. I was going to have to find a money tree and get some of them reupholstered.

It took over a year, but I finally found that money tree. Between my Friends Of The Library organization (beautiful people) and donations from the public I was able to get 10 chairs recovered. I'm so happy I could just about weep tears of joy. Not only for having "new" chairs, but also for the freedom that I now have. For the first time since taking this job, I don't have to think about furniture for a while. That albatross has passed for now.