Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman and Paul Newell

20Sept. Kindle. Book Club.

Not my sort of thing. At all. Still it kept me reading, if only to see what idiocy and excess this scion of the super-rich could come up with next. This woman, Hugette Clark, operated about as far from the blatant publicity-seeking modus operandi of the Hilton daughters as is imaginable, but the excess is just as excessive.

The author continually catalogues examples of Clark's vast generosity - she gave her nurse millions of dollars - but in the last analysis, it all read to me as attempts to buy loyalty, which, inevitably, produced amazing greed among those same individuals and institutions.

The Sign of the Book by John Dunning

16Sept. Kindle.

Another punny title - I didn't expect it from Dunning. All about ghosts from the past - this time the past of Janeway's sweetie, Erin - who has managed to be around for a couple of books now. A former friend of hers (former because she couldn't keep her hands off Erin's boyfriend) is charged with the murder of said boyfriend, now her husband and the father of their five-year old twins and to their adopted child.

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

13Sept. Paper.

Loaned to me by a friend. Not a particularly pleasant piece. A couple with problems of their own has a teenage daughter who is the victim of date rape - or was she? She is tried in the press and gossip networks and since the young man is a top jock at their high school ...

The girl's father has an odd past. His mother (a single mother) was the school teacher for an Alaskan native village. He grew up the lone outsider in the village younger set and was ostracized - on good days. He becomes a graphic artist and the book has pages of "his" artwork which add up to a graphic novel throughout. I believe the graphic novel is intended to parallel the "real" story. Bit of a reach.

To the Hilt by Dick Francis

11Sept. Kindle.

One of his punnier titles. The hilt is an artifact connected with Bonny Prince Charlie which is the focus of a search by the bad guys in the course of which they beat up the hero rather badly. The hero is a painter, specializing in portraits of horses (of course), the despair of his family. He lives in an unmodernized cottage (I know there is a proper Scottish word for structures of this particular type, but I can't think of it at the moment) without electricity or other "mod cons" and plays the bagpipes in his spare time.

Castle in the Air by Diane Wynne Jones

9Sept. Kindle.

This one has a Middle Eastern cast and setting (more or less). Howl and Sophie do appear momentarily at the end, but I found the whole thing just a bit strained - compared to the original book - it is still better than many that I have read. I did like the flying carpet, however, and the squid vendors bad-tempered dog.

Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers

8Sept. Kindle.

Sayers has such a way with words! It is only recently that I have discovered that she was a noted educational theorist and theologian as well as an outstanding mystery writer.

Here we have a couple of essays on the subject of the assumed subordinate nature of women in twentieth century society .

Howl's Moving Castle by Diane Wynne Jones

6Sept. Kindle.

I reread this because I just discovered that there are two more books in the series. I enjoyed it as much this time as the first time.

The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout

2Sept. Kindle.

Weak premise, perhaps. A bunch of men who are trying to atone for a hazing stunt gone wrong many years earlier when they were all in college are hounded by the victim of the stunt.

Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy Sayers

31Aug. Kindle.

Short stories - not my favorite sort of thing. Reading a whole collection of short stories is definitely not my thing - even short stories by Sayers were getting a little predictable by the time I finished.

Archie Meets Nero Wolfe by Robert Goldsborough

28Aug. Kindle.

Always somebody who just can't leave well enough alone. One must note that this prequel to the series is not written by Rex Stout. I'm not entirely certain what Goldsborough's credentials are, and while the story is pretty true to the flavor of the series, it is totally unnecessary.

Killer's Choice by Ed McBain

26Aug. Kindle.

Enter the new guy: Cotton Hawes. New detectives in the precinct fits with McBain's stated plan for the series, but it is also indicative of serious wobbling on the part of his publishers. They agreed with McBain's concept that the precinct would experience changes in personnel as in a real police precinct - but when he killed Carella, they forced him to resurrect him. Then he married him off - and discovered that to his publisher that was the same as killing him, only more permanent. As a happily married man, he could not possibly be a hero.

Hawes' first act in the precinct is to almost get Carella killed, but not quite. My suspicion is while McBain introduced the super-macho hero, he believed that his readership will prefer the married Carella. Perhaps he will reveal the truth in future intros to this rerelease of the books.

Jewel by Bret Lott

24Aug. Kindle.

Jewel devotes her life and to some extent sacrifices the lives of her husband and other children to her unexpected sixth child who has Down's Syndrome, or, as the specialist puts it to her, is a Mongoloid idiot. The world was not nearly as PC back in the early forties. Actually, the sacrifices that Jewel manipulates for Brenda Kay work out pretty well for all of them - except her husband. And it would have been better for him as well if he hadn't been a red-neck bigot.

Grievous Sin by Faye Kellerman

21Aug. Kindle.

While Rina is in the hospital near death after the birth of daughter Hannah, a new-born is kidnapped from the nursery. Decker, of course, takes the case in spite of his close connection to the situation. He is doubly close to the crime because not only was infant Hannah in the nursery, but his older daughter Cindy was there keeping tabs on Hannah while Rina was unable to care for her.

As always, Kellerman's story unwinds through a jungle of generational abuse and perversity. How does a nice Jewish girl like Faye come up with these things?

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

21 Aug. Paper.

Answers to the questions you never quite dared ask about the space program, such as "what did they use for toilet facilities?" and "what would they do with all that 'end product' on a two year mission to Mars?" Roach boldly goes where very few women (or men, for that matter) have gone and asks the hard questions.

In addition to questions of physical logistics, she investigates the studies into what sort of person makes a good astronaut - and into the sociological differences which makes the selection process very different in the United States and Japan and Russia.

Come to Grief by Dick Francis

17Aug. Kindle.

A return of Sid Halley. I can't decide whether I am more pleased that Francis resisted making Sid a genuine series detective with a novel a year or frustrated that he did not. Sid is a great character and I would really enjoy more stories about him, but I would hate to see him degenerate into a stock character. Also I would certainly have missed the many other great characters that populate the Francis stories, especially in his later books. Granted, many/most of these men share some of Sid's virtues and faults - and they are all men, perhaps Francis was reluctant to subject women to the physical abuse that his heroes invariably take.

Someone is gruesomely mutilating the best young racehorses in England by cutting off one of their forefeet. The investigation leads Sid through a tortuous re-examination of friendship and loyalty.

Murder: London - New York by John Creasy

16Aug. Paper.

I picked this up off the freeby table. Back in the day, I used to read John Creasy, not faithfully or obsessively as I did others, but he was definitely on my list - and a number of them are still on my shelves. My sister reminded (or informed me, because I have no memory of having known) that Creasy (under that name and his many other pen names) is one of those who challenged Isaac Asimov for most prolific writer of the 20th century. Apparently, it has been said that he was cranking out a book a week for years. Whatever, as long as he was still putting out entertaining reads, I'm okay with that.

As the title telegraphs, this one is a transatlantic number calling for the cooperation and collaboration of a detective of New Scotland Yard and a member of the NYPD.

Into the Out Of by Alan Dean Foster

15Aug. Kindle.

Alan Dean Foster at his most whatever it is that he is. The world needs saving and the leader of the team has collected the right people for the task: a girl from Seattle who works as for Eddie Bauer as a night phone order taker, an undercover federal agent, and the team leader himself: a several hundred year-old elder of the African tribe which lives near the out of from which comes the peril.

Good fun and not nearly as silly as the above paragraph makes it sound.

109 East Palace by Jennet Conant

12Aug. Kindle.

I have fallen terribly behind again. So much for resolutions. Maybe I should resolve to make entries short and to the point - did I like it and why, would I recommend it to this group or that - or to the other group with reservations.

I liked this one a lot. An acquaintance at church recommended it (the same Sunday that another acquaintance recommended the Julia Child book). She had lived and worked for a number of years at Los Alamos and found, as I did, that The Wives of Los Alamos was a sorry excuse for a novel and gave no insight whatsoever into the Manhattan Project days of the labs. She thought that this one was a much better look at the place, people, and period.

The book focuses on two people: Dorothy McKibbin who was the face of the lab to newcomers and the world during the closed years and Robert Oppenheimer, the laboratory director. That is not to imply that other members of the collection of brilliant and volatile people who, for better or worse, made it all happen were slighted in the telling. The famous feud between Oppenheimer and Teller gets plenty of coverage, as do the issues with housing and schooling for the children of the families relocated to the mountain. The situation of the wives and kids was supposed to be the subject of Wives, but this book made it all much more immediate in the direct narrative and names of those involved.

McKibbin ran the office in Santa Fe where everyone, but everyone, in-processed. It was also the clearing point for all shipping and receiving (a lot more receiving than shipping) and a handy place to park babies while doing a little shopping. One of the more entertaining threads concerns the baby boom up on the mountain - the population of scientists and workmen and their families increased far beyond the original expectations - somehow they had neglected in planning to consider that young couples with limited options for entertainment would soon produce another generation, requiring the lab to add an ob/gyn and pediatrician to the staff.

Oppenheimer comes across as enigmatic and charismatic. His bizarre marriage gets plenty of play, as does his gift for creating controversy.

My future boss got a fair amount of coverage as one of the rabble-rousers among the scientists. The concerns of the scientists about what they were doing was a revelation. There was a point at which they considered the possibility that the nuclear reaction would set of a chain reaction which would ignite the atmosphere of the planet. Think about going to work with that in your mind.

Did I say "short" commentaries? Oh well, I really did like it.