lauriereadslohf's reviews
1518 reviews

I enjoyed this book so very much and am going to search out his others. The author chronicles his life as a newish care-taker of various animals including dogs, donkeys, sheep and even two cows. His rural neighbors are friendly but I guess think he's a little odd what with his penchant for taking in useless animals such as donkeys but it seems he's winning at least a few of them over as one asks him to "buy" a cow that he just can't bring to slaughter. The book is filled with love and pain and life lessons learned the hard way. It makes me want to sell everything and start a little sanctuary of my own. If only I had the cash :)

What I found odd about the book was the fact that his wife seems to live a separate life in another home and is very rarely spoken about until the very end of the book. There is one point where he considers re-homing the wife's favorite dog and then he just does it without any mention of the wife's thoughts on the matter. I think I need to read the earlier books to figure out how this works for them because it seemed quite a strange situation.

This was sad and horrible and I am glad the child managed to become a stable adult but the writing style really prevented me from becoming involved with the child's nightmare. It read as if the author made a list of every horrible thing his mother ever did to him and wrote them down one by one. There was usually no lead in to the punishments. He just went right into them with no rhyme or reason. It was painful to read but also tedious. I don't think I'll search out the other books in the series unless I hear that the writing has improved.

This was an entertaining mystery that mostly managed to hold my attention. It seemed a little old fashioned to me, almost as if I'd stepped back into time but sometimes that's a good thing.

When an investigator's friend dies of a morphine overdose he doesn't believe it was suicide. The book then delves into the dead woman's life to discover the culprit. I found this all pretty interesting and the eventual outcome surprised me. I'm going to check out more from this writer.

This was a gripping murder mystery featuring mummies, shrunken heads, bog bodies, psychopathic killers and some annoyingly contrived human drama which causes an investigator to make a crucial mistake to keep the suspense moving. I liked it okay, the mummies, bog bodies and head shrinking details held my attention but I felt a little distanced from the characters, some who seemed to make rather pitiful emotional choices so it isn't a book I'd reread.

"The Name" is a dark take on Rumpelstiltskin. Telling the story from the viewpoint of a heartbroken man, the author really changes things up and gives you a new view on this old story. I enjoyed it a lot.

"Blood and Bone" is an odd twist on Jack and the Beanstock about a devastating disease and the disturbing ingredient needed to prolong the lifespan of the afflicted. It's another grim tale, to be sure, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the first. The choices made by the lead protagonist weren't well thought out . . .

"A Bed of Peas" isn't the fairy tale you may think it might be. This one wasn't my favorite because I felt a disconnect and disinterest to the characters and storyline. It also wasn't grim enough for me ;)

"The Good Mother" more than makes up for the lack of grimness in the previous tale and is a truly imaginative take on a classic fairy tale. Sad, desperate and a great little read.

"The Voice of Love" is about a doomed prince and a mermaid. It just didn't grab me.

The rest of these tales are variants of the same. Classic fairy tales told from a very different perspective and all were fascinating to me.

Hmmm, this book was very underwhelming for me. It seemed to drag on and on and the story and characters never grabbed me. This time around Rachel has love life problems, demon troubles, elf woes, pixie-man friction and the usual vampire struggles with her roommate/business partner Ivy who wants to be more than friends. She also has to face up to her deal with the demon Al that she made in the last book. And then there's the master vampire and other assorted issues she must deal with here. Honestly, there was so much going on that I found myself lost for much of it. My focusing problems weren't helping matters out either. I feel the same way about this book as I did the last. It needs humor (I keep reading reviews calling it "light, fun, funny, etc. but I'm not seeing it . . . ) and more emotional ties to get me to care about the characters. I don't know if I'll bother to continue with the series at this point.

This book picks up where the first book ended and because it had been so long since I read book #1 it was a bit disconcerting. My memory isn't that great and I basically remembered nothing about the first book.

This time around witch Rachel starts out by snatching a fish (still not sure where this going), and getting caught up in the drama of living with a vampire who has some trouble keeping her dark side under control.

Later: This was a solid enough installment in the "Dead Witch" series and I did eventually figure out the deal with the fish. This series would benefit from some dark edged humor because it did tend to drag a bit here and there and personally I would've like to have read a bit more blood and gore. It seemed a little too clean for the genre but maybe it's just me.

This guy has inspired me to grow my own food and keep a few hens in the backyard. Being a little self-reliant in these unsettling times gives me a sense of stability and hope.

In this book, Pollan takes a look at four plants and relates them to human desires, I think . . . He starts things off with the apple and goes into a bit of long-winded ramble about Johnny Appleseed's quest to sell his trees to pioneers and his lust for a 10 year old bride (fortunately this bit wasn't dug into with any sort of detail). Johnny's enthusiasm for the apple and his desire to plant the seed (and refusal to graft) results in the many varieties that adapted to new climates. Though I'm learning a lot about Johnny here, I'd rather have more factoids about the apple. I'm hoping the following chapters are more interesting because I find my mind wandering more than usual while listening to this.

I've now finished up the tulip section and made it about halfway through the marijuana chapter but, at this point, I have come to the realization that this book just doesn't interest me. It's very repetitive and meandering. I'll finish it up and hope the potato's treatment can grab me enough to get through it.

Later: I finished up and did find the potato section much more interesting but that's because I'm always interested in GMO foods, the science, the corruption, the danger to our society, the greed . . . I didn't really learn anything new as this was written quite a few years ago but it still captured my attention all the same.

This was my reading group choice for our February meeting but as is my usual habit I didn't start it until after the meeting.

This book is part of a series but I was told that it can easily be read as a standalone so I decided to give it a go since I had already spent the $6+ to purchase it for the group. To be completely honest I only decided to read it after reading the author blurb who talked about sharing her home with bunnies and a goofy dog and who promotes supporting your local shelter. She seems like a nice person so I resisted the urge to trade it in unread which is a bad habit of mine recently.

I only managed to read a few pages yesterday while waiting for the kids to get out of school but I was intrigued enough to keep it in my bag. It is about a race of dragon people, the drakon, who after generations of war and destruction, have evolved to the point where they can transform back and forth from human to dragon form. Still, they are hunted and their numbers are small. When a young woman who claims to be Princess of a lost tribe of drakon makes contact with the drakon council they send one of their men on a reconnaissance mission to find this woman who may be a danger to them as she obviously knows of their existence. I'll write more as I get it read.

Feb 13, 2009 Temporarily putting aside to read a bookring book.

April 2, 2009: I read through a bit of this last week while waiting for auto service and it didn't hold my attention as it did in the beginning. The dragon princess, Mari, has come to visit the alpha dragon, Kim, the two have power struggles, mistrust each other and are painfully attracted despite it all. They spend a lot of time flying about in dragon form, looking for a missing girl, fighting their attraction and so on and so forth. A whole lot of nothing seems to have happened for 100 or so pages. I may finish as I'm so close to the end but maybe not . . .

April 9, 2009: Well, I finished but only after a whole lot of skimming. This is definitely a middle of the series book and in the end seems like just a setup for a future book. Nothing special and not a re-read for me.

I put this on my Ipod without knowing anything about the author, plot or especially that it was part of a series. I like surprises and will grab any new audio my library offers. I can tolerate so much more on audio than I can when I'm reading an actual book which I can too easily put aside and never pick up again. Sometimes this works out for me, other times not so much. This book is apparently smack in the middle of a series. I really hate coming into the middle of things like that. I felt lost during much of it and didn't understand how or why the brother and sister pair were supposed to be intertwined with the mystery. Most of the time I felt as if I were reading two separate stories. That of the destitute brother and sister trying to make ends meet during the great depression and the other of the murder mystery being solved by other assorted characters. It was light reading but too disjointed for me to truly enjoy or comprehend.

I did find it very interesting to read about the brother & sister pair taking whatever jobs they could find (without complaint and "oh woe is me") and using all of their resources to make it through tough financial times. The mystery was a bit "meh" for me but I'm not a big mystery fan so that's not shocking.