Second Grave on the Left

Second Grave on the Left

Well, at least it was light reading.

Second Grave on the Left is the second in the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones. It's basically in the same genre as the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, but nowhere, nowhere near as good. (You can even tell that Jones is going to use the word "grave" in all her titles -- just as Harris uses "dead".)

Charley Davidson is a private detective with supernatural powers. Specifically, she's the Grim Reaper, which in this case means she's the portal through which the dead can pass to get to Heaven. (Apparently some of them manage to do it on their own, or she'd be a whole lot busier.) She can see ghosts, and communicate with them, which gives her an advantage as a PI. As far as I can tell, it's her only advantage, as she certainly doesn't seem too smart or too resourceful. Mostly, she just flits around and does things on the spur of the moment with no thought as to repercussions or consequences. She also unmercifully bosses around her faithful little doormat, er, sidekick, Cookie. And she wisecracks. Continually. Like, every other sentence. You can practically hear the rimshots.

She also has a supernatural entity boyfriend, who, apparently, has been stalking her since birth. (I won't tell you what he is, because although it's no secret in this book, apparently it was in the first.) There are a lot of hot, steamy encounters with him, which of necessity are of the delayed gratification type -- primarily because he's not in his corporate form through most of this.

Oh, yes, the plot. There are two of them, and I couldn't tell you which one is supposed to be the main one. One involves a series of apparent homicides that involve a friend of Cookie's and apparently go back to that friend's high school days. The other plot concerns the necessity of saving Charley's boyfriend from torture and a fate worse than death -- for everybody. You won't care about either of the plots, I promise you.

The Six-Figure Second Income

The Six-Figure Second Income

The problem with books of this sort is that they're generally obsolete almost before they get published. The Six-Figure Second Income is a bit of an exception. It's actually a pretty solid book, filled with sound advice on general internet business practices and copywriting techniques. It would be an excellent book for a beginner, but even an old hand at internet marketing could pick up a pointer or too. Of course, it's a fairly new book -- it was only published in 2010. Still, I suspect it will stand the test of time.

Amazon Reviewers generally agree with me. They've given the book an average of 4.0 stars (out of a possible 5), with a total of 60 reviews.

Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators

Curation Nationhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071760393/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0071760393&linkCode=as2&tag=dianesbooks-20

I really wanted to like this book. I'd heard good things about it, and I went to considerable lengths to get my hand on a copy.

There's a whole lot of information in this book, more than I can possibly summarize or even remember. There's a general history of curation (covering, among other things, the history of the Dewey Decimal system). There are examples of websites that have been hugely successful in the field of content curation (the Huffington Post, for example). There's some lip service paid to the process whereby the individual can contribute curation to the internet, but this is really more of a "why to" book than a "how to."

In short, it's really difficult for me to figure out exactly who this book was written for. It seems to me that if you're interested in this stuff, you already know most of what Rosenbaum is telling us. And if you don't know, you probably aren't all that interested.

Deadlocked

Deadlocked - Charlaine Harris

Deadlocked is the latest in the Charlaine Harris series about Sookie Stackhouse and all the supernatural friends, enemies, and lovers in her life. If you've never read any of them, but are a fan of the HBO series True Blood, you have a real treat ahead of you.

That being said, if you've never read any of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, you don't want to start with this one. This is #12 in the series (Harris intends to discontinue the series after #13) and each novel does build on the previous ones. You'll want to start with Book 1, Dead Until Dark and take them in order. I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to get ahead of the TV series or not.

The last couple of books in the series had been kind of ho-hum, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that this one was really quite good. I remained absorbed in the story throughout, and was surprised a couple of times. Sookie has definitely become older and wiser, but the supes are just as unpredictable as ever.

If you aren't completely up-to-date on the Sookie Stackhouse series, or if you've only watched the TV show, you might want to stop reading now.

Naturally, I won't reveal any SPOILERS for this novel, but the situations that Sookie finds herself in might reveal major plot developments that you don't wish to know yet.

Sookie by now is deeply involved in a romantic relationship with Eric -- he's even gone so far as to make her his "wife", a step that should protect her from some trouble with other vampires. But all is not well. The couple and their accomplices will have to answer to Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana, for past actions, and the situation doesn't look good. When a dead woman turns up on Eric's front lawn, all the vampires have some explaining to do, but Sookie has her own ideas about how the woman got there. To add to the tense climate, all the fae seem restless too, and the weres have a few problems of their own. Sookie and Eric each have a major decision to make, and it's likely that their choices will have a serious impact on their relationship.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

In 1957, at the age of 81, Jung began telling the story of his life to Aniela Jaffe. That narrative, combined with chapters that he wrote himself, by hand, resulted in this book. It's not exactly a biography -- rather, it's the story of his own spiritual journey, and it does a great deal to further our understanding of his book.

A fascinating and absorbing book.

The Long Earth

The Long Earth

Even before Terry Pratchett had even begun his Discworld series, he had an idea about a possible premise for a science fiction series. His fantasy series, however, was such a huge success that he never got around to writing the science fiction work -- until recently, when he collaborated with Stephen Baxter, an author well-known in his own right for his work in the world of hard science fiction. As an avid Terry Pratchett fan, I was eager to find out what it was all about.

I could have waited. This book, presumably the first in a series, is little more than an exposition of the premise. There are a whole string of alternate universes, you see, and people from Earth can easily "step" from one to another. Most people need a device to do it. Some can step naturally; some can't step at all. There is world after world after world, all remarkably alike, differing mainly in the climate conditions and the particular beings that inhabit each world. Even the characters find it boring.

Besides showing us the scenery, the book introduces us to the main characters, essentially cardboard cut-outs with names attached. There is no actual conflict, although there is a foreboding of doom. We actually get introduced to the potential source of future conflict at somewhere around page 300, just before the end of the book.

This is a dreadful, dreadful book, and, as much as I love practically everything Terry has been involved with, I will not be likely to read any future volumes in the series.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

Sure, we've all had a look at Bartlett's a time or two in our lives, but sometimes we forget just how good it is.

Of course, you can always find quotations on the internet, but this time I was looking for a series of quotations by a particular author for a Zazzle project I'm working on, and it was real handy for me to settle down in my comfy chair with Bartlett's on my lap. Unlike some books of quotations, Bartlett's is organized chronologically by author, which in my case was exactly what I was looking for.

A good reference book is always good to have.