True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

When twelve-year-old Gratuity (“Tip”) Tucci is assigned to write five pages on “The True Meaning of Smekday” for the National Time Capsule contest, she’s not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens – called Boov – abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it “Smekland” (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod to the Human preserve.

But it ends up being so much more as we learn how Earth was invaded by the Boov and the name of the planet is now Smekland.  On Christmas Eve which is now called Smekday Tip's mother is sucked up by what looks like a giant vacumm but ends up being the Boov.  Several weeks before Tip's mother complained about having a new mole that glowed.  Tip notices it getting bigger and glowing more and that her mom is talking in Italian and English in her sleep - yelling out what sounds like vocabulary.  But the worse is yet to come on Christmas eve when Tip is now alone with her cat Pig.

What follows is a heartbreaking yet hysterical cross country journey to Florida.  Along the way she picks up a Boov - or rather after her car breaks down and J.Lo fixes it.  So now her car floats and she's nicnamed it Slushes after the slushes tail fins it now sports.  After some very surreal conversations with J.Lo Tip discovers that her mother is one of the teaches to the Boov so they can learn human language.  But while they can speak and understand Human language they can't read.  The Boov use these complicated bubbles to communicate with. When they get to Florida they discover that the humans have been moved to Arizona because the Boov love oranges and want Florida for themselves.


So now they have to get to Arizona. Their car breaks down in Roswell, NM and they find a small colony of humasn still living there.  But worst of all aother alien group called the Gorg are invading Earth and the Boov are now fighting to save Smekland/Earth.


Chief Shouting Bear (aka Frank) who owns the Area 51 spaceship, Mitch, the guy in the missing persons bureau who always talks in questions?, and Daniel Landry who may not be the fantastically great guy everyone seems to think he is--but they need leaders and he's rich, so that must make him a good leader! The future looks dim for the humans and it seems like the new and improved group of aliens may just win the day...except for a little glitch in their nature that Gratuity figures out!


I read this on CD after recommendation by friend Teresa.  It was hysterical and heartwarming at the same time.  The reader, Bahni Turpin was awesome and she fit the personality of the characters perfectly.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson

Born in 1951 in Des Moines, IA this follows Bryson's childhood growing up in the midwest.  Bill's recollections ran the gamut of those of any kid of either sex from that era: family vacations, the first televisions, favorite TV shows, the nature of contemporary comic books, toys, soda pop and candies, parents' occupations and eccentricities, Mom's cooking, the specter of The Bomb and Godless Communism, drop and cover drills, Saturday afternoons at the movie matinees, the National Pastime (major league baseball), the State Fair, Dick and Jane books, visits to Grandpa's farm, paper routes, strange relatives, and Best Friends.

A few years ago I read his book "Notes from a Small Island" and was surprised at his witt and humor that he is able to portray. I listened to both books on CD and find myself enjoying his stories spoken aloud as it gives it a new element.

I grew up in Omaha, only about an hour and half away from Des Mo

ines but 15 years later and still much of the innocense I read in this memoir was what I remember of my childhood.  I had a paper route and ate TV dinners and my mother was a working mom who was always running late and forgetting things. It doesn't make me nostalgic but rather smile with fondness about a time I had not thought a lot about since I've moved to my adult life.

Clea's Moon by Edward Wright

A John Ray Horn Thriller

John Ray Horn is a former rodeo bronc-rider turned B-Western star who tanked his career when he decked the son of the head of his studio, putting the guy in the hospital with a broken jaw. He did two years in prison for that, and when he returned, he discovered that his old boss had blacklisted him and his acting career was over. His faithful Indian sidekick, Joseph Mad Crow, had invested his earnings from the movies and bought a poker parlor/casino on the edge of L.A., so he offers Horn a job collecting bad debts from gamblers. Horn reluctantly takes it, though he hates the work.

When a friend, Scotty Bullard, approaches him with some intriguing information about Horn's former step-daughter (the wife divorced him while he was in jail), he decides to look into things. But when Bullard apparently committs suicide just before Horn goes to visit - he knows it can't be true so wants to find out the truth there too.

But most of all Horn wants to find Clea, his former step-daughter who has been missing for over a week.  She's barely 16 and he's worried by her sudden disappearance.  He knows it must be related to the photos Bullard showed him before he died.  When he looks more carefully at the photos he actually recognizes the location as a cabin he used to go to when he will worked for the studio.  Now Horn is on the hunt for the people behind the photos, death of Bullard and Clea's disappearance.  But will he be able to figure it out before they get him.

This felt very realistic look at the time of the western movies and when Hollywood was still a romantic place to come find your fame. But it shows the seedy side of the industry as well.  I enjoyed the complexity of John Ray Horn's character and his relationships with his former side-kick now boss Joseph Mad Crow and tries to reconsile with former friends.  An interesting look at time period that I don't know much about but since I've lived in LA it intrigues me.

On Parole by Akira Yoshimura

Shiro Kikutani, a man who has just been released to a lifetime of parole after spending 16 years in prison for murdering his adulterous wife. Kikutani's time in jail has stunted his ability to act independently, so that the first chapter finds him in a halfway house, suffering abdominal pains because he is unable to walk from his room to the bathroom down the hall.  He feels so weighed down by the weight of wearing clothes and leather shows.  For 16 years he wore a scrub type outfit with paper slips. 

But under the tutelage of his gentle parole officers, Kikutani gradually overcomes this fear and others, learning to walk out of lockstep and ride escalators, handle money, keep a job (once a teacher, he is demoted to working as a janitor in a chicken factory).  But having the time to think during his commute allows him to slowly adjust.

Some of these episodes are described in minute detail, weaving the story of man whose emotional life has been blighted by his imprisonment and whose hard-won equanimity unravels under the relentless demands of those around him. Through flashbacks we learn what happened to put him in prison, that upon finding the adulterous couple in bed, he violently stabs his wife to death and wounds her lover, follows the lover to his home, torches it, and accidentally kills the lover's mother in the fire.

This book covers 3 years of his life after he gets his parole.  In their final acts his permanent parole officers pressure him to get married to a widow, but when his new wife insists he must repent of his crime, which he always considered inevitable and not his fault, he is unable to explain his true emotions. Under increasing stress, he snaps.

This was an intriguing and almost edge of your seat as the author really portrays the isolation and fear Kikutani feels from the beginning to the end of the story.  But never will he admit to responsibility for his actions - rather he only seems to react to the situations given him.  And as events move inexorably toward the novel's violent climax, it gives an eye opening look at a man no longer able to express his own will.

This book was recommended to me by my friend Teresa after I couldn't stop talking about "Devotion of Suspect X" that I read several months ago.  Also set in Japan but more of  psychological mystery On Parole is a look at a the Psyche of a man who is broken.  This is not an easy book to read and it is deceiving as it is so short, barely 250 pages but so much is in it. 

First grave on the right by Darynda Jones

P.I. Charley Davidson sees dead people. Well, she not only sees them, they are drawn to her. Because she is shiny. You see, Charley Davidson is the grim reaper as well as the portal (the shining light) through which all souls must travel to gain entrance to Heaven.

The advantage to having these miraculous talents is that Charley Davidson not only helps the dead move on, she also helps her father and Uncle who work for the local police solve "unsolvable" cases. The only downside is that lately people are trying to kill her -  literally.  To even make things more complicated she's having these red hot steamy dreams that include a very hot studly man but she is starting to wonder if the man might be a dead guy or a ghost or something even worse.

This was a fun and sarcastic kind of look at the undead - Jones has an almost Janet Evanovich style of writing. All the characters are very entertaining.  The way this book leaves you hanging there is hopefuly a sequel.

English tea murder by Leslie Meier

Lucy Stone Mystery series

Ok, I will admit it.  I read this book for the cover.  I did a double take and had to read it.  Wouldn't you want to read it after this cover?

This is something like #17 in the series and I normally would never just jump into a series but I wasn't that interested in reading the rest until I had read this one.

Lucy Stone is the main character and joins her 3 girlfriends, Sue, Rachel & Pam to a trip to England sponsored by Winchester College. She soon finds that England may be old, but at times, not very jolly. They barely get off the ground when the tour guide, College Professor George Temple suffers an allergy attach that proves to be fatal as he dies on the way across the pond.  I had to laugh when they have to leave him in his seat as it is a full flight and no where to put the body. 

Others on the trip as the sad Smith family, Dr. Cope and his supposed anorexic granddaughter, Jennifer, tough and totally Goth Amber, and last but not least, fretful Laura Barfield and her "wild child" son, Will. To add some spice to all of the drama, Quentin Rea, a Professor for whom Lucy had a slight crush many years ago, is sent by the college to replace Professor Temple and escort the group to various sites of interest in London and beyond.

I think everyone knows that that Temple didn't just have an allergy attack but is really murdered.  Lucy starts to suspect everyone and then wonders if it isn't really an almost Agatha Christie style "Murder on the Orient Express" but who is really responsable and why?

Deadly Descent by Charlotte Hinger

In western Kansas, historical Lottie Albright marries Keith, whose adult children are older than his new wife. Her twin sister clinical psychologist Josie objects as she assumes her sibling married for money. To prove everyone wrong, Lottie works as director of the Carlton County Historical Society; a role she thought would be fun. She is also the district manager of the election campaign for senate by Zelda's nephew Brian Hadley.



It seems like the ideal job to get connected to the small town and close community. But suddenly one of the family's stories blow up in her face, Zelda St. John's contribution of a racist account of the history of her Rubidoux ancestors.  Her twin sister, Fiona Hadley demands the copy of the story as she feels it will destroy her son's political careeer. Though Lottie refuses to release it and Fiona seems to retreate but the next day Zelda found murdered.  Along with the story's disappearance valuable historical letters have gone missing as well.  Thankfully Lottie kept a copy of Zelda's story and had sent it to her own twin sister, Josie, to analyze, since Josie is a clinical psychologist.


When Zelda's daughter, Judy, insists her Aunt Fiona murdered her mother, Lottie tries to shut down those comments. As campaign manager for Fiona's son, who hopes to be a state senator, Lottie doesn't want the family's dirty laundry aired in the small community. But she wants to help Judy, so provides her with a job at the historical society. To get further insight Lottie volunteers as the town's deputy which gives her more ways to investigate the current case as well as a historical unsolved mystery.

I'm really not much of a fan of historical mysteries but the story was compelling and since I get up not far it was fun to read about a small town and see how an outsider tries to fit in.  Hinger does a fabulous job describing the tiedious job of hunting down historical data, it was fascinating.  I didn't find the mystery as compelling but the rest of the story was well written and interesting. I'll try one again someday.

Templar legacy by Steve Berry

Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. Justice Department, is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts–and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he’d left behind.

It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton’s former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who’s far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. Armed with vital clues to a series of centuries-old puzzles scattered across Europe, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune-hunters through the ages by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to have been lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the fourteenth century. But she’s not alone. Competing for the historic prize–and desperate for the crucial information Stephanie possesses–is Raymond de Roquefort, a shadowy zealot with an army of assassins at his command.

This book is a combination political intrigue and historical religious novel. Much of the book focuses on the history of the rise and fall of the Templars. The primary questions about the Templars that have yet to be answered are: 1) How did the organization manage to acquire the power that it did? and 2) What happened to its much-rumored treasure, which was seemingly lost forever when the Templars experienced a rough disbanding at the hands of an alliance of convenience between church and state?

Berry even devotes the epiloge to the books he read that helped him write this novel.  There were parts I enjoyed like the puzzles of trying to figure out the solution but I didn't care for the graphic torture scenes or the shoot-outs that reminded me of the DaVinci Code books.

A distant neighborhood Vol. 1 / Graphics, Jiro Taniguchi ; graphic adaptation by Frédéric Boilet ; [translation, Kumar Sivasubramanian].

One morning, 48-year-old business traveler Hiroshi Nakahara boards the wrong train—a recently built express to his old hometown. Upon arriving, he visits his mother's grave, where he is mysteriously transported back in time. Hiroshi finds himself 14 years old, with full adult foreknowledge of all that is to come.  Hiroshi slowly embraces his ability to relive his youth differently and prepares to address the great mystery of his childhood: the disappearance of his father.

This is a very quiet yet intense graphic novel so many layers to this very subtle book.  I've linked up the online version on the title listed above.  Now I don't have to try to find the next volume at the library as I can read it online at my leisure.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

First in the Leviathan series.

This is World War I as never seen before. The story begins the same: on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated, triggering a sequence of alliances that plunges the world into war. But that is where the similarity ends. This war, however, won't be waged with mustard gas or in trenches; Aleksander's Great War is one split down the middle of two factions: the Clankers and the Darwinists. The Clankers depend on mechanics and steam power, man-made machines with legs that mimic animals and firepower that rivals the creative weaponry and biotechnology of their rivals. The Darwinists are inspired by Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution. In Leviathan, the mystery of DNA --brought forward a few decades for the sake of plot--has been discovered and manipulated to create crossbreeds of animals and huge, living dirigibles as part of their military power.

Deryn Sharp--disguised as a boy so she can fly the floating airships and Alek Ferdinand--heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, are both 15-year old but very new to the ways of the worlds they've been thrust into. Most of the story is from both their separate points of view until Deryn's ship crashes near Alek's hide-away in the mountains. 

Once their stories intertwine the story gets more interesting as Deryn teases Alek about his irrational fears and disgusts over the conglomeration of living bodies that make up the Leviathan; Alek makes sure Deryn sees the advantage of machines. In between their banter is the truth of the situation: the survival of everything dear to them depends on teamwork; biotechnology is as necessary as gears, metalwork, and engines. Cooperation is the key to success.

Many interesting characters and since this is so obviously first in the series it will be interesting to see how everyone develops.  It is an intriguing concept written in some historical truth but goes much further with a cyberpunk aspects.  Looks like this will be a trilogy so looking forward to the rest of the books - maybe look for on CD.