Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts (2010)

This is the third book in the Bride Quartet and focuses on Laurel McBane, the pastry chef. I've got to say this is one of the weaker books by Roberts, but she always gives some details I find interesting. After watching some of the cake baking shows on TV, there was not that much new in the pastry side, but I am still interested in how people pull things like this together. The love interest, which was clear from earlier books is Del, her friend Parker's brother. They have to resolve a pretty simple thing about knowing each other since childhood, she having a crush on him from that time, but having kept it just being friends, the move to being romantic partners is not that simple. My biggest problem with some of these series books is that it is a too self contained world. Why in the world would they want to vacation together (the four couples) after working together all year. I guess having a tight knit group of friends is nice, but I like a more expansive approach to life. Laurel at least has traveled, studied in France, worked in NYC, but returns to this secure circle of friends. Now to just get Parker married off to that mechanic Malcolm.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz (1997)

Subtitle: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. I think I even own this book, but never did read it, so I thought I should read something good for my soul around my birthday. It was OK, but nothing special. The four agreements make sense: Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.  I think I basically do try to live by most of these, though being impeccable is hard, and I do tend to take things personally. All good advice, but much of it is about relating to your partner, those very close that you live with. Since I have chosen not to have someone that close in my life, and my child has just moved out,some of the book did not feel as applicable.

O'Hurley's Return by Nora Roberts (2010)

Contains: Skin Deep (1988) and Without a Trace (1990)

Two quick Nora Roberts' novels read over the Christmas season. This is two of I assume four books on the O'Hurley's, who were raised by a couple of vaudeville actors constantly moving and performing as a family. The three sisters are twins and they have an older brother. In Skin Dep see the story of Chantel, now a famous movie star. She falls for her body guard Quinn Doran. In Without a Trace, the older brother Trace has just retired as a spy and is relaxing in Mexico, when an Irish woman Gillian Fitzpatrick looks him up and get him to go save her brother and father from terrorists. I like Roberts' thriller books.

Is There Really a Human Race? by Jamie Lee Curtis (2006)

I have always wanted to read one of Jamie Lee Curtis' children's books, as I find her a fascinating actress, so I assume her books would be fascinating too, and she did not disappoint. With great illustrations it plays with the idea of a wide variety of humans racing towards something - "Did it start on my birthday?" "If the race is a realy, is Dad on my team? And his dad and his dad?" About being a success, but do some win and some lose? And of course the great lessons - "If we don't help each other, we're all going to ... crash."... "Shouldn't it be that you just try your best?"... "And make the world better for the whole human race." You have to see it, it is really fun.

The Burroughs Cyclopedia by Clark A. Brady (1996)

I didn't really read this, just took a look, but thought it was interesting to find a reference book on Burroughs. The subtitle is: Characters, Places, Fauna, Flora, Technologies, Languages, ideas and Terminologies Found in the Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I looked up a few of the things I had questions about from Princess of Mars and found them informative.

Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1917)

Though I went through a pretty long science fiction and fantasy stint in my reading history, I never did read one of the classic SF authors - Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950.) My audio book store had a row of his books prominently displayed, so I thought I would try one. Pretty good. I had no idea that the man wrote so long ago. He started writing stories for adventure magazines, and his first story was about Mars. Though he published his first book in 1914 on Tarzan, his most famous series, but returned to write 11 books about Mars. This is the first one.

John Carter is an Arizona, where he enters a cave chased by Indians, sorta passes out, and finds himself naked on Mars. There he meets the huge green Martians, and later more human-like red Martians. I kept wondering if Burroughs was the first to create a visual image of Martians for us. Will have to research that, if I ever have time. Then he turns out to be a skilled fighter against these huge beings, earns the right to be a chieftain among them, falls for a Martian princess that he ends up saving from enemies numerous times, teaches one of the chieftains about friendship, and changes the face of Mars in the 10 years that he is there. All just a great adventure story. I don't mind the damsel in distress scenario, taking into consideration that this was written almost a 100 years ago. I enjoyed his description of what Mars would look like, the issues with breathable air and water. Obviously he was fascinated with the beginning experiments with flight, as he has large flying ships and small one person crafts, though he used some mysterious force to give them flight instead of the physics and engineering really needed. I was also interested in some of the other numbers and scientific accuracy of the times.

As pointed out in Contemporary Authors, though very popular, academically Burroughs is considered a pulp fiction writer of little merit. But I like the quote in Contemporary Authors: "Writing in Esquire, Gore Vidal claimed that, although Burroughs 'is innocent of literature,' he nonetheless 'does have a gift very few writers of any kind possess: he can describe action vividly.'""

Not a priority to check out the rest of his books, but not bad for light reading. Glad I picked it up.

Jame O'Rourke and the Big Potato by Tomie DePaola (1992)

This Irish Tale retold and illustrated by Tomie DePaola was just the right break I needed in a long work day. Jamie O'Rourke is the laziest man in Ireland, he catches a leprauchaun, grows a big potato that feeds the whole town, but they get sick of it and promise to provide Jamie and his family with food if he promises not to grow any more huge potatoes. I've always loved these tales and wonderful illustrations by DePaola.

Golem by David Wisniewski (1996)

My brain was fried at work, so I went up to the children's section and picked up one of the Caldecott Award winning books I had not read. Golem was about a time in the 16th century in Prague, when the Jews were being put in a ghetto and persecuted. A rabbi decided to invoke a golem - making him out of clay and bringing life into him - as long as the Jews were persecuted. I was thinking that was forever, but there seemed to come a point in the story where the Jews felt safe(r) and the golem went back to being clay. Actually not so light hearted for a kids book, but the illustrations were great - often layers of cut paper creating all sorts of neat effects.

Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline (2010)

I remember liking the Killer Smile by Scottoline, so I thought I would try another one. It is rare that I want a book to be over, but this was one. The main character in this book wasn't Mary DiNunzio, who I really liked, but her boss at the law firm Rosato & Associates - Bennie Rosato, who is a much less likable character. Then Bennie has a twin, Alice, who is as brilliant as Bennie, but much more wild and evil. I kept being frustrated, that Bennie was turning evil, and Alice was easily taking Bennie's place at the law firm and with ex-boyfriend Grady, and that no one except Mary's crazy Italian aunt and friend Julie had any suspicions. Turns out in the author interview after the book was read, Scottoline explained that she was looking into the phenomenon of twins and how much is DNA and how much is circumstance and environment. I believe the character Bennie realizes too, that she has kept herself so closed off, even to close friends and associates, that they did not know her well enough to not recognize Alice in her place. Sooo - redeemed and I will not give up on Scottoline books. The story was quite a thriller. Alice burries Bennie alive and tries to get at her substantial funds.

Hieroglyphic Tales by Horace Walpole (1785)

This literary delight came to me completely serendipitously. The power went out in our library for 40 minutes. A student was looking for The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. With no computer to look for a call number in the catalog, I ventured to use my librarian skills in still locating this book. Sooo... Walpole was a British author from the 18th century (looked that up in the print version of the Dictionary of Literary Biography), so in the early part of the PR's. I guess I could have looked up the call number range in the PR section of the cataloging classification books, but this student seemed to be in a hurry, so we just went wandering in the PR's.  I knew it had to be an early range of PR's, but probably not in the same range as Shakespeare, and I knew approximately where he was (turns out Walpole was in PR3291-3785 - 17th and 18th centuries)  So I tried a few sections, following the alphabet until I got to W's. Now mind you, it was dark in the shelves that were not close to windows, so we used the light of our cell phones. Walpole was in a dark section of the shelves, so I had to pull out handfuls of books and take them to the one emergency light in the area. I found Walpole, but not Castle of Otranto. (The name Otranto seems familiar to me. It took me a while, but then I remembered that a Latvian poetry book had that name. Had to look up the author - Andrejs Eglitis. Will have to look up the book and see if it refers to Walpole or the city in Italy.) Though I didn't find the book for the student, I was proud I found the right area. And there among Walpole's books, mostly books about Walpole, was this delightful little book, printed in 1993 and whimsically illustrated by Jill McElmurry.

This book is appropriately prefaced by a quote from Monty Python's Flying Circus. It contains seven absurd tales that the author himself describes as: "...they are mere whimsical trifles, written chiefly for private entertainment, and for private amusement half a dozen copies only are printed. They deserve at most to be considered as an attempt to vary the stale and beaten class of stories and novels, which, though works of invention, are almost always devoid of imagination....that there should have been so little fancy, so little variety, and so little novelty, in writings which the imagination is fettered by no rules, and by no obligation of speaking truth. There is infinitely more invention in history, which has no merit if devoid of truth, than in romances and novels, which pretend to none." (from the author's postscript) There was also a substantial editor's note at the beginning explaining Walpole and his effect on literature. His Castle of Otranto is considered the first gothic novel, so I will have to check that out.

Not all the tales caught my fancy, nor did I really understand them all, as they were full of absurd names, references that there was no way I would understand, but mostly I found them fun. "A New Arabian Night's Entertainment" was a variation on the spinning a good tale to save one's life story. "The Peach in Brandy - A Milesian Tale"was quite gruesome, but was written for friends, so maybe they thought it was funny. I think my favorite was "Mi Li. A Chinese Fairy Tale" where it is foretold that a prince will be unhappy unless he marries a princess whose name is the same as her father's dominions. The conditions of the foretelling are muddled over the years, so the prince goes looking for the wrong bride all over the world. The tales are full of little commentaries, like in this one: "...for it is death in China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries." or "What could She do? Nothing but what a Woman always does in critical cases -- that is nothing." (OK sexist, but could apply to anyone.) I also really like "A True Love Story" - with a twist, of course.

I love being a librarian!