Book 20: The Purple Pterodactyls

The Purple Pterodactyls: The Adventures of W. Wilson Newbury  is a collection of short stories of the supernatural adventures of a banker named Newbury.  From lots of  ancient deities to a lake monster to a voodoo zombie to a pair of dueling djinn and more, each short story read like a tale that might be heard around a campfire on a dark night without being too dark.


The tales weren't spellbinding, but I found them entertaining nonetheless.  3 stars

Book 19: Getting Things Done

This is my second time reading this edition of Getting Things Done by David Allen.  Although the book is geared toward the working environment, I find that it applies equally as well in the home.  Since I have several projects currently going on, I mainly focused on the sections related to projects although I reread the rest to glean new tips to help improve my current system.


I experimented around with several mediums last year try to figure out what worked best.  I tried using paper lists but honestly felt a little guilty about the amount of paper I was using.  I switched to post-it notes until I lost a note or two.  Next I attempted using a whiteboard instead, and it worked quite well until someone erased it.  I still use whiteboards for dinner menus, grocery lists, or handing to a kid who I need to complete more than one task, but finally I decided I should go digital.  So for 2017 I'm using my Kindle fire to maintain my calendar and lists with a free list program called Simple Lists.  I'm still tweaking what categories work best for me, but so far it's working quite well although it will take a few weeks to capture everything.


For an overview of the main part of the program see my previous review.


Again I highly recommend this book.

Book 18: The Murder on the Links

A cryptic cry for help from France bring Hercules Poirot and his friend Hastings to Merlinville only to discover their client Monsieur Renauld has been murdered via a knife to the back.  Since the Belgian detective is known to the police, they enlist his services in the investigation.  Almost immediately Poirot is struck by the fact that this particular crime reminds him of another, and as usual he takes interest in evidence that the other police disregard.  A second young French detective named Giraud, who believes his more modern forensic approach to detecting to be superior to Poirot's now outdated style, adds an intriguing twist to the investigation.  Soon, however, even Poirot is momentarily surprised at the appearance of a second dead body, but undaunted he presses on to finally discover the truth.


An excellent follow up to her first mystery novel, Agatha Christie continues to intrigue with The Murder on the Links.  Definitely 5 stars.

Book 17: The Color of Magic

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett is the first published book in the Discworld series and introduces the character of the wizard Rincewind.  All of Rincewind's troubles and adventures begin when he offers to work at a translator for Twoflower after seeing his magical chest of sapient pear and his purse full of the rarest of gold coins.  Thus begins the strangest journey where Twoflower is trying to see everything, Rincewind is simply trying not to die, and the two are pieces played by the Lady (the one goddess who name no one invokes) in a game between the gods. 


After an extremely slow start, I found myself laughing over and over as I made my way through the tale.  The scenes between Rincewind and Death were particularly amusing.    I never thought I would actually like Death as a character.  All in all it is a good start to the series, and I will definitely continue reading the remainder.

Book 16: The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman's Hugo award winning The Graveyard Book recounts the major events in the life of a boy who comes to be called Nobody Owens after wandering into a graveyard on the same night a man named Jack is murdering his family.  Jack follows the boy's scent to the graveyard, but the ghosts hide his prey, and Simon, who protects the graveyard, sends the man away.  The ghosts of Mr. and Mrs. Owens decide to adopt the boy, and Simon volunteers to be his guardian and provide for his food and other needs.  The graveyard also accepts Nobody Owens, which allows him to see the ghosts and fade into the dark to hide.  He learns normal things like reading, writing, and the constellations as well as several odder bits of knowledge including the danger of ghouls, how to get help from various supernatural creatures, and dreamwalking.  All this time the man Jack continues to hunt for the missing boy to finish the job that he started.  Will Simon's help and Nobody's lessons be enough to save him in the end?


Although the tale was a bit outside of my normal range of fantasy, nonetheless I found it entertaining and well-crafted.  I enjoyed my time spent with Nobody Owens and will add Neil Gaiman to my list of authors to read.  Four stars.

Book 15: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie is her debut novel featuring Belgian detective Hercules Poirot.  A refugee of war, Poirot has settled in Essex with the help of Lady Emily Inglethorpe.  While his friend Hastings is staying at the Inglethorpe home visiting his friend John, who is one of Emily's stepsons, Emily is murdered by poison.  Hastings enlists the help of Poirot in apprehending the culprit.

This is actually the first Agatha Christie book I've read since high school when we were assigned Murder on the Orient Express.  I don't know why it's taken me so long, but I'm definitely going to read more soon.  Hopefully once I get a little more used to Poirot I won't be quite as clueless as Hastings anymore.

Book 14: Slathbog's Gold

Slathbog's Gold by M. L. Forman is the first book in the Adventurers Wanted series currently containing four books.  Fifteen year old Alex is mystified by a sign in Mr. Clutter's shop window reading "Adventurer's Wanted".  When he inquires about the sign, he suddenly finds himself the eighth member of a team on a quest to defeat the dragon Slathbog in a land of elfs, dwarfs, and magic.  The journey to the dragon's hoard is long and full of dangers including bandits, a troll, and wraiths as well as new friends.

Unlike many stories today where the pace is light speed and the action nonstop, Slathbog's Gold is a realistically paced tale where the journey is as important as the obstacles.  I enjoyed watching Alex grow in confidence and character and look forward reading of his future adventures in the subsequent books.  Excellent read for ages 10 and up.

Book 13: Murder of Crows

After spending a few weeks reading only new books, it has been relaxing to sit down and reread Murder of Crows by Anne Bishop.  I love the world and characters of Thasia, and it's fun to revisit to enjoy anew those parts that I remember and discover again those which had either slipped my mind or escaped my attention the first time.

Here's a link to my review from last year.

I'm still looking forward with gleeful anticipation to the release of book five Etched in Bone next month.

Book 12: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens

Sean Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens is a simple step-by-step approach to teach teens how to reach their goals.  The first three habits focus on self: looking at the effects of your own actions, setting goals, and prioritizing.  The second three habits focus on relationships: establishing win-win relationships, listening and understanding others, and working synergistically.  Finally, ideas for taking care of oneself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually both with daily choices as well as less frequent times of rest and renewal.

The content is a clearly explained road map of living a more positive life.  The presentations is a times a bit cheesy and the stories included are naturally geared toward teens.  Still even if the tone makes your teen want to role their eyes, I think the meat of the information is more than worth the time and effort to understand the points Covey is trying to make.  I will be handing this one to my teens to read and hopefully discuss.

Book 11: Samantha Watkins: Chronicles of an Extraordinary Ordinary Life

Samantha Watkins: Chronicles of an Extraordinary Ordinary Life by Venem follows a year in the life of Samantha Watkins, who starts out as a quiet, friendless librarian working in her old high school.  One night as she walks home, she is not paying attention and ends up in a bad part of town in the middle of a fight between three vampires.  Humans that know about vampires have two choices: work for a vampire or die.  Phoenix offers her a position as his assistant because he hates writing reports.  Since she really has no choice, she accepts his offer and begins training.  Phoenix is trying to determine who is responsible for the abundance of human disappearances in the area, which are threatening the exposure of the vampire community, so for Sam there is no real warm up or chance for mistakes if she wants to survive.  If they do not find the culprits before the Elders intervene then this just may be the last job for both of them.

Overall I have mixed feelings about the book.  Samantha's character seemed very inconsistent to me going from helpless to ridiculously furious to cool and competent to whiny and needy. Sometimes I wanted to cheer her on and other times I wanted to strangle her.  Phoenix's character likewise seemed to swing back and forth more than I would expect from a 500 year old vampire.  The mystery part of the plot was well written, but there were also inconsistencies.  For example, why would she get lost on a walk in such a familiar area?  The ending of the book is also extremely frustrating.  I despise cliffhangers, and this one was really unnecessary.  The book could have stopped a few pages earlier and had a nice ending with enough open threads that I would have been curious about the second book.  The last few pages would have been fine as opener for book 2.  I also am annoyed that the remainder of the books remain untranslated despite the number of requests that I see on the Amazon site for English translations.  Overall, I would say three and a half stars.

Book 10: The Happiness Project

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin is a one year chronicle of one woman's attempt to increase her level of happiness by focusing on a new area each month.   She covers the basic topics that are expected: marriage, work, parenting, friendship, and leisure.  A few of the topics were more personalized: vitality, the relationship between money and happiness, mindfulness, and attitude among others.  Taking a page from Benjamin Franklin's virtue chart, Rubin created a resolution chart that she slowly added to over the course of a year and referred to each night to gauge her success for the day.  She did an excellent job of taking an abstract concept and creating concrete resolutions.  For example, during June when she focused on friendship, her resolutions included remember birthdays, don't gossip, and make three new friends.

I appreciated her very practical approach but found her sheer volume of resolutions a bit overwhelming.  It will for example take me more than a month to declutter parts of my house. Overall though I give the book five stars because of its very practical approach to what is usually a very abstract concept.  It was inspiring to see how much change is possible within the bounds of one's own normal life.

Book 9: Adventures of a Vegan Vamp

I was browsing through the Amazon Prime reading again looking for something funny when I came across Adventures of a Vegan Vamp by Cate Lawley.  The title alone made me chuckle, so I decided to give it a try.  Mallory goes out with her coworkers on a Tuesday night for drinks and decides to walk home.  Three days later, she wakes up in her own bed exhausted and feeling ill.  It's Friday.  She has no memory of getting home, has lost 25 pounds, and can no longer hold down solid food.  She goes to the doctor to figure out what is wrong.  The diagnosis: she's a vampire... that throws up at the sight of blood.  When the local society tasked with handling unusual matters realizes that she's actually going to survive, Alex, one of their wizard enforcers, introduces her to a vampire named Wembley to answer her questions.  Then when one of her neighbors is killed presumably because she could identify Mallory's attacker, the society hires her to help Alex find the killer.




This cozy mystery was amusing, light-hearted, and entertaining.  The unique take on vampires isn't really fully explained but is still interesting.  The mystery is well crafted and engaging, and the humor kept me chuckling through the book.