sandypfeff

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My user name is a combined and shortened form of my first and last names.  I couldn't think of anything clever, and it's easy to remember.

My first car was a 1954 two-door green and white Ford, which I got from my grandmother in 1962.  It had less than 15,000 miles on it.  My grandmother had never learned to drive, and so she didn't need a car  when her second husband died.  I had been teaching for two years when she gave me the car for a dollar.  Before I got the car, I rode two buses to and from school each day.  I drove that car until 1966 when I sold it to my brother for $500.  That Ford was a good car.  It was built like a tank.  About the only thing I didn't like about it was that it did not have power steering, and because of that, it drove like a truck.  (I don't remember how much my brother got for the car, but I know he sold it for a profit when he went into the army.  That's not bad for a dollar car!)

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 Book 31 was the Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalyptic novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  This is an excellent book although the subject matter is extremely grim and depressing.  A man and son are walking alone through a devastated and burned America, apparently having survived a nuclear attack which has destroyed the entire country and perhaps even the entire world.  Neither character is given a name, but for the sake of the story they don't really need names.  They have been walking and headed south for an indeterminate number of years in an effort to reach the coast even though they do not know what or whom they will find if they reach the end of their journey.  They have only each other, and the father has vowed not to leave his son alone, no matter what happens.   

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Current Mood: pensive

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Current Mood: sleepy

My last book for 2007 was good literature and was quite long: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.  I needed a break from more serious stuff and decided to read these three little "junk food" mysteries back-to-back.  They are part of the Trailer Park Mystery series, which my daughter lent me.  All three are fast reads and entertaining.  There are also recipes in each book.  (Diane Mott Davidson she's NOT!)  All the books are set in Tullahoma, Mississippi, where the main character Wanda Nell Culpepper works two jobs to support her two daughters and grandson.  Her first job is a waitress at the Kountry Kitchen which apparently serves good old country comfort food like chicken fried steak; her second job is working the night shift at Budget Mart, a Walmart-type store.

Book 1: In Flamingo Fatale, Wanda Nell, her family, and her friends and neighbors are introduced.  Shortly after the book begins, her ex-husband returns to town with lots of money from an unexplained source.  He and Wanda Nell get into an argument, and she later finds Bobby Ray Culpepper dead, stabbed in the neck with one of her garden ornament flamingos.  The deputy sheriff Elmer Lee Johnson is convinced that she killed her ex-husband.  Wanda Nell begins her own investigation to prove her innocence.

Book 2: In Murder over Easy, one of Wanda Nell's co-workers at the Kountry Kitchen is found stabbed to death in her own home with a knife from the Kountry Kitchen.  Not too many people in town liked Fayetta Sutton, and she had a reputation as a woman who slept with lots of men, many of whom were prominent citizens of Tullahoma.  Melvin Arbuckle, owner of the Kountry Kitchen, is arrested and charged with her murder because he was her latest paramour.  No one can figure out why Fayetta met such a violent death, but several people, including Wanda Nell, thought she might have been blackmailing her lovers.  Wanda Nell sets out to prove Melvin's innocence and keeps getting in trouble with Elmer Lee for her nosiness.

Book 3: In Best Served Cold, Wanda Nell's estranged brother Rusty returns to town and before long is accused of murdering one of his former high school classmates because the two of them had gotten into a fight shortly before his body was found.  Rusty disappears, and Wanda Nell thinks he has been kidnapped and possibly murdered himself.  Clashing with Elmer Lee again, Wanda Nell searches for Rusty and the killer.

When I was searching the Internet to see if Tullahoma was a real place, I found author Jimmie Ruth Evans' website.  Jimmie Ruth is a pseudonym for the author Dean James.  He said he is a native Mississippian, and he wanted a Southern-sounding name.  He chose his parents' first names and just arbitrarily chose Evans as a last name.  I was totally surprised to learn that the author was a man because he does a good job of writing from a woman's point-of-view.  (I never did learn whether or not Tullahoma is a real place.)

If you like Southern "cozy" mysteries, you will probably like the Trailer Park series.  Try 'em with a Moon Pie and a Coke!

 Book 98 for 2007 was Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, which was also our book club's selection for January.  I finished reading it New Year's Day.  The novel is set in 12th century England, and the action revolves around continued civil wars among various monarchs vying for the English throne and corruption in the Catholic church.  Tom, a master mason, has building a cathedral as his life's goal.  Prior Philip has been appointed prior of Kingsbridge and is determined to keep his priory dedicated to the service and glory of God.  William Hamleigh is a ruthless, blood-thirsty nobleman who will stop at nothing to get what he wants--land and the woman who had refused to marry him Aliena.  The main plot and numerous subplots are woven throughout the 983 page book and keep the reader interested in spite of the book's length.  The book is well-written and quite interesting.  The author succeeded in making me love and sympathize with some characters and hate others while wishing that they would get their well-deserved comeuppance for their evil deeds.  The book should provide for some lively discussion when our book club meets later in the month.

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Current Mood: chipper

Current Location: home
Current Mood: chipper

Book 97 is Metro Girl by Janet Evanovich, but it is not one of her Stephanie Plum books.  It was OK, but I like the Plum series much better.  Alexandra "Barney" Barnaby has received a mysterious phone call from her brother Bill.  They are disconnected right after Barney hears a scream in the background.  She takes off from her job and heads for Miami to find out what happened to Bill.  When she arrives in Miami, she meets NASCAR driver Sam Hooker and learns that Bill and a woman have stolen Sam's boat and disappeared.  It turns out that Barney is not the only one looking into Bill's disappearance.  A bunch of hit men have also targeted Bill.  Barney and Sam go searching the waters around the Florida Keys and Cuba to find Bill and trying to stay ahead of the hit men.  There's a lot of action involved, but as I said, I much prefer Stephanie Plum.

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Book 95: Patterson's The Midnight Club apparently is a pre-Alex Cross book.  The homicide detective in this book is John Stefanovitch, and the setting for most of the story is New York City and Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the mid- to later-1980's.  As the book begins, Stefanovitch and his men are on a stake-out to apprehend a psychopathic killer nicknamed the "Grave Dancer," who has managed to elude the police from London to Paris to New York.  Instead of the cops taking down the Grave Dancer and his thugs, they are ambushed.  Many are shot and killed, and Stefanovitch himself ends up a paraplegic.  Stefanovitch learns that Alexandre St.- Germain (the Grave Dancer's real name) has murdered Stefanovitch's wife in cold blood even before the ambush went down.

The rest of the book deals with Stefanovitch's continuing to be a police officer while being confined to a wheelchair.  He has vowed to bring the Grave Dancer to justice and to avenge his wife's death and his being made a cripple.  He is joined in his quest by journalist Sarah McGinniss, who is writing a book about the crimes committed around the world by St.-Germain, and another cop who wants to avenge his brother's death which was also caused by the Grave Dancer.  Patterson has written a very good book here that is a real page-turner.

Book 96: Billie Letts' Shoot the Moon is her third book after her very successful Where the Heart Is and The Honk and Holler Opening Soon.  The setting is small town DeClare, Oklahoma, where an unsolved brutal murder had occurred in 1972.  Single mother Gaylene Harjo was found brutally stabbed to death in her trailer, and her 10-month-old son Nicky Jack has disappeared.  Although the baby's body was never found, the Sheriff Oliver Boyd Daniels (known to the townsfolk as O Boy) arrested a black man, charged him with Gaylene's and the baby's murders, and declared the case closed.  When the man arrested for the crimes killed himself, O Boy felt that his suicide was an admission of guilt.  

Twenty-seven years after Nicky Jack's disappearance, veterinarian Mark Albright comes to town from California and startles everyone when he reveals that he is the missing baby.  Albright had never been told he was adopted and learned about his adoption only after he found his birth certificate and adoption papers after both his parents had died.  He had come to DeClare to meet his biological mother and to learn why she had given him up for adoption.  When it seems as if one mystery is about to be solved, another presents itself.  This is an excellent book which will keep the reader up turning pages to find out what happens next!

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Current Mood: cheerful

Whoa!  It has been over a month since I've posted the books I've been reading!  This bunch has some real page-turners!

Book 87: Donna Andrews' No Nest for the Wicket is another in her bird series.  Here's the blurb from the back of the book: "While stumbling down a steep bank after her ball, Meg encounters the body of a fresh female corpse with a mallet-sized dent in her head.  If that isn't reason enough to call a time-out, it turns out that Michael [her fiance] knew the woman from years before.  Ever curious, Meg decides that playing armchair sleuth is far more important than working on her game, , ,and soon she finds herself in the perfect position to solve the murder mystery--or become the next victim."  This really wasn't one of her better books, but it moves the story along in the series.

Book 88: In Ann B. Ross's Miss Julia Stands Her Ground, Hazel Marie's nefarious uncle, Brother Vernon Puckett, has returned to Abbottsville and cast aspersions on Little Lloyd's paternity.  This is obviously another attempt of Brother Vern to get his hands on Miss Julia's late philandering husband's estate, and she goes all out to ensure that neither she nor Little Lloyd will be disinherited even if it means exhuming her late husband's body.  Even when everyone else has forgotten any manners, Miss Julia remains a lady to the end.

Books 89 & 90: I read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum stories Ten Big Ones and Eleven on Top back-to-back.  In Ten Big Ones Stephanie inadvertently becomes involved in dealing with a vicious Trenton gang and has to lie low for awhile.  She picks Ranger's secret apartment and fantasizes about the two of them spending time together there, all the while thinking that he doesn't know she is there.  Lula, Grandma Mazur, Morelli, and Stephanie's family are the usual characters who keep the story moving right through to the end.

In Eleven on Top, Stephanie resigns from her bounty-hunting job and tries on other jobs for size: working in a button factory, then at a dry cleaners, and finally at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.  With Stephanie, whatever can go wrong, does, and she's out of work again.  This time, however, Ranger hires her to work in the office at his security business.  In the meantime, she's trying to figure out the identity of the guy who is stalking her and trying to kill her.  As usual, Evanovich has written a funny, entertaining book.

Book 91: Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls is an entertaining, well-written book about a teacher who is falsely accused of raping one of the girls on his soccer team.  Even though he is innocent, his lawyer talked him into plea-bargaining for a lesser offense so that he would only have to serve 8 months in prison.  The book opens as Jack St. Bride has been released from prison and is attempting to find a new town in which to live, so that he can pick up his interrupted life.  Picoult does a good job of moving the story along through flashbacks and present action so that the reader gradually finds out exactly what had happened to Jack.  Picoult also uses a lot of Arthur Miller's The Crucible to help the reader see why everything turns out the way it does.  I enjoyed the book very much.

Book 92: Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter was our book club's November book.  What a story this was!  In 1964, Dr. David Henry delivers his twins during a blizzard when he and his wife are unable to get to the hospital in time.  His son, who was born first, was perfectly healthy; however, his daughter was born with Down syndrome.  Dr. Henry decides, while his wife is still under the anesthesia, to have his nurse Caroline take the baby girl to an institution.  He plans to tell his wife that the little girl had died when she was born.  Caroline, who fancies herself in love with the doctor, drives the baby to the institution.  When she sees what kind of place it is, she instead decides to raise baby Phoebe on her own.  Our book club had quite a discussion about the book and the decisions that the various characters made in the story.  

Book 93: Faye Kellerman's The Burnt House is a Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker book.  However, they don't play as much a part as Detectives Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver do.  A plane has crashed into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California.  At first there is suspicion of terrorism which has to be ruled out during the investigation.  As the bodies are recovered from the crash site and identified through dental records, a mystery develops: there is no trace of one of the people supposedly on the plane and an additional body has been discovered in the debris.  Thus, Decker, Dunn, and Oliver have their work cut out for them to learn the identity of the unknown victim and to find the missing person who had been on the airline's list.  If you like CSI  and  Without a Trace, you will like this book.

Book 94: Fannie Flagg's A Redbird Christmas is a sweet little book that is just perfect for this time of year.  After learning that he has a limited time to live, Chicagoan Oswald T. Campbell leaves home and journeys to the little village of Lost River, Alabama, where he finds a reason for living.  That's all I'll say because I don't want to ruin the book for anyone.  If you like Fanny Flagg's writings, you'll love A Redbird Christmas.

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I haven't been posting, but I have been reading.

Book 82 was Not All Tarts Are Apple by British author Pip Granger.  It was our book club's October selection which everyone liked except the person who chose it.  The story is set in 1953 London, just before and after Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.  Seven-year-old Rosie narrates the story, and on the very first page both Rosie and the reader learn: "You haven't got no proper mum and dad, you haven't. . . .  Your mum's a tart."  Although she wasn't quite sure what a tart was then, Rosie popped her classmate Kathy Moon in the nose and made it bleed.  The rest of the book deals with Rosie's adopted Aunt Maggie and Uncle Bert working to make Rosie's adoption legal.  Rosie knew her mother as "The Perfumed Lady," but didn't know the woman was really her biological mother who had flitted in and out of her life ever since she left her daughter on the doorstep as a baby.  Rosie learns that her mother is a professional tart and also a gin addict.  This is an excellent little book that is a fast read.  In the edition I had there is a glossary of British slang in the back of the book.  However, the author did not include all of the slang words, and some were difficult to figure out, particularly the Cockney rhyming slang expressions.

Book 83 was Robin Cook's Critical.  If you've never read one of Robin Cook's novels, let me assure you that you will begin to wonder if you have the affliction he is writing about before you finish the book.  MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) has mysteriously turned up in multiple patients in a group of specialty hospitals operated by Angels Healthcare.  Medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and her husband Jack Stapleton become involved in the investigation of the deaths caused by the MRSA outbreak when Laurie does the autopsy on one of the first victims.  Laurie tries to get Jack to postpone his elective knee surgery until the MRSA triggers have been found.  (Jack had injured his knee playing basketball with neighborhood friends.)  Jack stubbornly refuses even though he is scheduled for surgery at one of the Angels Healthcare boutique hospitals where more than one MRSA-caused death has occurred.  (If you start reading this book in the evening, you will probably remain up till the wee hours of the morning until you finish as I did.)

Book 84 was another of Donna Andrews' bird-related mysteries: Owls Well That Ends Well.  Meg Langslow and her boyfriend Michael have purchased a dilapidated Victorian mansion crammed full of miscellaneous old furniture, assorted antiques, and junk.  They decide to hold a multi-day yard sale to get rid of all the flotsam and jetsam from the house and the barn.  In the middle of the sale, a hated antiques dealer whom Meg has dubbed "Gordon-You-Thief" is found murdered and stuffed into a trunk in the barn.  In order to eavesdrop on the police interrogations being held in the dining room, Meg climbs into a dumbwaiter and almost gets caught by the police chief who has warned her not to become involved in his investigation.  There are many more laugh-out-loud situations as Meg continues her sleuthing to find the killer.  (The owls in the title refer to the barn owls nesting in the barn.  Meg's dad has joined an owl preservation group and tries to keep people from disturbing the owls which have recently hatched their little owls.)

Book 85 was James Patterson's Cross.  Alex Cross, former Washington, D.C. police officer and FBI agent, has recently set up practice as a psychologist.  He had left police and FBI work because he was tired of always putting his life on the line to apprehend psychopathic murderers.  However, when his former partner John Sampson calls on him for his aid in catching a brutal serial rapist in Georgetown, Alex reluctantly agrees to help and eventually comes face-to-face with the man he believes was his wife's killer.  This, too, was an excellent book.  If you've ever seen Morgan Freeman in the Alex Cross movies, you'll have no trouble envisioning him in a movie version of this book.

I decided I needed a respite from the murder and mayhem, and so book 86 was another in the Miss Julia series by Ann B. Ross called Miss Julia's School of Beauty.  The book begins shortly after Miss Julia and Sam Murdoch have returned from their honeymoon in Dollywood.  They have returned to find Sam's houseman and cook James and Julia's housekeeper and friend Lillian vying to take over the cooking and housekeeping for the newlyweds.  Hazel Marie has become involved in organizing a beauty contest to raise money for the K-9 unit of the sheriff's department.  If these things are not enough to keep Miss Julia busy, she learns that she and Sam might not be legally married and are thus "living in sin."  She banishes poor Sam to a separate bedroom until they can track down the preacher who married them in the 24-hour wedding chapel near Dollywood and make sure their marriage is legal.  There's never a dull moment in the book as the usual cast of characters solve one problem and are faced immediately with several others.

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Book 80 was Seven Up, another Stephanie Plum mystery, by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie is looking for Eddie DeChooch, a semiretired mobster, who had failed to show up for court.  Even though he's an old man who doesn't see very well, Eddie is not an easy capture for Stephanie.  In addition to trying to capture DeChooch, Stephanie must contend with her "perfect" older sister Valerie, who has decided to move back to Trenton with her two daughters because her "perfect" marriage has come apart; Grandma Mazur, who is asking questions about becoming a lesbian; and Bob, the huge "omnivorous" dog she shares with Joe Morelli.  Because she is having difficulty bringing DeChooch in, she asks for Ranger's help.  Ranger's price for helping is one night from dusk to dawn with Stephanie.  As usual, this was a very funny book with many laugh-out-loud situations.

Book 81 was another Stephanie Plum book: To the Nines.  (I had read Hard Eight previously.)  In this book Stephanie has to bring in  illegal immigrant Samuel Singh.  She eventually traces Singh to the Las Vegas strip, but this case brings her much more than she bargained for.  The usual cast of characters, including Lula, Grandma Mazur, and the rest of Stephanie's "unique" family, provides the comic relief.  I was not disappointed in the book.  

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In Donna Andrews' We'll Always Have Parrots, Meg Langslow and her actor-boyfriend Michael have gone to a fan convention for the TV show Michael has been on for the past few seasons.  Meg is working in the dealers' room at the convention where she is displaying her swords, daggers, and other realistic weapons for the conventioneers' perusal.  While they are at the convention, parrots and monkeys, which were brought along to provide genuine jungle ambiance, have managed to escape from their cages and are swinging from the fake vines and real chandeliers in the convention hotel.  The monkeys' chattering and the parrots' squawking and mimicry are adding to the chaos and confusion in the whole hotel.  If that isn't enough, the star of the show has managed to get herself murdered.  Meg pitches in to find and apprehend the killer as she has done in Andrews' other books in this series.  Once again, Donna Andrews has written a funny, page-turning, cozy mystery.

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Book 77 is another book by Jen Lancaster, entitled Bright Lights, Big Ass.  Her sub-title for this one is "A Self-Indulgent, Surly Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me?"  This is a continuation of her memoir Bitter Is the New Black, which I read earlier.  She and her husband live in Chicago, and this book deals with their lives in Chicago and how they are coping after both losing six figure income jobs.  It's funny, but she's still a bit of a "smart-ass."

Book 78 is another in Donna Andrews' "bird series," called Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon.  Rob Langslow has persuaded his sister Meg to work the switchboard at his fledgling computer game company Mutant Wizards.  In addition to the computer game geeks who work for Rob, Meg also has the company of a one-winged buzzard named George and her boyfriend's mother's psycho dog Spike while she's is manning the switchboard.  The office practical joker is found murdered on the automated office mail cart, and Meg has to find out who the killer is before someone else is rubbed out.  This is a funny cozy mystery that is as good as Andrews' previous books in the series.

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Book #75 is Bitter Is the New Black by Jen Lancaster, an author who is totally new to me.  She calls her book "a memoir" and subtitles it--"Confessions of a condescending, ego-maniacal, self-centered Smart-ass, or why you should never carry a Prada Bag to the unemployment office."  Here is the blurb from the back of the book: "This is the story of how a haughty former sorority girl went from having a household income of almost a quarter-million dollars to being evicted from a ghetto apartment. . ."  Jen Lancaster had been a vice-president at her company where she was earning a six-figure income.  She lost her job after 9/11 and never managed to find another that was comparable.  This book is the story of her downfall and also of her decision to become a writer.  It's a funny book in many places, but she really does come across as a "smart-ass."  

Book #76 is The Good Guy by Dean Koontz.  What can I say?  It's a typical Koontz book with man-who-saves-woman-from-death with obligatory chase that is one step ahead of the bad guy(s).  There is also the obligatory sweet dog that is in most of what Koontz writes.  Does this sound as if I didn't like it?  Nope, I loved it.  To me, there is something intriguing about the way Koontz crafts his novels and the language he uses that keep me reading.  It's not great literature, but it's a page-turner.

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Miss Julia Meets Her Match is another book in the funny Miss Julia series.  In this book her beau and neighbor Sam Murdoch pursues her more fervently than ever with matrimony in mind.  In fact, Sam is over at Julia's house so often that her pastor Larry Ledbetter, who has been trying unsuccessfully for the entire series to get hold of some of her money for the church, has threatened to censure her for unseemly behavior in front of the whole congregation.  The townspeople think the Presbyterian church's secretary is having an affair with either Pastor Ledbetter or the mayor.  If that isn't enough to keep Miss Julia on her toes, an outsider and his entourage are building a religious theme park called "Walk Where Jesus Walked" on property that she owns at the edge of town.  Housekeeper Lillian's great-granddaughter five-year-old Latisha has come to live with them for awhile as well.  If you're a fan of the Miss Julia series, you'll love this book as well.

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Miss Julia Hits the Road is the funniest book in the Miss Julia series that I've read so far.  (I've been trying to read them in order.)  In this one Miss Julia's housekeeper and friend Lillian and all the people who live in her neighborhood are about to lose their homes because their greedy landlord has decided that he wants to tear down their houses and build a bottling plant to bottle water which is bubbling up from a small spring at the top of a near-by ridge.  It had been rumored for quite some time that the spring water has produced a miraculous rejuvenation for men of a certain age, and of course, Miss Julia is embarassed about learning of the miraculous "liquid Viagra."  (my words--obviously not hers!  She'd be mortified!)  Well, Miss Julia vows that she will do everything she can to save Lillian and her neighbors' homes from the clutches of their money-grubbing landlord.  One of the things she does is participate in a Poker Run with her friend Sam on his new Harley-Davidson motorcycle to raise part of the money.  This is a funny book that is a really fast read if you can stop laughing about the things Miss Julia and her friends get involved in to save the Willow Lane neighborhood's homes.

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