_The Great
Starship Race_ by Diane Carey. Sometimes you just need to go back to
your youth. Would have made a fun Star Trek episode.
_Booked to Die_ by John Dunning. A
mystery (that turned out to be a significantly collectible book) about
significantly collectible books. Let's just say that for someone who
loves books and mysteries, this volume hit the spot.
_The Sky People_ by SM Stirling.
Rocket ships. Venus. Dinosaurs. Derigibles. Thwarted romance. Robot
intelligences run amok. Sabotage. And did I mention the fur-bikini
clad babes with AK-47s? The author found a way to make 1930's style
pulp stories still work and it was a lot of fun.
_To Say Nothing of the Dog_ by Connie Willis. Who
says you can't have it all: Victoriana, comedy of manners, time travel, chaos
theory, and comedy, comedy, comedy all muddled up in a delicious, Hugo-winning
novel. This is one I wish I'd read years ago.
_The Lost Symbol_ by Dan Brown. Don't know why I did
this to myself...Steve Berry is so much better at this stuff: he knows he's
writing adventure with fun, weird facts and doesn't try make it actually
meaningful as his characters save the world. Of course, sometimes I'll listen
to 10 minutes of Limbaugh an...d maybe the same masochistic streak pulled me to
this Dan Brown thing.
_Religion in the Ancient
Mediterranean World_. Kind of an exhausting course--starting with neolithic
times and ending as around Constantine, with Christianity becoming the primary
religion of the Roman Empire. Nicely messy--while there were general historical
themes going through, it went back and forth ofte...n since clear lines could not be drawn between topics, beliefs, epochs,
or cultures.
_The 37th Hour_ by Jodi Compton.
Another Twin Cities/surrounding Minnesota mystery, not nearly in Sandford's
class. Too many flash back episodes--would have been better to wrap one
extended one. Probably won't bother with the second book.
_Wicked Prey_ by John Sandford. I
think this is the first Prey novel I've read since the Jones' girls migration
to the Twin Cities started, and I enjoyed reading the location details and
going "Hey! I know where that is now!" As always, Sandford's story
was brutal and fine.
_Daddy's Girl_ by Lisa
Scottoline. Meh. I thought the Underground Railway stuff, while interesting,
was mismatched with the rest of the book. I'd rather have had one book for
each.
_The First Rule_ by Robert Crais.
A Joe Pike book based around taking care of his own. Interesting that a recent
Lee Child, _Bad Luck and Trouble_ had Reacher with the same challenge and that
Crais & Child are friends. The books aren't alike, just the protagonists
challenges.