Hoot of a series start

 Crime and Punctuation
by Kaitlynn Dunnett

How is it that I have to read four or five boring mysteries before I find one I really like?  Like this one, which was very amusing.  But how to find another? I already screen by ratings in the 4-star range, certainly no lower than 3.9.  Then I do a quick scan of other people's reviews. So why do so many people rave about mystery series that I find meh?

Sadly, the author doesn't have any more in the series. She has some other series, but none seem to appeal to me. They don't seem as highly rated, for one thing, and they don't seem to have a heroine I can identify with.

Like "recently widowed Mikki Lincoln." She's rather elderly (60-something) but extremely sprightly. And she's a hoot!

Gardening in my Roots--can it be spring?

Quick hurrah!  Three snap peas are up!

Funny and not so inspiring, thank heavens

   

Operation Ironman:
One Man's Four Month Journey from Hospital Bed to Ironman Triathlon
George Mahood

Funny; touching; a little scary. It's a thrilling ride on which he takes us, and I for one enjoyed every minute. His hospital stories made me chuckle despite the scary aspect of doctors finding a "mass" on his spinal cord but wanting him to just wait and see if it grows. Which is odd, because in general I approve of the wait-and-see approach to doctoring. But maybe not as much as I thought.

Then his training stories are a hoot, of course. But the one surprising thing I found that made me love this book were the occasional snippets of family life that came out. Like his kids preferring him to Mommy on the trampoline, because he was more "bouncy". More fat, didn't you mean? No...more bouncy.  (Whew--they spared his feelings)

A dark and spooky moor

The Crossing Places

by Ellie Griffiths


Mysterious AND full of detection. And creepy to boot. The heroine--a forensic archaeologist (or is that anthropologist? I forget)--

Anyway, she's an expert on old bones, so she gets called in when the police detective needs to know the age of a set of bones found buried in on a lonely beach. The boggy, spooky, tidal marshes with quicksand, mud and sticky ooze. And, it just so happens, the home of a long-dead civilization who revered the place and marked it as magical--the boundary between land and sea, a place where spirits ruled.

As to the book, the pacing and action are great. And the history, too--I hope she got most of it right. I won't fidget on her making up a detail or two, such as the specific burial and the trappings thereof, but I assume the general history of the iron age civilization and their burial rites and the sacrificial offerings is somewhat accurate.

If so, then this is a winner for me. It didn't get especially good reviews, mostly due to bad writing. And yeah, when I skimmed through what other people had to say just now, I have to agree. There were places where her writing irritated me, too. I'm hoping that as she advances at her craft she'll clean that up, so I'll give her another try. I also notice at least one person objected to her digs at religion--and probably others did, too, but were too cowardly to admit it. There are some narrow-minded readers who absolutely won't approve a book that disagrees with their beliefs even in the slightest. All I can say to that is that your faith must be pretty precarious if it can't endure a minor snub.  Very minor, in fact, and not so much about religion in general as the annoying behavior of her parents in particular. Give me a break.

Ahhhhhhh

 Sagebrush Country
The American Wilderness/Time-Life Books
by Donald Dale Jackson


Gorgeous and thoughtful book about the Great Basin area of the U.S. It encompasses all of Nevada and parts of the surrounding states, and it's almost all desert. A beautiful place, if you like deserts and I do. And a beautiful book.

Gardening in my Roots--Not Yet

We made wood chips yesterday--doesn't it look nice?  

But there is nothing growing (except for garlic, which has been there all winter) yet. A bitter freeze is coming down tomorrow and Thursday, so it's best if all the little plants stay safely dormant and under the soil. Except for lettuce and dill, which are planted on top of the soil. Keep fingers crossed!

Best memoir of the year and then some

The Sound of Gravel
by Ruth Wariner

I picked this out of the Best Memoir and Autobiography awards on Goodreads, and wow! Did it ever deserve to be there! Her life in a small renegade Mormon community in Mexico is mind-bogglingly weird. As the oldest girl of sound mind in the family, she gives up any personal dreams she might have had to become her mother's mainstay, the person who takes care of all the kids that her mother continues bearing, long past any point of reason.

It kind of puts a finger on the kind of screwed-up logic a lot of religious people follow. In their case, they have a very strong belief that plural marriages are the direct route to heaven, and having lots of children is part of it. So the husband (I hesitate to call him a father), spawns child after child with little thought of how he's going to take care of them. The lord will provide. And, of course, the U.S. government--all of the three wives live off welfare and food stamps. They are American citizens even though they live in Mexico, and they are single mothers because their marriages are not considered valid.

Of all the important things in the Christian theology that a person might choose to believe, the men (the father, who is dead, and the mother's husband) seem to fixate on the whole multiple wives thing. In fact, that's why they've broken from the rest of the Mormon church. But it could just be that's the one issue that affected the author's life so much and all the other points of doctrinal difference don't come into the story.

But in the case of the mother's husband, best I can tell it's all about the sex. And a little about power, too. And in the case of her mother, there seems to be a sick sense of worthlessness that rules her life. Without her husband, she's nothing. She truly believes that the only path into heaven is through loving service to a worthless man.

As I read the story of the little girl slowly working herself into adulthood, I wanted to cry so much at so many lost opportunities.  The book isn't all sad and definitely not pitying, it's absorbing--and very hard to put down. Many stars to this.