Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Two

Fiction

Black Hills by (supposedly) Nora Roberts. I'm starting to think almost all these authors with multiple books a year are purely ghost written. This "Roberts" book has a blue cover - like many of her other books - with a full moon and a leopard.

NonFiction

Top 10 Florence and Tuscany by Reid Bramblett. A travel guide from DK's Eyewitness Travel series. The cover says, "Pull-out map and guide." Well I would certainly hope so. How crappy would a travel guide be without a map?

Monday, July 06, 2009

Norwegian Chick Rockers, More Mexican Wrestling, Two CDs Worth of Nick Lowe

Music CDs

Saint Valentine's Day Massacre by The Cocktail Slippers. Norwegian chicks sing garage rock tunes. Featured by Little Steven on his syndicated radio show which I love to listen to.

Quiet Please: the new best of Nick Lowe by Nick Lowe. You have to be cruel to be kind.

DVDs

Thin Ice starring Tom Selleck, Kathy Baker, William Sadler, Camryn Manheim. Selleck has done a excellent job with these adaptations of Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone novels.

Dia de los Muertos. Mexican wrestling featuring El Hijo Santo vs. La Park in a steel cage match.
Viva Guerrero!. Eddie Guerrero's wrestling life is celebrated by other famous wrestlers.

Reaper: season two starring That Guy From Twin Peaks, That Guy From Grounded for Life. Slacker finds out his parents sold his soul to the devil. Now slacker has to work for the devil by catching escaped souls.

Fiction

Even by Andrew Grant. Former nsval intelligence officer from Britain is set-up for murder in New York City.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

John Ceepak, Lansdale, Tractors, Vietnam Memoir

Fiction

Mind Scrambler by Chris Grabenstein. John Ceepak and his narrating partner Danny Boyle return for another mystery on the New Jersey shore. The two are on vacation in Atlantic City when Danny meets an old friend who nannies for a magician. The girl is strangled and Ceepak and Boyle get involved.

Punisher: War Journal: Secret Invasion by Fraction, Remender, Spurrier, Chaykin, Macdonald, Dell'Edera. Judging from the cover the Punisher fights green aliens with pointy ears.

Run A Crooked Mile by Janet LaPierre. Rosemary moves to the California mountains to be alone. He she ends up taking in the dog of a recent murder victim. Mystery and danger follow.

Vanilla Ride: a Hap and Leonard novel by Joe R. Lansdale. East Texas pals Hap and Leonard tend to stir up trouble and when "rescuing a friend's daughter from an abusive, no-good drug dealer" Hap and Leonard end up stirring trouble with the Dixie Mafia who want payback.
Lansdale does real good work.

NonFiction

Classic Farmall Tractors: history, models, variations and specifications 1922-1975 by Kenneth Updike.

The Ghosts of Thua Thien: an American soldier's memoir of Vietnam by John A. Nesser. "Nesser was deployed to the Ashau Valley, site of some of the war's heaviest fighting, and served eight months as an infantry rifleman before becoming a door gunner for a Chinook helicopter. In this stirring memoir, he recalls in detail the exhausting missions in the mountainous jungle, the terror of walking into an ambush, the dull-edged anxiety that filled quiet days, and the steady fear of being shot out of the sky."