Thursday, October 13, 2011

Panzer Cupcake Articles on Stuff Framing Accounting Windows

NonFiction

1001 Cupcakes: cookies & other tempting treats by Love Food. Ampersands are stupid. Pretty pictures included.

Day of the Panzer: a story of American heroism and sacrifice in Southern France by Jeff Danby. Armored troops slip past a German rearguard and attack a German headquarters. Vicious fighting ensues. Maps and photos.

Get Your Articles Published by by Lesley Bown and Ann Gawthorpe. Page 192, Modern buildings often look more striking if taken from an unusual angle.

Accounting Demystified by Leita Hart-Fanta, CPA. Page 283, This is a fascinating metric to me.

How Stuff Works by Marshall Brain. Page 98, The INS uses those signals to understand the vehicle's rotations relative to the platform.

Degunking Windows 7 by Joli Ballew. Page 160, Then you can decide if you want to enable it or not.

Framing a House by Roe Osborn. Page 233, I am completely making this quote up; don't forget to push the pinion into the gibbet.

"People Watch THis Crap?", Africa, Abbott

DVD

Transformers: Dark of the Moon starring CGI. Things blow up. Things burn. Things fall. People watch this crap?

Fiction

Nairobi Heat by Mukoma Wa Ngugi. African peace activist comes to Madison to teach. Girl is dead on his doorstep. Black Madison cop travels to Africa as part of investigation. Cop has a few troubles during trip.

Audiobooks on CD

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott. 7 CDs at 8.5 hours. This has gotten lots of nice reviews. Reviews like, This was good, and I liked this, and Abbott was at that Random House party at Bouchercon where they had free drinks.

Eight Keys by Suzanne LeFleur. 4 CDs at 5.25 hours. Didn't the Cowboys have a tight end named LeFleur? A big guy who was drafted as a receiver in a failed bid to replace Novacek?

Life Itself by Roger Ebert. 12 CDs at 14 hours. Ebert does some fine writing outside of movie reviews. But, how much do I want to learn about Urbana, Steak and Shake, and working with Russ Meyer? How much more do you want to hear about that stupid Random House party? Because I keep writing about the free drinks anyway.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Two NonFiction and Another Bouchercon Freebie

NonFiction

While They Slept: an inquiry into the murder of a family by Kathryn Harrison. 18-year-old kills his parents and a sister. Spares the other sister. An uplifting family story.

Quicken 2011: the official guide by Bobbi Sandberg. I bought a previous annual manual. Manual Samuel. Samuel Cram-you-ill. Cram-you-ill Spam-a-hill. I need a rhyming dictionary.

Fiction

Three Seconds by Roslund and Hellstrom. Co-authors Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom were doing signings at Bouchercon. I picked up this free book but did not get it signed. Some other Scandinavians were doing a signing in the bar early that evening. I didn't get a book but got a free drink.

Free Drink at Bouchercon Signing

At the above mentioned signing I asked the waitress for some sort of IPA. When she got back I ended up with a Budweiser. I don't like Budweiser. I did not complain because the gal was busy and the drink was free. I drank the lousy beer anyway. It was free.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Christa Faust and Clare O'Donohue Overkill

Clare O'Donohue

I sat next to O'Donohue during a breakfast event at Bouchercon. O'Donohue has written a series of cozy mysteries that sounded like people here would like them. O'Donohue also has a newer mystery series based on her own job as a free lance news producer.

Double Cross. Quilter is asked to teach class at a New York bed-and-breakfast where the business owner is murdered.

Devil's Puzzle. Quilting group has to solve mystery of a skeleton in one member's backyard and the town's witchcraft history.

Missing Persons. Soon to be divorced Kate's husband is killed. Kate takes a television assignment on a missing persons case and the cases overlap.

Christa Faust

Faust was also at Bouchercon but I did speak to her. I didn't have anything to say.

Choke Hold. Angela Dare, retired porn star, entered witness protection after helping break a kidnapping and prostitution ring. A former co-star is killed and Dare shepherds the friend's mixed martial arts fighting son.

Fiction

Mortal Terror by James R. Benn. Great WWII series featuring character Billy Boyle. Boyle is a troubleshooting investigator for his uncle, General Eisenhower. A killer is targeting officers and Boyle is sent to quietly clean things up.

Shock Wave by John Sandford. Minnesota.

Trackers by Deon Meyer. Meyer was also at Bouchercon. I congratulated him on his novel Blood Safari.

Thirteen House by Deon Meyer. Meyer is a big, tall dude. His English seemed pretty dang good so I wonder why he writes in Afrikaans and has his work translated by someone else.

Headhunters by Jo Nesbo. Recommended by Anthony Neil Smith who is teaching our writing workshop this November. At least I think it was Nesbo. Some Scandinavian guy anyway.

Doverkeepers by Alice Hoffman. Cover has a long-haired girl with a dove on each shoulder.

Prey by Linda Howard. We have two copies because one was donated. That is dandy since this novel has plenty of holds.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Another copy.

October Fest by Jess Lourey. Presidential debate at Octoberfest ends in murder.

Murder Unleashed by Rita Mae Brown. Some sort of dog mystery.

13 Million Dollar Pop by David Levien. I met Levien at Bouchercon too. Levien writes a lot of screenplays. I asked what they were and I have seen none of the flicks. I made fun of him. He was good guy.

Heirloom Murders by Kathleen Ernst. Wisconsin author. Wisconsin setting. Wisconsin murder.

Police and Thieves by James Patrick Hunt. Earlier Hunt books have proved popular here.

DVD: Violence, Bodybuilding, Cars, Talking Beaver, Bad Parenting

DVD

Hanna starring Saoirse Ronan and Eric Bana. Girl is raised in rural Finland by her father to be an assassin. I was an short-term exchange student to Finland after high school. We drove to a museum in Helsinki and I spent most of the checking out the girls.




Thor starring Guy With a Hammer. Guy With A Hammer hurts hedonistic heathens with hammering.



Incendies starring French Canadians. Dying mother asks kids to travel to Middle East. Family mystery.



Fast Five starring [same people as last time] and Dwayne Johnson. Car chases! Machine guns! Bikinis! Posturing! One liners! Brazil!



The Beaver starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. Guy has a mental breakdown and can only talk by using a beaver hand puppet.



Everything Must Go starring Will Ferrell. Guy's wife ejects him from his house and puts everything on the lawn. Guy has a yard sale. This looks like it might be way too "learns an important lesson about life"-y.



Win Win starring Paul Giamatti and Alex Shaffer. High school wrestling.

Cruel Teenage Fighter Pilots Head to Space in Tweed

NonFiction

Classic Fighters: the inside story by Ray Bonds. "Inside story" is a pun. Each entry has "incredibly detailed cutaway drawings" of each plane. I keep mixing up plane and plain. I think the early days of each style of aircraft are neat. The WWI planes and the early days of jets.

Space by Andrew Chaiken. Coffee table book with great photos and text of space flight and history. My sons add guns onto their Lego Space Shuttle. "Pow! Pssh! K-sh!"

Tweed: more than 20 contemporary designs to knit by Nancy J. Thomas. Two models in the whole book with a gal and a guy who forgot to shave.

Why Good Kids Act Cruel: the hidden truth about the pre-teen years by Carl Pickhardt, PhD. Early adolescence is a phase of anxiety, of uncertainty, of insecurity. To make matters worse, although all kids are going through the same transformation, none of them share what it is like, each feeling alone, isolated, and unique. The result is that even fantastic kids will do and say harmful things.

What Do You Expect? She's A Teenager!: a hope and happiness guide for moms with daughters ages 11-19 by Arden Greenspan-Goldberg. Yeah, no kidding. I've worked with teenage girls at the library but having them at home must be very difficult at times.