Comic Book Stuff, Badgers

NonFiction

What It Means to Be A Badger: Barry Alvarez and Wisconsin's greatest players by Justin Doherty. University of Wisconsin football? Or badgers?

Clark Howard's Living in Lean Times by Clark Howard. Financial advice on "250+ ways to buy smarter, spend smarter, and save money."

Comic Books

Superman Grounded by Eddy Barrows and G. Willow Wilson.

Star Wars Omnibus: a long time ago - Volume 4 by David Michilinie.

Comics on DVD

Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively. Some guy gets a magic ring from space.

Two Audiobooks, Local Flavor

Audiobooks on CD

Northwest Angle by William Kent Krueger. 10 CDs at 12 hours. Mystery in the north woods.

Litigators by John Grisham. 9 CDs at 11.5 hours. Mystery at a legal firm.

Local Flavor

The downtown Witches Night Out was Wednesday, October 26th. The library ran out of candy twice. The first time we started out with about 300 pieces. I told the Children's Librarian that was not enough. Vindication! After those first pieces ran out I sent a Page to the store for more candy.





That kid in the camouflage looks like he is making one of his, "Hmph" sounds.









Best Weimaraner ever. Look at those ears!

Power Outage This Monday

Power Outage

A sand filled dump truck snapped a utility pole on Monday morning. The library was without power for about four hours.

Stanley Kubrick Reprint, Seasonal Novel

DVD

The Killing starring Sterling Hayden. 1956 noir flick of a racetrack robbery. Scripted by novelist Jim Thompson. Also includes Kubrick's 1955 picture, Killer's Kiss.



Fiction

Litigators by John Grisham. Lawyers do lawyering.

A Christmas Homecoming by Anne Perry. Another Victorian murder.

Blessings by Anna Quindlen. This book was published 2002. I'm notputting this in the New Books section. This is a paperback donation we decided to add.

AudioBook on CD

Drama: an actor's education by John Lithgow. 9 CDs at 10.3 hours.

"Gerard, doesn't this sound fascinating?! Introduced a budding young actor to the undeniable power of the theatre!"
"No."

Missed One About Kettlebells

NonFiction

Kettlebell Training for Athletes by Dave Bellomo. The guy model demonstrating the exercises does not have a shirt on but the gal models do. I read that some practitioners with advanced skills will grease the kettlebell grip for more challenge.

Uninspiring Pile of Books and Audiobooks

Fiction

The Mercy by Beverly Lewis. Typical cover with a good looking model dressed Amish-like with head scarf.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett. Pratchett is English.

Bonnie by Iris Joahnsen. Johansen has a posed studio shot for her author photo.

Lady of the Rivers by Phillipa Gregory. I do not order many fantasy and Sci-Fi titles because they do not circulate well. High school kids read a lot of Sci-Fi but not from here.

Christmas Wedding by James Patterson and Richard DiLallo. The Patterson factory continues to boost production.

Large Print

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar. Father and son refugees in Egypt. Dad goes missing.

Audiobooks on CD

The Cut by George Pelecanos. 6 CD at 7.5 hours. Pelecanos is a "writer's writer". Blah blah blah.

Blessing by Ann H. Gabhart. 11 CDs at 13 hours. Some sort of story.

Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. 10 CDs at 12.5 hours. Death. Blood. Miami. You know the drill.

Other

Last Soccer Game by Saturday Morning. Last soccer game for K-1st Grade is tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll force the kids to go somewhere "educational" afterwards.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

DVD

Spartacus: blood and sand: the complete first season starring Lucy Lawless, John Hannah. Alternate titles considered were:
Spartacus: guys with no shirts
Spartacus: the return of Lucy Lawless
Spartacus: where is Gabrielle?
Spartacus: what about Ted Raimi?
Spartacus: will Hannah bring any mummies?
Spartacus: CGI gone wild

Spartacus, Comic Book Novel, Large Print

Fiction

Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning. Monster hunting.

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks. Sparks just bought another yacht.

The Infernals by John Connolly. I still cannot keep these Connolly/Connelly guys straight. This is the Irish one. "an angry demon is seeking revenge for Samuel's part in foiling the invasion of Earth by the forces of evil." Connolly just bought a platinum cigar humidor.

As the Pig Turns by M.C. Beaton. Beaton just bought another gold faucet.

Comic Book Novel

Isle of 100,000 Graves by Jason. Girl finds treasure map and hopes to find vanished father, horror ensues. Jason just bought a sandwich.

Large Print

Killing the Blues by Robert B. Parker's Estate. The Estate lawyer just had a steak dinner.

Son of Stone by Stuart Woods. Woods just hired a full-time pilot for his private jet.

New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb. Robb just bought Nora Roberts a new Mercedes.

1225 Christmas Tree by Debbie Macomber. Macomber just bought ponies for all the kids in the neighborhood.

NonFiction

State of Wisconsin Blue Book, 2011-2012. Why did I list this at all?

Another Bouchercon Freebie, Charlie Stella, Gigdet

Fiction

Trail of Blood by Lisa Black. Another freebie paperback from the "goodie bag" at Bouchercon. I don't know if Lisa Black attended. Cara Black was there. I know because I read her name tag. I said nothing to her.

Crime Factory: the first shift stories by Charlie Stella, Scott Wolven, others. Short stories from the online magazine devoted to short crime fiction. At least I think it is devoted to short crime fiction. (Don't expect extensive fact-checking on this blog.) Charlie Stella is always worth reading. I read Wolven's Controlled Burn and liked it a lot. Wolven has a new book releasing soon entitled False Hopes.

EDIT: I just looked at Stella's webpage and he has a novel slated for 2012 entitled, Rough Riders.

DVD

Gigdet: the complete series starring Sister Bertrille. Someone donated this story about a young surfer girl who falls in love with Burt Reynolds but is stricken ill by osteoporosis.

Seven Large Print and One Raymond Benson Novel

Fiction

Black Stiletto by Raymond Benson. Man discovers his dead mother's diaries that show she may have been the 1950s vigilante named Black Stiletto. I spoke with Benson at the Random House party I keep mentioning. He said the majority of his fan mail is still for the James Bond novels he used to write.

Large Print

Summer in the South by Cathy Holton.

Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton.

Second Nature by Jacqueline Mitchard.

Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas.

Lassiter by Paul Levine. Nope, not a western.

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache.

Wife-In-Law by Haywood Smith.

Season 16 of Top Gear on DVD

DVD

Top Gear: 16 with [Three English guys] and cars. My oldest son loves this show so much. He has been watching an episode from Series 10 over and over.



Bridesmaids starring Kristen Wiig, other people. Something to do with preparing for a wedding. I think.

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.

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.

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.

An Event of Cultural Interest

Jefferson County Dairy Breakfast

I forgot about the video files from this event. I stuck them together.

Sight and Sound

Sight

Blitz starring Jason Statham, Paddy Considine. London cop Brant cracks heads while hunting a killer. Based off the Ken Bruen books. Bruen's Brant is a feared cop among both crooks and cops and his work and personal activities cover both sides of the law.



Sound

1225 Christmas Tree Lane by Debbie Macomber. 5 CDs at 6 hours. Cover has three dogs in a basket. As if those dogs would actually stay in the basket.

The Accident by Linwood Barclay. 11 CDs at 12.33 hours. I was sure I spoke to Barclay at a Bouchercon party hosted by Random House. I just saw Barclay's photo and it was not the same guy. I must have gotten his name mixed up.

Justice by Karen Robards. 10 CDs at 11.5 hours.

Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen. Another Rizzoli and Isles novel. 9 CDs at 10 hours.

Area 51: an uncensored history of America's top secret history base by Annie Jacobsen. 15 CDs at 16.25 hours.

What to Read 44: Chasing the Devil by David Reichert

What to Read

Chasing the Devil: my twenty year quest to capture the Green River Killer by David Reichert.