House Trained - A Review

 * I received this ebook at no charge from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review *

Opening line … “This morning I overheard my husband talking to his penis.”  Hmmm ... what had I gotten myself in for with this read?

Alex and Barry – to all appearances a happily married couple; childless by choice, they own a lovely home (decorated – several times – by Alex, the interior designer) and dote lavishly on their much loved and very well trained dog, Marie (named by Alex – after Marie Curie).  Although they are happily married each has their own secrets.  Alex is trying to get her fledgling business off the ground, which is not going as well as she has led Barry to believe and Barry was talking to his penis because he had something he desperately has to tell Alex.

Soon enough, Barry’s secret comes walking through the front door of their home in the form of a daughter Barry did not know he had, carrying a granddaughter that is even more of a surprise.  She’s in a bit of a bind and needs help.  

Enjoying and spoiling their nieces and nephews is one thing, but having agreed not to have children of their own, can Alex cope with this stranger who now calls her husband “dad”?

Having always felt like a second choice after “the love of his life” left him, can Alex embrace this daughter Jade gave birth to?

Can Alex keep her business afloat with the chaos going on at home?

It is certainly a bumpy road and the only one seemingly able to roll with the changes is Marie … she embraces everyone with a wagging tail and sloppy licks.  Maybe the people around her should take a lesson from that?  And when things take a (admittedly heavily foreshadowed) turn for the worse, Marie shows that love, a big heart and some bravery can save the day.

This is the first book I have read by Jackie Bouchard.  She herself refers to her books as “Fido-friendly fiction; humorous and heartwarming stories about women and the dogs that profoundly impact their lives.”  This book certainly lives up to that description and although I found it a light, easy to read book there are a lot of life-themes buried in the pages as well.  I often paused for a bit wondering about the choices Alex made and that  left me asking myself what would I do? 

I think this book would make a perfect summer read.  It was a well written, entertaining story that I enjoyed enough that I have another book by Ms. Bouchard waiting on my virtual shelf.

This book is scheduled for release October 20, 2015.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from her website)

Jackie is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author.  She spent a long time as a creative soul trapped in the body of a practical person. When she was bitten by the writing bug, she managed to leap free of the hamster wheel of corporate America, and now spends her days walking her dog, talking to her dog, and listening for the voices in her head that want their stories told. When the voices don’t talk to her, she can often be found staring into the refrigerator.

After growing up in Southern California, Jackie moved to Bermuda, where she met her husband. Now back in San Diego, American Jackie, her Canadian hubby, and her Mexican rescue mutt form their own happy little United Nations. Jackie’s novels include HOUSE TRAINED (Lake Union, 2015), RESCUE ME, MAYBE, and WHAT THE DOG ATE.

I couldn’t resist including this quote also from her website because it made me chuckle …

“Hi, I'm Jackie Bouchard: lover of books (both writing and reading them) and dogs and laughter. In fact, one of my favorite quotes involves all three: Groucho Marx said, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." You can tell Groucho was around before e-readers. You could actually read inside of a dog if you were using, say, an iPad. It would have to be a pretty big dog though.” 

Adult Coloring Book Freebie

The tag line reads "Rediscover your Creativity".

There are many kinds of creativity and I like to think that I have a varied assortment of creative talents.  However, I am also quite realistic about the fact that art and drawing are DEFINITELY NOT where my talents lie.  I admire people who can draw and paint and sculpt, I can quite happily lose myself in art galleries and museums for hours on end and I have a bucket list of works of art I would like to see in person.  I'm an "Appreciator"!

Truth be told, I was one of those moms who would have a mini panic attack if one of my girls came up to me and said "Mommy, can you draw me a puppy?"  I would have to admit, "No Sweetie, Mommy has a hard time drawing stick people."

But coloring?  Now that's another story.  I can certainly color with the best of them and spent many happy times coloring with my girls when they were little.  So it has not escaped my attention that lately there have been a significant number of "Adult Coloring Books" on the market.  Hmmm ... interesting concept I thought to myself.  Have I bought one?  No, because quite frankly I have enough things in my life that I can do to waste use up my precious time.  Will I buy one?  Probably, but only as a gift for that person that "has everything" or is "difficult to buy for".

In the recent issue of  "Shelf Awareness for Readers" (a weekly e-zine - free subscription HERE) they had an offer for a free downloadable sample package of pages from Perigee's adult coloring books.  Really, how could I resist?  I loaded a couple of pages of card stock into my printer and printed them out.  There are 8 pages of pictures that range from pretty simple looking to pretty darn complicated looking (to me anyway).  In the wise words of George R.R. Martin, "winter is coming", so I'll tuck them away and maybe pull one or two out some dark winter night to try while watching a movie?

If you're a frustrated artist (like me) or just like free stuff (like me) or are just curious before buying one of these books (like me) ... This is the LINK to the download.

HAPPY COLORING!!


Aw crap ... now I have to go and buy crayons and markers.

The Little Detective Agency - 2 Reviews

PAW AND ORDER by Spencer Quinn.

Chet and Bernie of the Little Detective Agency travel to Washington to visit Bernie’s girlfriend Suzie Sanchez.  Hoping to smooth over some “misunderstandings” the couple are having, Bernie and Chet arrive unannounced – probably not a good thing – they arrive at Suzie’s only to discover her having an intimate looking chat with debonair Englishman, Eben St. John.  Jealousy rears its ugly head until Suzie explains that St. John is her source for an international story she is investigating.  Chet and Bernie rarely turn down a case, literally having one land in their laps while on vacation, is something they had not planned on – but how could they walk away from this one when the next day St. John turns up quite dead and Bernie’s fingerprints are all over the murder weapon?

As usual Chet is on top of things from the get go, spotting the unusual bird with the red eyes almost immediately.  It takes Bernie a little longer to catch up … of course having landed in jail didn’t help.

Also, as usual Chet the dog narrates this 7^th installment in the Chet and Bernie Mystery series and as usual he “is not the most reliable of narrators”.  As quick as he is about noticing clues he is just as quick to get sidetracked and lose his train of thought. 

I have enjoyed this series from the time I read “Dog On It”.  Admittedly at first I thought it was a novel idea to have the dog as the narrator and found the story entertaining enough, but rated it only as “Like it”.  Many series start to lose steam as the author continues to pump out story after story, but Mr. Quinn’s books seem to do the opposite.  I find they are becoming more interesting as the series progresses.  Is this just because I am totally enamored of Chet?  Possibly!  But they are still a fun read with a more than decent story line. 

SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY by Spencer Quinn.

Happy to be home after their long road trip, Bernie and Chet are looking forward to some down time. Chet, as usual whenever he reenters the house begins his sniff and search – just to make sure everything is at it should be.  Bernie is a little confused when Chet begins clawing at the wall in is office, until further investigation shows his wall safe has been removed, and with it, his prized possission – his grandfather’s pocket watch.  Just as he begins to try to unravel that puzzle their elderly neighbour, Mr. Parson’s is outside and quite agitated because his being investigated for illegal possession of the Saguaro cactus which has been transplanted into his front yard.  Strange as it may seem the two incidents turn out to be related.

Looking into the case pro-bono (which always worries Chet because of “their finances”) they discover it all stems back to a suspicious kidnapping case that happened many year ago.

Not only that, but the reader is FINALLY given the answers to what happened on that no-so-long-ago night that Chet leapt the gate and had an unexpected tryst.

Once again Chet does a fine job of not only helping to solve the mystery but also in narrating the adventure from his canine point of view.  In my humble opinion this is the best entry yet in Mr. Quinn’s series.

One small paragraph in the book made me once again appreciate Chet’s simple view of problem solving and had me thinking that maybe people could take a page out of Chet’s book …

“Bernie looked over at me in surprise.  “Growling?” he said.  “What’s that about?  You mad at me?”

Whoa!  Mad at Bernie?  What could that possibly mean?  I was mad because … because … nothing came to mind.  Meaning I was mad at nothing, which had to mean I wasn’t mad.  There!  All better.  I rested my paw on Bernie’s leg, just to let him know we were cool.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from his website)

As a boy, I read voraciously, almost anything I could get my hands on, but I enjoyed adventure stories the most. I wasn’t one of those unhappy kids who loses himself in books. I was a pretty happy kid who did it. We had a summer cottage in Quebec. My grandmother would come up on weekends, bringing me a kind of popcorn I liked and a stack of books. There would be famous ones, like Treasure Island, and not-so-famous ones, like Red Pete the Ruthless. I can still recall the last scene of that one – Red Pete, buried up to the neck between the high and low tide lines, surrounded by his stolen gold, waves lapping closer. Can’t you just hear the hiss of the bubbles?

I was also interested in words themselves. Probably like you, I hated to stop reading if I thought I’d pretty much understood a new word from the context, but some persnickety thing in me usually insisted I look it up. (“Persnickety,” for example, seems to derive from the Scots dialect. Nice to find out I’ve got some Scot in me, probably a surprise to my family.)

I began by writing stand-alones, meaning non-series novels – such as Lights Out, The Fan (filmed by Tony Scott, with a cast including Robert De Niro), Oblivion, and End of Story. It was during this period that Stephen King – uh-oh! I just came close to quoting from my own reviews. Wasn’t I brought up better than that?

It wasn’t until my wife said, “You should do something with dogs,” that I finally stumbled on the idea of writing detective novels from the POV of the gumshoe’s dog. Not a talking dog! He’s as canine as I could make him. I refer to Chet, the narrator of the Chet and Bernie series. Chet’s a supremely unreliable narrator, and it’s a lot of fun to let him loose in the strict plot confines of detective fiction. The Chet and Bernie books (Bernie is the detective) are for adults, although a lot of teens seem to be reading them. For middle-schoolers, I’m writing the Bowser and Birdie series, with Woof coming out in May 2015.
What else? Did I leave anything out?

(Well – webmaster here – how about the fact Spencer Quinn is the pen name for Peter Abrahams, Quinn handling all the dog-narrated material? And is it okay to mention winning an Edgar Allen Poe award for Reality Check, best young adult mystery, 2010, and an Agatha for Down the Rabbit Hole, best young adult mystery, 2006?) 

I’d prefer you didn’t.

ABOUT HIS RESEARCH TEAM (from the website)

I live on Cape Cod with my wife – all the kids up and grown now – and dogs Audrey (the black one in the photo, a wonderful year-round swimmer) and Pearl (who may dip a delicate paw into the water on a warm afternoon). Dogs are a big part of our life and there’s no way I could have written the Chet and Bernie books or Bowser and Birdie without them. Audrey and Pearl are the kind of researchers writers dream of, showing up every day and working for treats.

A Dog's View of Books

“Ellie was doing all right in my book, although I had no books at the moment, and had really only possessed one in my life, much too briefly; namely an extremely tasty leather-bound volume that I’d sniffed out at the home of a – judge, was it? – where Bernie and I’d been invited to a big, noisy party.  I myself spent a quiet evening, curled up behind a couch with my book.  A very pleasant memory to this day!  And if things had gone down-hill later – some back-and-forth about first editions and Mark Twain autographs, whatever those happened to be – why let it spoil things?  That’s one of my core beliefs.”

Chet the Dog

in "Scents and Sensibility"

Sunday - A Story in Pictures

HBO Adopts Big Bird

TODAY'S BLOG POST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS H, B, AND O

One of these things is not like the other,

One of these things is not the same.

Can you tell which thing is not like the other,

Now its time to play our game.

I heard it announced on television this morning that HBO is the new home of Sesame Street.  I understand the financial side of the deal … “Sesame Workshop”, the non-profit organization behind the production of “Sesame Street” needs a cash infusion to remain functional and obviously it is not going to hurt HBO’s bottom line to have what is probably the most recognizable children’s television show in their lineup, but somehow, something about this does not sit right with me?

Okay, I am the first person to admit that I do not like change, but Sesame Street began in 1969 in response to a study that found although preschool children watched an average of 27 hours of television per week, programs available at the time were considered too violent or commercial; or too simplistic to hold their attention.  Many of the children’s programs were produced on a local level.

I remember a television show called “Romper Room” that was on a local television station when I was a youngster – it fit the typical style of children’s program’s at the time – a simple, one-camera-eye view of a “classroom” filled with children and a “teacher” reading from story books and showing pictures, followed by some simple activities and a guest appearance by Mr. DoBee (do bee a good girl, do bee a mommy’s helper, etc.)

Of course, the children were all impeccably dressed, attractive and well-behaved.  There was no Oscar the Grouch in that little group.

Then Joan Ganz Cooney walked into the arena of children’s programming pronouncing it “a wasteland”. 

In 2010 I enjoyed and reviewed a book called “Street Gang” by Michael Davis.  In his book he explains that Ms. Ganz, with her knowledge and research into developmental psychology, understood that changes in early childhood education could increase children’s success level when they enter the school system.  Unfortunately, children from low-income families did not have the resources to prepare them for school.

 

From this stemmed Sesame Street; a program that had a low-key set, short educational vignettes that would hold the child’s attention span, was super colorful and had a neighborhood setting and characters children could relate to without regard to race, economic level or family dynamic.

  

Ms. Ganz led a valiant fight to bring Sesame Street to fruition so on November 10^th, 1969 the first episode of Sesame Street aired on public broadcasting.  Public broadcasting is available to a wide variety of households of various social and economic levels.  I know I do not include HBO in my cable package because of the extra expense, so will this leave a large number of children … those who would benefit the most from Sesame Street … without the program?  No.  Sesame will still air on PBS but with new episodes airing 9 months after they are shown on HBO.  Not a great tragedy, but is it necessary to make that distinction?

I like to think that my time investment of reading to my daughters, coloring with them and playing “learning games” helped them when they got to the scary world of kindergarten as well as helping them become adults who enjoy reading, but I fully admit that in a pinch – don’t judge – Sesame Street was an ideal, temporary babysitter.  I have to give Sesame Street it’s due in helping my girls “learn” before they entered the hallowed halls of formal education.

I certainly hope moving the show to HBO will not deprive a new generation of falling in love with the residents of “Sesame Street”.

And of course, in writing this blog post I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that, despite the news being not yet 24 hours old, the memes and tweets have started to flow fast and furiously.

  

Ya' know what they do to rats on HBO

Crimson Shore - A Review

CRIMSON SHORE by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

* I received this ebook at no charge from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review *

Once again we join A.X.L. Pendergast and his ward Constance Greene as they are enjoying a quite evening at 891 Riverside Drive.  Once again the doorbell rings, “the rarest of occurrences at the Pendergast mansion”.  As faithful readers of the series recall – last time this happened it was certainly a harbinger of bad things to come.  As Proctor answers the door Agent Pendergast gives the strict order NOT to let the person in.  He has a change of heart when he hears it is the reknown sculptor, Percival Lake.  Mr. Lake has come to make a rather strange request; to hire Agent Pendergast to act as a private investigator for a recent theft of an entire wine collection from his home in Exmouth, Mass.  Pendergast refuses at first until he hears that Mr. Lake is still in possession of an entire case of “Haut-Braquilanges ‘04”.  In exchange for a bottle of this rare vintage Pendergast agrees to look into the crime.

Seems simple enough at first – but is anything ever as simple as it seems when Aloysius Pendergast is involved in the case?  Throw in a secret chamber behind the wine cellar, shackles, an overlooked finger bone, drizzly and foggy salt marshes, a mysterious 17^th century shipwreck, proximity to Salem and its witch stories, a couple of murders plus a swamp-monster legend and a simple wine theft becomes so much more.

This is the 15^th book in the Pendergast series and “Crimson Shore” is a little different from the previous entries.  The usual cast of characters is not present – it’s Aloysius and Constance working the case on their own.  The last few books had Constance Greene taking on a slightly different role from the meek and reserved young woman readers have come to know.  This takes that transformation one step further and (is it possible) she may even be able to “out investigate” Agent Pendergast?  Time will tell!  Personally I like Constance Greene and am very happy to see even more of her in this book.

As fans of the series know these books have to be read with one foot firmly planted in the murky waters of the extraordinary.  Again, “Crimson Shore” is no exception.  I have to say it was certainly a page-turner.  Since this book does not release until November 2015 I do not want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that the ending raises as many questions as it answers and I definitely see another Pendergast book to enjoy in the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) (from their Facebook page)

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are coauthors of the bestselling novels "Relic," "Mount Dragon," "Reliquary," Riptide," "Thunderhead," "The Ice Limit," "The Cabinet of Curiosities," "Still Life with Crows," "Brimstone," "Dance of Death," "The Book of the Dead," "The Wheel of Darkness," "Cemetery Dance, "Fever Dream," "Gideon's Sword," Cold Vengeance, and the latest (out 1/10/12) "Gideon's Corpse."

Preston’s bestselling nonfiction book, "The Monster of Florence," is being made into a major motion picture. His interests include horses, scuba diving, skiing, and exploring the Maine coast in an old lobster boat.

Lincoln Child is a former book editor who has published four bestselling novels of his own. He is passionate about motorcycles, exotic parrots, and nineteenth-century English literature.