DEBlog

Barclay, Linwood: Stone Rain

Bantam © 2007, 480 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

In Linwood Barclay's fourth novel featuring trepid newspaper writer Zack Walker, Zack falls into two dangerous situations. His friend Trixie Snelling, accountant turned dominatrix, calls asking for help with a reporter who's been buzzing around her for a story. For reasons that later become clear, she's terrified of having her picture printed in the paper. And Zack's son Paul takes a job as a fry cook, only to discover that the trio of muscular Slavic women running the burger joint are serving up E. coli with their fries. The two threads of the story eventually combine, with both sets of bad guys intent on killing or maiming Zack, albeit with very different weapons. As usual, Zack's tendency to fall into trouble and not come clean about it soon enough also gets him in hot water at home. But what's unusual about this book is that the main story is punctuated by chapters detailing Trixie's colorful back story. This is necessary for our understanding, but for me these were the low points of the book. Frankly, I don't find Trixie a very interesting or sympathetic character. She's made a number of mistakes in her life that have put her friends and family in danger. And while one can try to exonerate her by saying that she was forced into them by her situation, well, she really wasn't. Given at various times in life a choice of two directions to take, she has invariably made the worse choice. So, I don't really care what happens to her. Barclay, however, tells a great story, and he ties up the various strands of the plot very neatly at the end. Still, if there's to be another Zack Walker novel, I'd prefer that the troubles Zack faces be closer to home. And, generally speaking, the more we see of Zack's friend, the enigmatic private eye Lawrence Jones, the better (provided that he, unlike Trixie in this outing, remains enigmatic).

Barclay, Linwood: Lone Wolf

Bantam © 2006, 464 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

Linwood Barclay's third book featuring feature writer Zack Walker is unlike the first two in some ways. In Bad Move and Bad Guys the trouble that Zack unwittingly finds himself in is closer to home: his wife and children are threatened directly, and to an extent matters are exacerbated by Zack's tendency to worry over much about safety issues. In Lone Wolf Zack hightails it up to his father's fishing lodge upon hearing that a man has been mauled by a bear on his father's property. Once arrived, Zack finds himself compelled to stay for a few days and take care of his father's business. But that's all the time Zack needs to land in the customary hot water--though this time around Zack's tendency to worry excessively doesn't really come into play: the small town is riven by a controversy involving the participation of a gay and lesbian coalition in an upcoming parade; the Barney Fife-ish local sheriff is not up to the task of investigating a murder; and a family of Timothy McVeigh-worshipping wackos is renting a house from Zack's father. There are personal issues to deal with as well: this book may not be centered on Zack's wife and kids, but it is concerned with family. Happily, private eye Lawrence Jones, whom we first met in Bad Guys, sweeps into town in his shiny blue Jaguar to help Zack sort things out.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Crossword: Toasting the New Year

Here are the theme-related clues to this week's Sunday New York Times crossword.

ACROSS
1 Common toast
12 Sounds accompanying toasts
25 Purported cry from 100-Across upon discovering this puzzle's subject
75 Alternative to 1-Across
77 Connoisseur of this puzzle's subject
100 See 25-Across

DOWN
34 100-Across, for one
39 Cry before "Happy New Year!"


THE ANSWERS
UR PVEPYRQ YRGGREF FCRYY BHG 'OHOOYRF' NAQ 'PUNZCNTAR.'

1 PURREF
12 PYVAXF
25 V NZ QEVAXVAT GUR FGNEF
75 OBGGBZF HC
77 JVAR YBIRE
100 QBZ CVREER CREVTABA

QBJA
34 ORARQVPGVAR ZBAX
39 VG'F GJRYIR B'PYBPX



The answers are encrypted. To decrypt them, select whichever ones you want to see, throw them into the Crossword Decrypting Widget below, and hit the red button:

Barclay, Linwood: Bad Guys

Bantam © 2005, 448 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

Linwood Barclay's Bad Guys takes up where his 2004 novel Bad Move left off. After a disasterous foray into suburban living, Zack Walker has moved his family back to the city. He's now a feature writer for the local paper, and he's working on a story about ex-cop turned private eye Lawrence Jones. Together they've been staking out high-end mens' clothing shops, which have been the target of a spate of recent robberies. The gig with Lawrence, his family's need for a second car, and his daughter's insistence that she is being stalked by a trench coat-wearing admirer combine into a storm of troubles. Barclay's Bad Guys is another great read from an author who's quickly becoming a favorite. The plot is tight, and there's a perfect mix of action and Zack's thoughts, which explain why he makes the choices he makes. Readers should probably read Bad Move before starting this book, as it provides background about the anxieties which inform much of Zack's behavior, but it not essential to do so.

Weekly Set Puzzle Challenge: December 26

It's Saturday, which means it's time for the deblog's Weekly Set Puzzle Challenge! (View a list of winners of the Weekly Set Puzzle Challenge here.)

This week's scores:

• Debra -- 1:36
• Karen -- 0:47
• Maxine -- 2:13

How to participate:

1. Play the theoretically simple yet maddeningly difficult Set Puzzle. (Remember, the clock starts ticking the moment you open the Set window.)
2. Post your time in the comments to this post.
3. The winner for the week gets to hoist the much-coveted winner's badge.
   This should be posted in a blog post rather than on your sidebar, say,
   because, after all, your time to bask in the glory of the win is likely
   to be ephemeral.

How to post the badge? Some possibilities:

a. Download the badge to your own space and link thereto.

b. Include this code in your post:

<br/><a<br/>href="http://www.the-deblog.com/set_puzzle_weekly_challenge/index.html"><img<br/>src="http://dhamel.typepad.com/images/setduelwinner.gif&"<br/>/></a><br/>

c. Alternatively, you're not obliged to post it. This is all in fun, after all.

Seuss, Dr.: How the Grinch Stole Christmas [TSS]

Oceanhouse Media © 2009

Note: Review copy received from publisher.

This isn't a review of the Dr. Seuss classic per se but of an edition of the book for the iPhone/iPod Touch just released by Oceanhouse Media. The book can be downloaded from the iTunes app store for (currently) $3.99. When you enter the app you arrive at a welcome screen that offers two alternatives: you can either have the book read to you or read it yourself. If you choose the former option, a pleasant, expressive male voice with an English accent will read the current page. The words in the text turn red as he says them, so young readers can follow along. The pages don't turn automatically, but one swipes right to left or left to right to go forward or back in the text. If you select the read it yourself option, a reader who is stuck on a word can still choose to have that page read to them: you just touch the text and the same narrator will read that page's content. Again, the words will turn red as the narrator reads them.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Crossword: Inside Dope

Here are the theme-related clues to this week's Sunday New York Times crossword.

ACROSS
23 It has a large canopy
25 Average Joes
35 Republicans in 2008
55 Busboy's assignment
78 Stop a trip?
96 Rafael Nadal specialty
112 Expect, everything considered
114 Unite

ANSWERS

RNPU BS GUR NAFJREF UNF GUR JBEQ 'VASB' VA VG.

23 ENVA SBERFG
25 CYNVA SBYXF
35 ZPPNVA SBYYBJREF
55 ANCXVA SBYQVAT
78 ERTNVA SBBGVAT
96 GBCFCVA SBERUNAQ
112 ONETNVA SBE
114 WBVA SBEPRF


The answers are encrypted. To decrypt them, select whichever ones you want to see, throw them into the Crossword Decrypting Widget below, and hit the red button:

The Amazon Kindle, after 5 months of ownership [TSS]

My Kindle 2 arrived on July 20th of 2009 (see "My Kindle Come! Initial Thoughts...."), so today marks its five-month anniversary. Since then I've read 18 books on it plus a lot of parts of books--free samples of books I decided not to read or went on to read in hard copy because I had them sitting on my shelves already. One of the 18 was a Kindle-only novella, so I don't know what its corresponding page count would be. But I actually looked this up and the total number of pages of the other 17 books--counting trade paperback versions where possible and hardcover if not--is 6,122 (an average of 360.12 pages per book, and about two thousand pages more than all the Harry Potter books put together.). So that's 6122 pages that were never printed and bound and carted around and, most importantly from my perspective, 6122 pages that aren't now taking up room on my already crowded shelves. Here are the seventeen books I don't need space for:


Five months in and I'm finding myself liking the reading experience on the Kindle as much or more than ever. In particular, I've discovered that reading on it while exercising on a treadmill is a great experience. The exercise time flies by, one is doubly constructive, and the hassles of propping up a bound book and somehow holding the pages open simply don't exist. I in fact prefer reading books on the Kindle now because it's ergonomically more pleasant, because I can exercise while doing it, because I can change the font size at will, and because I don't have a physical book to deal with after the fact. I wish all the books on my TBR shelves were instead on my Kindle.

After six days of ownership of the Kindle I wrote a bunch of pros and cons of the device in a blog post. If I were to address the same issues now, I'd say:

• I've gotten used to navigating the menus with the five-way controller and no longer find it very clunky. I believe navigation has also sped up since the release of the most recent version of the...firmware, I guess it is.
• The experimental web browser is still an unpleasant experience, but I just don't use it very much.
• I no longer worry about opening the Kindle case the wrong way and possibly cracking the plastic housing of my Kindle because I put a bit of velcro between the case and the back of the machine. A simple fix, and it's sufficient to keep me from making a mistake.
• I'd still like to see cover art on the home page.

The Kindle and review copies

I'm hoping that at some point Amazon and publishers will get together and figure out a way to send out review copies via Kindle. It seems to me that it should be possible. I would propose this: Amazon sells the publishers a bunch of one-use coupon codes. The publisher gives a potential reviewer a coupon code to download the book for free from Amazon. Perhaps that code could be linked to a particular email address, perhaps it doesn't matter. Either way, once it's used, the coupon no longer works, so it's only one digital copy that's used.* Amazon makes some money from this. The publishers spend some money, but surely less than they have to spend by having ARCs published and shipped at great expense to reviewers who may or may not review the books. And for what it's worth there are no ARCs out in the wild reducing the numbers of copies of the books that will be sold.

* After writing this I in fact received a coupon code to download an iPhone app for free from the iTunes store. Worked like a charm.

Barclay, Linwood: Fear the Worst

Bantam © 2009, 416 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

This is the third book I've read by Linwood Barclay, and I'm beginning to think that I should forego all responsibilities for a time and allow myself to tear through his entire oeuvre in a breathless few weeks of pure pleasure reading. Fear the Worst is a fantastic read: pure suspense, great plotting, a perfect page-turner. (Or in my case, a perfect next page clicker, since I read this one on the Kindle, much of the time while exercising on a treadmill: I surely walked farther than I would have without this stimulation.) As for the plot: Tim Blake is a car salesman and the divorced father of a 17-year-old, Sydney, who's staying with him for the summer. She goes off to work one day at the desk of a small hotel in Milford, Connecticut, and doesn't come home. When he goes to the hotel to find out where she is he's told that she never worked there. Thus it begins: Tim throws himself into the task of trying to find Sydney and discovers that the explanation for her disappearance is far more complicated than he could have imagined. Meanwhile, the police aren't much help, since they seem to be looking at him as a suspect. Eventually, going rogue seems to be Tim's only option, so that by book's end he's running not only from the bad guys but from the police. False leads and false friends complicate his investigation, but eventually all is revealed in a tense ending which, however, does feel a little too rushed. Other than that slight misgiving, I've got nothing to complain about.

Grafton, Sue: "A" is for Alibi

St. Martin's © 2008 (orig. pub. 1982), 320 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

Sue Grafton's 1982 novel "A" is for Alibi introduces her series featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhouse. In her debut, Kinsey is hired by Nikki Fife, who was recently released from jail after serving eight years for poisoning her husband with oleander. Lawrence Fife was by most accounts a bastard: a merciless lawyer, an unfaithful husband. But Nikki didn't kill him, or so she says. And looking into the case, Kinsey discovers that Lawrence wasn't't the only person to die of oleander poisoning eight years earlier.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Goldberg, Lee: Mr. Monk Goes to Germany

Signet © 2008, 288 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

In this sixth installment in Lee Goldberg's series of TV tie-ins, Adrian Monk and his assistant Natalie Teeger travel to Lohr, Germany (home of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) in pursuit of Monk's vacationing psychiatrist, Dr. Kroger. Naturally, while they're stalking Kroger, Monk and Natalie encounter a corpse or two, as well as the German equivalents of Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher. Monk also has a run-in with someone potentially more significant, the man who, Monk suspects, was responsible for his wife Trudy's death--the one murder he's never been able to solve.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Kroese, Robert: Mercury Falls

St. Culain Press © 2009, 352 pages

Note: Review copy received from author. Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

God--or at least the mind-numbingly complex bureaucracy that administers His domains--has a plan for us, and it turns out that it involves the destruction of life as we know it, and sooner rather than later. The Apolcalypse is very nigh indeed, its imminence evidenced by the fact that the Antichrist walks the earth. Thirty-seven-year-old Karl Grissom, a part-time pizza delivery guy who lives with his mother, was selected for the role in a contest run to promote a series of young adult fantasies. Human reporter Christine Temetri gets thrust into the thick of things apocalyptic when she's handed one of the Four Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse (that "horsemen" thing wasn't quite accurate) while covering a flare-up in the Middle East. This leads her to hook up with her latest apocalyptic cult leader--interviewing them is her specialty--who happens to be Mercury, the fallen angel of the book's title. Maybe "fallen" isn't quite right: Mercury isn't playing for the other team, but he's had it with the pencil-pushers and he's playing by his own rules. Together, he and Christine set their sights on averting the Apocalypse, or at least minimizing the casualties.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Crossword: Sometimes a Great Notion

Here are the theme-related clues to this week's Sunday New York Times crossword.

ACROSS
1 Intrinsically
24 "That's pagently ridiculous!"
27 He played Dr. Kildare in 1930s-'40s films
39 Victim of Achilles
53 It borders the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
59 Band with the 1998 #1 hit "Iris"
66 Activity for good-looking people?
76 Rich blue stone
84 All out
111 Western accessories
115 Cause of Irish emigration in the 1840s-'50s
125 Frequent Security Council topic

THE ANSWERS
1 NG URNEG
24 QBA'G OR FGHCVQ
27 YRJ NLERF
39 URPGBE
53 SYNGOHFU NIRAHR
59 TBB TBB QBYYF
66 UVQR NAQ FRRX
76 YNCVF YNMHYV
84 JVGU N IRATRNAPR
111 OBYB GVRF
115 CBGNGB SNZVAR
125 ZVQRNFG


The answers are encrypted. To decrypt them, select whichever ones you want to see, throw them into the Crossword Decrypting Widget below, and hit the red button:

Weekly Set Puzzle Challenge: December 12

It's Saturday, which means it's time for the deblog's Weekly Set Puzzle Challenge! (View a list of winners of the Weekly Set Puzzle Challenge here.)

This week's scores:

• Debra -- 1:31
• Karen -- 1:42
• Maxine -- 3:09

How to participate:

1. Play the theoretically simple yet maddeningly difficult Set Puzzle. (Remember, the clock starts ticking the moment you open the Set window.)
2. Post your time in the comments to this post.
3. The winner for the week gets to hoist the much-coveted winner's badge.
   This should be posted in a blog post rather than on your sidebar, say,
   because, after all, your time to bask in the glory of the win is likely
   to be ephemeral.

How to post the badge? Some possibilities:

a. Download the badge to your own space and link thereto.

b. Include this code in your post:

<br/><a<br/>href="http://www.the-deblog.com/set_puzzle_weekly_challenge/index.html"><img<br/>src="http://dhamel.typepad.com/images/setduelwinner.gif&"<br/>/></a><br/>

c. Alternatively, you're not obliged to post it. This is all in fun, after all.

Barclay, Linwood: Bad Move

Bantam © 2005, 416 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

Zack Walker is a security conscious husband and father of two who moves his family to the suburbs, a cookie cutter house in a new subdivision, to escape the crime and drugs that were becoming more prevalent in their old neighborhood. There are some trade-offs to the move: Zack's wife now has a longer commute, and his daughter has some trouble adjusting, but the increased safety and peace of mind seem worth the price. Problem is, as Zack comes to find out when he runs across his first dead body, the suburbs aren't always the milky white, crime-free zones they're made out to be.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

links for 2009-12-10

• Barnes and Noble’s Nook Reader Fails to Live Up to Promises - NYTimes.com
  Pogue's piece makes quite an argument for choosing the Amazon Kindle over the Barnes & Noble nook. (Not that I'm in the market: I'm very happy with my Kindle 2.)

Stark, Richard: The Hunter

University Of Chicago Press © 2008 [orig. pub. 1962], 208 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

The Hunter, first published in 1962, is the first book in Richard Stark's series featuring professional thief and sometime killer Parker. When we first meet him, Parker is just arriving in New York fresh from a jail break, broke and looking for revenge against a former accomplice. Mal Resnick double-crossed Parker after a heist, stole his share of a $90,000 payoff, and left him for dead in a burning building. We follow Parker as he hunts the guy down and looks to replenish his stores of cash.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

My Fitbit flower is healthy!

My Fitbit flower is healthy!
Originally uploaded by dhamel.

The Fitbit has a single button which, when pressed, reveals steps taken, calories burned, miles walked, and a general sense of how active you've been in the form of a flower. When you're active, the flower blooms. As you can see, I've been active enough today to please my flower. I realize it's day one of owning this device, but it's certainly induced me to be more active than usual so far.

My Fitbit has finally arrived!

Fitbit
Originally uploaded by dhamel.

My Fitbit has finally arrived! I ordered it late last October (2008), and it's finally here. I've been using the Fitbit website for a while: you can too; it's free to use and you don't need the Fitbit for it. I'm excited now to start tracking my activity, particularly now that I've got the new treadmill.

Simply rolling in gadgets here! This will doubtless be the first of many posts wherein I comment on this thing. It's charging now....

McCall Smith, Alexander: Tears of the Giraffe

Anchor © 2002, 256 pages

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

Tears of the Giraffe is the second book in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. In this outing Mma Ramotswe is principally concerned with two cases. An American woman seeks her help in finding out what happened to her son, who disappeared ten years earlier while working on a farm in Botswana. Mma Ramotswe's assistant Mma Makutsi, newly promoted to the position of assistant detective, acts as the lead investigator in the second case that crosses their desks: a man hires them to find out where his wife has found the money to send their son to an expensive private school. At the same time big changes are sweeping Mma Ramotswe's private life. She's agreed to marry Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors--a decision neither of them regrets the morning after the decision is made--so there is an engagement ring to think of. Her fiancé, meanwhile, kind man that he is, finds himself agreeing to do something he fears may threaten the impending nuptials.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »