This book was much funnier and more engaging than I expected. I don’t usually enjoy the witty, smart ass, New York chick books. But this one was an exception. In addition to being a well formed and engaging story, the narration of the audio book was well done and perfect for the content. I recommend checking it out for some light reading.

on Saturday night, Benjamin and I saw this movie at the Neptune with my father-in-law and Benjamin’s friend Jimmy. The movie has an excellent cast and a solid, if imperfect, story. As you’d likely expect from a Scorsese mob film, it’s violent. Despite the sometimes extreme violence, I enjoyed it.

The premise for this story is far from original. However, the execution is good enough to make it an entertaining read. I’d consider it the kind of thing you’d read in paperback while on vacation.

I enjoyed listening to this as an audio book, but the ending didn’t do a whole lot for me. The story is about a man whose wife is killed and how he deals with that and tries to move on with his life. There’s a new romance, which struggles in the face of new evidence about the wife’s death.

The characters are well developed and the story is engaging, but in the end it left me wanting somehow. I am at a loss to say exactly what was missing.

I find this show very enjoyable, even though it isn’t the most spectacular show on TV. It’s really the characters that make the show so appealing. I originally decided to try it out because I had enjoyed Mark Harmon’s performance on West Wing so much. While I do like him, I like NCIS’s Goth forensics specialist Abby, played by Pauley Perrette, that much more. On the final disc of NCIS season 1 there are DVD extras, including an interview with Pauley. I was delighted to find she is a super smart Goth in real-life and is interested in forensics in real life—she has a Master’s Degree in Criminology. She didn’t study acting at all and she’s a computer nerd. My kind of girl. :-D

I thought this was a perfectly decent read, but nothing to write home about. It’s a story of a group of college friends who reunite later in life to mourn the death of one of the friends. They take a cruise down the Mississippi River to scatter the dead friend’s ashes. The story goes back and forth between their time in college and the present day. I started out reading it in paperback (a gift from my sister-in-law), but ended up listening to it as an audio book.

Season 3 of 24 continues to be fast-paced and engaging, but it isn’t up to the standards of season 1 or 2. The plot doesn’t hold together nearly as well and some of their style and methods has become predictably annoying. Benjamin and I joke that you should have to take a drink every time someone says “You’re just going to have to trust me” (or an equivalent). They’re really into that trust dilemma and it becomes a cop-out after a while. However, it was good enough that we watched the whole thing and are looking forward to season 4, which we hear is very good.

What I read of this book was very good, but I needed to return it to the library and I knew I didn’t have time to read it right now anyway. I may check it out again, but if you’re interested in the subject, I recommend giving this book a go. It was well written and convincing, as far as I got into it anyway. It seems to go into how the Pro Life movement has become more and more about restriction contraception over the years and less about preventing abortion, especially since use of contraception actually decreases the need for abortion.

This was an enjoyable mid-level mystery. The suspect pool kept growing and the twists weren’t obvious, so I think it was good. It’s nothing ground-breaking, but it’s a solid mystery. Admittedly, the Alex Delaware series has some reality issues, but those are in the foundation of the series (he’s a psychologist that consults with a Detective at an unrealistic level) and I’ve already accepted them.

This book wasn’t my thing. It’s apparently a Pulitzer prize winning book, but I found it a long read. It is told from the point of view of an old minister writing a letter to his young son about his life, with long periods of tangent. It’s nicely written and has some interesting characters, but nothing happens and it progresses quite slowly.