Jennifer Crusie and Mary Kay Andrews and Cheez Whiz

fake cheese on fake crackers… shoplifted and served with warmed over leftovers. Shame on the publishers.

19 Years of Reviews

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Messrs. Gates and Jobs joked about the famous Apple commercials showing a boring P.C. suit and an eternally nerdy Mac user at a Carlsbad, California D: All Things Digital conference. "The art of those commercial is not to be mean. It'sBill and Steve and the Wall Street Journal's bad grammar

Ed McBain's DOLL (Pouty D, drag the O, tongue heavy on the L.) is bedtime reading. The warped, lusty, utterly female voice of this slut-goddess kicks you in the groin, cuffs you to the radiator, and feeds you sex and ham sandwiches. You, or rather Steve Carella, who rarely gets tangled up withDOLL by Ed McBain read by

Yes it is well written. Yes, it reels you in and captivates you, and the dialogue is peppy enough to make you grin. But. All Hemingway needed to write was: Who was she? for Bacall to deliver the message that Bogie was being a dick, and she wasn't having any,Not Hemingway. Sea Glass Sunrise by Donna Kauffman read by Amanda Ronconi

As good as reading a short history of the rise and rise of the garden variety jihadist. A retired SAS agent is mending the roof of his medieval barn when he is summoned to a final counter-terrorist mission. The medieval political system also needs mending. So begins a storyThe Afghan::Frederick Forsyth read by Robert Powell

Ex-police chief and widow returns to her home town to help her daughter recover from a divorce and gets messily involved in a murder. Mildly uninteresting.The Fine Art of Murder by Emily Barnes read by Carrington MacDuffie

"The thing you have to understand and understanding this explains so much about Murdoch's success is that happy newspaper families are alike and unhappy newspaper families are, well, quite alike too: in the end they all lose their papers. As cautionary tales go you could hardly find a more hothouseThe Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff read by Paul Boehmer

Geek gaming firm with mascots (wounded buzzard, psychopathic dog) sets up shop in small Western town but needs a Wendy to clean up and organize the Peter Pans. Enter Californian Meg Lanslow to clean up their books - and before she finds out whats going on everybody's least favoriteCrouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews read by Bernadette Dunne

Maeve Binchy is the grand-mistress of the domestic imaginary: that hearty, busy, pretty space where women make themselves primal. It is late Capitalism and the lumpen proletariat of Dublin are caterers, not cooks. Katy is prole and caterer and the figure of a Dublin that caters to others, toScarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy read by Barbara Caruso

This is so well read, so well thought out, so well organized that it stands out as a motherlode of precious advise for anybody who wants to work better, be better, CHANGE. Remember your fifth grade teacher? The one that was a little pretty, a little strict, a little scary? TheBernadette Dunne reads Work Less Make More by Jennifer White

It takes you by the throat and starts squeezing from line 1. The Irish voice muscles out a story about post-bank crash Ireland: an out of work family living in an Unfinished family development when the money and the economy run out. And why the economic woes of the Irish alwaysBroken Harbor by Tana French read by Stephen Hogan

This is a charming very digestable story about one sister told by another. The sister in the spotlight is a freckled lovable morning news show host, with a perpetual trousseau of people who dress her, praise her, and advertise her friendship. A black limo brings herRise and Shine by Anna Quindlen read by Carol Monda

Annie moves to sleepy Heron Island on Chesapeake Bay with her 8 year old daughter Taylor, who carries a broom everywhere. This is because she is one of the only pupils who survived a shooting at an elementary school in Washington D.C. Mother and daughter enjoy renovating the old fashioned houseWind Chime Cafe by Sophie Moss narrated by Hollis McCarthy

War stories are love stories. Boys unsaved, unburied, unremembered. Violent, emotional, harrowing stories, told and retold and told again, afterwards, of boys too young, too dead, too Vietnam.The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Jesus Mary and Joseph in Rocksburg, Pa. Heartflipping. Smile wrenching. Honestagawd. Self-conscious, thoughtful, slightly misaligned human being, good son, and Detective Sergeant Acting Chief, Rocksburg Police, Rugs [”because some people think they can walk all over me”] Carlucci, falls in love while investigating death of sociopath baseball legend. Utter-fuckingly wonderful.BRUSHBACK by K.C. Constantine :: Lloyd James

According to Cheney and the gang, some torturers are more equal than others. This is the story of how one American becomes unequal. How an average guy, born of poor fishing folks of poor Maine stock, becomes a torturer. How a guy who knew boats, and joined the Marines, and learnedThe Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman::David Colacci