COMMENTARY: BUNNY SALAD RECIPE (as mentioned in review of GOODNIGHT NOBODY)

After reviewing GOODNIGHT NOBODY, I can't resist posting this, because I think it's hysterically described as "easy." These really were brought in batches of twenty-five, to complement orange cream cheese carrots with green shredded marshmallow stalks.

"You have enough on your plate this month with Easter rolling around, pictures needing to be taken and baskets to be assembled. Why not have your little ones help you out this Easter dinner? Below are really easy and simple recipes for you and your little helpers!"


Difficulty: Easy
Things You’ll Need:
Small plate for individual bunnies or couples, platter for bunny family
Lettuce
1 half pear (fresh peeled and halved,(!) or canned halves)
2 raisins
2 almond or cashew halves
1/4 maraschino cherry or red-hot candy
2 toothpicks for whiskers (optional)
1 heaping tablespoon cottage cheese
Lightweight food storage bag to fit plate (optional)
Step1. On a small plate, place a leaf of lettuce as “grass” for your bunny.

Step2. With the narrow end facing you, place pear half cut side down in the grass.

Step3.Press 1/4 maraschino cherry or red-hot candy into the tip of the pear as the nose.

Step4. Break toothpicks in half and poke into pear as whiskers. (The better to have your kids choke on them, I guess).

Step5. Press raisins into pear for eyes. Cut and use half for each eye if whole raisin appears too large.

Step6.With pointed end up, press almond halves into pear for ears. For floppy ears, use cashews. (Nuts, another good thing for kids to choke on).

Step7. Add one heaping tablespoon of cottage cheese as the bunny’s tail. "May substitute a miniature marshmallow for the tail, but if exposed to air too long it won't look good."

Step 8. Run screaming through the house when kids have spilled all ingredients arguing about who gets to eat the maraschino cherries.

GOODNIGHT NOBODY, by Jennifer Weiner.(audiobook) Parker, Johanna, Narrator.

I liked the premise of Kate Klein,the writer-turned housewife who gets to use her investigative skills again when she falls over the murdered body of one of her neighbors. She describes her Connecticut neighborhood as making Stepford seem diverse.

I can really relate when she talks about the perfect stay at home mommies with perfect bodies who are always making crafts with their children. I REMEMBER some of these supermoms, who brought cute little pear-half bunny rabbits arranged on lettuce leaves for the Easter party at the preschool. With cute tiny little sliced almond ears, raisin eyes,and marshmallow tails. Unfortunately, the book is dragging on way too long. I no longer care which perfect neighbor has which sordid past. I thought once that Kate's old boyfriend did it, but he didn't. I'm now hoping that it's not Kate's best friend.

Narrators can make or break an audiobook, and Johanna Parker is good, not great. She really differentiates the women characters, and that's good. But she doesn't have the deeper range for the male characters, and I can't tell some of them apart. Parker is not nearly as good as Isabel Keating, who read PLAYING WITH BOYS

A.D. NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DELUGE, non-fiction, by John Neufeld

This new graphic (comic book style) novel about the people who faced Katrina propels the reader onward as a nightmare unrolls. The author follows several real people of all colors and ages as they meet the storm. Each decides to go or to stay, and later to return or relocate. No decision is perfect.

Leo and Michelle evacuate to Houston, a nightmarish nine hour drive, leaving behind Leo's beloved fifteen thousand comic books.

Denise, an acerbic social worker, is a sixth generation New Orleanian. She and her family attempt to relocate to Memorial Baptist Hospital, then eventually make it to the convention center. There is little water and no sanitation, but in a departure from what we've all heard, it's the gangsters who provide help by looting stores to bring water, and by keeping order.

Abbas and Darnell are friends who team up to protect Abbas' small grocery and deli. They will finally cling to a rooftop as Darnell's asthma worsens.

Kwame is a pastor's son who's entering his senior year in high school. His father's church will soon drown, and he will finish high school in California.

Dr. Brobson throws a hurricane party in his elegant French quarter home. Later he offers volunteer help for weeks.

Neufeld, who spent three weeks as a volunteer in Biloxi, tracks the storm slowly as the deluge occurs. His drawings are as beautiful as they are dreadful. He follows not only the storm but also the relocation and rebuilding of each life. For Leo, it's getting his comic book collection started again by donations. For Denise, it's being able to return to New Orleans after a bitter time in Baton Rouge. But as she says, it's not over yet, because, “we're not all home.”

PLAYING WITH BOYS, by Alisa-Valdes Rodriguez, audio recording, read by Isabel Keating

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's trademark style intermingles the struggles and triumphs of several Latina women. Her first book, THE DIRTY GIRLS' CLUB, followed six women, friends from their college years. It was an exhausting but fascinating mix.

This book stirs together three LA-based protagonists: the talent agent Alexis, a transplanted Texan who's stuck managing a tasteless, sexist band; Marcella, a former telenovela star hoping to escape her nude photographs and find better roles in Hollywood, and Olivia, a would-be-screenwriter suffering from PTSD since she witnessed the murder of her father by Salvadoran death squads.

The three support each other with humor and warmth in their professional lives and their tangles with men. I feel that Valdes-Rodriguez could have tightened the action by eliminating a little of Alexis' seething about her chunky body and Marcella's hatred of her never quite perfect one. Stay-at-home mom Olivia is initially so dreary and depressed that I began to skip those segments. When she finally re-invents herself, it's worth the wait.

Isabel Keating's narration is splendid; the different voices are distinct and crisp, a pleasure to hear. This artist is top-notch, and I hope to find more of her work. It would be great with another of Valdes-Rodrigues' tasty combinations.

KITTY GOES TO WASHINGTON, by Carrie Vaughn

New fantasy favorite! Carrie Vaughn's heroine is a werewolf, Kitty Norville, who has her own radio talk show. The Midnight Hour takes on the world where werewolves and vampires have just come out of the closet. Kitty gets subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee whose vicious chair, Senator Duke, seems more interested in persecution than intelligent discourse.

Two things about this series intrigue me. The werewolf and vampire conditions are caused by infectious diseases. Researchers from the NIH and CDC, some unscrupulous, launch investigations to uncover the biological sources of the rapid healing and immortality of these monsters, as Kitty freely labels herself.

But werewolves are not all ravening creatures. Carrie Vaughn explores actual wolf pack dynamics and concludes that for every snarling alpha, there are twelve whose only desire is to submit to the leader. Kitty is one such beta, whose Wolf interior constantly tells her to be quiet, make herself small. No eye contact, no smiling because she might show her teeth--all these show cooperation and keep her safe within the pack. Unfortunately, she's had to leave her pack, which unsettles her. Living alone, she's in charge only with her talk show, dark in the night. She's coping with a solitary life, but submits to others in authority--such as Alette, the Vampire Mistress of Washington, DC

Psychics, dangerous wild Fae, scandal-mongering reporters, and a sexy Brazilian were-panther fill out the roster for a satisfying read. An entertaining bonus short story about a demon-infested band which visits the talk show ends the tale.

Three Roman Mystery Series: comparison, by CeeViews

I found two new Roman mystery series recently and launched myself into them, hoping to find another like the Marcus Didius Falco series, by Lindsey Davis. But the first lines alone tell the difference. From SPQR XIII, THE YEAR OF CONFUSION, by John Maddox Roberts, "There was nothing wrong with our calendar." Steven Saylor, in THE TRIUMPH OF CAESAR, scores better, with "I heard that you were dead." In SILVER PIGS, the first Falco novel, the tone for the series is set: "When the girl came running up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes."

Roberts' hero is the senator, Metullus, who rarely leaves the upper class world. Saylor's Gordianus is sixty-four, and a retired "Finder." When Gordianus stirs to action, he takes a trip to the "dangerous Subura region," where there are "fewer togas and more tunics." Falco lives in the world of tunics, often wine-stained and moth-eaten. His only toga comes from his dead big brother Festus, a soldier-hero, and Falco hates it. The wool is hot and horrible to drape properly. Besides, Falco has already informed us in the first chapter that togas were whitened with the ammonia from urine.

Davis's detail for Roman life astounds. Where Roberts describes shouting workmen removing the scaffolding from a public building, Davis informs us they are cursing slaves, wearing one-armed red tunics. Falco, looking around for a diversion, notes that the Forum steps are crowded with illegal touts and overpriced market stalls. He considers overturning some melons, but settles for some copperware instead, so as not to lose the melonseller his profits. Davis establishes the scene in three sentences and kicks over the copper stall in the fourth, never losing momentum. Before SILVER PIGS is half-way through, Falco has gone undercover as a slave in a silver mine, and been rescued barely alive by a snooty senator's daughter, Helena, who drives a pony cart like a Maserati.

Lindsey Davis states that she wrote the first Falco book as a spoof, setting loose a classic PI in imperial Rome. I can't believe she's serious, but the forthright face on her website doesn't lie about anything. Fascinating description, fast action, and Falco's trademark sarcastic humor combine in an unforgettable series.

QUICK TAKE: PLAYING FOR PIZZA, John Grisham

In a story that promises fun, Grisham leaves his legal thrillers for this tale of a third-string quarterback who relocates to Italy.

MAGIC STRIKES, by Ilona Andrews

This second outing of Kate Daniels and her magic-afflicted Atlanta has more romance, as Kate teams up with her were-panther friend Jim and the sexy shapeshifter Curran, the Beast Lord.

THE FIERY WOOING OF MORDRED, by P.G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse, the well-known British humorist, has created many enduring characters. One of those is Mr. Mulliner, who has endless nephews.

In this short story Mordred Mulliner falls in love with a girl who lives in a white elephant of a country home. At least it's heavily insured. When he visits her all his competitors are big-game hunter types. Morosely, he retires to write a poem. What a pity that he's got this absent-minded habit of tossing his cigarettes into the waste-paper basket.

How now brown cow-Commentary, CeeViews

I have a T-shirt which states "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." Okay, now that's a lot for one t-shirt, but it reinforces what a devil of a language English really is. So how do we learn it? Slowly, if not at birth. Miss a cue or two, and pow, you're out. But we mowed the hay, plowed the snow, rowed the rivers, watched the towers, and what a fight we fought. I offer the following new doggerel to help you flow down the stream of pronunciation easier.

"The cow and sow just had a row
about the way to mow.
Oh wow, you really don't know how,
Called out the bossy crow.
So Pow! and Zow! they knocked him out,
And then they watched a show."

Pausing only to polish the Polish silver, I remain
Your scribe.

MAGIC BITES, by Ilona Andrews

MAGIC BITES' heroine, Kate Daniels, is a magic-wielding mercenary who navigates the dangerous underworld of an Atlanta which experiences waves of magic and tech. She inserts herself into the investigation of her high-ranking friend's death, in the manner of all PI's. The job takes her into some of the nastiest areas of the city, places ruined by by magic attack and by the evildoers who dwell in them. Along the way she gathers allies, including her friend Jim, a werepanther, and the Beast Lord, the leader of all the shapeshifters in the city. The plot is predictable, and we're not surprised when she experiences enormous physical damage, but rescues the city.

This book is interesting to me mainly because of the vampires, whose description and roles are far different from anything I've seen before. Far from being sexually exotic and dangerous, they're a ruined humanoid species with little brainpower, and less free will. In an insectile manner they cling to ceilings and crawl down walls. They can't even move by themselves, but are "piloted" by others who use them as remotes for observation and attack. But dang, wouldn't you know it, there are some free, unpiloted vampires after all, and when they attack, I'm very much reminded of the hordes of orcs in LORD OF THE RINGS.

It's about time someone took the undead to task, reducing them back to the monsters they were before dozens of books glamorized them.

A RAG, A BONE, AND A HANK OF HAIR, by Jonathan Gash

Lovejoy, no first name, is a scruffy English antique dealer who loves the ladies. He's perpetually down on his luck, despite his amazing ability to sense real antiques which makes him a "divvy." He hates the botched frauds of others, yet is often driven by need to create fakes of his own. However, he crafts them with techniques as close to the original as he can, almost an homage.

In RAG, he is commanded to leave his East Anglia home for London by a criminal antique dealer, Dosh Callaghan, who thinks he's been gypped. "Find me who duffed my padpas."

Duff means to fake. Padparadshas, padpas, from Sri Lanka, are sapphires which are odd colored, orangey pink. Gash doles out this information after enlightening us on faking Holbein miniatures, painted on modern ivorine, a plastic, instead of ivory, and after Lovejoy hears the call of a real, beautiful fruitwood box, found in the modest barrow of a dealer in the midst of the Portobello open air market.

Lovejoy completes the job for Dosh suspiciously easily, but finds Colette, a old friend of his who has lost her antique store and is down to rags and a handcart. She's been reduced to this by the brutal Dieter Gluck, who cheated her and drove her husband to the grave. As Lovejoy prepares to work a scam to catch Gluck, he stumbles across the mystery of Colette's teenage son, who can tell real antiques by their touch. The plot takes many leisurely detours into the antiques world, yet we are always rewarded by Gash's enthusiasm.

ENDLESS BLUE, by Wen Spencer

I wish this intriguing book weren't so exhausting due to its multiple themes. I counted at least twenty-eight. Even ANONYMOUS REX, a complex science fiction/noir detective combination reviewed earlier, has perhaps eight themes. FINAL CUT, the Charlie Salter detective novel just reviewed, has even fewer, about four. ENDLES BLUE has five or six gigantic themes, any one of which could almost be a book in itself.

MIKHAIL VOLKOV, an officer in the Novalya Rus, Russian derived union of worlds, investigates the strange appearance of a spaceship engine which returns to normal space without its ship and covered in coral. He desperately needs to find a weapon which can be used against the Nefrim, humanity's genocidal nemesis, and hopes the engine's origin may point the way.

VOLKOV's foster brother TURK, an officer on his ship, is a Red, one of several types of manufactured, "adapted" humans. Adapted humans provoke endless discussion about racism, slavery, sexual exploitation, finding love, etc.

When VOLVOV's ship jumps through a worm-hole, it crashes in a mysterious space ship graveyard world, the SARGASSO. It's an earth-like universe whose ecology is like the South Pacific, with startlingly different physics. PAIGE BAILEY, the captain of a fishing ship, rescues TURK, then struggles with her relationship with him. PAIGES's ability to communicate with multiple alien species is a vital thread in the book.

I really like the book, despite its many flaws. If the measure of success of a writer is the desire he creates to revisit his world, SPENCER succeeds in ENDLESS BLUE. Next time I'll bring a compass and a sextant.

Commentary:Books as comfort food and obsession. byCeeViews

Yesterday I added another book to my car books pile. A DYING LIGHT IN CORDUBA, is a Marcus Didius Falco Roman mystery by Lindsey Davis joined LOVE LIES BLEEDING, a China Bayles mystery, by Susan Wittig Albert, a young adults book, and several professional magazines. Oh, and a little book on obsessive compulsive disorder. These books met my criteria for a car book.

It should be no surprise that I also have purse books, a greater necessity than ones loose in the car.The current occupants are SF paperbacks by John Barnes, and by Wen Spencer, both authors new to me. I have two books because I'm close to finishing one and don't want to be caught bookless.


I got my love of reading from both my mother and my father. My mother read mainly popular books, mysteries, romances, books on the top ten list. She always settled down with a book in the evening. My father read less often, but his choices were more eclectic, including humor books, Shakespeare, and the old West.

I'm not sure when it became essential to have books with me at all time, or when the number began growing. This habit may be a tiny bit obsessive now, but I would never have become the person I am today without books as my friends.

FINAL CUT, by Eric Wright

FINAL CUT is a mystery featuring Staff Inspector Charlie Salter, of the Toronto Metropolitan police. Salter has an desirable odd-jobs position in the Special Affairs Center. In FINAL CUT he has a sweet assignment, baby-sitting an American-directed film set in Toronto, warmly depicted here. He gains the director's cut view of the craft behind the magic. The villain's escape may be unrealistic, while the contents of a grocery bag are precisely detailed.

The job looks a cinch until various acts of sabotage occur during the filming. After several occurrences, the screenwriter is killed. The pushy young star, the grouchy cinematographer, the unappreciated assistant director, the autocratic continuity manager, and all the others are suspects. Salter investigates with quiet competence, the complete opposite of the flashy car chases of the movie.

A subplot of the novel is Salter's relationship with his teenage son Seth, who wants to dance professionally. Salter is uncomfortable with this decision, though he keeps it from Seth. He wants better for the boy, and doesn't want others, including his police brethren, falsely stereotyping his son as gay. Salter gets Seth a chance to visit the set, where he's fascinated by meeting a famous actor, Henry Vigor. Vigor has made a career playing villains. He's a Nazi in this film, although he escaped from them in real life. Seth idolizes the old man, and by the end of the novel, may have a new career choice.

The noir detective has to walk alone; Salter has his wife and family. That's another reason I love this series. The family relationships are quite real, neither idolized nor demonized.

A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE, by H.L. Mencken, non-fiction

H.L. Mencken was mentioned recently in Connie Willis' INSIDE JOB, and, honestly, I'd barely heard of him before. He wrote from 1899 until 1948, producing an estimated 5,000,000 words. He generated political articles, public health crusades for his beloved Baltimore, and a gigantic work on THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE collects 69 of the articles written for the Baltimore EVENING SUN newspaper. His editors caution that his "vivid violent style and...his droll fakery tend ...sometimes to obscure or crowd an astute observation."

In an August 25, 1924 column about the 1924 Presidential campaign, he says of Vice-President Davis, one of the candidates, "Is he in favor of shoving men into jail without jury trials or is he against it? No one knows." Imagine how Mencken would explode about the Patriot Act.

His next column, September 15, 1924, tears into Calvin Coolidge, "He is the favorite of all (Wall Street's) jackals. They believe they will be safe if he is elected, and they are right."

Continuing his slam against Davis and adding Calvin Coolidge "....The money changers greatly prefer a ductile ignoramus, eager for flattery...Dr. Coolidge has been tried (by flattery). And found satisfactory."

He ultimately states that he will vote for Senator Robert M. La Follette, widely hated because of his opposition to WWI. The Senator from Wisconsin had broken away from the Republicans (yes, the Republicans) to form a Progressive party endorsed by the Socialists.

Mencken admires La Folletee for sticking to his principles, but lambasts him. "La Follete (is) busy with his archaic visions of monopolies and his lamentable schemes to curse the country with more and more (political appointed) jobholders."

In a column just before the elections he says of La Follette,  " I shall vote for him unhesitating, for a plain reason: he is the best man in the running, as a man...There is no ring in his nose. Nobody owns him...Does it matter what his ideas are? Personally, I am against four-fifths of them, but what are the odds?"

I don't know of anyone today except possibly Jon Stewart who slams all sides. Even Stewart couldn't get away with Mencken's criticism of former President Warren G. Harding's writing. "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges ... it reminds me of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights."

He goes on for three pages, not neglecting to slam Harding's target audience as "morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables."

And you thought the 21st century had produced great rants.

ANONYMOUS REX, by Eric Garcia

Raymond's Chandler's Simple Art of Murder. “But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”
Or, down these means streets a dinosaur must go. In this quick-paced witty novel, Vincent Rubio is a noir-style California private eye with a bad herb habit. He's also a Velociraptor in disguise, one of the 16 species of dinosaurs which have survived the great extinction and insured their future existence by secretly moving into the human world. In a wildly complicated plot Rubio must avenge his dead partner and solve the murder of Raymond McBride, a prominent Carnatour entertainment mogul. There's a dame with secrets, lethal minions, forbidden love between different dinosaur species, and a terrible basil addiction to fight. Garcia has created a wonderful world about hiding and coming out, and the one regret is that he can sustain it in only three books.

WELLSTONE, by Wil McCarthy

In this space yarn, nanotechnology in the ubiquitous form of wellstone, a programmable material, creates everything from buildings to clothing. Fax machines provide instantaneous travel and convert matter into food, boats, or anything else desired.

The Prince of Tonga leads a colony of over-privileged boys, more Peter Pan than Lord of the Flies, to an escape from the summer camp planet where they've been exiled. They discover the raw edges of their universe, not in a Star Wars-like cantina, but a wood-faced coffee shop in Denver. When these rowdies mess up the cafe, the Queen and King of Tonga take note. The Queen of All Things sends them back to a harsh world where there are no flush toilets and their dorky uniforms can't be programmed into anything stylish. The locked fax machine thwarts any travel. It serves only s'mores and frank'n'beans, leaving them to climb the dangerous peach pie trees for any variety to their diet. The defiant Prince plots his next escape with passion but no practicality.

I'm not sure in what wild brainstorming session Wil McCarthy conceived his universe, but it's a splendid one with chuckling references to the cone of silence and adamantium. Youthful rebels dash across the solar system, while only Conrad Mursk, the prince's best friend, argues for reason. When the defiant teens fail to calculate the dangers of their journey, the trip turns deadly.

NINETEEN MINUTES, by Jodi Picoult

I usually take home grocery store books as comfort food. Rarely have I brought home those which are thoughtful and provocative, but “Entertainment Weekly” had given this one a short cover blurb. NINETEEN MINUTES is about the relationships illuminated and changed by a high school shooting spree. In this multi-viewpoint book, two pairs of mothers and children vibrate at the core.

Peter Houghton is the shooter at the school, a lonely bullied boy who strikes back viciously. Lacy Houghton, his midwife mom, is as horrified as anyone else at the shooting. She continuously struggles to understand her son's actions and second-guesses every minute she's ever spent with him. (Wouldn't you?) Alex Cormier is the judge who'll preside over Peter's trial. Lacy delivered her daughter, Josie, with whom the icy career woman has been estranged. Now Alex struggles to comfort her wounded daughter.

Josie and Peter used to be friends, until Josie rejected the always-awkward boy to join the popular crowd. When the detective investigating the shooting finds Peter's yearbook with his victim's faces circled, Josie's is the only one circled, then crossed out, with "Let Live" next to it.

Lacy's self-lacerating thoughts are especially compelling. Did she push him too much? Compare him too much to his golden brother? Not monitor his computer use enough? Leave him too much alone? When the shooting victims are evacuated, their foreheads are numbered with a Sharpie marker to aid in identification. There's no such mark for a killer, and anyone who's ever nervously watched a moody teen, or been one, will identify with that.

CIAO AMERICA, by Beppe Severgnini, Non- Fiction

Beppe Severgnini and his family lived in Washington, D.C. for a year in 1995, and he affectionately describes the America he found then. It seems such a long time ago in the post-9/11, post 2008 crash, world. But his observations still apply in the main, and we have a commentator here perhaps better than we even deserve.

He writes of our well-known shortcomings: we're fat, we can't spell, don't know any history, and share personal information too quickly. But he also describes the things he didn't expect. Deep, deep discounts on everything, to say nothing of outlet malls and free return policies, lure him.

We have 1-800 numbers which dispense detailed advice on repairs from computers to refrigerators, all free. In his Georgetown church, he notes the "choreography" in which each pew of worshipers goes down the center aisle to communion, and comes back up the side. They even stand politely, singing the last hymn, while the celebrant recesses. Italians apparently crowd the communion rail and bolt away.

We further delight him in the inventiveness of our language; we mash up letters and numbers for wonderful creations. I would not have thought that "K-9" for canine, and "want2CU" would have been that exciting, although a vanity plate such as L84AD8 does sound original. In a throwaway newspaper I read today, one company promised "2X UR tax return," while another said they'd keep your car Shine-N. I'm tickled to recognize how these neologisms pleased him.

In this cheerful account, Severgnini says he and his family were happy here. That's the best report card anyone could ever give.