papablues050164's reviews
136 reviews

A typically warped treat from Douglas Adams. He takes his Doctor Who scripts and runs them in another direction with a know-it-all detective who...well, isn't all he's cracked up to be.

Combining humor and a rouge's charm, Resnick scribes a readable entry in the Widowmaker series.

It's a bit overwhelming, and not all of these stories can be considered classics. Some of the best are worth the read, especially the title selection.

Kennedy debunks all the arguments denigrating the immigrant 'problem' in this country by demonstrating. in a coherent and comprehensive manner, that we are all immigrants. His reasoning should persuade one and all against the fallacy of immigrant prejudice.

An impulsive decision to walk the Camino de Santiago becomes a rude awakening for author Jane Christmas. A quick, funny and enlightening read as the author discovers a herd of 50-something women is not a social paradise, and the 'walk' is a bit more challenging than she thought. And there's that infuriating Brit. Read it.

One of the first of its kind, this showcases the struggle to assemble the 15th New York Infantry, an all-colored regiment in Brooklyn. Arthur Little, their white commander, led them in an atmosphere of racial hostility, even in the Northern United States, and these men overcame it the only way they could in 1917, by keeping mum and showing their worth by their actions. The writing style is straight-forward and exposes the bigotry of the time without banging people on the head with it. Little writes without any agenda other than to show his pride in the men who served with him in France, including Henry Johnson who earned an article in a prominent New York newspaper naming a battle for him. France appears as a nation without a color line. The book is sparing in detail and allows the reading to come to the necessary conclusions.

This is a hidden chapter of sabotage, committed by an Imperial Germany that didn't want America in the war & came up with all sorts of ingenious plots to undermine our support to the Allies. Primarily it is the duel of wits between New York City police inspector Tom Tunney and his able crew of detectives on the NY bomb squad; & Franz von Rintelen, a man handpicked by Germany's spy agency Abteilung III B. Rintelen was a schemer whose plots included cigar bombs, rudder bombs, creating a false labor movement, his plots including a germ warfare program.
Sadly the author colored his narrative with modern references to 'the homeland', 'ground zero' and terrorism' that were not in vogue in 1915 America. Nor can one really call Rintelen's activities terrorism; terror is a tool to publicize a political cause by small groups unaffiliated with any one nation. These German acts were sabotage, which while sanctioned by the Imperial government, were not actions they wanted their name attached to, on account of that bringing the United States into the war.
There is a lot of details to absorb, but the author's style is breezy enough and engaging enough to latch onto reader's interest. If you can overlook the author's modern biases, this a book well worth the read.

America is not a country for gods, and this is true of the new gods as well as the old. Which is pretty much the theme for Gaiman's book. Worship in our society passes from the railroads, the railroad tycoons to celebrities who come and go with the night. I suppose it would take a Brit to notice. My main gripe would be that the protagonist, Shadow, is almost superfluous to the resolution. He is acted ON more than he takes action, and his main contribution was to talk all the gods out of fighting. Otherwise good, to a point.

Why should anyone be attracted to a character who's basically...well, Death? She's a spunky Goth-girl variation on the ole Grim Reaper-myth we're used to. When she told off her brother Dream and beaned him on the head with his own loaf of bread, that reminded me so much of my sister. That's exactly what she'd do. Gaiman's interpretation is unique and no, I'm really not suicidal for loving what he's done with this lady.

There's very little that I can add, other than this is a superlative necessary read, and unfortunately a lot of what Orwell describes in this book is happening right now in the USA. God help us if it's too late to go back.