72. "Soulless" by Gail Carriger

Carriger, Gale. Soulless. New York: Orbit, 2009. Kindle ebook.

388 pages

Reviewed by J. d’Artagnan Love

Soulless stars Alexia Tarabotti, an enigmatic, assertive Italian who has no soul. Alexia is classified as a “preternatural” in London’s BUR records. Her soulless state allows her to retract the powers of the supernatural beings around her. If she touches a vampire, his/her fangs retract. If she touches a werewolf, s/he goes back to human form. These abilities have caught the attention of a mysterious dark figure stalking Alexia like prey. Thankfully, Alexia has also caught the attention of the Earl of Woolsey, a dashing werewolf pack leader. Between him and Lord Akledama, her rogue vampire dandy, Alexia finds herself in a web of science, mystery, and intrigue as well as some spicy, um...positions.

Set in the late 1900s, Soulless is a fabulous combination of urban fantasy and steampunk. The characters are vivid and the aesthetic qualities of the steampunk genre creates a world that is beautiful and ornate. The plot had some unexpected twists and turns that delighted me and the prose was elegant and witty. Soulless vampires and werewolves are unique in their creation and integration into the London community. Carriger’s creation of the BUR organization is an effective set-up for an intriguing series of steampunk/urban fantasy/crime novels. I’m looking forward to reading the rest!

3 darts out of 5

Bookshelf Project Status: Returned to the library

71. "Postmortem" by Patricia Cornwell

Cornwell, Patricia. Postmortem. New York: Pocket Books, 1990

342 pages

Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

Kay Scarpetta is a doctor who smokes, rarely exercises, and downs meals full of fat and cholesterol. She’s not your average doctor and not simply because she seems to shun taking a dose of her own medicine. Kay Scarpetta is the county medical examiner in Richmond, Virginia, an area known for its soaring murder rate. Scarpetta deals with death on a daily basis: “What the hell. You die. Everybody dies. So you die healthy. So what?” (Cornwell, 41). This was the most profound couple of sentences in Postmortem. The rest of the book is pure entertainment.

Death and the fragility of the human experience is a theme in nearly every murder mystery. It’s present in Postmortem as well, a finely tuned radio acting as background noise to the turbulent plot. There’s a new serial killer in Richmond who the newspapers dubbed “The Strangler” for the gruesome ways in which he kills his victims. Scarpetta, working in conjunction with the local police force, tries to unravel the knot the strangler managers to tie. There isn't a lot of evidence to work with aside from a “glittery substance” found at each scene.

Postmortem was startling creepy is its realism. I found myself double and triple checking the locks on my windows and doors at night before bed while I was making my way through the story. It got under my skin more intensely than other murder mysteries due, though I can’t pinpoint the reason why it affected me in that way. I didn’t identify with Kay Scarpetta, but I liked her a lot. I was rooting for her the whole time.

Postmortem was written at a time when technology was just starting to play a role in police investigations. Dial-up modems were still used regularly (remember that horrible sound?) and DNA testing was just starting to come en vogue. The outdated technology was a chuckle-worthy trip down memory lane. I was just a littlin’ in the early 90s, but I was old enough to have vivid memories of some of the technology that was used before the era of cell phones and iPads.

There were some low points in the writing. The foreshadowing tended to be a bit too obvious and made certain scenes predictable. Some of Scarpetta’s inner dialogue drags on and gets a bit repetitive. Generally speaking, though, I had fun reading this book and isn’t that the purpose of a beach read? To entertain? I had enough fun reading it, that I plan to continue with her series and start in on book number two soon!

3 darts out of 5

Bookshelf Project Status: Return to the Library 

70. "Kent State" by James Michener

Michener, James. Kent State: What Happened and Why. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1971.

512 pages.

Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

Kent State does exactly what the title suggests; it explains what happened during the Kent State riots and why. I went into reading this book with preconceived ideas about what the 1960s and 1970s were like. Most of these ideas were born from media representations of this time period. Reading this book opened my eyes in exactly the way I was hoping. I knew that my understanding of the decade was based on exaggerated and romanticized ideas of hippies, political radicals, and free love. This text helped me ground my perception of the era within a more realistic framework. 

Michener's text is nonfiction but reads like a novel. After completing in-depth interviews with many people involved in the Kent state riots, he crafted a piece that is engaging and eye opening. I was not aware of the seriousness of the situation or the complicated nature of the activism that took place in this point of American history. We came very close to losing our established educational system to groups of people who relied often on violence as a means of change. I used to side with these groups in a romantic, idealistic fashion, but after reading Kent State, the issue has been complicated for me and I no longer do so.

No matter where you stand on the issues surrounding these events, Michener has you covered. He does a very good job documenting all sides of the issue and important events in American culture that shaped this era and lead to the riots. This book might not be for everyone as it does rely on a lot of historical discussion and thinking, but if you like learning about the 1960s and 1970s, I highly recommend it!

3.5 darts out of 5

Bookshelf Project Status: Return to the friend from whom I borrowed it. 

69. "Enlightened-ish" by Gail Dickert

Dickert, Gail. Enlightened-ish: A Grief Memoir About Spiritual Awakening. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2013.

153 pages.

Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

This is Gail Dickert's second book. She is an author, poet, blogger and activist. She is especially active in LGBT communities and advocates for former "ex-gays" and youth. Enlightened-ish is a memoir of her experience of awakening following the death of her father. Emphasizing that everyone's experience of spiritual awakening is uniquely his/her own, Dickert walks readers through a series of "Freedoms" that she learned on her own path. Woven in with descriptions of these "Freedoms," Dickert illustrates the grieving process she went through after the death of her father as well as her means of healing after witnessing a man's suicide.

There were several "Freedoms" that rang very true for me. The first point was in the chapter titled "The Freedom to Cuss." In this chapter Dickert dissects the idea that your body and soul must be separate and that your body, or the human condition, is an obstacle to spiritual awakening. It's true that we, especially in the west, separate our body and "soul" (however you may define that) as often competing entities. Our body has base, carnal needs that get in the way of spiritual purity. This leads us to believe we are imperfect and immoral from the start simply because we have bodies. Dickert is able to break this idea down and show why body and soul should not be considered competitors but teammates in the game of life.

The next chapter that stood out for me was one titled "The Freedom to Say 'Enough!'". Dickert breaks this Freedom down into several principles including being able to relinquish the need to do it all, the need to be seen and heard, the need to be right, the need to know, the need to rescue or be rescued, and the need to suffer (Dickert, 71). Relinquishing the need to rescue and be rescued was a principle that stood out for me as I lean towards being a rescuer in my personal life.

Finally the last chapter that reverberated for me was one title "The Freedom to Save Yourself." This chapter explores what it means to love yourself, forgive yourself, and be your own best friend. It touches on providing for your own emotional needs rather than expecting another person outside yourself to provide those needs for you.

These are just the chapters that touched my heart, but if you read the book yourself, you may find that several other chapters, entirely different from the few I've chosen here, speak to you personally. Because of the way individuality is emphasized in the text, you are free to take from this book whatever fits your own personal path. Nothing is prescribed; it is merely suggested as a possibility to open unexplored places in our heart and psyche. At the end of each chapter, Dickert provides some workbook pages in which discussion questions are provided to help readers connect the reading to their own experience. In this way, Dickert's story helps readers to open themselves to their own stories of grief and awakening.

4 darts out of 5
Bookshelf Project Status: KEEP

68. "Creole Belle" by James Lee Burke

Burke, James Lee. Creole Belle. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

528 pages.

Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

James Lee Burke is an award winning author with Guggenheim and Breadloaf fellowships, Crime Novel of the Year Award, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship all under his belt. He has written and published over thirty novels, many of which were a part of the Dave Robicheaux series of which Creole Belle is an installation.

Creole Belle picks up after Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel, best friends and fellow employees of the justice system, are shot in a previous novel. The story begins with Dave in the hospital recovering from his wounds where he is visited by Tee Jolie Melton, a zydeco singer in New Orleans. Tee Jolie is in a bad situation with some shady oil men and is asking for Dave's help. Unfortunately, none of Dave's family or friends believe that the visit was real because Tee Jolie had recently gone missing. It is assumed that Tee Jolie's visit was a figment of Dave's morphine-fueled imagination. 

Once Dave is released from the hospital, he and Clete become entangled in a mystery of mob men and low-lifes being popped right and left by a woman Clete believes to be his long-lost daughter. From here, I can't go into much more without spoiling the story. 

Burke has a very interesting writing style. The first thing that caught my attention was his use of point of view. The book is told half from Dave's point of view in first person limited and then shifts to third person point of view for the other half of the story, following Clete and other important characters through Southern Louisiana. The switch was not jarring and I actually really liked the variance in point of view. It gives the readers insight into the story and into Dave's character in particular. This really added to the complex crime narrative that was very well crafted. 

Speaking of characters--this is where the novel fell flat for me. Granted, this could be because this book is part of a series. It could be that the character development has happened in earlier novels and I just missed out from not reading the earlier stories. That being said, I found the characters to be fairly stock, archetypal, and empty. All the good guys had the same blunt, cold, logical personality with a few quirks here and there. All the bad guys had the same manipulative, seductive, and sociopathic tendencies. Good guys were the same. Bad guys were the same. I wasn't able to connect with any of the good guys because they just seemed to blend together. There wasn't anything significant or interesting about any one of them that I could hold onto. Some of the descriptions of the bad guys' appearances were interesting and unique, but their personalities were all the same. 

Characters are so important to me as a reader that I just cannot honestly say I enjoyed this read. I came really, really close to liking it because the plot was so interesting and I loved the descriptions of New Orleans and Louisiana. Perhaps if I had read some of the earlier novels, I'd have a better understanding of the characters and it would have been more enjoyable. So, my advice with this series is: start at the beginning. It is difficult to jump into it in the later books. 

2.5 darts out of 5

Bookshelf Project Status: None--it was a library book.  

67. "The Bone Garden" by Tess Gerritsen

Gerritsen, Tess. The Bone Garden. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.
487 pages
Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

The Bone Garden was another one of those books that I bought to build a stack of beach reads. In The Bone Garden, Julia Hamill, recently divorced, buys an old house in Boston and discovers a skeleton buried in her back yard. After the story hits the newspapers, Julia is contacted by Henry Page who is a descendant of the previous owner of Julia's home. Together, he and Julia sort through boxes of old family heirlooms, newspaper clippings and letters to try and uncover the mystery surrounding the skeleton in her garden.

The Bone Garden has a second story arch. The narrative flashes between present time and 1830s Boston where Norris Marshall attends medical school. In a maternity ward, Norris meets Rose Conelly, an Irish immigrant and her sister Aurnia, who is dying of childbed fever. When Rose is witness to a murder, she and Norris are entangled in an investigation to hunt down a serial killer.

This book is a fun read. The sections  of the narrative taking place in the 1830s are much better developed than those set in the present. Julia Hamill experiences a cheeky romance with Henry's nephew that feels contrived and forced. The relationship between Julia and Henry is endearing but not much time is spent getting to know Julia herself. Her character is less of a protagonist and more of a plot device to connect the past to the present. This in itself is not necessarily a bad writing choice, but it did make Julie feel like a hollow and archetypal character.

Rose Conolly, on the other hand, is pretty interesting. She has a fierce devotion to her family and, Irish stereotypes aside, she's strong and easy to root for. The relationship between Norris and Rose also feels a bit rushed and contrived at points but the mystery of tracking down the serial killer, and Gerittsen's descriptions of medical practices in the 1830s were fascinating.

In all, I enjoyed this book. It certainly falls into the category of "beach read" because it was highly entertaining, but not something of high literary value. The next time I want an easy, quick, entertaining read, Gerritson's work will be at the top of my list of choices.

3 darts out of 5
Bookshelf Project Status: DONATED

66. "Women Food and God" by Geneen Roth

Roth, Geneen. Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. New York: Scribner, 2010.

211 pages.

Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

Roth writes, "On the first morning of my retreats, I tell my students that the great blessing of their lives is their relationships with food" (27). In Women Food and God, Roth explains that everything we know about ourselves and our lives can be unlocked by breaking down our relationship with food. Her target audience is individuals who struggle with disordered eating whether they binge eat or starve. Her approach to healing from disordered eating boils down to being kind to yourself. 

Roth's approach to healing from disordered eating draws from the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and the practice of inquiry. Both of the practices involve living fully in one's body rather than caving to your incessant brain chatter. In the inquiry process one is to ask what they are feeling in their body. Is it a burning sensation? How big is it? Is it moving? Does it have a color? A shape? The goal is that in doing this, a person will learn to listen to the needs of his/her body rather than just eating on auto-pilot. When we listen to the needs of our body and eat when we are hungry, when hungry eat exactly what our body is telling us we need, and stop when we are full, Roth argues, that our weight will level out to our "natural body weight" and the battles that take place in our hearts over food will come to a stop. 

Roth's work is compelling and applicable even for individuals who don't necessarily suffer from disordered eating. Her practices are outlined in easy-to-implement steps that would benefit anyone wanting to get in better touch with their bodies. Interestingly, she points out that when we are able to get in touch with our bodies we are also more easily able to access the part of ourselves many conceptualize as "souls," "God," "Buddha nature," or "consciousness." The book is not specific to any religion or creed but is instead a good practice of psychological health. I certainly recommend this to anyone interested in self-improvement!

4.5 darts out of 5

Bookshelf Project Status: KEEP

d'Artagnan