Looking for Your Next Book

 I fully admit that my main interest in reading this is because of the author, David Ives.  I've seen a number of his short plays (I used to judge high school one act plays and if there was a year without a David Ives play, it was an unusual year).  His plays are tremendously funny and so I thought a book written for young readers would be worth checking out. It is a dark and stormy night in 1609 in the coastal city of MacOongafoondsen (population 21) when a ship washes up on their beach. There's only one figure aboard, and a mighty strange figure it is.  It must be, the people of MacOongafoondsen think, a Frenchman. After all, this ... 'Frenchman' ... doesn't seem to understand them and all he can say is "Eek." By not answering their questions, Monsieur Eek (as he is called by the residents) is found guilty of some local crimes and sentenced to death. Monsieur Eek is, of course, a monkey ... who turns this tiny town into a frenzy. Not surprisingly, author...

Cassandra Reilly works as a translator. She's an American, living in London, when a friend (of a friend), Frankie Stevens, calls and asks for her help. The friend (of a friend) needs someone who is fluent in Spanish to accompany them to Barcelona to locate her missing husband, Ben. Cassandra sees this is an easy assignment and jumps at the chance to go to Barcelona on someone else's dime for some simple translating work. But it doesn't take long for Cassandra to realize that she may have been lured to the job under false pretenses as truths about the situation may have been withheld or obfuscated altogether. While finding herself caught up in the search for Ben amid the lies and deceit, Cassandra finds herself reconnecting and caught between two former lovers, Ana and Carmen, making her Barcelona visit anything but the fun adventure she was expecting. I thought that the beginning few chapters of the book, the set-up of our central characters ("Frankie reminded me of a ...

 Ethan Pitowski is afraid of just about everything, so when he (along with the entire class) is invited to a classmate's house to watch a horror movie, Ethan isn't too keen on the idea - even though it is the most popular by in school. Ethan's friends, knowing of Ethan's fears, encourage him to attend anyway. It's hard for Ethan to say no to someone like Olivia. But when Ethan shows up, the horror is far more than he could imagine in his worst nightmares! The movie is one that was once thought to be lost and is considered by every single person who's ever survived seeing it, as the scariest movie ever made! And the worst part is, it isn't just a movie - it is coming to life! The movie IS the monster and it's eating Ethan's friends ... or their heads, anyway - the rest of them seems just fine. But Olivia is missing and no matter how scared Ethan is, rescuing Olivia comes first. In addition to finding his best friend, Ethan needs to find a way to stop ...

 For no reason that anyone can understand, Earth's moon one day quite unexpectedly turns into a massive, round cheese ball (or, as NASA refers to it - "a newly developed organic matrix"). The moon appears to have the same mass but it has increased in size. It is also causing some massive ejections of its organic material as pressure on the core increases. One such organic ejection sends a massive hunk of cheese toward earth, which could be more destructive than the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. For one entire lunar cycle, citizens of Earth debate and reflect on what's happening and how they want to see the end of the world. There probably isn't anyone writing better writing light, humorous, science fiction than John Scalzi. While I personally prefer his space opera sci-fi (ie the Old Man's War series, The Interdependency series, or even the non-space opera but hard-hitting Lock In series), the general reading public seems to like his humorous work ev...

 Una Chin-Riley is the poster girl for Starfleet: smart, driven, and dedicated. She's a by-the-book student, not afraid to ask questions and to quote the manual when she thinks something is being done incorrectly.  And like all really good students, she's also active in extra-curricular activities.  She's often the lead in the Academy-produced opera and she has sympathies for displaced peoples and works with groups to help people seeking asylum. Christopher Pike is an ensign, having only recently graduated from the Academy, he's back at Starfleet waiting for a hearing for an incident during his short tenure on the ship.  He's asked to give a lecture to students ... he's closer in age to them  (compared to the usually retired people who lecture) and yet he's got actual starship experience. Pike takes a liking to Una, despite her being so by-the-book and his realizing 'the book' doesn't have all the answers out in space. 25 years later, Christopher...

STAR TREK WEEK  It's never been told before, but finally we can read about the final mission of the Starship Enterprise . It's been five years and Captain Kirk and his crew have encountered many new life forms and discovered many inhabited worlds but will this mission bring about the end of the Federation itself? The mission brings Kirk full circle as they head to Archernar IV, where Kirk had his first mission as the Enterprise captain. The natives here are essentially giant, intelligent spiders, and their beasts of burden are centipedes. The story mostly looks at character growth.  How much have Kirk and Spock and bones matured, as people and as Starfleet officers during the past five years. I found this to be a well-written, interesting story and the art was generally okay (I miss the work of Gordon Purcell who worked on a number of different Star Trek comics) but there are enough oddly drawn scenes to take me out of the story. I've randomly opened to a couple of page...