All-In

I have a friend who has a weekly Texas Hold'em Poker game. The 10 dollar buy in gets you a certain amount of chips and once you lose them you are done. I have never done very well. Always being one of the first to lose my chips, I usually spend the rest of the night talking with the other "losers" in the kitchen! I am a terrible liar, so everyone knows when I am bluffing. That makes for a lousy poker player.

The book All-In by Pete Hautman is about a teenager who is a fantastic poker player. In fact, he makes so much money playing poker that he leaves his home town to move to Las Vegas and play full-time. The descriptions of the tournaments are exciting. I never thought that reading about the action in a card game could be thrilling, but Hautman has a gift. Denn Doyle is 17 years old and he has won and lost a fortune playing poker. He gets on some one's bad side and they set him up to lose everything. Now Denn's only chance is a winner- take-all tournament; however, he has to come up with the $10,000 entry fee.

If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?

I finally had some time this weekend to work in my yard. I have had snow in my yard since the ice storm before Christmas. With a couple of nice days last week, most of the snow has melted, so I was able to get out there and do some raking. I had two great big cypress trees in my backyard and they are really messy. I needed to rake up all the junk they lost plus the broken limbs from the ice storm. I moved the big limbs out into the front yard so they could be picked up. The city says that it is working on picking them up, but it might be March before they get to my neighborhood, and I just am not patient enough to wait that long. So I found someone with a truck who would pick them up for me. It will be nice to have that done. I also packed all the leaves and stuff in garbage bags and set them out by the curb to be picked up with the trash today. I felt pretty good about my yard when I finished, so I didn't feel bad about spending several hours reading a book.

The book I read was If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince? by Melissa Kantor. This book is nothing new, but if you like romantic fiction it is a good read. Lucy's father has remarried and moved her from California to New York, so she can live with her new stepmother and her two new stepsisters. Her father has some business to finish in California so Lucy is there alone. She feels invisible at her new school until she has a conversation about basketball with the "cutest guy in school." And suddenly Lucy's life is looking up. She sees that maybe she can have a prince since she has a wicked stepmother and two wicked stepsisters. However, Lucy starts to see that maybe the prince isn't so perfect after all. This book is witty, light and very entertaining and Lucy is a strong female character.

Absolutely Positively Not...Gay

I had to laugh at the book Absolutely Positively Not...Gay by David LaRochelle. The main character Steven is a closet square dancer. At school every year before Christmas, our students go to the gym and square dance. The gym is filled with students who really enjoy the activity. So it was funny to see Steven who doesn't want his friends to know that he likes to square dance. Steven has other problems too. He doesn't like sports, his best friend is a girl, and he just can't seem to find any enthusiasm for the Victoria Secret catalog, but he is "absolutely positively not gay!" This book treats the subject of sexuality in a humorous, but honest way. Steven tries to deny who he really is by dating as many girls as possible and reading a book that attempts to curb his "deviant behavior." This book is sometimes laugh out loud funny and sometimes it really makes you think about teens and the world we live in. We all can understand how Steven feels as he searches for someone to talk to--someone who shares his feelings. And everyone--gay or straight--can understand the need to be accepted.

Looking for J.J.

I like to watch sports of TV. I watched the KU basketball game last night. It was not a very good game, so I didn't have to pay close attention which was good because I was reading a really good book.

Looking for J.J. by Anne Cassidy is a good mystery novel. Six years ago 10 year old Jennifer Jones killed her best friend. She has now been released from prison and is trying to make a new life for herself. However, the tabloids will not leave Jennifer Jones alone. They want interviews and want to know why one child would kill another and want to see what kind of monster she is. J.J. has become Alice as she tries to put her past behind her. However, Alice is haunted by what happened when she was 10 years old and so is the reader. The story of the murder is told in flashbacks as the reader discovers what happened with J.J. and her friend and her family. If you like books that keep you guessing, this is a good one. And I really liked the ending because it seemed real. I don't like books that have those canned endings that tie everything up nicely and put it in a neat little box. Life is messy and I like books that reflect that. Looking for J.J. does that.

Twisted

Happy New Year! And Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

I am a few days behind. The Jayhawks won the Orange Bowl last Thursday night, so it is a good time to be from Kansas! Of course, I stayed up and watched the game and then I was tired the next day. I don't think that I was the only one though.

I am still trying to get back into the swing of school after the Christmas vacation. One of my New Year resolutions is to blog more often. We'll have to see how that goes; it doesn't look too promising. I don't know what happened to the vacation time. I thought that I would have lots of time to read, but somehow that didn't happen. I guess that there were too many friends and family members to see because I only read one book over the break.

The book was a really good one. Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson was a really good read! I loved Speak and also enjoyed Prom which are also by her, so I knew that I would enjoy it. I liked the twisted pencil on the front cover of the book which is what made me pick it up to begin with. (Yes, I judge books by their covers.) Anyway I don't know why, but I expected it to be a fun read like Prom instead of being thought-provoking like Speak. However, this book really made me think and it was a great combination of funny and sad. Tyler Miller was socially invisible before he spray-painted the school and became "dangerous." As he describes himself, "I was a zit on the butt of the student body." But the physical labor he does for his community service with the school custodians and his summer job working for a landscaper transform him from a wimpy junior to a strong, ripped senior. Suddenly the girl of his dreams sees him and his new muscles in a new light and his social life has hope. When naked pictures of Brittany are posted on the Internet, the police and the school come after Tyler. When there seems to be no justice for Tyler, he considers many possible escapes including running away and suicide. Although the book doesn't have a "happily-ever-after" ending, Tyler perseveres and shows strong moral integrity. This book is sad and funny and hopeful!

James Patterson books

The weather was definitely frightful this past week. The ice storm kept us home from school for 3 days and then 8 inches of snow kept me in the house for most of the weekend. It was a perfect time to catch up on some reading. In fact, the first day I didn't have electricity so there wasn't much else to do. Thankfully I had a gas fireplace to keep me warm and a kerosene lantern to read by. I curled up by the fire and read most of the day until the power came back on. I was one of the lucky ones who was only out of power for a day. I know that several places in town were out until Sunday--that made it almost an entire week without electricity. I would not have made a very good pioneer because I was pretty whiny after only a couple of hours without my modern conveniences.

I used this opportunity to catch up on the James Patterson books. I really enjoy his books. They are filled with suspense and keep me on the edge of my seat wondering what will happen next. I just finished Double Cross the latest book in Patterson's series about Alex Cross. Alex is a psychiatrist who works with the Washington D.C. police department and the FBI. He profiles serial killers. Double Cross is about a serial killer who they call the DC Audience Killer because he likes to kill in front of a audience. The first murder involved throwing a popular mystery writer off a balcony into a crowd of people. From there his murder become even more gruesome and more public. To make things worse, Kyle Craig who Alex Cross had put in prison in a previous book has escaped from prison and is seeking his revenge against Alex Cross and anyone else who had something to do in his capture. Each chapter has a new twist and turn.

Patterson isn't for everyone, but I really like his short chapters--usually only a couple of pages long. The books read quickly and like I said are filled with action and suspense. However, they also tend to be pretty graphic in their violence.

Another Vampire Book

Glass Houses by Rachel Caine is another vampire book. What makes this book different is that the vampires are not the good guys like all the other vampire books that are out right now. In Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, Edward, the vampire, is good looking, kind and nearly the perfect man and so many vampire books portray vampires in that manner. However, in Glass Houses which is the first book in The Morganville Vampires Series, the vampires are vicious and scary and not desirable at all!

Claire's parents send her to Texas Prairie University because they think that the town in small and the school is safe. Claire immediately gets on the wrong side of Monica, the leader of a gang of popular girls. They push Claire down the stairs and threaten to kill her. Claire is frightened and moves out of the dorm into the Glass House with three strange roommates: Eve a Goth girl, Michael who sleeps all day and Shane who left Morganville and returned under strange circumstances. From Eve and Shane, Claire learns that the town of Morganville is controlled by vampires and it is not safe to be out after dark. Somehow the Glass House has protective powers and they are safe inside. Claire with her talent of upsetting the wrong people has a vampire join Monica and her gang in threatening her and what happens is nonstop action as the reader discovers all the strange happenings in Morganville and the Glass House.

The downside of the book is that it is part of a series and although it solves the immediate problem, it ends in a place that makes you have to read the next book. We have three of the books in the series in the library.