That's all, folks.

Dearly Devoted Dexter – Jeff Lindsay

In Darkly Dreaming Dexter, we meet Dexter Morgan who is a serial killer super hero. We learn about his past, why he does the things he does, and how he covers his tracks. The biggest element in his cover is Rita, his girlfriend who’s ex was a drug addict and abusive who left her life when he turned on her two kids, Cody and Astor. In Dearly Devoted Dexter, the second in the series, Dexter has to use the “happy family” cover even more when Sgt. Doakes starts tailing him. That certainly puts a damper on his favourite extracurricular activities. But Dexter is starting to think that Cody is carrying a “dark passenger” of his own, as he spends more time with them.

Amongst all this, a new kind of baddy has hit the scene, and he’s not even killing people. He’s just systematically removing their appendages as well as all facial features and leaving them alive to suffer. How fun!

The Dexter tv show takes a pretty clear deviation from the books, and that’s good, because this would have been one messy, disturbing season to shoot. But I enjoyed this book, it was an interesting aside to the world of Dexter that never made it to TV. 

Haven – Justin Kemppainen

This was a free download on my e-reader and the author encourages people to share it. After my first experience with a book that is only available for free on e-reader (A Bride for Tom), I was skeptical and assumed another very immaturely written story. But Haven was good, if not a little disturbing. I found it hard to read before bed because it would usually put me in a bad mindset. But, it was very much an early draft... poor editing and alignment issues galore. It was messy, purely from a structuring point of view, without proper chapters and so on. Since I downloaded it, it has been revised quite a bit and most websites have it for $0.99 now.

Since Prop 172 came into effect, you no longer have to worry about mixing with the garbage of society - those who are not genetically sound enough or useful enough to let continue on. The rabble gets reprogrammed as workers and labourers, and your city is perpetual clean and beautiful. What a wonderful city is Haven!

But, the Haven that the Citizens live in was just built on top of the original city. Those people who did not make the cut have been left behind in the dark, sunless, infrastructure-free city down below. Not a fun existence. Gangs of people band together to steal from one another and try to stay alive. And they've decided to do something about it.

Apparently Haven 2 is in the works and I'm curious to read it.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

I’m still a little surprised that I had never managed to read this. And I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and how well Lewis Carroll managed to portray a dreamscape. The absurdity of it all, the inability to do something that’s typically easy for you (in the story Alice is asked to recite verse that she apparently knows but she gets it all wrong) and the way that the things change and move – the way that one second you can be in one place in a dream and suddenly you are somewhere else entirely – just read so true to what a sorts of experiences I have while dreaming. Just add a good dose of talking animals to any of the dreams I would have had as a kid, and you have Alice’s adventures.

I was surprised how short it was too. There is certainly a lot more to the Disney rendition that we all know and love.But I suppose that's because most versions include Through the Looking Glass now.

April’s Grave – Susan Howatch

Karen has been back in America for three years when she is contacted by Marnie, her ex-husband's best friend.  Her short-lived marriage ended when her slutty, vagabond sister April interfered. So when Karen asks Marnie how April is doing, and they realize that no one has had contact with her since that fateful night, the search is set in motion. Where is April? And is she even still alive?

This was a pretty light murder-mystery. I found it easy to read the characters but I didn't get too emotionally involved either, so I didn't feel a terrible amount of tension as it came to a close. It did feel a bit rushed in the end, trying to tie up all the loose ends, but that's ok. We're not talking about great literature here. But on the whole, the writing style was clean and easy to read.

Hard Candy – Mary Lynn Baxter

Ugh… this was bad. A little bit formulaic crime drama, a little bit cheesy romance novel, and all sorts of hilariously bad. I found myself groaning, rolling my eyes, and just getting exhausted trying to read it. It reminded me of a bad plot on a soap opera. 

The Publishers Weekly synopsis really describes it rather nicely. 

"Not only had he kissed his main suspect, he wanted to fuck her, as well," is one of many bits of tacky internal dialogue from bully detective, Ryker Delany, regarding his prime murder suspect in this one-dimensional, raunchy crime drama by the author of Autumn Awakening. When Blythe Lambert's dead husband washes up on the shores of a local lake, Ryker would love nothing more than to pin the murder on her. (Apparently she'd ticked him off once by mistaking him for one of her landscaping company's laborers). Bitchy and self-absorbed, Blythe doesn't like Ryker any more than he likes her, but she likes him well enough to hop into bed with him, which doesn't seem to complicate their hate/hate relationship. Between battling her in-laws, searching for a missing will and lamenting her failing business, Blythe is dogged by someone who wants the mysterious but valuable "Hard Candy" that her husband supposedly had in his possession when he died. But Blythe and crew are so distasteful that it's hard to care about her predicament or whether she gets out of it."

And that covers it. Every single character in the book is so vile, I kind of hoped it would end up with everyone being caught up in an unfortunate gas explosion. No such luck.

The Modern Dog – Dr Stanley Coren

If you have any real interest in dog behaviour, you are at least mildly familiar with Dr Coren, or you’ve heard his name. He speaks all over the world and has written a number of books. He has a way of presenting ideas and information in his books that makes them very readable, even for the more casual dog enthusiasts. And if you are a dog owner with an interest in behaviour, but not a whole lot of background, this is a good read for you.

In The Modern Dog, he covers all sorts of areas in which dogs enrich our lives, but also explains how we got to where we are as species sharing our lives cohesively.

As someone who has read a few of his other books and has heard him speak at seminars and in various television programs, there wasn’t much of anything new in this book for me. But, because he gives real-life examples to go along with what he’s discussing, everything from stories he has heard on the road to accounts of how famous figures and historical character interacted with their dogs, it was still enjoyable.

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi 

Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel about a young girl's life in Iran in 1980. And I keep re-writing this second sentence, but I just can't say anything that does this story justice. It is so beautiful, and sweet, and sad. The artwork is so simple, it offsets the often heavy subject matter. I can't believe that so much story and emotion is crammed into 153 pages.

Persepolis is also a movie and is available on netflix. I am SO going to watch tomorrow. Available on Amazon here.

****

Book count: 52/50

I guess that's it... I've done my 50 books and surpassed the goal. It was actually accidental, I forgot about a book when I was doing my mental calculations (that's what I get for not blogging often enough) and the Persepolis was a bathroom add-on. 

It is hard to believe that a year has almost gone by since I started this. Next will be the 15,000 pages challenge, I think. But we'll see.....