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Challenger has invited Malone, Roxton and Summerlee to his house for a reunion a year after their adventure in the Lost World. Just before he is to leave Malone is approached by his editor. He wants Malone to figure out what Challenger is up to now, apparently he is making statements that there is poisonous ether headed towards Earth. Then he makes a strange request of his guests -- they should bring bottled oxygen with them. The three head to Challenger's house with their oxygen. On the way, each notice strange behavior in their traveling companions but do not notice their own. When they get to Challenger's he explains that this the effect of the Poison Belt that is tightening around the planet. They retreat to Mrs Challenger's rooms and seal it off the best they can while using the oxygen tanks to cleanse the air. As they look out the windows they notice the people and animals in the countryside succumbing to the effects of the poisonous ether. Soon it appears that the poison has dissipated and they realize that they may be the only ones left on Earth that have not died. They decide to go into London to see if there are any other survivors. Along the way they run into one woman who was also on oxygen but everyone else seems to be dead. Disheartened, they head back to the Challenger estate where they find that the ether's effects may not be permanent.
This story was not as good or as entertaining as The Lost World. I like science fiction and I like the unbelievable but this story was just a little too unbelievable. It bordered on the absurd and the characters seemed to have lost some of their charm.
Edward Malone, a young and enthusiastic journalist, is invited to accompany the great Professor George E. Challenger on an expedition to a remote part of the Amazon where dinosaurs still live. The blustery and pompous Challenger also invites another scientist, Professor Summerlee, and a nobleman, Lord John Roxton to confirm this discovery. The four set off on an arduous adventure through the Amazon to "the Lost World" that Challenger has kept secret until now. Here they encounter dinosaurs, ape men and a small tribe of primitive humans.
Although it's a departure from the Holmes stories that Doyle is best known for, I really enjoyed this. Challenger is such a charactature of a pompous professor and quite humorous. He is most like Holmes in that he knows his stuff and completely believes in his own knowledge and abilities. Unlike Holmes, he is boisterous, cantankerous and just plain loud. Summerlee is mostly there just to annoy Challenger which does lead to some funny scenes between the two. Malone, as the narrator, is very similar to Watson but his tale has a lot more awe and wonder. Roxton embodied the gentlemen noble and was true to his character even when faced with deadly situations. The descriptions of the dinosaurs and landscape were very realistic. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the South Americans showed typical Victorian bias' and racism.
Ellery is invited to a dinner party of an acquaintance at the Hotel Chancellor in New York City where they find a dead body in the waiting room of his friend's office. The unidentified man is on the floor with all his clothes on backwards, all of the items in the room are facing backwards and the peeling of a Chinese orange are in a bowl. And to make matters worse, both doors are locked from the inside. Inspector Queen and his police force are baffled and Ellery is intrigued so they work together to solve the case. More than one of the suspects are lying and all their stories and motives are suspect. Ellery has to figure out what the "backwardness" meaning is and does it have anything to do with the Chinese orange?
I truly enjoyed this book. It was a lot of fun and since it was written in the 1930s, it had a completely different feel to it than the mystery novels written today. Although I do enjoy the forensic based novels of today, I really like the old fashioned detective novels of the 30s and 40s. They're a lot of fun and include more deductive reasoning and not so much science. The Ellery Queen books were written from the 1930s to the 1960s by a writing team under the pseudonym of Ellery Queen. I don't know how many of them there are but I'm hoping to read them all.
I hadn't read a Kay Scarpetta book in a very long time. I'd forgotten some of the details of Scarpetta's life but most of it came back to me. In this book Kay is faced with a series of murders where only the torsos are found and the bodies cannot be identified. Unfortunately these murders are not just occurring in the US but also in Ireland. While working on this baffling case she also has to contend with an outbreak of smallpox that endangers those that she cares about. She has to deal with an idiot inspector that thinks he has the torso case all wrapped up without sufficient evidence and then she finds that she has a stalker who is taunting her and sending her pictures of the crime scenes. As always the cast is rounded out by Marino, Lucy and Benton. Although I enjoyed this book, I think I like the earlier Scarpetta novels better and that might be why it's taken me so long to get back to the series.
I tried to read this book a long time ago and never could finish it. Jen suggested that I try again and I'm glad she did. I really enjoyed it even though it could be a little confusing at times. The story is about a boy, Paul Atreides, who moves to a new planet (Arrakis AKA Dune) with his father, Duke Leto, and his mother the Lady Jessica so that his father can take stewardship of Arrakis. Arrakis is the sole place where melange, the spice, can be found and is very important in the Empire...too everyone. The political intrigue, religious issues, the climate and history of the new planet, and survival on this desolate planet plunges Paul and his mother into quite the adventure. The biggest of which is Paul's new found purpose. I can't wait to read the next one!
by Robert Sullivan
This book starts with a farewell from Tony Bennett and then moves into wonderful pictures from the Life Magazine. Although it's a short book, starting with Sinatra's birth in Hobokon, NJ, it is very interesting and full of great little stories about his life. And it's definitely worth getting just to look at the pictures!
There are three parts to this book. The first part is the amazing short story written by Annie Proulx. The second part is the fabulous script by McMurtry and Osana. The third part is comprised of three essays written by these three authors. If you didn't feel the specialness of the story from the incredible movie by Ang Lee, then the short story, the screenplay and the essays should bring it home to you. They talk about the eight year battle to get the movie made. I think that they had to wait for Ang Lee, Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams to make the movie. If it had been made sooner I don't think it would have been the same. I highly recommend this book, if any of you need to borrow it, just let me know. And yes, Consuelo, I cried, again. That line, "Jack, I swear...", gets me every time.
I read this book when I was either in middle school or high school and recently ran across it again so I just had to read it. It's the story of a young girl who is dealing with all sorts of turmoil in her family in the early 70s. Her mother is a single mom trying to raise three girls and working two jobs. Carol is the middle child. Her older sister is "popular" and is never home. Since her mother works so much, she is in charge of her little sister. She has raise her little sister, do homework and deal with the loneliness of being without friends or any kind of social interaction with kids her age. When her older sister gets pregnant and has to move to a home for unwed mothers, her life takes yet another not so pleasant turn. It is such a sweet but sad story of one girls' struggles. I remember liking it when I was a kid and I still like it. Although I would recommend it to teenage girls, I think it will be hard for girls today to understand the isolation Carol felt. Without cable, internet, iPods and other things to help stave off the loneliness would they understand what she was going through? And the humiliation of an unwed teenager girl and draft dodgers? It won't mean the same thing. But I still think they would be able to feel for this girl even if her situation was really foreign to them.
