Two for the Dough

I like both of these covers.
And I'd like to declare that I want to be Grandma Mazur when I grow up! She's tiny, quick as a whip and carries a .45-long barrel. My kinda woman!
Two for the Dough is the second installment of Evanovich's One for the Money series. Stephanie Plum is the heroin/ victim/ bait of these books. And in this particular book she has found herself the target of Kenny Mancuso, sicko, cutter extraordinaire.
She is a Bounty Hunter by profession, out of necessity. Like the book suggests, she's doin it for money. Her latest FTA (Failure to Appear) is said cutter. She finds herself travelling around to all the local funeral homes which happens to be Garndma Mazur's favorite thing to do in the evenings. I'ma itchin to review, so let's turn this mother out...
Review: This is just the morbid kind of humor that I like. Death, guns, old people, good times.
Evanovich also includes all the every day stuff and her novels span over little periods of time which I like. I can see where Stephenie Meyers gets her influence. I actually picked these novels up in the first place because Meyers, being one of my favorite authors, really likes these books. I always like to see what my favorite authors enjoy. Helps me get in their head more. Example: C.S. Lewis regarded George MacDonald as his "master", so I checked out MacDonald, and as it turned out, loved his stuff too!
Just like the first. Fun, page-turner, if you have the time, pick it up, but you won't want to put it down... Here's a quote:
"I rumbled off to Vic's Video and rented Ghostbusters, my all time favorite inspirational movie. I picked up some microwave popcorn, a kitkat, a bag of bite-sized reese's peanut butter cups, and a box of instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. Do I know how to have a good time or what?"
Why, yes, you do. Sounds like the best time.
Only one bone I have to pick about this book. Steph's jeep gets stolen and she ends up with a powder blue '53 Buick, which I think sounds awesome! But she doesn't like it. I guess I'm just into the retro thing, I would go for the antique before the shiny new toy.

One For the Money Review

I like the cover of this. Very 1950s-mystery-thriller. That being said, it isn't the right one.
One For The Money is about a woman named Stephanie Plum who is out of a job and selling her furniture off one by one to feed herself and her hamster Rex. She ends up working for her Uncle Vinnie and becoming a Bounty Hunter, the worst one ever. Hilarity ensues. If you've ever seen Dominoe imagine her opposite. R-E-V-I-E-W T-I-M-E
Review: This series, to me, reminds me of those little pecan pinwheels my momma used to get when I was a kid. They were small and one wasn't really enough, but by golly they were tasty and not good for you at all. Now if you ate nothing but the the pinwheels you would surely turn into a fat slob and possibly suffer a sugar coma. Well, with this series, it's the same. One definitely isn't enough, so be prepared to want more. But if all you read is Evanovich, your brain will surely suffer for it. Not to say it isn't witty, because it is. It just doesn't edify your mind intellectually, or your soul spiritually.
Evanovich also feels no need to beautify anything. She makes me want to stay the hell away from Jersey. But I like the fact that she didn't try to make Plum overly sexy and girly girlish. She's not too cool or confident, not too smart, but not too dumb. She doesn't shoot three bad guys as she jumps through the air after a major explosion happening just yards away. Actually she kind of hate guns. And is more afraid of herself with a gun then the baddies she's chasing.
I'm not going to bother with a theory, it is just what it claims to be and there are no deeper meanings. Here are some quotes:
"As a backup, I intended to get a quart of defense spray. I wasn't much good with a gun, but I was bitchin with an aerosol can."

Now this book was published in 1994, and in this quote it is painfully obviously so.. "I took a shower and spent some time on my hair, doing the blow-drying thing, adding some gel and some spray. When I was done I looked like Cher on a bad day. Still, Cher on a bad day wasn't all that bad. I was down to my last clean pair of spandex shorts. I tugged on a matching sports bra that doubled as a halter top and slid on a big, loose, purple T-shirt with a large, droopy neck over my head. I laced up my hightop reeboks, crunched down my white socks, and felt pretty cool."

Yup, I remember feeling pretty cool in my white turtleneck and sweatshirt in elementary school. And the bad fashion train moved forward slowly but surely creaking and screeching all the way through my teen years.
Wrap up time: Good vacation books. Or if you can't go anywhere: mental-vacation books.

What I'm Reading...

The Evanovich train pulled in and I hopped on board...
I got the first two at the library, and 48 hours later I was mad because they aren't open on Sundays so I couldn't get the third installment of the 'One for the Money' series. So, I secured my week by putting the next five on hold. Certainly I'll have to get the next 8 put on hold in about 3 days (yes, there are that many.) I don't want to have to be put in the situation of having to watch t.v. on a sunday afternoon again!

The Scarlet Letter

A novel by Nathaniel Hawthorn. The story is set in colonial times when the Puritans came to America searching for religious freedom. Oh, how ironic. Seeing as how the main character of this novel (Mrs. Hester Prynne) finds herself the the victim of a new kind of punishment in the form of the scarlet letter. What does the 'A' stand for ? Amorous? If Mr. Hawthorne mentions what it means it passed right over my head.
It's hard to review this book, I mean, of course it's awesome. Every paragraph is so poetically written and charged with spiritual and patriotic indignation that it's hard to pin anything down and say "here, this is the best part!" If you haven't read this book yet, you are missing out on an incredible story. No, do not see the movie. Get your history from a man who knows it.
I usually search through hundreds of pictures to find the one I like the best to put up on this here blog-of-the-universe. And if you google The Scarlet Letter and hit 'images' you'll come up with some real nastiness. (This is not a suggestion) Point is, the book is not as sexually charged as people like to make the story out to be. It doesn't start with sin. It starts with the CONSEQUENCE! In fact there are no love scenes. Only the aftermath. Which is the point of the story.
Hawthorne doesn't see fit to make Hester a victim, nor is she a heroin, but equally she is not a villain. She is a woman who screwed. up. big. She is now living with it. It is walking beside her in the form of a child who is also doomed to live life as an outcast.
The story starts with Hester walking out of a prison cell holding a babe that is the source of the controversy. She walks over to a scaffold for the entire town to view her and her new symbol. This is the most famous scene from the novel.
The story carries through her life as the town outcast. The priests use her constantly as a reference point in sermons and even in the middle of the street they will stop her and say "take this example of a woman given over sin."
The sin that earned her the scarlet letter was adultery. Her husband sent her to this town to establish a home for them until he could join her. Cut to two years later and we find Hester on the scaffold, her husband in that time had never made an appearance. Which is what made it so obvious that she had committed the offense.
I am by no means done with the discussion on this book. There is simply too much to try and force into one article. I'm going to pick up again on How Hester has established herself in her life as the town scandal.

The Scarlet Letter - Introductory

The Introductory of The Scarlet Letter is so loooooooong that I decided to separate it from the main story and treat it as it's own entity.. It starts out as a proclamation that it is not an autobiography. And to add to that it has a formal letter in the beginning of the book disclaiming any ill will to a certain individual that the author is supposed to have particularly expressed an.... oh hell, here is a quote; "As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such motives." Hawthorne didn't write that part himself but the did write the introductory. Said letter is in reference to the fact that the introductory contains both how he received and lost his job at the Custom House. Attributing the loss largely to one particular individual. This is what Hawthorne had to say about the Custom House, where, by the by, he got his inspiration for this book;
"Its front is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunder- bolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later -- oftener soon than late -- is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows."
This statement could describe the America of today. It was published in approximately 1850, and yet acutely describes America in the age of the setting of the story (approx. 200 years prior to being published) all the way through it's history to modern day. America has been this weird mix of freedom, oppression, comfort, and indignation. And the writer Mr. Hawthorne is evidently very aware of it. This awareness stems from his own family tree.

"The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor-who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace -- a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the Charter-street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them -- as I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist -- may be now and henceforth removed."

It seems to me that Hawthorne is both unifying and yet separating himself from the era of The Scarlet letter, and the Salem witch trials. And maybe feels the need to show the effects of religious and governmental persecution so that we don't fall back to it.
Hawthorne was living American history. And as I can now look back on it and say 'wow, the first settlers of our country, in effect, stole this land and persecuted many people in horrific ways according to their stiff legalistic religious spirit according to how it suited them.' Hawthorne is saying ' yeah, I was close to it. I know how bad it is.' Much in the same way a descendant of a slave owner might feel today.
The place, The Custom House, more accurately it's attic, was the where the author found the scarlet letter, and yes it was an actual thing, and Hester Prynne was an actual woman, the bearer of the letter.
The author goes on to describe some of the characters of the custom house. One of whom I feel close to my own personality.

"though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation -- was fond of standing at a distance, and watchinghis quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the unappropriate environment of the Collector's office."
Yeah, I understand that guy. I'm not great at casual conversation and usually save my breath for something that interests me. It's quite the opposite when I write. It might seem I'm long-winded when it comes to this here blog-of-the-century, but in reality it's almost painful for me to have to speak to actual people sometimes. Which is why my closest friends (including the husband, BFFs!) are very long-winded. I'm just very much in my head most of the time.
Mr. Hawthorne lists many different men that, while in his office of the Surveyor, he had grown to love. But he also knew that he could not stay in office and do what he loved the most. You guessed it, writing. Luckily, or unluckily he gets fired due to a change in political office. A new governor I think, maybe even president, any way, which brings us back to the beginning of the article in which he is supposed to have had any "ill-will".
Thus the story is able to be made, and thus it is.