Stake and Eggs (Childs)

Stake and Eggs
by Laura Childs (2012)

[No Image, Audiobook]

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is the fourth book in the Cackleberry Club series. For some reason, it was not avaible in ebook form at any of the three library systems in NYC. It was not available in book form in either Brooklyn or Manhattan. (I don't have a Queens branch near me.) And it was only available as an audiobook from the New York Public Library system through the SimplyE app, but not the Libby app. It was a total accident that I found it. I'd been searching Libby, but when I searched the libaries' website catalogues, I finally found it.

SimplyE is an app that hast been on my iPad for quite a while. I don't remember downloading it and I can't say that I've ever used it. Maybe it was the app I used when I downloaded comic books many years ago. I can't say. But I put it on my phone and used it.

IT IS A TERRIBLE APP. USELESS. It doesn't always save your place, backing you up to the last time you started listening. And when my book was due, I returned it and downloaded it again, and it restarted me at Chapter 1. I had no idea exactly where I was, but it doesn't matter because THERE'S NO TABLE OF CONTENTS MENU. Actually, there is, but any time I tapped on it, it brought me to the NYPL Catalogue page.

I was so desperate that I actually asked my wife, who may have been a little miffed at me at that particular moment, if she could show me how to do something on my phone. Appealing to her sense of, not so much superiority, but of I-married-an-idiot-ity, got her to put miffed aside and try. I almost didn't get my phone back because she was working under the assumption that the interface, though primitive, made some kind of sense. It did not.

Okay, now about the book, which was fine enough, but I'm not spending money to buy a copy.

First off, I've realized that the names don't mean a thing. There are no stakes that I recall in the entire book. The murder is committed with a piece of fence wire. Previously titles also didn't seem to matter. Also, it takes place in winter, so the election that we never got to in the last book is already behind us. Spoilers, the crooked mayor and the dogged Sheriff Doogie both won.

This review has been sitting here for a few weeks, unfinished. I'd forgotten about it, honestly. And I'm forgetting more about the book, but here's what I remember.

Toni finally decides she's going to divorce Junior, after he was a hero in the last book. The other two ladies are happy about this but aren't sure if she'll actually go through with it. Junior shows up with a car that has his new invention: the car cooker, which is an oven built into the engine that cooks as the car goes. It's a running gag throughout the book, with food needing a few more miles until it's done. He says that he has investors looking into it. His cooker car will, of course, play a part in the finale, as silly as it sounds.

The Winter Fair is coming and there is a radio competition to find a medallion hidden somewhere in town. The clues are all vague and refer to ice. The initial ones of course should be vague, but they don't get any better or more specific. I mention this because one note I did leave myself from a couple of weeks ago is that where the medallion is found makes absolutely no sense for the rest of the story because the place it was in at the end didn't exist at the beginning.

So the bank president is killed on a snowmobile with a wire strung between two trees. He's head is found in the woods sometime after the snowmobile crashes into the back of the Cackleberry Club. Meanwhile, a teen runaway had seen the man who hung the wire, so he's laying low because he's afraid he'll be next. He switches jackets with the busboy who works at the cafe, and manages to sneak in for some food. He gets caught. Joey, meanwhile, gets attacked and is hospitalized. Suzanne comes to realize it's because the two boys switched jackets.

All of the regulars put in appearances, and a few people are vying to be the new bank president.

In the end, the runaway identifies the killer, who then steals Junior's car and the chase is on.

I won't say that the series is getting stale just yet, but it's almost done for me. I'll take some time off before the next book. I'm not even sure if the next book is available for loan.

DNF: The Zoo of Intelligent Animals (Holdsworth)

The Zoo of Intelligent Animals
by D.A. Holdsworth (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This may be the first "Did Not Finish" book that I've listed. It's certainly the first that I labeled "DNF". Usually, I decide at about 10% if it's worth continuing, and sometimes I ask again at 20%. Other times, I know in the first few pages. Unless I promised to give feedback, I've learned to cut my losses rather than suffer through -- and likely avoid reading anything in the process. (Games, videos, whatever.)

I stuck with this book until I was almost halfway through. Things were finally starting to happen ... and I found myself totally uninterested. And if you're going to start with a trope like an alien zoo filled with humans, you need to make it a lot more interesting a lot sooner. And I might've stayed the course, but this was a 400+ page book. I had basically an entire 240-page book to go.

I knew I'd be cutting out of this book soon any way because I have a Book Club selection on hold. But while checking my place in line the NYPL suggested a collection of stories by Jane Yolen, who I've read before (although I didn't complete that collection -- perhaps it's time that I did). I started on that book, which, again, I'll drop out of when my other book arrives. And I'll get back to the collection. And maybe I'll get back to this.

Aside from dullness, it made an error in the science, something which could've been hand-waved, but not like this. All but one of the main characters are people out of time. That's because they've traveled through space and suffered the effects of time dilation. That much is fine. If the explanation had been that they'd past through a different dimension, again, that would've been okay. Had they traveled long distance and near light speeds, that would've been permissable. But instead the explanation was that they'd spent time on other planets in this universe where time passed differently. And the explanation for that was that the planets are traveling at higher speeds through space.

Gentle readers, if there are any of you out there, this is poppycock. The planet, and the star is was circling, would have to be moving at over .95c to achieve the time dilation effect described. Stars don't move like that and planets that somehow did wouldn't support life. And the fact that there's no suggestion of just how fast the planet (and star) must be moving tells me that the author didn't consider it and that he expected that the reader wouldn't either.

And the worst part of the offense is that the exact reason probably didn't matter but there needed to be on because the timelines on the two planets wouldn't match up otherwise. And these late 19th century folks would be very out of place in the early 21st century.

The book was a free download, not a library book, so there's a chance (slim as it is) I will pick it up again and try to continue because I was a little curious where he was going to go with his zoo, but by no means hooked.

And since I got this, I've been getting emails to buy his first book, which, oddly, isn't a free download. Usually, the first is free to get you to buy the second. Or so I thought.