Wordcraft – Books and reviews to mix & match

The first time I noticed my ranking among Amazon’s reviewers, I was 1 million plus something. And I thought – wow, Amazon even has algorithms for ranking reviewers? Of course, I set my sights on #1, only to find that top rated reviewers gain their status by reviewing everything. In fact, thousands of everythings. Including baby shampoo. (The package was in good shape, it arrived quickly and the shampoo cleaned the reviewer’s hair nicely! A 5-star review!)

image: wikimedia commons

I decided to stick to reviewing books, occasionally posting reviews on this blog as well.  As I contemplated more book reviews for 2017, I enjoyed looking back at reviews posted in the past 12 months and thought – why not do a brief share with readers? Here are the openings of my reviews of several recent books by Texas authors and their titles/authors. See how many you can match. Better yet -- read the books for yourselves!

Review openings:

1)      Psychopaths make the best villains – in life as in fiction. But a psychopath as a main character? That’s what this Texas author has accomplished with a book whose anti-hero flashes the glibness and charm (superficial though they may be) of a true psychopath in a way that will have readers cheering for him against their will.

2)      Jane Austen fans can have Elizabeth Bennet – my fav Austen heroine is Emma Woodhouse. Yes, that Emma, the insufferable know-it-all who tries to fit her friends into incongruous romances while remaining blissfully unaware of her own admirer, her almost equally know-it-all brother-in-law George Knightley. So I was delighted to find the Emma-Knightley trope still alive and well on the plains of West Texas.

3)      Shortly after Saving Private Ryan appeared in movie theaters, I was aghast to hear that one of my co-workers had taken her then-teenage son to see it. She did it, she said, to keep him from getting any ideas that war was glamorous. Then came 9/11, and wars when both civilians and soldiers die – or sometimes worse, live – without any thought of glamour, under circumstances of almost unimaginable, unremitting horror. Those are the kinds of wars this Texas author writes about.

4)      The latest installment in this Texas writer’s series of thrillers starring an ex-CIA agent is the story of a plot to assassinate an autocratic, plutocratic ex-KGB agent who happens to be president of Russia. Readers may rest assured that the Russian president in question is completely fictional. Any resemblance between him and current Russian president and billionaire ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin is, of course, purely coincidental.

5)      A tall handsome stranger rides into a small Texas town just vacated by a corrupt law enforcement official. It’s the classic Western scenario, lovingly but devastatingly updated for the 21^st century by this Texas author. But unlike the horse opera versions of the story, this hero can’t ride a horse, dislikes getting his city slicker shoes dirty, and has no patience for cows. And he comes with a load of modern-day angst – a wife who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, a previous job he left under a cloud, and an angry teenage son.

6)      One spring day in 1940, a 29-year-old West Virginia coal miner went to work as usual. Wearing his carbide lantern helmet, carrying his dinner bucket, he said goodbye to his wife and three children, the youngest a five-month-old infant. His family would never see him alive again. In compensation for his death, the mining company paid his widow one thousand dollars. It also ordered her to clear out of the little company house she rented, because on the first day, the family of the miner who would take her dead husband’s place was moving in.

image: wikimedia commons

 Titles/authors:

            A)    Stillwater, by Melissa Lenhardt

B)    The First Order, by Jeff Abbott

C)    Steel Will, by Shilo Harris

D)    Interference, by Kay Honeyman

E)     Running on Red Dog Road, by Drema Hall Berkheimer

F)     Hollow Man, by Mark Pryor

(Answers: 1, F; 2, D; 3, C; 4, B;5, A; 6, E)

Wordcraft -- Channeling Austen on the football field

Interference

by Kay Honeyman

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As 2017 approaches, this blog site will metamorphose into a book review site. Not that I’ve ever been reluctant to share space with current authors, especially when, like Kay Honeyman, they’re fellow Texans. The following review of her YA novel, Interference, has also appeared at Goodreads and Amazon.

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Honeyman and daughter

Jane Austen fans can have Elizabeth Bennet – my favorite  Austen heroine is Emma Woodhouse. Yes, that Emma, the insufferable know-it-all who tries to fit her friends into incongruous romances while blind to her own admirer, her almost equally know-it-all brother-in-law George Knightley. So I was delighted to find the Emma-Knightley trope still alive and well on the plains of West Texas in Kay Honeyman’s YA romance, Interference. But there are no bonnets or maidenly blushes in Honeyman’s version. This time around, it’s congressman’s daughter Kate Hamilton who’s channeling Emma. After a vengeful ex-boyfriend posts disgraceful photos of Kate online, her family retreats to her father’s hometown of Red Dirt, Texas.

But is the move to spare Kate the notoriety of scandal at her D.C. school, as she broods, “. . .what pushed Mom and Dad into this three-day, five-state road trip was that the pictures made them look bad, like they were neglectful parents,” Kate broods. “Part of me wished that for once they’d spent some of their political capital to defend me. . . Instead, we packed up and drove to Texas.”

Or, as she also suspects – and doesn’t sit well with a teen – is the move really to reboot her father’s flagging political career, as he is down 15 points in his bid for reelection in his East Coast district?

Not that her family’s problems weigh heavily on Kate’s mind. She’s more worried about her standing at her new high school in the tiny town of Red Dirt, Texas. The photo-scandal at her former school has ruined any chance for the teachers’ recommendations. She’ll need great photographs in her own portfolio to qualify for admission to the art college she has her heart set on. Not to mention a long string of volunteer hour credits

Red Dirt High School offers no classes in photography and its only darkroom belongs to the school’s yearbook sponsor. Can Kate take pictures for a yearbook, especially of the high school football team that is the town’s pride and joy? She swallows her pride in exchange for a chance to use the darkroom.

And those volunteer hours? Her only chance to add them to her resume is a local animal shelter, where Kate is quickly introduced to the realities of ranch life. And to the other volunteer – enigmatic fellow Red Dirt student Hunter Price, who scorns Kate’s big city pretensions.

Adding to her horror, she finds herself immersed in politics both inside and out of high school, yet another political campaign, when her father files as a surprise candidate for Congress from Red Dirt’s district – with an opponent whose son Kyle is the star quarterback of the high school football team. Still, Kate decides, handsome Kyle would make the perfect boyfriend for her new friend, fellow yearbook photographer Ana Gomez. Or would the annoying Hunter, who mysteriously quit the football team himself, make a better match for best friend Ana?

As Kate’s matchmaking brings turmoil to all around her, she finds herself actually beginning to enjoy Red Dirt, enjoy using her political skills to help her father – and finally realize where her own heart is leading her.

I’ll admit, I had to let some of the turmoil of this year’s election campaigns cool off before I could bear to read a story about another election. Honeyman's Texas -- and its politics -- are of a kinder, gentler strain than those most adults would recognize. But her sprightly dialogue, the gritty, gutsy teen characters – slightly smoothed over for younger readers -- and the genuineness of the Texas setting and the state’s mania for football make Interference worth my vote.