An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

Let Us Prey by Jamie Lee Scott My rating: 3 of 5 stars Free Kindle book. I liked this book. Mimi is an ex-Secret Service agent who has a PI agency with two of her best friends. They're hired to protect a famous authoress who writes a popular vampire series. When someone is gruesomely murdered, Mimi gets dragged into the investigation. Making it even more interesting was that the investigating cop was Mimi's college boyfriend. Very hot boyfriend. It was a nice read and the first in a series. I'll be checking out the next one. View all my reviews

A big group of us headed to El Golfo which is a gorgeous beach about an hour from Rocky Point. The qualifications to attend was to bring your own beer and a "toy". The toys in question were a combination of ATVs, Quads and a heavy duty golf cart. Our vehicles consisted of three trucks pulling trailers, Annette's Xterra and the Pirate Captain's big, red Chevy truck. We carefully navigated down the partially washed out road to the beach and got stuck at the end where we couldn't go any further because another group had parked an old school bus, a popup camper/car and a couple of tents (including a teepee) at the end of the road to the beach and even pulled a rope across the road to stop all traffic. So, we stopped about 100 yards away from them up on the road and lugged our stuff down to the beach via human effort and Quad delivery. As we were unpacking our popups, two of the guys came over from the other group and started talking to us. The older guy was the sp...

Dead End Job by Ingrid Reinke My rating: 2 of 5 stars Another free Kindle read. Louisa is an Admin for the legal department of a PR company in the midst of a big merger. She's a hot mess at the beginning of the book. Slacker at work, anxiety-prone and a mess around men. I found that to be laid on a bit thick and discordant as she managed to still have a full social life and a lot of great friends. When people at the firm start dying, Louisa is a suspect and also in danger. She half-heartedly tries to discover who's killing her co-workers but can't get past her hots for a good looking cop and the office cutie. I saw some growth in Louisa but it felt a little forced considering the shortness of the timeframe for the story. View all my reviews

Ex and the Single Girl by Lani Diane Rich My rating: 2 of 5 stars Got this for free to read on the Kindle. Good story. Portia is depressed after her boyfriend of two years leaves her on Valentine's Day with just a note written in the front of his recently published but unsuccessful book. Her Mom calls and asks her to come home to their small town and help with the family bookstore. When she arrives, she finds that her Mom, Aunt and Grandmother have set her up to have a fling with a visiting British author. Lots of family drama as Portia tries to discover what the women in her family do to chase men away and there's an added element when her ex-boyfriend shows back up. This was a nice, light read. However, I gave it two stars instead of three because of the formatting and typographical errors. They drove me nuts. View all my reviews

I made my annual trip to Key West at the end of October for Meeting of The Minds. It's where several thousand parrot heads take over the island and follow all things Trop-Rock. Two great things about the event are the chance to meet some wonderful people from across the country and to see a lot of musicians. And, meet a lot of musicians. So, that makes three great things. The Trop-Rock people are super friendly and really gracious with, and grateful for, their fans. I was working Registration on Thursday morning and had two super volunteers, Lorene and Joe at one of the desks. I swear they worked more hours during the convention than I did and I'm an assistant Chair. In walked John Patti and his Dad, John Patti, Sr. Lorene was so excited! She got in between them for a hug then moved back to her job. I stopped her and said, "Do it again so I can get a picture." Man, that was even more exciting! She lunged between them and almost knocked down Jr in her exuberance...

So, I have an iPhone5 and I love it more than is healthy. It's awesome! I just loaded the Blogger app and created this post with a picture from the Roller Derby from the photos on my phone. Yes, I went to the Roller Derby on Saturday and it was the BEST people watching. It will be interesting to see how this post looks when I'm done.

Bemused by Catherine Winchester My rating: 2 of 5 stars A friend gave me his old Kindle to try out so I got this book free from Amazon to read on that device. I thought I would find it annoying because I'm a really fast reader and there's not a lot of text on one page but I very quickly got used to it and I liked the portability. On to the book, Niall is a Scottish property developer who is attacked by vampires one night while leaving the pub. Suddenly appearing to rescue him is Mel, an apparent 20-something, beautiful woman. She fights off the vampires then reveals to Niall that she is a 6,000 year old Muse and has been giving him inspiration since he was a small child. Mel is tired of sitting on the sidelines so she enlists Niall into solving a supernatural case of a hotel with mysterious, malicious incidents and the two become increasingly closer emotionally. This was just OK. Pretty much a fluffy, paranormal romance without the hot sex that those books often have....

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson My rating: 2 of 5 stars This was our book club selection. I was happy about that because I wanted to read this book but couldn't muster the energy on my own to tackle 600 pages. We really didn't like it. The first 200 pages, I thought, "What an asshole" on every page. Jobs was one crazy, self-absorbed, delusional dude. However, a brilliant dude when it came to vision. When it came to execution, it's hard to know what was Jobs and what wasn't because he took credit for a lot of others' work. And, for a guy who said he didn't care about money, he certainly screwed a lot of people out of some large sums. Most of us felt that the writing was what distracted us. It read to me like a "look at all the research I did" tome with lots of small stories in it. Others found the jumping back and forth on the timeline annoying. I knew a lot more about Jobs than the other members in my book club so the major things w...

Frozen Heat by Richard Castle My rating: 4 of 5 stars I love these books because of the brilliant tie-in to the show and tongue in cheek style that Castle is actually writing these based on his experience working with Becket and crew. A Jane Doe is found dead in a suitcase. The suitcase turns out to be detective Nikki Heat's (based on Becket) from when she was a child. The investigation leads to a tie-in to Heat's Mother's murder from ten years ago and sends Heat and Rook on a transcontinental search for evidence. Add in the CIA, Homeland Security and police station politics and it added up to a good story. If you like the show, Castle, you'll love these books. He really is ruggedly handsome. View all my reviews

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare My rating: 3 of 5 stars This read like the end of a trilogy but with a small opening for more (which there are). However, I may be satisfied with just the first three. Clary, Jace and crew travel to the City of Glass, home of the Shadowhunters, to face questioning of what's transpired so far. The action heats up as Valentine enacts his evil plan and there's a big showdown. You're left until nearly the end as to who's side everyone is going to be on and what's going to happen. Needless to say, young Clary is in the middle of all of the action. Again, Cassandra Clare doesn't steer away from serious issues and she showed she's not unwilling to let some of her characters die. A reason why I may stop at this book is that I saw the major plot twists coming from nearly the beginning of the book. There are plenty of clues and, frankly, issues could have been resolved much earlier if people had just freaking talked to each o...

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare My rating: 3 of 5 stars Clary and gang are after the big bad, Valentine, former Shadowhunter and the man who's stealing the Mortal Instruments (magical items) so that he can force his will on the world of man, magical creatures and demons. Again, the young characters are full of drama but also face serious issues and decisions. I can see teens and tweens really liking this series. View all my reviews

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare My rating: 3 of 5 stars I picked up the first three books in this series at Changing Hands for my recent trip to Florida. I thought they would make good airplane reading and they did. Clary Fray appears to be your average teenager living with her very cool artist Mom in NYC. She and her best friend Simon go out to a rave club one night and Clary sees an attack by three teenagers on another and an apparent murder. The problem is that no one else can see them and the body disappeared before her eyes. Turns out, Clary comes from the Shadowhunter society where humans with magical enhancements fight off demons who prey on mundanes (or humans as we like to be called). There are your standard paranormals in here. Fairies, vamps, werewolves, etc. and even mentions of angels. The first book follows Clary as she tries to make sense of her new world view and is romanced by Jace, one of the young Shadowhunters. It's a YA book so the characters are ov...