Reading The Psalms with Luther

This book was originally published as Psalms with Introductions by Luther in 1993 by Concordia Publishing House. The translation of the Psalms used is the English Standard version. The edition I am reviewing is the 2007 printing by Concordia Publishing House by the name of Reading The Psalms with Luther.

This book has several helpful features. It has a section on how to sing the Psalms so that can become a part of your daily devotions. There is a power to singing scripture especially the psalms which were written to be sung. There is both an explanation and prayer with each psalm to help dig further into the psalms. There is also a list that categories the psalms as well as two different reading schedules for going through the psalms. You are not limited to using the schedules suggested.

At least for my style of devotions, this is a great aid in my devotional life. It is aid for personal worship as well as learning God's Word. Definitely a great way to deepen your devotional life.

4 out of 5 Pith Helmets

The Royal Mess: by MaryJanice Davidson

Synopsis: A reluctant princess and a determined Royal bodyguard are about to discover that, when it comes to powerful love, there are no defenses... (from the back flap)

So. Another Royal book. What more is there to say than it was one of the funniest things I've read in quite sometime. Of course, it IS a MaryJanice Davidson book so that really goes without saying.

Being a MJD book, and a "Royal" book no less, you have all the things you've come to expect. A sassy tell it like it is heroine, a "I love her but she's ROYAL and I'm so not but I just have to have her..." hero and the lovable, sarcastic royal family of Alaska.

It's not a deep book. In fact, it's a very easy book to read in an evening. Light and fun, I had my first chuckle on the 'quotes' page and really didn't stop chuckling until the book was over. (most of the reading time was spent in the bathtub. It's just that kind of book)

Of course, being a MJD Royal book, there's plenty of hot 'n steamy action but none of it graphic enough to make you want to lose your dinner. You know exactly how the book is going to end but there are a couple of twists along the way and you find yourself wishing that the book wouldn't end but sadly, it does. And the Author's note makes the parting even more bittersweet by letting the readers know that she's not planning on writing anymore Royal books. *deep sigh* So enjoy this one while you can.

I give it 4 out of 5 berries

I {heart} My in-laws, by Dina Poch

I saw this book on the shelf at the library under New Releases, Non-Fiction, and I thought, "hey, that looks like a good book." So I picked it up. After all, I {heart} my in-laws, so why not.

It's not exactly a diary about how much the author loves her in-laws. It's more how to get along with your in-laws, with advice and vignettes from people who have Been There, so to speak. How to get along with the seriously weird, annoying, overbearing, insert-bad-character-trait-here people you've managed to inherit along with a new spouse.

My personal opinion: Remember you marry the family, not just the PERSON, when you're considering marriage. If his family is a problem NOW, while you're still DATING, getting a ring and putting a deposit on a reception hall isn't going to improve matters. It's a fun read, though. Full of humor, and guaranteed to give you at least one instance of "wow...now that's bad."

Some good advice, if you've never thought to get any or think of things quite that way before. I suppose as "general relationship" advice it might work, and there may be some suggestions in there you've not thought of before. However, don't expect it to magically change anything. Most of it's generic self-help stuff, and obviously they can't cover every single problem (although they do, at times, appear to try). It's presented better than most, though - good use of humor and examples.

3.5 out of 5 bones.

A Lick Of Frost

WARNING, WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Seriously. If you don't want to know what happens in the latest Merry Gentry book, don't read any farther. I'm gonna reveal a LOT about the book, and make some commentary.


OK, if you've read this far, it's your own darn fault if the outcome is spoiled for you.

SYNOPSIS: Starts out in a lawyer's office. Taranis has accused 3 of Merry's Men of raping one of the Seelie Court. Merry & her Men spend some time discussing it, and revealing some of Taranis' dirty laundry as well. Taranis shows up via mirror and glamourizes...well...pretty much everyone. Then he tries to kill Doyle and Abeloec. They survive, but they're horribly burned.
Taranis' own court turns against him, and votes him out of office, so to speak. They want Merry to be their next Queen!
Back in Unseelie Land, Andais does not take kindly to this news. She thinks Merry has been treating with the Seelie Court for quite some time, and is absolutely furious. Merry finally convinces her that the offer was as much of a surprise to her as it was to Andais, and Andais...sorta...forgives her. Sorta. As much as Andais does, really.
Merry's feeling run-down and fears she has a cold or the flu. VERY tired, feeling "off", that sort of thing. She fears that even IF the "Golden Court" elected her Queen, she wouldn't be "immortal" or Seelie enough for them, and they'd shortly change their mind and kill her.

We get introduced to the Faerie Hounds. Several Faerie have dogs now. They're the result of the Wild Hunt being released at the end of "Mistral's Kiss". They were all the large black Wild Hunt dogs until the fae touched them, then some stayed large black dogs (Doyle's), some became greyhound type dogs, including Merry's, and some became terrier-types, like Rhys's.

Some backing-and-forthing goes on with the goblins and more with Andais. Merry and her Men do what Merry and her Men are supposed to do, and they have a lot of fun doing it. Ash and Holly, the 2 goblin-sidhe she's agreed to "service", show up for their Night Of Fun, along with all the RedCaps. Merry talks to them a bit, and suddenly faerie is "created". Maeve Reed's house, where they are staying, pretty much turns into another sithen. Sort of. We find out that Merry's female hound is pregnant. And so is Merry, with twins - and she has been for a month. And the twins have six fathers: Doyle, Rhys, Galen, Frost, Mistral and Sholto. Anyone that had a dog or twelve were "anchored" so they weren't as affected. The ones that didn't...
Ash and Holly were brought into their powers. Holly is happy, because he now has more power to be a goblin. Ash is not, because he wanted a shot at being King of the Unseelie Court, and he found out they're a month too late to even try to be in the running. The RedCaps are changed. It's not certain TO what, but they're still RedCaps. And, unfortunately, Frost is affected as well.
He didn't have any dogs, and feared that he wasn't sidhe enough to "make" them. When faerie came, he didn't have anything to anchor him to "how he was", so he was Changed. He changed into the White Stag, and ran off. He may or may not ever come back, and may or may not ever see his child. Merry is devastated, and goes outside to get away from everyone.

Amatheon shows up, and tries to...um..."press his suit". Only it's not Amatheon - it's Taranis in disguise, who knocks Merry unconscious and kidnaps her. She wakes up in his bedroom, and is rescued by the Seelie Court, who essentially arrest him and take her out to meet the press and get medical attention.

COMMENTARY: It's a fun ride, as usual with the Merry Gentry books. However, there were some completely bad things about the book. For one thing, the composition is terrible. There were chapter breaks in the middle of the action, which would pick up in the next chapter right where it left off. News flash: if it's not a thought break, don't make it a chapter break! That kind of "cliffhanger" writing is fine for the Hardy Boys, but these are supposed to be grown-up books. We don't need a "tune in next chapter for the exciting conclusion" every other page. Really.
I liked that there was more plot / action / character development than sex in this one. Mistral's Kiss seemed to have the non-sex scenes in there SOLELY to drive us to another sex-scene; it's nice that this one actually has plot and the sex scenes are a part of the plot instead of the replacement for it.
However.
The biggest, most unbelievable part of the entire book was that Merry was feeling run-down and tired, and never ever once thought, "hey, I wonder if I'm pregnant." We find out early in the book that she'd been feeling tired for a couple days, and everyone, including her, assumed that she was coming down with a cold! She fears that she's not immortal now, as she thought she was.
Erm.
The entire point of Merry's Men is to get her pregnant. The focus of the entire series so far has been "get Merry Pregnant". And with all of these people participating in the activities, not one of them said, "Hey, you're feeling tired and out of sorts, like you're getting a cold or the flu, let's stop at Walgreen's and pick up an EPT"???? Come on. That plot device just did not work. Do they not have pregnancy tests in Merry's world? The only way to ever ever tell you're pregnant is if you Miss Your Period? Puh-leeze. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that. By page three, I was thinking, "she's not got a cold, you morons, she's pregnant. Duh."
And the "I've got a cold" theme came up way, way too often for me to just suspend disbelief and set it aside to enjoy the rest of the book. I'm forced to conclude that it's a good thing sidhe don't breed that often, because apparently they're all dumber than a box of hair.
Of course, it did have one positive effect. Because pretty much all my disbelief was occupied with "I can't believe it took a freaking VISION to tell her she's pregnant", I didn't have too much trouble believing the whole "six fathers for two babies" thing. It probably helps that I have read enough mythology to buy it, but really. That's a stretch. I think Hamilton painted herself into a corner, here - she made way too many likable characters, and then couldn't choose which would be Merry's King-Consort. So she didn't. (My personal opinion: she didn't want to alienate any of her fanbase by "eliminating" their favorite from the Father List.) You'll notice any of Merry's Men that have received more than 5 pages of action & dialog wound up on the Father List. The throwaways, the "red-shirts", if you will, didn't.

Not a bad book, certainly not the worst in the Merry Gentry series, but not exactly the greatest, either.
3.5 out of 5 bones for this one.

COMMENTARY ON OTHER SPECULATION: I've read a lot of other people's speculation about it, too. Here's some of my thoughts on that. The biggest lot of comments regarding this book expressed disappointment that Cel has been built up into a big threat "for nothing". Er...excuse me? Just because Merry's finally pregnant doesn't actually mean that Andais is going to give up her throne, and it's far from certain that it'll be to Merry in any case. She already said that! She's deeply offended that Merry was offered the Seelie throne, and has said that Merry is "too Seelie" to rule the Unseelie.
She knows that as soon as Merry takes the Unseelie Throne, Cel is dead dead dead. She's already demonstrated a significant soft spot for her son, and she absolutely hates Merry. No, I'm not seeing this transfer of power from Andais to Merry happening any time soon, if at all, and certainly not easily.
Cel's not eliminated as a threat, people, and it's stupid to think he is.

The Woman Who Swallowed A Toothbrush, and Other Bizarre Medical Cases, by Rob Myers, M.D.

Long title, isn't it? And it pretty much sums up the contents of the book. I can't really give you a "synopsis", per se, because it's not real long on plot. It's a series of short vignettes about Weird Medical Stuff, and their reasons.

For example, the title case was a gal who was admitted to the emergency room with a sore throat and problems swallowing. Turns out she had a toothbrush lodged in there. Yup, she said she was brushing her teeth and slipped and fell and *WHAMMO*, toothbrush in the throat.
Only the toothbrush was lodged in there handle-side first.
Turns out she was bulimic, and was using it to induce vomiting, and stuck it in juuuuuuuust a little too far.

There's a story about a teen who came in with priapism, too. I'll leave it to you to think about how they solved that one. Oh, and the guy who showed up with mysterious symptoms that turned out to be lead poisoning. No, he wasn't eating Chinese-made toys - but he was chewing on electrical wire. That was his substitute for smoking. He decided after his chelation treatments (to remove the lead from his system) that he'd go back to smoking instead.

The book is a fascinating look at the human condition, really. I quite enjoyed it, although I will have to say it's not for everyone. If you're rather weak-stomached, I wouldn't recommend reading it while eating, for example. Especially not the one about the woman who had insects in her scalp. Really. Ew.

This book reads rather like a collection of stories from Jan Harold Brunvand's doctor. It's a lot of fun to read, well-written, and not too overlong on medical jargon, except where necessary (and then it's explained). You may think that it's actually a collection of Urban Legends, but the blurb in the back does say the cases are all based on fact, and most come from medical journals and professional publications. Some did come from personal anecdotes, however, and it may be that Dr. Myers was taken in occasionally by a "friend-of-a-friend" story, where someone told him that they knew someone who swears they know someone this happened to. There were a few times reading through it that I thought, "wow, I could swear I just read something similar on Snopes recently." I think, though, that most of that feeling is because the cases of necessity must be anonymized. Urban legends always happen to "someone in the emergency room", or "a guy walking down the road" - so these stories, by their nature, are going to 'feel' like Urban Legends.

But overall, it's an entertaining read, and well worth the time.

Even if it is kind of icky sometimes.

4 out of 5 bones. Crunch!

Two Ghosts for Sister Rachel by Kim Harrison. From the anthology Holidays are Hell

Synopsis: A younger Rachel Morgan is confronted by her older brother about her decision to join the I.S. (Inderland Security) Her brother wants her to come west to be with him and to study advanced Earth Magic and gives her a test…if she can stir a spell and bring her father back as a ghost and her father says yes, her brother will sign the paper for her to join the I.S. But of course, things go wrong…

Thoughts: It’s wonderful to see a younger Rachel before she’s the tough chick running for, and from, the I.S. We get to meet her older brother, Robbie, and her first “crush”. To keep from being moved out to the West Coast with Robbie, Rachel stirs a “level 800” spell to bring her father’s ghost back so he can tell Robbie that Rachel should join the I.S. even though that’s what, apparently, killed him.

Other than the fact that the novella was too short, there wasn’t much to complain about. I enjoyed getting to know Pierce (Rachel’s first crush that was alluded to in a previous novel) and especially enjoyed seeing Rachel before she became “kick ass”. She’s still very weak from Rosewood Syndrome that almost killed her but she’s gaining strength, graduating from a 2 year magic degree program at the University of Cincinnati, and already showing the kind of grit it will take to get her into the I.S. and eventually kicked out of the I.S.

All in all, I give this one 4 out of 5 berries. Just 'cause it wasn't long enough to suit me. :o)

"Air Apparent", by Piers Anthony (Xanth Novel)

SYNOPSIS: Hugo (Humfrey and the Gorgon's son) has disappeared. A mysterious body is found in the cellar of the Good Magician's Castle in his place. The Book of Answers is completely scrambled - and it's up to Wira, Hugo's wife (who is blind) to fix it all.

THOUGHTS: Convenient plot device, the scrambling of the Book of Answers. That was the best explanation for the complete absence of any cohesion or consistency in this book - nobody had any idea what they were doing. Unfortunately, the book also read as though the author was included in that group.

It started out fine - laying out the problem of Hugo's disappearance and Wira's reaction. However, it went rapidly downhill. Several elements were introduced that hadn't even been hinted at before. Hugo and Wira have had a spell on them preventing the storks from receiving any signals from them? Really? Who set it? Why? None of that's explained. It's just introduced as a handy MacGuffin to get Hugo into the basement for some Rhed Whine (to celebrate the Good Magician lifting the anti-stork-geas).
Hugo's problems with conjuring bad fruit are explained too. He couldn't possibly be just "not quite bright", oh, no, he's the victim of a seed of a mediocritree, which has been lodged in his ear for his entire life. Wait, what? How did that get there? No, no, no...on second thought I don't want to know. Really. His history indicates he's pretty much always been a little...slow...so I really don't want to know how that seed got into his ear.
I must say, though, that the bathing rituals in Xanth seem to be a little lacking, if he's managed to get through over 40 years of life with a seed in his ear, and nobody has even noticed (including him).

The Point-of-view cuts from Wira's Story to Hugo's are terribly abrupt and completely interrupt the flow of the story. Every single time the story jumped from POV to POV, I got jolted out of the story and had to take a few paragraphs to try to figure out what the heck was going on. Not a good thing if you're trying to enjoy the book. I found it more irritating than enjoyable, overall.

I did, however, quite enjoy seeing more of Happy Bottom and Fray, as they took strong supporting roles in this book. Their adventures were quite enjoyable to read.

The ending...oh my gosh, the ending. Do yourself a favor. Don't bother. Really. The ending winds up linking all of Ida's moons into an endless loop, and breaking the Earth / Xanth interface link forever. Sort of. Except through the moons. Yeah, it makes no sense.

And -WHAT a shock- the whole story is just another Demon contest. Wow, that plot device hasn't been used for every single book in the Xanth series lately. Seriously, when was the last time a Demon contest wasn't involved somehow???

Overall, I obviously didn't enjoy this one very much, and I may be giving the Xanth books a miss from now on.

BOOK RATING: 1.5 bones out of 5. And that's just because of the bits with Happy Bottom & Fray.