The Big Damn Classic of 2019 is....

I have no idea! With only 24 votes, this could swing either way (although I think North and South is out of the game.)  Vote below for the Big Damn Classic that I will read in 2019!

Getting Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut queued up on my Kindle - my 2018 Big Damn Classic (hey, it's still technically 2018!)

So what will it be next year?

Look Alive Twenty-Five by Janet Evanovich

I'm surprised I got this book from the library when I did. I was 186th in line for the audiobook! Thankfully, the hardback line was much shorter. I enjoyed this one and whipped through it pretty quick, but it felt different to me and it took me a moment to realize why.

For one, Grandma Mazur is barely in here. When she appeared, she was funny, but I'm hoping her lack of antics in 25 isn't an indicator of things to come. Grandma is pretty damn funny.

The second, it didn't feel as chaotic as a regular Plum book. I realized it was because Stephanie was always...ALWAYS...with Ranger, Morelli, or one of Ranger's men. ALWAYS. The crack team of Plum and Lula didn't have much opportunity to get into their normal trouble. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the dudes and the sexual tension. But they stepped in and helped too much.

Vinnie has to take over a deli, that was used as collateral for a bond. Harry the Hammer, Vinnie's father-in-law, makes Stephanie the manager and Lula associate. The big problem? Neither has ever managed anything before. Gamely, they arrive to open the store only to hear that managers end up kidnapped, leaving only one shoe behind, by the dumpster. Rangeman services step in with round the clock bodyguarding until Hal, one squeamish at the sight of blood bodyguard, ends up kidnapped himself.

Trenton's finest (Morelli) and Ranger protect Stephanie while using her as bait. We have a lot of bizarre things in this book, and many literal LOL moments, but most of the heavy lifting is from the dudes surrounding Stephanie.

I hope Twenty-six finds a happy medium between twenty-four and twenty-five.

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy

We've landed in the 30's and 40's, in Canada, in Chinatown. Not exactly a place I thought I would be! This was a timely book about immigration and it allowed us to hear how it was to be a Chinese immigrant in Canada from the perspective of 3 children. 

Gender and birth order play a huge role in Chinese culture. It's unfortunate because the first POV we experience is Jook-Liang, only sister. Being female and not being the oldest in the family puts her in a position of, well, I'd like to say invisibility but she's visible and constantly being told by her grandma that girls are worthless. No one wants girls. Jook-Liang is nothing if not persistent, even becoming best friends with an old Chinese man, Wong Bak. You notice that in this POV Chinese culture is very prevalent.

Our next voice is Jung-Sum, Second Brother. Still not a place of austerity but certainly better than being a girl. Jung is adopted and he's taken with boxing, getting lessons and learning how to shadow box. As you're reading, you notice he has a need to be "manly", with boxing, fighting, and how he dresses. As you walk through Jung's POV with him, you discover his secret.

Our last POV is the youngest brother Sek-Lung, a sickly little kid that was constantly kept out of school and was a favorite of the grandma. His POV is distinctly void of Chinese culture and he's very clearly a spoiled kid. Probably the least favorite of the sections because it didn't feel like it had a point (you'll notice the other two did). Sek-Lung takes in all the disinformation about the Japanese, including with Pearl Harbor that forced America into the war, and he joins in bullying Japanese children, even while admitting that he was mistaken for being Japanese and had to be protected. Well, perhaps that is the point? 

This was a good book with great perspective on, essentially, being a stranger in a strange land....illegally. 

Elevation by Stephen King

Short little novella that has some of the patented King weirdness along with the should-be-patented King humanity. If you follow King's Twitter, it's not a secret that he is very much against Trump and this novella shows his liberal side, but in a good way.

Scott Carey is a large man with a big front porch (I have never heard a beer belly called that before). But he's rapidly losing weight. Not just losing weight, he's losing gravity. Gravity is loosening it's hold on Scott, more every day. So while he looks like the big man he always has, he's very much not.

His new neighbors are lesbians who have opened a new restaurant in Castle Rock. Despite having fantastic food, customers are very few. Castle Rock doesn't cotton to lesbeans who are married.

How the little town quits being a dick to the lesbian couple, how Scott, Missy, Deidre and Doctor Bob end up together and how Scott loses his battle with gravity....ALL very well written.  Humans are great (except when they are not).

The Whispering Room by Dean Koontz

I know I started on book 2, because that was the only one available from the library. Normally, books in a series recap the book before so, even if it's not a stand-alone book, it can still be read like one.

Not here.

I was lost.

We just JUMPED right into Jane Hawk's adventures. Her terrifying, horrifying adventures. I learned enough to understand that people, rich people and the government, want to mind control everyone and shape how the direction the world moves. That's terrifying and just a smidge to on the nose lately. Jane's husband (apparently from the first book), killed himself but only because the nanobots in his brain told him to. The puppet masters didn't want him around.

Cora, a schoolteacher for special needs kids, is another one of the victims of the puppet masters. How in the world she could destroy the future is beyond me, but they decided she needed to go. She killed herself in a fiery explosion that took out many other innocent lives.

Jane's goal is to get to the puppet master himself and make him confess his crimes so she will be believed and not on the FBI's most wanted list. As a fugitive, former FBI, she does a great job stealthily going across the US in search of her answers. She's more prepared for anything than I would ever be!

Luther Tillman, the sheriff in the small town were Cora lived and died, believes something is very wrong. His own sleuthing leads him to Iron Furnace, Kentucky. Jane's already on her way there as well. They end up allies and continue on, saving children and running to safety.

In the end, this book didn't wrap up. It left a lot of questions for us and for Jane. Nothing ended like she had hoped.

For the most part, I enjoyed this, especially Jane. She is going to be a great new lead to get on board with. I did end up skimming quite a bit because the writing was very, very descriptive. I loved the Odd Thomas books but skimmed the descriptions there as well. The inside of a building really doesn't need 4 pages of descriptions.

The Midnight Line by Lee Child

I just randomly pull Reacher's out when I can get them. I'm not these need to be read in order, so if the library has one, I get it. I still cannot get over the description of Reacher (Bigfoot, Incredible Hulk) and correlate that to Tom Cruise (Reacher in the movies).  How did that even happen?

The Midnight Line had a weird premise. Reacher finds a West Point class ring in a pawn shop. He wants to find it's owner. That's how the story starts and that's what prompts Reacher on this crazy-ass trip across the Midwest. The pawn shop owner is the first stop for intel, obviously, which leads to Jimmy Rat and his hoodlums which leads to Scorpio and his "laundromat" that is clearly a front for something else.

Which leads to the middle of Wyoming, Mule Crossing, to be exact. 

Reacher teams up with a PI, hunting for the sister of his client, and the sister herself. It turns out that the missing sister belongs to the West Point ring.

What we end up in the middle of is a drug ring. It's interesting and a bit terrifying, if this is our future in the opiod epidemic, but a good ride, nonetheless.

I don't feel that Reacher's heart was in this one as much as the other novels I've read. The ring seemed like a weak premise to start this adventure and it seemed to be the only thing Reacher thought of. People died? Ok, gotta return the ring. Hot woman next to you? Ok, gotta return the ring. Someone ate by a bear? Ok, gotta return the ring.

It was good but....slightly off.

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

This is 13th in the Temperance Brennan series (Bones TV show was based on this series). I say this with every Brennan book and I'll say it again: this series is 1000 times better than the show. I liked the show at first but then, I didn't.

You might know that Brennan is a forensic anthropologist and spends her time between Montreal and North Carolina, doing whatever work is needed for any case that needs her. She's called to a body that was found wrapped in plastic and weighted down with a rock tied around the ankle, sunk in a pond. At first, it seems like murder. Until, the body is unwrapped and it's discovered that it was autoerotic activity. The fact that the male victim was dressed like a naughty nurse was a good first clue.

The victim was ID'd by fingerprints as John 'Spider' Lowery....

who died in Vietnam in 1968.

So who is buried in Lowery's grave in America? Brennan exhumes the body and, at the insistence of Lowery's father, accompanies the body to Hawaii for identification.

Things get very screwy with at least 4 bodies appearing without ID and bodies showing up and getting incorrectly ID'd. Detective Ryan comes to Hawaii (and continues hitting on Brennan) to help investigate when the plastic-wrapped body's DNA did not match Lowery's mother's DNA.  Something is seriously a miss.

I figured it out half a page before Brennan realized the whole picture and that was near the end of the book. It was one curvy, weird ride and I liked it!