Betty Bacal is an only child, abandoned by her father, raised by her Rumanian Jewish mother in New York. Stagestruck from an early age, she takes acting classes for years but gets little stage work. Modeling work is a fallback. A cover shot for Harper's Bazaar leads Howard Hawks to bring her out to Hollywood. Within months, Hawks' protogée, now Lauren Bacall, is the lead in “To Have or Have Not” and falling in love with her costar, Humphrey Bogart. Bogie is 45 to her 20, but it doesn't …continue.

Rural Texas, 1980. Llewelyn Moss, out hunting in the middle of nowhere, finds the remains of a drug buy that went wrong: dead bodies, shot-up cars, black tar heroin. And a satchel with two million dollars in cash. Moss takes the money and runs. He knows it's stupid, he knows that people will come after him, and he does it anyway.

Anton Chigurh is the worst of the killers on his trail. Relentless, re­morse­less, untroubled by conscience, and offended by the wrongness of Moss's act. He and Moss will be …continue.

Ten LAPD patrolmen congregate regularly in MacArthur Park for “choir practice”: late-night bitchfests, marathon boozing, and group sex with a couple of cocktail waitresses.

LA's finest are not exactly fine specimens of humanity, but then neither are the people they serve, whom they consider little better than the ones they arrest. The choirboys include an idealist, a psychopath, a prankster, and a world-class mooch. They fight and they drink and they argue: everything but discuss the things that really bother them. Wambaugh lampoons the choirboys, but he reserves his full contempt for their …continue.

DI John Rebus in­ves­ti­gates the murder of an illegal immigrant, who had ties to asylum seekers in Edinburgh. DS Siobhan Clarke looks into the dis­ap­pear­ance of a teenaged girl; soon, the rapist of the girl's sister is murdered.

Rebus and Siobhan struggle with the uglier side of life in Edinburgh, notably, racism, latter-day slavery, and the increasing numbers of asylum seekers. As usual, their personal lives are in a mess: Rebus drinks too much; Siobhan falls asleep with a tub of ice cream.

As in other Rebus books, the two in­ves­ti­ga­tions …continue.

Bay Tanner is a young widow and aspiring private in­ves­ti­ga­tor from wealthy South Carolina stock. When a hitherto unknown shirt-tail cousin (fifth half cousin, specif­i­cal­ly) bursts into Bay's life, she brings havoc in her train.

As one of the characters says, the plot sounds like a made-for-TV movie. Still, Bay is a feisty heroine and the background is not one that has been mined deeply.

I was Toast­mas­ter of the Day at this evening's meeting of Freely Speaking Toast­mas­ters. My theme was software de­vel­op­ment and I wanted to give the non-developer audience a taste for what it's like to write a program. I talked about writing a simple Sudoku game.

Yesterday, I read Pro­gram­ming Sudoku for background. I bought this book for Emma after reading about it on Scott Hansel­man's blog. It's targeted at beginning pro­gram­mers and walks them through building a Sudoku game and solver. I was hoping to get Emma more interested in pro­gram­ming—un­suc­cess­ful­ly. She found …continue.

Set in an alternate 1985 where costumed heroes are real—and outlawed—Watchmen follows six ad­ven­tur­ers. Rorschach, half-mad, continues his vigilante activities. Nite Owl is retired and a worrywart. The former Ozy­man­di­as—the world's smartest man—is now one of the richest. The Comedian is murdered at the very beginning; after the Keene Act passed, he was allowed to continue operating as a government enforcer. Dr. Manhattan was trans­formed into a superbeing in a nuclear accident in 1959; he is America's strategic weapon in the arms race with the …continue.

In the 1850s, three anti-slavery families settled next to each other in rural Kansas: the Grelliers, the Schapens, and the rich Fremantles. Seven gen­er­a­tions later, the last of the Fremantles is gone, the Grelliers are pro­gres­sive farmers, and the Schapens are bel­liger­ent fun­da­men­tal­ists. Gina Haring, a Wiccan lesbian from New York, housesits the Fremantle mansion, while she tries to pick up the pieces of her life. In­ad­ver­tent­ly, she triggers a cascade of changes. Most notably, the Grellier son, at odds with his anti-war mother, enlists and is killed in Iraq, sending her into a …continue.

Sequel to For a Few Demons More. Best read in sequence.

Rachel Morgan: witch and private in­ves­ti­ga­tor. An unknown enemy is summoning a demon every night to kill her. She learns some surprising things about her past and her place in the world.

Previous books were heavy on the action; here it kicks in very late and the book is very talky.

Moderately en­ter­tain­ing but weaker than earlier books in the series.

Another novel in the Dune franchise. Paul of Dune is an interquel, largely taking place in the decade between the events of Dune and of Dune Messiah.

Paul Atreides has become the Emperor of the known galaxy. A vicious jihad has burst across the empire in his name. His prescience tells him that it's absolutely necessary so that mankind can break out of the course that leads to stagnation and de­struc­tion. But billions have died and many more are yet to die. He is feared and hated. A …continue.