Veteran's Day

I know that this is not strictly a bookish post, but I felt like it was important for me to say.

I am a pacifist. And hard core. I have always said that arguments are best solved with words, not violence. However, my boyfriend and I have had arguments about this recently. He says "Might makes right," and I haven't yet come up with an argument that trumps that. There are some people that are just not open to negotiation. It takes two to come to an agreement. My views about are mostly not changed, but I'm recognizing that there are some cases in which nothing short of violence works.

I have usually viewed veterans with respect, but somewhat of a negative attitude. I don't often feel that they fight for me, the military is misused by the government(not the service members' faults), and so forth. As I have said to people in the past, I don't support the cause the troops are currently fighting for in Iraq, but I definitely support the troops.

I've been substitute teaching at a middle school for a few days now. Today, they had students bring a veteran for lunch and an assembly honoring the veterans. The assembly really changed my attitude about veterans. They had students and staff stand while they played the songs for each branch of the military. I stood for my cousin who was in the Navy, my cousin who was in the Army Reserves, and for my grandfathers whose branches I don't know.

Doing that made Veteran's Day personal for me. I love my cousins and my grandfathers fiercely. I believe that they deserve to be honored for their service in the military. No one else's family member deserves any less.

So, in the name of Fred Sweet, Jim Underwood, Nicholas McCoy, and Matt Delavega, I honor all who have served in the military this veteran's day.

Frozen by Jay Boninsanga

Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time has probably noticed that my two favorite genres currently are paranormal romance(vampires and werewolves and witches, oh, my!) and action-adventure historic mystery(think Dan Brown-esque, but better!). Paranormal romance is so popular right now that it's not hard to find new authors to read. The action-adventure historic mystery isn't quite as popular, so I have to do more hunting to find the kind of books that fall into this category. Of course, Dan Brown and James Rollins are always a good bet, and I've discovered both Raymond Khoury and Chris Kuzneski to be great authors in this genre as well. I expected Frozen to be a typical thriller since a profiler was the main character, and I was happy when it took a different turn.

Ulysses Grove is an FBI profiler working on the Sun City case. He's known as the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit's golden boy, cracking cases that no one else is able to close. He has been working on the Sun City case for over a year without any breaks in the case, and his superiors are beginning to believe that's he's having a nervous breakdown.

After an incident on the job, his unit director sends him to Alaska to investigate a mummy at the request of a journalist for Discover magazine. There, he meets off-beat journalist Maura County and discovers a link between the death of the neolithic mummy and the MO of his Sun City serial killer.

My only complaint about the writing is that the author has a tendency to foreshadow too much. He says things like "she didn't know how important this person would be," or "he didn't know that this would help crack his case." There were quite a few show, don't tell moments in the writing. I've come to the conclusion that this is a pitfall for first time fiction authors. Possibly it is confined to this particular genre.

I really enjoyed the book, and I can't wait to read more about Ulysses Grove. I really hope that all Bonansinga's books have a historic/supernatural twist like Frozen. If you enjoy James Rollins, you'll love Frozen!