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All Creatures Great and Small is a classic written in 1972, but I just discovered it. It is now an all-time favorite. The author is the main character. James Herriot (a pen name) evidently kept a journal through the years about his experiences as a country veterinary surgeon. Each chapter tells one of his experiences. They follow in chronological order, so it reads like the story of his first year in practice. It is at times hilarious and at times tense as he deals with difficult cases. ...

Reviewer: Sally James Qwilleran stayed the compulsory five years in Pickax to complete the requirements placed on his inheritance. He is now officially a billionaire. Now it is time to decide what to do with the rest of his life. He intends to go somewhere–a quiet island with a beach or a mountain hideaway–someplace where he can have seclusion and quiet to sort out his options and make plans. ...

Interesting novel of an earthquake (8.4 magnitude, of course) on the New Madrid fault in Southeast Missouri/Southwest Illinois/Western Tennessee, etc. The science was fun to read. The romance was bad, as there was no basis for the romance. Over all, worth reading if you are an earthquake buff, or interested in the science of quakes.

The first chapter of Nick Hornby’s novel, “A Long Way Down” introduces the 4 main characters, Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ. Each main character tells the story in a rotating first person, and each section clearly identifies who is speaking. The story starts with Martin explaining why he is on top of a fifteen-story building, on New Years Eve, “Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?” ...

Caution: Puns Ahead! That should be on the cover of this book–if you hate puns, you won’t find this book as amusing as I did. Because the bad guy calls himself the Gingerbread Man, one might think this was a light book. It certainly was a quick read, but the subject is disturbing, as the Gingerbread Man is a serial killer. Like many mysteries, the suspense isn’t who the murderer is, but how he is caught. And, with a main character named Jack Daniels, you know this could become a very interesting series. I’m sold! ...

Troubleshooting is tracking down pesky bugs, rooting them from the code and squashing them. Having some basic troubleshooting skills can greatly enhance your bug fighting. The goal of troubleshooting is to quickly identify the root cause of the problem, however, don’t confuse troubleshooting with problem solving. Problem solving is answering the question, “Can this be done?” or “How can we do this?” Troubleshooting on the other hand is answering the question, “Why isn’t this working? ...

Going to get a little geeky here. But I wanted to share a simple, and effective way to create a simple rss feed of content in the Zend Framework. The new ClubReading site is separated into two parts, the blog, and the books. The books site is now using Disqus for the comments, and so far Disqus is working out great, but that’s a topic for another day. The blog is a wordpress blog. What I wanted to do was display a couple or three of the recently added books from the books site on the sidebar of the ClubReading Blog. My thought was to create a simple rss feed of the most recent books, and use the standard wordpress rss widget to display the feed content in the sidebar. But - how to create the rss feed? Turns out it was pretty simple thanks to a great article by Alex Netkachov called “Syndicate content with Zend Framework Zend_Feed classes”. ...

This book is a collection of letters from a female writer in New York City to a bookstore in London. She writes for good, inexpensive copies of books which they ship to her in New York. Eventually, she and the man who answers for the bookstore become friends. The love of books is throughout the collected letters. Helene tries to help her London friends by sending them treats during the rations in London after World War II. She longs to go to London, but doesn’t ever seem to have the funds to go. ...

Daphne Phelps inherited a house in Sicily called Casa Cuseni. At the time, Daphne had no knowledge of Italian, no money, and was war-weary. At 34, she moved to the small Sicilian town of Taormina expecting to sell the house. After 50 years and guests like Tennesee Williams, Bertrand Russel, Henry Faulkner and Roald Dahl, Daphne Phelps has a wonderful story to tell. This is a charming and entertaining memoir, full of fun and earthy stories told in a no-nonsense style. ...

A terrific read! Very entertaining, unusual and fresh with a sly humor and good story. A detective story of sorts. In Eric Garcia’s world, Dinosaurs are walking among us. A while back, the Dino population of the world took notice of the annoying apes evolving and made the decision to hide their identity. Now living among the apes are various breeds of dinosaur hiding in very elaborate costumes…including our protagonist Vincent Rubio. ...