The Tenth Case by Joseph Teller

The Tenth Case by Joseph Teller opens with an attorney, Harrison J. Walker AKA “Jaywalker” standing in front of a disciplinary committee. Jaywalker is suspended from the practice of law for three years due to his use of “creative” tactics and for the fact that he received an oral “token of gratitude” in the courthouse stairwell from a grateful client, while in full view of a security camera. He is told to pick ten of his unfinished cases to complete and hand the rest off.

Jaywalker’s tenth case will be his most challenging ever. Samara Moss, Jaywalker’s client, is a young, beautiful woman, who married an elderly billionaire when she was an eighteen-year-old waitress and sometime hooker. Samara’s husband is murdered and the police find a weapon matching her husband’s stab wounds, along with a bloody towel and bloody shirt stashed in Samara’s bathroom. Add this to the huge life insurance policy that Samara appears to have taken out on him just weeks before the murder, and the case becomes the one in ten case that can never be won no matter how good the defense.

This is a very good legal thriller. The book gives a compelling insight into the workings of the legal system, especially from the perspective of the defense. The character of Jaywalker was going through a sort of midlife crisis throughout the book, yet the author managed to let us see that internal conflict without making the character a boring man. Just enough of Jaywalker’s past is revealed to assist the reader in understanding the man, but not so much that we start skimming pages out of frustration. The end of the book was excellent! While I sometimes find enigmatic endings irritating, because the character of Samara was pretty much a cipher herself, it really worked here.

The Tenth Case is a great book for anyone who enjoys Scott Turow or the early Grisham novels. I look forward to reading many more novels by this excellent author.

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby reviewed

I finished Life After Genius this afternoon while waiting for the freshman football game to start. Thank goodness for mandatory time spent sitting in the car, it allows me reading time!!

As I said during the blog tour for this novel, I think we've all known some people that are just a bit..well...different. In fact, I think that there is a little bit of Mead in all of us. We all feel like we're just a little peculiar sometimes. It's been very easy to empathize with Mead, and as the book drew to the conclusion, I found a deeper understanding of Mead's family as well.

I'll admit to being a little confounded by the ending. It seemed almost abrupt, and as a rule, I don't like endings that are somewhat inconclusive. I guess could be considered a good type of ending, as the reader can draw their own conclusions and pretty much write the ending they'd prefer in their minds. However, I always feel a little bit let down by novels with endings like this one. Since I've been told I live in my own little happy world too often, I've decided to give the novel a "They all lived happily ever after" ending for my purposes. But I would have much rather the author had shared with us what her ending would have been for the characters.

Life After Genius is a pretty good book nonetheless, and well worth your time to read.

From the Publisher:

Theodore Mead Fegley has always been the smartest person he knows. By age 12, he was in high school, and by 15 he was attending a top-ranking university. And now, at the tender age of 18, he's on the verge of proving the Riemann Hypothesis, a mathematical equation that has mystified academics for almost 150 years. But only days before graduation, Mead suddenly packs his bags and flees home to rural Illinois. What has caused him to flee remains a mystery to all but Mead and a classmate whose quest for success has turned into a dangerous obession.

At home, Mead finds little solace. His past ghosts haunt him; his parents don't understand the agony his genius has caused him, nor his desire to be a normal kid, and his dreams seem crushed forever. He embarks on a new life's journey -- learning the family business of selling furniture and embalming the dead--that disappoints and surprises all who knew him as "the young Fegley genius."

Equal parts academic thriller and poignant coming-of-age story, LIFE AFTER GENIUS follows the remarkable journey of a young man who must discover that the heart may know what the head hasn't yet learned.

You can read an excerpt from the book here, Life After Genius

This made me chuckle...Wackonomics

Everything we've ever needed to know to understand today's economic crisis....

Wackonomics by Walter Williams

For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues.

Since July this year, crude oil prices have fallen from $147 to $64 a barrel. Similarly, average gasoline prices have fallen from over $4 to a national average of $2.69 a gallon. When crude oil and gasoline were reaching their historical highs, Congress and other wackoeconomists blamed it on greedy oil company CEOs in their lust for obscene profits. But what explains today's lower prices? The only answer, consistent with wackonomic theory, is easy: Oil company CEOs have lost their lust for obscene profits. Or, maybe, since many of these CEOs are getting up in years, they might have begun to heed Matthew's warning (19:24), "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Speaking of CEOs, there's the "unconscionable," "obscene" salaries they receive, in some cases over $10 million a year. Wackonomics has an easy answer for these high salaries: it's greed. However, CEOs don't have the corner on greed. There are other greedy people we don't scorn but hold in high esteem. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list, Oprah Winfrey receives $275 million, Steven Spielberg gets $130 million, Tiger Woods $115 million, Jay Leno $32 million and Dr. Phil $40 million. I need to talk to these people and learn their strategy. I've been making every effort to get that kind of money. I go to bed greedy, dream greedy dreams, awaken greedy and proceed through the day greedy. Despite my heroic efforts, it's all been for naught; I earn a pittance by comparison.

Wackonomics can help us understand what some people call the income distribution. The logical extension of wackonomic thought is that the unequal or unfair distribution of income is the handiwork of a dollar dealer who distributes dollars. The dollar dealer might deal one person a million dollars a year while dealing most others a mere pittance like $10, $20 or $30 thousand a year. Thus, the reason why some people are wealthy while others are poor is because the dollar dealer is a racist, sexist, a multi-nationalist, or just plain mean. Economic justice requires a re-dealing of the dollars, income redistribution or spreading the wealth, where the government takes the ill-gotten gains of the few and returns them to their rightful owners. Wackonomics might have a greed-based explanation for income inequality. There is a pile of money called income and greedy people got there first and took their unfair share. Similarly, economic justice requires a redistribution of income.

Wackonomics isn't just practiced by the uninitiated. This year's Nobel Laureate, Princeton University Professor Paul Krugman, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, gave one rendition of wackonomics in his column "After the Horror," New York Times (9/14/01). Krugman wrote, "Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack -- like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression -- could do some economic good." He went on to point out how rebuilding the destruction in New York and Washington, D. C., would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation. For practitioners of non-wackonomics, this reasoning doesn't even pass the smell test. If Professor Krugman's vision is correct, and extending his logic, the terrorists would have made an even larger contribution to our economic well-being had they been able to fly a plane into the White House and destroyed buildings in other cities.

Wackonomics isn't all bad. There's an upside to it. It spares people the bother of having to understand the complexities of the world.

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby is due out today. I have to confess that due to the current state of chaos in my house, I haven't finished the book yet. I'm about 2/3 of the way finished and its wonderful!

From the Publisher:

Theodore Mead Fegley has always been the smartest person he knows. By age 12, he was in high school, and by 15 he was attending a top-ranking university. And now, at the tender age of 18, he's on the verge of proving the Riemann Hypothesis, a mathematical equation that has mystified academics for almost 150 years. But only days before graduation, Mead suddenly packs his bags and flees home to rural Illinois. What has caused him to flee remains a mystery to all but Mead and a classmate whose quest for success has turned into a dangerous obession.

At home, Mead finds little solace. His past ghosts haunt him; his parents don't understand the agony his genius has caused him, nor his desire to be a normal kid, and his dreams seem crushed forever. He embarks on a new life's journey -- learning the family business of selling furniture and embalming the dead--that disappoints and surprises all who knew him as "the young Fegley genius."

Equal parts academic thriller and poignant coming-of-age story, LIFE AFTER GENIUS follows the remarkable journey of a young man who must discover that the heart may know what the head hasn't yet learned.

I think we've all known some people that are just a bit..well...different. In fact, I think that there is a little bit of Mead in all of us. We all feel like we're just a little peculiar sometimes. It's been very easy to empathize with Mead, the story hasn't disappointed and I can't wait to finish it!

You can read an excerpt from the book here, Life After Genius

I hope I get my painting done early today, I really want to finish the book and see how it ends. So far...a very good read!!

Whooo Hooo!!! I got cabinets!!!!

Yep...now you're almost all caught up with the big doin's in the kitchen. This past weekend we started hanging cabinets in our little bitty kitchen. Whoo hooo!!!

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

I need to explain something, the wall oven cabinet used to be 27" wide and my oh so talented hubby modified it to fit a 30" oven. He took it all apart, added three inches to the overall width and put it back together. Personally, I don't think it even looks one bit modified! Dang, he's good! He also modified the cabinet above where the frig will go, as it was too small too. He cut back the drawers next to the tambour door cabinet so they were only 21 inches deep instead of 24", so the sink would be centered in the window. All that remains is for him to do some major mods to the cooktop cabinet, since we got a JennAir cooktop and we have to vent it down and out the wall instead of up and into a hood. (We didn't want a hood hanging down in the peninsula and blocking views, etc.)

Ok--gotta go paint now......

Kitchen Advances....

I know...I know....I'm slower than a turtle with posting, but the kitchen advances!

Drywall...done!

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

Here comes cabinets......!

Someone just needs to stop me!

Oh Great...now I need to pick out, buy and install a new floor....argghhh.....

From Kitchen Progress

Someone needs to tell this mouse to stop with the accouterments for the cookie already...(If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff reference if the previous sentence doesn't make sense......)

Kitchen remodeling...weekends are so much fun!

Sunday morning, October 12th brought us to the point of beginning reconstruction! No more demolishing and hauling, we finally get to rebuild a bit. An early morning trip to Lowe's, a couple hundred bucks and...voila....drywall and insulation await installation.

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

I began the search for floor tile to match the existing. Not much luck. I found some tile that's pretty close, but really, since I know that the mismatch will bug the crap out of me, even if I'm the only one that ever notices it, and also since I really hate the horrible ugly brown grout, I'm thinkin'....its time to learn to lay tile....Can't be that hard? Right??

Kitchen remodeling.....oh what fun!!

Well, lots has happened in the kitchen of the "House of Unlimited Potential". Last Friday, (10 days ago, not three....) I took hammer, crowbar and other various assorted implements of destruction to the kitchen and finished it off. All by my lil ole self, I smashed, broke, crushed and hauled the remains of the kitchen. (yep...it was sort of fun!!)

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

Yes, in case you're wondering, I was in fact watching a tape of Law and Order SVU whilst wreaking havoc.

I got everything out, except the sink, when DH got home that night, the sink was outta there as well. The drywall behind the sink looked, well, gicky and yucky, so I ripped it off. The insulation behind the drywall also looked yechy, so I removed it as well. What remained was a wall just begging for some new copper piping to replace the galvanized. (If you Give a Mouse a Cookie.......)

From Kitchen Progress

We called my new best buddy, Ben the plumber, (DH hates plumbing, won't do plumbing. I feel the same about electrical work, so usually between the two of us, we've got all bases covered, but a copper repipe is waaaay over my pay grade and ability)

Three hours later, and okay, a few more holes in the ceiling and tada!! My kitchen has been all repiped in nice shiny new copper, with a nice shiny new copper line running to my refrigerator as well. Yayyyy!!

From Kitchen Progress

Youngest son, Matt and I made a major dump run, disposing of the cabinets and tile, so the backyard once again looks semi decent. After the plumber left, Robert, aforementioned dear husband) donned his electrician cap and I've got me a couple new outlets. Double Yayyy!!


And so concludes Saturday, October 11. My wonderful husbands birthday. Wow, do I know how to show him a good time!

Happy Birthday!!

To my amazing, talented, smart, funny, totally wonderful son. (The artist who painted the painting in the previous post)

I'm so proud of you!

Johnny Cash

Artist: R. Scott Norman

(Yep, I know, I'm showing off a bit, but dang, my kid can paint!!!...)

Beginning kitchen demolition.....yikes

Okay....trying to get caught up here. Last weekend we took down part of a wall, moved a bunch of electrical, rebuilt the ceiling soffit of the kitchen extending it about eight inches, tore out the pantry wall of cabinets, hooked up my oven outside under the patio deck, and intensified the chaos of the house.

Of course, its never as easy as it sounds. The electrical was all just 6 inches too short to move, so we had to make lots more holes in the ceiling to extend the wiring. I've got so much painting to do, and my DH has so much patching to do, it's nuts!

Here's more pics, taken after I had ripped off the sheetrock, but before the wall came down....

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

And here's some post- demo pics...the kitchen just looks purtier and purtier...don't it!!

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

And because every woman needs a pantry and a cabinet to keep our dishes and pots in...

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

Later...demo of the rest of the kitchen....stay tuned...feel my pain......*yikes.....

Chaos and Mayhem reign supreme!!

I swear I haven't given up on blogging. But as you can see, we've just been so dang busy. I actually have four reviews to write still for Ted Dekker's Sinner, Dave Boling's Guernica, The Shiniest Jewel, and for the soon to be completed The Tenth Case. I think I'm only getting a couple dozen pages read a day, so I'm waay far behind in my reading.

The kitchen remodel is underway. We're committed now and there's no going back. For those who don't know, we live in a house built in 1969, which we like to call "The House of Unlimited Potential". (But it's withstood two big earthquakes so that's good!) Since my wonderful hubby is the construction type, we do most all the work ourselves, although we did sub out the new roof a few years ago. Something was mentioned about a certain someone, (me), who has the tendency to be clumsy and the family's desire that I not fall off the second story roof. Hmm...go figure...(I say innocently as I nurse my plethora of bumps and bruises from smacking myself in the leg with the cabinets and lumber that I'm hauling around....)

So, old house, old kitchen, sort of remodeled by a DIY'er who didn't know what they were doing in the 80's when dusty rose was the "it" color. When we bought the place ten years ago, the walls and ceiling in the kitchen were papered in dusty pink wallpaper, window coverings in the whole house were a sort of bubblegum pink, mirrors abounded, and the carpet was pink. I've de-pinked it pretty well over the years, and I'm super psyched that I can finally take a hammer to the awful kitchen tile with the pink grout.

Here's my before pics, taken last week before demolition began.

Disclaimer: I'm not the tidiest person around.....especially when I know its all about to get ripped out!!

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

From Kitchen Progress

Demo pictures up next! Whoo hoo....we're having some fun now!!