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Whew! This one went by quickly. Well that's partially because I had to finish it before taking off for the US Social Forum in Detroit. It's a new book, so I couldn't renew it, and it's due before I'll get back. Anyway, it's the continuing saga of Cincinnati witch Rachel Morgan and her partners Jenks, a pixy; and Ivy, a vampire as they fend off coven witches, powerful elves, and greedy fairies trying to fuck with them.

I'll tell you off the bat that if you're looking for another Time Traveler's Wife, this ain't it. I'm not referring to the quality of the writing. You know what, actually I'm mystified by this book. It's the story of two sets of twins, one estranged and one symbiotic; and the residents of the building where three of the four twins lived or live. Pretty much no one in the story is sympathetic, and at least one of them is downright horrible. There's sort of a side story about a guy with debilitating OCD. Because I'm so baffled by a writer I previously so enjoyed, I'm choosing to believe that there are deeper meanings to everything that I'm just not getting. Otherwise, I just didn't care for this book. A fair amount.

An aspiring journalist ca. 1990 attending a high school journalism camp queried the keynote on what to do to become a foreign correspondent. He (I think it was a he) responded, "Learn Russian." So that is what the Tex-Mex teen set out to do, and that's how she ended up in Moscow for about a year. Hers is a coming-of-age political memoir of a lefty journalist trying to sort out Revolution and her own identity. Well, the identity part sort of came last. She had to visit lots of foreign countries before she realized there were some important things she needed to learn about her own culture.