Allison Janney Books

Where do I start?

(A pretty good impersonator of) Mr. Rogers tells little kittens everywhere that "when you get that special feeling inside, that means it's time to visit Mr. Litter Box" in the "Mr. Rogers Catbox Video".

Guy Noir, the sardonic private eye, makes yet another appearance (minus the wise-cracking, tongue-twisting Pete), being handpicked by an ex-con-turned-poet to publish some poetic parodies in the Paris Review, including a hilarious take-off on Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening".

"Cold Weather" tends to cheer you up on those super-cold December evenings when the apartment has no heat (hopefully that's just me). Cold weather, according to Mr. Keillor can come in many forms including, but not limited to, your teenage son kicking you out of your own house because he's afraid of his friends coming over and finding the dad in the house.

"You come to New York looking for one thing, and you find another. And Bob Dylan and Carol Channing found each other," in this spoof of the young sixties generation livin' for today in New York City, hanging out with Truman Capote, Larry King, Kirk Douglas, Paul Harvey, and Mr. Rogers ("Found the mushrooms that were so amazing...right here in the neighborhood.").

"Little House On the Desert" is a guarantee side-splitter for any "Little House" enthusiasts out there, when Ma fakes tuberculosis in order to convince Pa to load up the wagon and get the heck out of Minnesota.

For Mother's Day, be sure to take your mom to "Mel's Big Boy Cafe" at the mall. Chewing is optional.

"Newt" is a toe-tappin' little tune about the former Speaker, which is sure to draw laughs from conservatives and liberals alike. Likewise, the Bemidji Boroughway [sic?] song provides a strong warning to ice-fisherman everywhere about the dangers of mistaking cigars, brautwurst, and dynamite.

I could go on and on and on about how great a collection of laughs this is, but I'll end my rambling with "Getting Older", my personal favorite from the three compact discs. This monologue warns us about the dangers of getting older: your grown children getting you as a present one of those stupid books about "the joys of aging"; similar to "Cold Weather", the teenage son lectures his dad on not dropping him off at the front door of school anymore; the vegetarian waitress goes ballistic when her patron orders "the 47-ounce beef-butt in the hot lard sauce" with french fries and butterbrickle ice cream.

In short (a little late for that), this collection has something for everyone.

i found this audio book funny and very impressive because he really tried to make the listener feel he was in each situation.

I began with his first two books, however The Abduction has caused me to think about the book all day, especially when I can't read it. Its a page turner, and I may say it doesn't contain any graphic descriptions the first two contained. Excellent writer, I will read on....

I listened to this book on tape and although the story was fairly entertaining, Mr. Grippando used the word "grimaced," so many times I was truly distracted. However, the reader pronounced the word, grim aced with a long "a," rather than grim uhsed. The word was used probably 40 times in the book and became such a distraction that I cringed every time I heard it. As well the major theme of the book was never answered in the end. Frustrating!

I'm in the middle of reading all of his books. They are all page turners. Bob in Virginia

The Abduction involves the kidnapping of the granddaughter of one of the two candidates for President and its investigation by the Attorney General, who is also the other candidate. The plot grabs hold of your attention and doesn't let go until the very end. The characters are interesting and pretty well-developed, although some aspects in their development requires you to suspend belief a bit. While The Abduction is not great literature, it is a very good choice for when you have a plane ride or a vacation coming up, or whem you just want to escape in a good book. Enjoy!

...but I thought this one was a total dog of a book.

Normally, I am a big fan of Grippando's books - they are interesting, full of lots of intrigue, unexpected twists and politics. I've reviewed several of them and have given them high marks. So, when I found one written about presidential politics and read by Allison Janney from 'West Wing' I thought that this was bound to be a great book on tape.

However, the politics in this one was just silly. Before the action gets going in the book, Grippando has the two candidates, literally less than a week before the election, sitting around their houses. Think about the last presidential election. Was Kerry sitting around his house with 3 days to go. Was Bush? No - they were in the midst of a marathon of speeches and events that had been going on for at least a month. I remember when Bob Dole ran against Clinton - he literally made appearances for 48 hours straight - right through the night before election day and through election day until the polls were closed.

Also, there's no secret service protecting these people or their relatives. Plus, people don't recognize the candidates when they are in public. Come on - Kerry, Bush, Gore, Clinton, Dole - they are forever ingrained in the minds of any TV-watching American, especially the day before the election.

I was even more confused by the bad guy with the Italian last name and the Russian accent. Either Allison Janney is the worst actress ever with accents or they left out a vital piece of information in the abridgement.

***********Caution - Spoiler**********************

I was also bothered by the shallowness of the Attorney General / Democratic Presidential Candidate. Literally hours after she discovers the awful truth about her husband's involvement in her baby daughter's kidnapping - hours after her whole world has been turned upside down, she's busy making goo-goo eyes with the head of the FBI. Lame

**************End of spoiler*********************

Grippando usually mentions Florida gubernatorial politics in his other thrillers. He is familiar with politics, but like many candidates who aspire to the national stage, I don't think he was ready for the presidential level when he wrote this book.

I give this one a grade of D.

Hard to understand why every guy was interested in her.

Not a lot of character development. I was enjoying the storyline until the middle of the book totally bogged down. Not sure where the author was going. By the end of the book I couldn't have cared less what happened to anybody.

Overall, the story was good but what was missing was more character development and relationship background between Delaney and the one she ends up with. The story's end was too abrupt and and epilogue would have been nice.

Since my youth, I know the existence of Janet Dailey, but I never wanted to try her books. And some years ago, when I heard about the plagiarism she made on Nora Roberts books (and Nora's one of my favorites), I was disgusted.

But the worlds keep moving, and then, ILLUSIONS came to my hands and I started to read it. And believe me, I loved this book. I couldn't believe that it was plagiarism, and later I knew it wasn't. Janet has a very nice sense of humor, she made up adorable characters on this book and a very nice plot that kept me reading during the whole night. It's the kind of book that sometimes it's not so interesting but that is never boring. I loved this book and I'd highly recommend it for fans of this genre. Janet is a very good writer.

This book started out with a cast of interesting characters, however, early on you could figure out who Delaney would end up with. Jared, Lucas, and Riley all interested in Delaney, lots of side characters that were quirky (her dad, Toby, Susan, Delaney's staff, Rina, the lawyer). It was a fun summer read, went quickly, and had a plot instead of girl meets guy who she doesn't like but who likes her, etc., etc.

I never saw it coming - this is a great mystery and romance, and I figured out the romance but the murder mystery? Never would have dreamed it! Love Janet Dailey's work and you'll love this book. Lovely romantic ending!

This is the first book by Ms. Fairstein that I've read. It was enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the art history in the books. I'm not into art that much so it was fascinating to me. It was something different for me. I did however like the mystery itself. Author had some good plot twists in there. I liked the characters interplay with each other and how you could see their bonds. I think I made the mistake of reading the third book first however. They speak of other cases which I'm assuming are in the first books. I plan on picking those up soon. It's not early Cornwell or Sandford but I would still highly recommend this book to others looking for a murder mystery.

If you enjoyed Paul Clifford, you'll love this. Here's the first sentence for you: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." Linda Fairstein has taken the master's style and run with it.
Not in my recent reading have I seen a book so in need of slash and burn editing. It is said that smarter people write longer sentences, but this book bludgeons you with excess words on every page.

This was the first in the Alexandra Cooper series I read and I really enjoyed it so I will be adding the rest of the series to my TBR pile. The characters are appealing, the story extremely well written and Linda Fairstein really knows her stuff! The story involved the art word and the Gardener Museum heist and being an Art History major I found it all exceedingly fascinating. A joy to read and it really should be in your must read pile!

This lady goes from strength to strength. Once again we see Alexandra Cooper, the Assistant District Attorney for the Sex Crimes Unit of Manhattan. Only this time she finds herself with a body being pulled out of the river, but the woman is expensively dressed and tied to a ladder, with no identification.

It is not the easiest of cases, we find all kinds of skullduggery in the genteel art world, with forgery and faked provenance and Alex gets a bit too close to the murderer in this one, only narrowly escaping being shot, although unfortunately Mercer Wallace is hit, which is all rather too real.

I never imagined Art Galleries to inspire the kind of passions that abound in this book, I know that money will drive people to extremes and this is well illustrated here, but this really is the ugly side to beautiful artworks.

Nevertheless, as a subject for murder, it is a gripping plot. I know that sidekicks are not as immune as central characters, but Mercer and Mike are too central to be the victim of homicidal lunatics, but here we see that they can have a little scare, just to remind us that it is a terrible place for the good guys.

Linda Fairstein's 3rd novel in the Alexandra Cooper mystery series, "Cold Hit," follows Alex and her team as they track the killer of a victim who washed ashore in Northern Manhatten, strapped to a ladder. Her connections to the flashy art world add plenty of glitz and suspects for Alex, Mike Chapman, and Mercer Wallace to investigate before the killer strikes again.

I used to read alot of Patricia Cornwell and I had to stop because I realized I was reading the same novel over and over again. Now, you can say that of pretty much any mystery author, I realize. Most of them do a really good job of masking it though. I am hoping that Fairstein is able to do the same. Cornwell's character Kay Scarpetta is not likeable and always is attacked by the vicious killer. Fairstein's Cooper is likeable, but the reader sorta has to work at it and she is always attacked by the vicious killer. Authors need to realize that readers catch on to these sort of canned plots. We're not stupid, dearest authors, really we're not.

I did find the plot of "Cold Hit" to be a bit tedious. Fairstein can be overly wordy sometimes. 50 pages could easily be shaved off of each of her books and they wouldn't be any different.

This story was a thrilling medical drama, filled with intriguing details of ethical issues and the limitless power of the human mind. Very different than my usual reading material, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This book had the potential to be a great emotional powerhouse. Here we have the Haywood family in total disarray: young Frankie is hit by a bus, Ben is wracked with guilt and denial, the father Jack has been kicked out of the house for having an affair and his airline business is tanking, and of course the mother Alison is caught up in the middle.

This potential drama is spoiled by Mawson's subpar writing. Of particular note is Mawson's uncanny ability to skip over the most intense moments. Instead, Mawson skips ahead, then backtracks through dialogue or a couple skimpy paragraphs. The ultimate example is at the end where at the end of Chapter 17, the kid is coming out of the coma, then the story skips ahead to weeks or months later. The whole story was building towards Frankie coming out of the coma (and I'm not spoiling anything for you, fair reader, since the book is titled the LAZARUS Child), and then Mawson glosses over the climax.

You can call it inexperience of a guy writing only his second novel, or if you're less generous, you would say it's purely lousy storytelling. Either way, Mawson's poor writing takes a potential 3 or 4 star book and drags it down to 2 stars.

The plot itself is pretty average and predictable, but the characters are fairly well developed. I did find Mawson's hypothesis of a neural network being able to bring people out of comas to be interesting. However, like everything else, it was poorly executed.

I would not recommend this book, but it certainly was not awful either. I can't say how much I paid for it, but it was low enough where I have absolutely no guilt about paying to read it. My advice is to check the bargain bin of your local book store (like I did) for this and if you got cash to throw away, go ahead.

I was on the edge of my seat through the whole book, waiting to see how it ended. I waded my way through the dream chapters to see what happend at the end. The end was terrible, you are built up for a big climax that never comes and leaves you with so many unanswered questions. How far does Frankie come back? What happend to Ben, Lizzie, Janet......

I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen.

I read The Lazarus Child by Robert Mawson. It is a fiction novel about the strength and love of a family. I had mixed feelings about the book, but I enjoyed it for the most part.
I liked the overall story and the plot. I enjoyed the ending. I would say more about why, but that would give it away. All of the characters were well developed and I think the author wrote them all well.
There were only two things that I didn't like about this book. One of them was that the author goes overboard with the descriptions. He went into such detail in some places that I skipped ahead to the next paragraph. The other thing that I didn't like about the book was that it jumped around. Within a chapter the plot would move from Frankie's hospital room to Dr. Elizabeth Chase's childhood, and then to Jack's office. It was hard for me to keep up with the plot and what had happened in the previous chapter. It was especially hard if I put the book down for more than a day. It would have been a lot easier to keep up if I had the time and the patience to sit down and read the book in one sitting.
Despite the two low points of the book I would have to say that the overall story and the concept of the book outweighed the low points. I would also have to say that I would recommend this book to anyone who is in need of a good book to read, but to be prepared and have your thinking cap on.