Okay, so this book is in my stack of quick-reads-when-on-vacation books, one that I can leave where ever I am, and not worry too much about it, since I don't think I'd want to bring it home.

Aaaaaaaand, I was pretty much right.

The book is a spy novel, written in the end of the eighties during that Cold War stuff. I can always believe there will be some twist at the end with these spy books, which makes reading them somewhat odd because I'm always wondering who is the bad guy and when will he reveal himself, and not, say, enjoying the book.

This one got me with the whole "guy loves girl he just met" thing. Ugh. Yes, hormones and emotions, but a disappointed-in-life, heavy-drinker, life-sucks kind of guy being unable to shake this one? Come on, that's the definition of a tragic life.

Anyway, yeah, glad to have left it. Glad to leave it behind. It's fine if you like spy novels from the eighties. This one at least had books in it.

The Dresden Files, book 8

The trick about writing book reviews is to do them immediately after reading the book, so that the book is still fresh in your mind, the parts you like, the parts you didn't like, the parts you want to read again and again and again.

This isn't one of my favorite Dresden books (those are Dead Beat, Changes, and Skin Game, in that order). This one was, however, an enjoyable read. Yeah, we know Molly can be annoying, she's written fairly well as the angsty teenager going through changes and being defiant. And I see how the introduction of her into the inners of Dresden's world can be.

I found the reference to the Parable of the Talents to be frustrating. It goes:

“Three men were given money by their lord in the amount of fifteen, ten, and five silver talents. The man with fifteen invested the money, worked hard, and returned thirty talents to his lord. The man with ten did the same, and returned twenty talents. The lord was most pleased. But the third man was lazy. He buried his five talents in the ground, and when he returned them to the lord, expecting to be rewarded for keeping them safe, his lord was angry. He had not given the lazy man the money to be hidden away. He’d given it to the man so that he could use it and make his lands better, stronger, and ...

The third man RETURNED the funds. He didn't lose any. No, he didn't gain any, but he didn't lose it either. So he didn't make a rich man richer, he didn't make the rich man any poorer. I swear this is exactly the kind of sermon that people in power use to abuse the people under them: hey, YOU need to work harder to make ME more powerful. I dislike that story a lot.

This book, however, I liked, it's a Dresden book. Keep reading.

You can never tell how someone is going to handle power—not until you hand it to them and see what they do with it.
Page 34

There are violent bones in everyone’s body, if you look deep enough.
Page 53

And I saw something about the old man, too. Beneath the shoe leather and gristle, there were more shoe leather and gristle. And iron.

The old man had been badly beaten, but it wasn’t the first such he had endured—physically or spiritually. He was a fighter, a survivor. He was afraid, but he was also angry and defiant.

Whatever had done this to him hadn’t gotten what it wanted—not like it had with the girl. It had to settle for a physical beating when its attack hadn’t elicited the terror and anguish it had expected.

The old man had faced it, and he didn’t have any power of his own, beyond a lifetime of stubborn will.
Page 117

I came through the door armed for bear and projecting an attitude to match.
Page 128

This cracks me up.

“Her actions could have thrown enormous forces out of balance, to the ruin of all.”

“Her heart was in the right place,” Fix said, his tone mildly defensive.

“Maybe,” I told him, as gently as I could. “But good intent doesn’t amount to much when the consequences are epically screwed up.”
Page 140

I got an up-close look at the Scarecrow as the van slewed into a bootlegger reverse.
Page 230

Another short phrase that just cracked me up.

“You stole my coat,” I said.

“Borrowed,” he corrected.

“They never talk about this kind of crap when they talk about brothers.”

“You weren’t wearing it,” he pointed out. “Hell, you think I’m going to walk into one of your patented Harry Dresden anarchy-gasms without all the protection I can get?”
Page 232

Sometimes I thought it might be nice not to make any choices. If I never had one, I could never screw it up.
Page 244

“How so?”

“Power,” he said, waving a hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “All power is the same. Magic. Physical strength. Economic strength. Political strength. It all serves a single purpose—it gives its possessor a broader spectrum of choices. It creates alternative courses of action.”

“I guess,” I said. “So?”

“So,” he said. “You have more choices. Which means that you have much improved odds of making mistakes. You’re only human. Once in a while, you’re going to screw the pooch.”
Page 245

“Faith in what?”

“That things will unfold as they are meant to,” Forthill said. “That even in the face of an immediate ugliness, the greater picture will resolve into something all the more beautiful.”
Page 245

“That the good that will come is not always obvious. Nor easy to see. Nor in the place we would expect to find it. Nor what we personally desire. You should consider that the good being created by the events this night may have nothing to do with the defeat of supernatural evils or endangered lives. It may be something very quiet. Very ordinary.”
Page 246

“Then perhaps you should try to have faith that you might one day have faith.”
Page 246

I can get behind this one.

“Am I the only one who is starting to think that maybe Mouse is something special?”

“Always thought that,” I said.

“I wonder if he’s an actual breed.” Charity glanced over her shoulder and said, “He looks something like a Caucasian.”
Page 261

Hard to picture Mouse. He's a Foo Dog, yes, but most foo dogs are representations of the actual animals. A Caucasian dog you can find pictures of, go pet if you'd like.

Yes, she had the potential to go astray on an epic scale. Don’t we all.
Page 344

“But…” Her face scrunched up. “I don’t want to be a bad guy.”

“No one wants it,” I said. “Most of the bad guys in the real world don’t know that they are bad guys. You don’t get a flashing warning sign that you’re about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren’t looking.”
Page 346

“Children are a precious gift, but they belong to no one but themselves. They are only lent us a little while.”
Page 352

“Harry, I know you aren’t a churchgoing man, but God does help people who aren’t perfect.”
Page 381

“I know what it’s like,” he said. “There isn’t any way to make it disappear. But it gets better with time and distance.” He studied me for a moment. “If you had it to do again, would you?”

“Twice as hard,” I said at once.

“Then what you did was a necessity, Harry. It might be painful. It might haunt you. But at the end of the day, so long as you did what you believed right, you’ll be able to live with yourself.”
Page 385

“Children have their own kind of power. When you’re teaching them, protecting them, you are more than you thought you could be. More understanding, more patient, more capable, more wise. Perhaps this foster child of your power will do the same for you. Perhaps it’s what she is meant to do.”
Page 388

Life can be confusing. Good God, and how. Sometimes it seems like the older I get, the more confused I become. That seems ass-backwards. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser. Instead, I just keep getting hit over the head with my relative insignificance in the greater scheme of the universe. Confusing, life.
Page 389

“Times are changing, Hoss. That’s for sure.” He polished off his beer. “But they always do.
Page 402

Okay, this was Jonathan Tropper's first novel. I am uncertain why I decided not to read it when I was on my Tropper kick, but I didn't, which meant I could read it this month.

The story is cute. Tropper's style is pretty apparent early on with this book. I'm glad this book had enough success that he was able to keep writing, as I liked his later books, too. That five people could be best friends in college and manage to keep the best friend status through all of the subsequent years I find to be the most fictional of this fiction, but I'd like to believe it could happen.

I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to anyone on a Tropper kick. If you want only one Tropper book, make it the Book of Joe. If you want a quick, light, delightful read, this is a good one.

To know him was to know a man of absolute contentment, a loving husband and father, a great friend, a Godfearing man whose ample intelligence did not serve to complicate him, as it does so many people.
Page 171

"You all accuse me of living in the past, but the truth is I’m thirty years old and I’m still counting on the future to bail me out. And that’s a crock. You can spend years working toward something and get killed before you reach it, so what’s the point?”
Page 173

I was scared shitless of reality. That it might be something other than this.
Page 196

Chuck always employed the Socratic method of viewing television shows. He didn’t seem able to enjoy himself without his pointless commentary.
Page 208

A weary-looking nurse carrying a tray entered the room briskly, her rubber souls squeaking on the waxed linoleum. She threw a disapproving glance at Lindsey perched on the bed and then dropped a paper cup with some pills on my end table.
Page 218

I cracked up at the "souls." Yay for homonyms!

“I don’t want Sarah back,” I said.

“I know you don’t,” Lindsey said with a tender smile. “I’m not worried about that. But you don’t want her to resent you or hate you either. And you can’t accept the fact that you left something behind, something messy. You want to keep going back to see if you can somehow clean it up, make it more tidy in your mind, but it isn’t going to happen.”

“I know that,” I said.

“And while you’re busy looking back,” she continued, “you’re not looking at what you have right here in front of you.”
Page 235

“You screwed up in the past. Well, shit happens. You learn what you can, you scrape it off your shoe and you move on. If you can’t do that, you’ll never get the chance to get it right.”
Page 235

“Divorce means you’ve been permanently changed, and that terrifies you."
Page 235

Until you found your way out of the woods, it was reassuring to find other people lost in them with you.
Page 242

“No way,” said the girl above the breasts Chuck was addressing. She was dressed in tight black slacks and an even tighter blue polyester shirt, the bottom three buttons opened to reveal her flat, tanned belly. She seemed very skinny for the breasts she was carrying.
Page 277

Yeah, I can relate to this one, too.

To lose your father at that age, when he’s still such a powerful presence in your life, constantly shaping your perceptions both intentionally and accidentally with every seemingly insignificant word or gesture, was a loss I would never comprehend.
Page 302

“The Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man weren’t just helping Dorothy for the hell of it. They all had their own reasons for wanting to see the Wizard.”
Page 305

“It must be tough,” I said sincerely. “Having no clear line between your reality and your bullshit.”
Page 331

At thirty, friends are pretty much like bone mass. Whatever you’ve managed to store up until now starts to diminish and is rarely replaced.
Page 331

Our private world was dissolving, like when the lights come on at the end of a movie and real life starts again.
Page 344

Time’s surface is slick as oil, and there’s just no way to hold on.
Page 357