The Walking Dead, Volume 9: Here We Remain by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2010)

In The Walking Dead, Volume 9: Here We Remain by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2010), the bloodbath of Volume 8 really pays off. After their escape from the fighting at the prison, Rick and his son Carl spend an unusually long time as the only characters in the comic. This section of the book, with Rick getting sick and Carl coming into his own, has been one of my favorite parts of the series so far, and the heartbreaking surprise of the dead telephone topped it off perfectly. Eventually they rejoin some of our old friends, but the character list has been greatly reduced from the community at the prison. The arrival at the end of the book of three new characters with an intriguingly hard-to-believe proposition points to the possibility of some interesting doings a'transpiring in Volume 10.

A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (2011)

The always amazing J.Lowe kindly loaned me A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (2011), the fifth (and last published) book in the Song of Ice and Fire series and even though it took me a while to attack this monster of a novel, I'm so glad he did.

You might remember that in the fourth book, Martin cut his cast of characters in half and only focused on part of the world of the novel. This fifth book picks up what the other half of our characters were doing and runs concurrently to the fourth book for the first two thirds or so of the novel and then brings everything together and moves into the future. Since Martin added several new important characters this time around and only killed off (or did he?) a few of our old buddies, he is going to have quite the menagerie to deal with in book six.

Like many others, I enjoyed this book more than the one before (although that one had its moments) not the least because my favorite character, Tyrion, is back in the spotlight in this volume. I can't get enough of that guy. And, without busting out any spoilers, I think that is about as far as I can get with this review. [This series and the Walking Dead comics are really stretching my ability to talk about something without talking about it in detail...]

Now that I'm caught up with Martin, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with myself while I wait for the 6th book to be release. Watch the TV series, I guess?

The Walking Dead, Volume 8: Made to Suffer by Robert Kirkman, Charlies Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2010)

The promise of rough chuckles for Volume 8 after the calm of Volume 7 was no joke: in The Walking Dead, Volume 8: Made to Suffer by Robert Kirkman, Charlies Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2010) things get pretty real pretty fast. The Governor, the most uncomplicatedly evil creation in the entire book, has set his eyes (well, eye) on our heroes who are trying to build a community behind the safety of their prison walls. That community is blasted apart quickly, although the group is much more of a match for The Governor and his crew of duped townlings than they expected. Heroes die. Attackers die. A bunch of zombies die. In fact, only a handful of our named characters appear to survive to walk the pages of Volume 9. I get the feeling that Kirkman had played out the prison scenario and needed to inject some excitement into his narrative, so he went all Game of Thrones, killed off some unexpectedly major characters, and waited to see what would happen next. And it got my attention, I'm definitely ready to follow him into the next volume.

Householder's Survival Manual: How to Take Care of Everything in Your Home, edited by Nancy Shuker (1999)

I bought this copy of the Reader's Digest Householder's Survival Manual: How to Take Care of Everything in Your Home, edited by Nancy Shuker (1999) at Half Price Books as an impulse buy shortly after we bought our new house. There are a few drawbacks: since it was written in 1999, it is pretty dated (particularly the section on buying electronics and anything that mentions computers); it is geared towards a Reader's Digest audience that I am not a part of (old people?); and the writing style is often clunky and choppy (and sometimes just odd: "The choices available in home flooring today are wide and wonderful.") Still, I am a huge pushover for helpful hints and basic reference, and this book covers everything from electricity and plumbing to stain removal and major appliance selection. Much of the information here can be found with a quick internet search, but when you want a simple explanation it is often more satisfying to consult an index. At least for me! I think I'll hang on to this one until a better general house repair reference book comes along...

The Walking Dead, Volume 7: The Calm Before by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn (2010)

As you might guess from the title of The Walking Dead, Volume 7: The Calm Before by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn (2010), things are relatively calm in this volume and look to get rather hairy in volume 8. At the beginning of the volume, everyone is reunited at the prison and Lori is ready to give birth to her baby any day. Luckily they brought a woman with some medical training back from Woodbury, and she gets to setting up the prison infirmary as a birthing center. To make things even more calm and happy, the crops are coming in, they get a bunch of food from an abandoned Walmart (not without some trouble, though), and Glen and Maggie are married by Maggie's father in the prison cafeteria. All so happy! And even though some rough things come (zombie attack, amputation, suicide by zombie), we are reminded of how calm things are by the characters constantly remarking on how nice things have been lately. It is no surprise that after all this niceness and treading of water, a big bucket of evil shows up on their doorstep at the end of the volume. To be continued....

Neil Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening by Neil Sperry (1991)

This is one I actually finished quite a while ago, but since it took me so long to read it I completely forgot to write up a post. My long reading time has nothing to do with the quality or usefulness of Neil Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening by Neil Sperry (1991), but more to do with the fact that I checked it out from the library twice, renewed it twice, and mostly read it while I was eating my cereal in the morning.

This is a good basic reference to Texas gardening -- particularly the extensive encyclopedias of flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees, complete with photographs, identifying traits, and general care. This second edition was published in 1991 and could probably stand an update to incorporate some more organic and water-conscious gardening techniques. Still, there is a lot to love here and I could see myself buying a reference copy of this book someday as my gardening aspirations grow.

Oh yes, I have gardening aspirations! Right now they are very small and mostly contained in a small metal tub that I've been using to grow a winter garden of lettuce, cilantro, and parsley. Check out my first mini-harvest! Everything I know I learned from my awesome friend Joolie, and beyond her tutelage, most of my techniques have been trial and error. Still, I have managed to grow edible food from seeds in dirt I put into a container by myself and I'm pretty excited to have gotten this far. Maybe in the spring I'll go crazy and try some herbs!