Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Rating: 4/5

Review: This was a very interesting inside take of the comedian's life, and how he developed his craft. He shows himself as a sensative, intelligent, and wounded person. He's funny, of course, and certainly has a way with words. I would like to read his fiction work, now that I see how good of a writer he truly is. I have always liked Steve Martin as an actor/comedian, but now I respect him as a human being too. That's the beauty of biographies.

Book Description: At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he worked in Disney's magic shop, print shop, and theater, and developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, most often at the Disney rival, Knott's Berry Farm. Obsession is a substitute for talent, he has said, and Steve Martin's focus and daring--his sheer tenacity--are truly stunning. He writes about making the very tough decision to sacrifice everything not original in his act, and about lucking into a job writing for The Smothers Brothers Show. He writes about mentors, girlfriends, his complex relationship with his parents and sister, and about some of his great peers in comedy--Dan Ackroyd, Lorne Michaels, Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson. He writes about fear, anxiety and loneliness. And he writes about how he figured out what worked on stage.
This book is a memoir, but it is also an illuminating guidebook to stand-up from one of our two or three greatest comedians. Though Martin is reticent about his personal life, he is also stunningly deft, and manages to give readers a feeling of intimacy and candor. Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs collected by Martin, this book is instantly compelling visually and a spectacularly good read.

Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Rating: 4/5

Review: The book starts out excruciatingly slow, but starts to pick up in the middle. By the end, I was completely consumed, and couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. I'm told that the movie version wasn't very good and that they actually left out Agent Pendercast, who is one of the main characters.

Book Description: The book that started the New York Times bestselling collaboration of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who-or what-is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Rating: 5/5

Review: Surprisingly, this was my first Agatha Christie book. It was a very fast read, as I finished it in half a day. I loved it! The mystery was so complete that there was no way of knowing for sure who the murderer was. The characters were just real enough that I worried what would happen next. A truly wonderful classic, that I now know why it has stood the test of time.

Book Description: First, there were ten - a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal - and a secret that will seal their fate. For each hsa been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion...

Black Order by James Rollins

Rating: 5/5

Review: I started out listening to this book on audio cd, but ended up buying it in hardback for a great price at Waldenbooks. Definitely skip on the audio version, as it is much harder to follow, and you lose a bit of the excitement. This book was definitely full of adventure and suspense. I loved all of the main characters, and really cared what happened to them. I certainly plan to read more books in this series. I have discovered a new favorite author in James Rollins.

Book Description: In Copenhagen . . . a suspicious bookstore fire propels Commander Gray Pierce on a relentless hunt across four continents—and into a terrifying mystery surrounding horrific experiments once performed in a now-abandoned laboratory buried in a hollowed-out mountain in Poland.
In the mountains of Nepal . . . in a remote monastery, Buddhist monks inexplicably turn to cannibalism and torture—while Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force, begins to show signs of the same baffling, mind-destroying malady . . . and Lisa Cummings, a dedicated American doctor, becomes the target of a brutal clandestine assassin.
Now only Gray Pierce and Sigma Force can save a world suddenly in terrible jeopardy. Because a new order is on the rise—an annihilating nightmare growing at the heart of the greatest mystery of all: the origin of life.