This is book four in Lisa Lutz’es series of The Spellmans. The books is a humorous look at a family of instigators, only they are dysfunctional.
In this book, Izzy deals with ex-boyfriend #12, the doorknobs are disappearing from the family home, Izzy pays an actor friend to be a spying butler, Rae blackmails a school drug dealer into giving her free rides, Izzy is going on blind dates with lawyers because her mother is blackmailing her, Rae kidnaps her sister Izzy, Rae has everyone wearing “Free Schmidt” t-shirts, and Izzy is still trying to get the dope on their competitor, Harkey. So, it’s just typical stuff.
This is a great read and lives up to the previous volumes.
Reading Like a Writer is a description of writing. It focuses on the use of the word in literature, and makes excellent use of examples for well-known books to illustrate her points. Francine Prose describes the strengths of her selected passages and why the wording is important.
The Machine Crusade is the second in a trilogy of the Legends of Dune, chronicling the Butlerian Jihad of man battling intelligent machines. This book didn’t contribute anything sufficiently important to warrant its own volume, it should have been incorporated into the other two works in the series.