Summer Knight

"Summer Knight" by Jim Butcher is Book Four of the Dresden Files, quite possibly the best fantasy/mystery series ever written. It starts with a rain of toads and continues on with White Council Wizards, ex-girlfriend wizard, werewolves, Faery Queens (summer and winter) Hellhounds, Faery Godmothers, as well as assassins both mortal and otherwise.
Obviously I give it 5 stars.

On page 26 we get an official introduction to our first Faery Queen.

The woman ran an opalescent fingernail through the blood on my desk. She
lifted it to her lips and idly touched it to her tongue. She smiled,
slower, more sensual, and every bit as alien. "I have many names," she
murmured. "But you may call me Mab. Queen of Air and Darkness.
Monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe."

Incidentally they hate being called Faery Queens so you should probably avoid that.

Page 76.

She'd just been toying with me in my office, and I'd fallen for it. I
wanted to kick myself. Somewhere out there was a village I'd deprived of
its idiot.

Page 81.
I slammed the doors open a little harder than I needed to, stalked out to the Blue Beetle, and drove away with all the raging power the ancient four-cylinder engine could muster. Behold the angry wizard puttputtputting away.

158-159
Billy pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So you're taking us into a maze of lightless, rotting, precarious tunnels full of evil faeries and monsters."
I nodded. "Maybe leftover radiation, too."
"God, you're a fun guy, Harry."

And page 207.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I reflected that odds were that not a lot
of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power,
and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a
Wal-Mart Super Center. But then again, maybe they had. Hell, for all
I knew, the Mole Men used the changing rooms as a place to discuss plans for
world domination with the Psychic Jellyfish from Planet X and the Disembodied
Brains-in-a-jar from the Klaatuu Nebula. I know I wouldn't have looked for
them there.

If you think about it, evil aliens at Wal-Mart would actually explain a lot...

Grave Peril

I am forever grateful to Rebecca for getting me started reading the Harry Dresden series. Grave Peril is the third in the series and while the first two books are alright it is with "Grave Peril" that Jim Butcher really hit his stride. In fact Rebecca had me read the 3rd book first and after loving it I went back and read the first two, but really you could just read a summery of "Storm Front" and "Fool Moon" and call it good...although Fool Moon does have some good parts.

I sometimes think that I get more Spiritual Education from Harry Dresden through Michael Carpenter (who is a Knight of the Cross) and Father Forthill than I do from going to Church. Perhaps because over the years while I have had some very positive experiences with church I have also had some very painful and negative ones. In addition to that the ongoing pain of my Mothers death is all tied up with my feelings about attending church. Whereas while reading Harry Dresden I get all of the benefit without any of the emotional baggage. And I really like and admire Michael which is not something I can say about just anyone. Yes I do realize he is a fictional character, but he happens to be an honest, intelligent, humble, worthwhile, humerus, respectful, tough, caring, stalwart, fictional character. And he doesn't come across as preachy .

First quote page 38.

"Holy shit," I breathed. "Hellhounds."
"Harry," Michael said sternly. "You know I hate it when you
swear."
"You're right. Sorry. Holy shit," I breathed,
"heckhounds. Godmother's out hunting. How the hell did she find us
so damned fast?"

Page 50.

Michael half-smiled "The Lord will never give you a burden bigger than your
shoulders can bear, Harry. All we can do is face what comes and have
faith."
I gave him a sour glance. "I need to get myself some bigger
shoulders, then. Someone in accounting must have made a mistake."
Michael let out a rough, warm laugh, and shook his head, then lay back on
the bench, crossing his arms beneath his head. "We did what was
right. Isn't that enough?"

I should mention the previous bit of conversation takes place in a jail cell :)
Next quote page 53.

I watched the two of them for a moment, walking in step beside one another,
while I stood there alone. Then I stuck my hands into my pockets, and
turned away. I hadn't ever noticed, before, how well the tow of them
matched one another - Michael with his quiet strength and unfailing reliability,
and Charity with her blazing passion and unshakable loyalty to her
husband.
The Married thing. Sometimes I look at it and feel like someone from
a Dickens novel, standing outside in the cold and staring in at Christmas
dinner. Relationships hadn't ever really worked for me. I think it's
had something to do with all the demons, ghosts, and human sacrifice.

Page 72.

The sun came up as we entered the parking lot. I felt the golden rays
slice across the morning skies, the sudden, subtle shift of forces playing about
the world. Dawn is significant, magically speaking. It is a time of
new beginnings. Magic isn't as simple as good and evil, light and dark,
but there's a lot of correlations between the powers particular to night and the use of black
magic.

Page 162.

A second later, the door opened, and Michael stood there, blinking sleep out of
his eyes. He wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with John 3:16 across his
chest. He held one of his kids in his brawny arms, one I hadn't seen yet -
maybe a year old, with a patch of curly, golden hair, her face pressed against
her daddy's chest as she slept.

John 3:16 reads "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Page 210 part A

I squinted our the window of the truck, silent. I don't have anything
against God. Far from it. But I don't understand Him. And I
don't trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they're working in
His best interests. Faeries and vampires and whatnot - those I can
fathom. Even demons. Sometimes, even the Fallen. I can
understand why they do what they do.
But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the
way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad
idea.
I guess he's just bigger about it than I would be.

Something I have thought about myself quite alot, only Jim Butcher phrases it much better than I ever could.
Page 210 part B.

"Lord," Michael said. "We walk into darkness now. Our
enemies will surround us. Please help to make us strong enough to do what
needs to be done. Amen."
Just that. No fancy language, no flashy beseeching the Almighty for
aid. Just quiet words about what he wanted to get done, and a request that
God would be on his side - on our side. Simple words, and yet power
surrounded him like a cloud of fine mist, prickling along my arms and my
neck. Faith. I calmed down a little. We had a lot going for
us. We could do this.
Michael looked up at me and nodded. "All right," he said. "I'm
ready."

See what I mean about Spiritual Education?

U is for Undertow

After having read "T is for Tresspas" I was worried that Sue Grafton had lost her magic touch, I just didn't like it.
Happily with "U is for Undertow" the magic is back. Although it was slightly confusing to go back and forth between not only different characters perspectives, but also different time periods, I enjoyed the book immensely and give it 41/2 stars.
Kinsey is pulled into investigating a two decades old crime by Michael Sutton, a 27 year old college drop-out with a multitude of issues who believes he has remembered evidence that he witnessed as a child from an abduction in his neighborhood.
Whenever I read a book I end up with little scraps of paper tucked between the pages making either things/words I want to look up or quotes that I want to remember. What is interesting about this first quote is that I read this book about a month ago and liked it, but now that I am finally getting around to typing it up I find it has more significance in my life now than it did when I first marked it.
Page 215

"I can undersand how you feel," I said. "It's not about
vengence. It's about balance, the sense that good and evil are in a state
of equilibrium."

There is more to the paragraph but that is the part that is stricking a chord with me right now.

This next one is long, but I can't see how to shorten it, so here
goes. Page 225
It's our nature to condense and collate, bundling related elements for ease
of storage in the back of our brains. Since we lack the capacity to
capture every detail, we cull what we can, blocking the bits we don't like
and
admitting those that match our notions of what's going on. While
efficient, the practice leaves us vulnerable to blind spots. Under
stress,
memory becomes even less reliable. Over time we sort and
discard what
seems irrelevant to make room for additional incoming
data. In the end,
it's a wonder we remember anything at all.
What we manage to preserve is
subject to misinterpretation. An event
might appear to be generated by the
one before it, when the order is
actually coincidental. Two occurrences
may be linked even when widely
separated by time and place.

Interestingly I went to a RS activity/class/thing where Dr. R spoke and he said something about how we are constantly changing our own past and remembering our personal history differently.