Good Review of "The Bird Saviors" in the San Francisco Book Review, and Eerie Similarities to Alex Prud'homme's "The Ripple Effect" in Recent L.A. Tourist's Death Case

So I’ve been too busy reading/teaching to blog lately, juggling about four books at a time and finishing all of them (more on that later), but had a nice surprise to be told about a good review of The Bird Saviors in the San Francisco/Sacramento Book Review website, here. I like this quote especially, the opening: “The Bird Saviors is a novel of great achievement. Not often enough does a book come out that carries with it the magnitude of talented story crafting, pristine language, and unforgettable characters. This holds a light to that candelabra.” Whoever this reviewer is, I like the way she thinks.
The other thing I’ve noticed in the last few days was the eerie similarity of the recent tourist death in L.A.—whose body was discovered in a hotel water tank (for an article about it, “Corpse Found in L.A. Hotel’s water tank,” click here)—with the opening chapter of Alex Prud’homme’s The Ripple Effect (2010), about our growing water crisis, which describes the death of a New Jersey area water official, found decomposing in a water tank that had been providing drinking water for people for many days. It makes you wonder: How often are people falling into water tanks? It’s an awful fate, for everyone involved, and is part of the Infrastructure Crisis (as if we need one more crisis, please) in the U.S.