The Gingerbread Girl - Stephen King

This is one of King's "short" stories. The short is in quotations because for other people, this would be a normal length story. But coming from the man who wrote It, this is a lazy afternoon's worth of work. It is in keeping with his style, simply not as long because the incident the book covers takes place over a short period of time.  It has all the frustrating desperation interspersed with obscure but relevant details that he is so good at creating. If you've never read a Stephen King novel, this would be an excellent one to test out to see if you like his style.

Proven Guilty - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk 8)

Good, good good story, good twists.
I have one small complaint: Harry shows up at the Carpenter household after it was attacked and specifically mentions that the family minivan looks like giants used it to play basketball. Then after getting everyone out, it is suddenly fine to drive to safe haven. MAJOR editing flaw people! Come on! I'm a casual reader and I noticed this, I wasn't even trying. This is the type of error in these books that I see regularly, and I am striving HARD not to repeat in my own book. But I think I also have a good handful of friends who will be more than obliging to help me find them when that time comes.
I also have one big complaint: Early Dresden books dealt with the Nevernever and ghosts and so on, but a few books in we get into knights and faith and God. Now, I love me some good demon/God/insane Catholicism/summoning type stuff. I'm a big fan of Lucifer and Hellblazer. BUT these characters are obvious where they stand in regard to God and how that influences the story. Butcher's take on it is just weird and wishy-washy. Dresden knows God exists, even has a demon imprint running around his brain, but still doesn't "believe" or have "faith". There are two reasons you wouldn't give God the time of day, either you don't believe he's there or you've already had a falling out and are damned. Neither of these is the case for Dresden so his whiny, "I don't know......." make zero sense. I wish Butcher had either thrown in with the religious crowd or stayed the hell away from it (pun intended). It is my least favorite aspect of this story line. This is another issue I am striving hard not to make in my own book. I'm pleased as punch that I have a better planned out universe than the author who inspired me. But I believe I'm far more neurotic and methodical than Butcher is, but you could say that about me in regards to 99% of all 7 billion people alive today, so that shouldn't surprising.
Also NEWSFLASH to my readers: I'm writing a book. I think it's great, but when you put that much love and effort into something, of course you should think it's great. It must be the same reason parents love their children.

Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy

This is the first Tom Clancy book I've read.  While I can appreciate his background and the knowledge behind the creation of this book, it wasn't my cup of tea. As odd as this sounds describing "world war 3", it was boring. I'm glad I read it and agree with Clancy in that this situation is absolutely believable. His writing is easy to follow and concise, but bland. If I was going for "alternate history" I would prefer Harry Turtledove.

Overall: Meh, Clancy isn't on my list to get back to barring another specific recommendation.

Mean Streets - Jim Butcher, Kat Richardson, Simon R. Green, Thomas E. Sniegoski

This is a compilation of four short stories by these four authors centered around one of their major book series with the idea being to draw in a reader who already likes one of the other authors and interest them in a new one. Being as each story is completely different, different realm, different world, different rules, I'll go through each one individually.
Butcher - I wasn't impressed and thought overall it wasn't a good representation of his books because the story was so short it had nowhere to go, but is was in the proper styling. Meh.
Richardson - I didn't like the first book I read by her, and this is the same character. It was written ok, but kinda boring. The best character was the dog who did nothing but follow her around.
Green - I destroyed Green in my first review of him. This was a different set of characters in a different realm, but it still sucked. I just don't like anything this man does. I have similar complaints to the last time, poorly written with jumps where I got lost, weird and kinda pointless story, cliched characters. This ensures that I won't be reading any of his other stuff. (ha, the opposite of the desired effect)
Sniegoski - I'd never heard of him before. The story and characters were ok. The dog talks, I like that. I might pick up one of his books, but it hasn't rocketed to the top of my list either.