What's in a Name Challenge

This here What's in a Name Challenge just looks adorable. I have to sign up!

Here's How It Works

Between January 1 and December 31, 2011, read one book in each of the following categories:
1. A book with a number in the title: First to Die, Seven Up, Thirteen Reasons Why
2. A book with jewelry or a gem in the title: Diamond Ruby, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Opal Deception
3. A book with a size in the title: Wide Sargasso Sea, Small Wars, Little Bee
4. A book with travel or movement in the title: Dead Witch Walking, Crawling with Zombies, Time Traveler's Wife
5. A book with evil in the title: Bad Marie, Fallen, Wicked Lovely
6. A book with a life stage in the title: No Country for Old Men, Brideshead Revisited, Bog Child

The book titles are just suggestions, you can read whatever book you want to fit the category.


Interesting, right? Well, I think so, anyway, and that's what counts! I have noooooo idea what I'll pick for this, but if you've got ideas, send them my way!

Number: Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy Sayers (Review)
Jewelry: The Ring of Solomon, by Jonathan Stroud (Review)
Size: Thinner, by Richard Bachman (Review)
Travel: Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach (Review)
Evil: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (Review)
Life: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach (Review)

TBR Challenge

I think the TBR Challenge is going to be really good for me — I am constantly making lists of books to read for other challenges and then NEVER READING THEM. Which is not useful for, you know, getting books read, though I do often end up finding new books to love. But I do have way too many books that I've been meaning to read for years (but not On the Road anymore!), so I think I'm going to throw them up here and finally get 'em done.

The rules:

* the challenge is to read 12 TBR books in 12 months — you can read those all in one month if you want, or one a month, or however you wanna do it.
* you should have a list posted somewhere for others to see
* you CANNOT change your list after January 1st, of the current year!!!
* you can create an Alternates list of MAXIMUM 12 books, if you want, in order to have options to choose from (you can read these in place of books on your original list).
* audiobooks and e-books ARE allowed
* re-reads are NOT allowed, as they aren’t TRUE “TBRs”
* you CAN overlap with other challenges
* OPTIONAL: you can join the Yahoo! Group created for participants of the TBR Challenge, if you want to have a place to keep your list, or just to share with others about how you’re doing!


The list:
1. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Review)
2. Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
3. World Without End, by Ken Follett (Review)
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Review)
5. Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
6. To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis (Review)
7. The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux (Review)
8. The Shining, by Stephen King (Review)
9. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (Review)
10. A Fine and Private Place, by Peter S. Beagle
11. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach (Review)
12. Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones

I'm not going to list any alternates, because I will read these books, darn it! I hope.

A to Z Challenge 2011

I think it's pretty safe to say that I failed last year's A to Z Challenge — there are four days left in the year, I've got six books to go, and I don't foresee finishing the one I've got that quickly! But I am certainly willing to give this challenge another go!

This year's A to Z is quite the same as last year's, but in case you don't remember the rules...

"How does this reading challenge work? Choose the option that works best for you...

Authors -- Read alphabetically by author. Commit to 26 books.
Titles -- Read alphabetically by title. Commit to 26 books.
Authors & Titles -- Commit to reading 52 books

How strict is the 26 or 52? I know it isn't always easy to find those difficult letters. The thought of finding the X's (for example) might scare folks away. It shouldn't! I'm a merciful host! (Ask anyone!)

If you want to give the X's a go... For authors, try to find an X in the first name, middle name, or last name. For titles, it doesn't have to be the starting word. Try to find an X somewhere in a title, and it'd count in my book.

Still can't find a book for the letter you need? I'll take your word for it. I've been there. I know. If your library doesn't see the need to order books just because it starts with an X, then I don't blame you for not wanting to special order a book that you may or may not enjoy. You gave it your best, don't feel bad. You can still make this challenge work for you."

Oh, I will! Prepare to be astonished! I'm going to try for all 52 again this year, since I came so close, but I think I'll try starting with those hard letters this time.

Authors (21/26)
A — Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (Review)
B — Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie (Review)
C — Dead Man's Folly, by Agatha Christie (Review)
D — The Search for WondLa, by Tony DiTerlizzi (Review)
E — A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Review)
F — The Sea of Trolls, by Nancy Farmer (Review)
G — Still Alice, by Lisa Genova (Review)
H — Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill (Review)
I —
J — 13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson (Review)
K — Please Ignore Vera Dietz, by A.S. King (Review)
L — The Willoughbys, by Lois Lowry (Review)
M — Regarding Ducks and Universes, by Neve Maslakovic (Review)
N —
O — Death Note Vol. 7, by Tsugumi Ohba (Review)
P — The Book of Awesome, by Neil Pasricha (Review)
Q —
R — The Dark and Hollow Places, by Carrie Ryan (Review)
S — The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud (Review)
T — The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (Review)
U —
V — The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell (Review)
W — I Saw You..., edited by Julia Wertz (Review)
X —
Y — How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu (Review)
Z — The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (Review)


Titles (22/26)
A — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Review)
B — Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach (Review)
C —
D — The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean (Review)
E — The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fford (Review)
F — Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy Sayers (Review)
G — The Golem's Eye, by Jonathan Stroud (Review)
H — The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (Review)
I — In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (Review)
J — Juniper Berry, by M.P. Kozlowsky (Review)
K —
L — The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor (Review)
M — The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart (Review)
N — The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Review)
O — One of Our Thursdays is Missing, by Jasper Fforde (Review)
P — The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux (Review)
Q —
R — The Ring of Solomon, by Jonathan Stroud (Review)
S — Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach (Review)
T — Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, by John Grisham (Review)
U — The Unwritten Vol. 1, by Mike Carey (Review)
V — V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore (Review)
W — Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan (Review)
X —
Y — The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (Review)
Z — Zombie, Ohio, by Scott Kenemore (Review)

The Caretaker of Lorne Field, by Dave Zeltserman

You may vaguely remember this title from my post on books that followed me home, like, forever ago. I had given Zeltserman's other book, Killer, first dibs on being read, but I didn't get very into it and this A to Z Challenge isn't going on much longer so I picked up Caretaker instead, hoping it would be better.

Boy, is it. The non-alphabet-related reason I had picked this book up was that it mentioned James M. Cain, whom I currently adore, on the cover, and I'd say that NPR is right with that comparison. Zeltserman creates an odd situation, throws a bunch of people into it, and then sees what they have to do to fix it.

I'm not kidding about the odd situation, either — the caretaker of the title spends his days out at the field of the title pulling up monsters that look like weeds but that if left to grow for only a few days will get ginormous and eat the entire world. Nomnomnom.

Or... maybe they're just weeds. The caretaker, Jack Durkin, certainly thinks they're monsters, and so do some of the older community members who have been around to see other Durkins take care of the field (there's a 300-year-old contract involved), but the majority of everyone is pretty sure they're just weeds, including Durkin's wife, who is getting a little sick of being ridiculously poor and thinks that Durkin needs to just get a new job already and stop being a lazy person who weeds for 12 hours a day.

Durkin doesn't like being so disrespected, so he figures out a way to prove that the weeds aren't weeds, but in the process of doing so some TERRIBLE HORRIBLE things happen that might be the monsters' fault or might be Durkin's fault or might be just an accident. And I changed my mind about which one it was just about every page for the last half of the book.

So it's pretty exciting, and a little brain-exploding, and it also throws in a ton of Cain-style completely depressing. Zeltserman takes it a little too far at the end, making the book several pages longer than it strictly needs to be and passing up a few good stopping points, but I was thoroughly satisfied with the ending so that's all right.

Recommendation: For the person who doesn't like to know what's happening at any given moment and/or who likes an existential crisis or two.

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 6, by Tsugumi Ohba

Oh. Em. Gee.

This is another of the books I've read recently only because they were due back at the library. After things got very wonky in the last book, I was not sure I was going to like this next one.

But I did.

Things? Still wonky. L still doesn't trust Light, which is as it should be, but now also he's decided to go after Kira whatever the costs while the ex-police guys are like, um, shouldn't we try to stop him killing people even if we can't catch him? So there is a split, and Light gets caught on L's side even though he doesn't like it on account of the handcuffs that keep him attached to L at all times. Oh, and also on account of his girl-thing Misa being really excited about being used as bait to find Kira.

But! While Misa is doing the bait thing, she discovers that in fact she used to be a Kira and that Light was also one (they had made themselves forget this previously), so now she has even more leverage with the new Kira, provided she doesn't slip up in front of the people who want to capture her. Who are also the people she is acting as bait for. And it's all crazy and stuff.

But but! It gets even crazier when the plans start to come together and the new Kira is being chased and herded and almost caught... but then the book ends in a bit of a cliffhanger. And to make things worse, my husband says that what happens next is EVEN MORE INSANE. I am going to have to go track down book 7, like, yesterday. Sigh.

Recommendation: This stuff is insane, yo. Read it if you don't mind your brains EXPLODING EVERYWHERE.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

How to Be Alone, by Jonathan Franzen

I was so sure this post was going to go up after my book club discussed it, but unfortunately our discussion has been postponed indefinitely. I say this because I found myself not particularly enjoying the essays in this book, but I am almost positive that I will like them more after I have a chance to talk about them with people who did like them.

And I think my dislike stems largely from something that Franzen mentions in his essay "Mr. Difficult," in regards to a particular woman that once wrote to him. "She began by listing thirty fancy words and phrases from my novel, words like 'diurnality' and 'antipodes,' phrases like 'electro-pointillist Santa Claus faces.' She then posed the dreadful question: 'Who is it you are writing for? It surely could not be the average person who just enjoys a good read.'"

This woman makes Franzen out to be a "pompous snob," but I wouldn't go that far. And I am certainly not afraid of big words or opposed to working through a difficult book that has an excellent payoff. I just found, as I was reading, that Franzen was writing this book for a set of people of which I am definitely not a part, though I couldn't tell you what particular set that might be. Writerly people? Big word collectors? Hipsters?

Whoever it is, it's a group that follows Franzen Logic. To me, his essays tended to ramble on, hopping from topic to topic without terribly much in the way of transition and sometimes without much in the way of sense. I often found myself thinking, "How did we get here? Didn't we start somewhere else? Whatever, I'll just keep going and hope it comes back."

On a small plus side, I really only felt this detachment from the writing in Franzen's more personal essays, the ones where he talks about himself and his life and his opinions a lot. Most of the essays in this book fall into that category. But he also throws in a few journalistic pieces, about things like crappy Chicago mail delivery, the history of cigarettes and cigarette companies, and a high-security prison and the town that surrounds it. And those, I thought, were incredibly well-done, possibly because they required more focus than the personal essays and definitely because I have more interest in strange facts than strange opinions.

Now I'm curious to read some of Franzen's fiction, which I hope to be more like these latter pieces. I suppose I should pick up Freedom anyway, what with all the hype about it, yes?

Recommendation: Again, I'm not really sure what sort of person would like all of Franzen's essays, but I'm pretty certain that everyone can find at least one essay in here to like.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

2011 Global Reading Challenge

I've done the Orbis Terrarum Challenge for the past two years, but I always end up using English-speaking countries to fill it up, and I can never convince myself to do otherwise. But! I saw this similar challenge making the rounds, and it looks like the best chance I'll have of breaking out of my Anglophone rut. But, because I know that I am lame, I am going to stick to the "easy" version of the challenge, and just hope I do better. :)

The rules!

Read one novel from each of these continents in the course of 2011:

Africa
Asia
Australasia
Europe
North America
South America (please include Central America where it is most convenient for you)

The Seventh Continent (here you can either choose Antarctica or your own ´seventh´ setting, eg the sea, the space, a supernatural/paranormal world, history, the future – you name it).

From your own continent: try to find a country, state or author that is new to you.


I'm hoping I can handle that -- if you have any good suggestions, let me have them! I'm putting, oh look, my entire pool of books from the last Orbis Terrarum back on this list, because I never read what I think I'm going to.

Africa:
Asia: Death Note Vol. 7, by Tsugumi Ohba (Review) Japan
Australasia: Death of a Fool, by Ngaio Marsh (Review) New Zealand
Europe: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Review) Sweden
North America: A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Alan Bradley (Review) Canada
South America:
Seventh Continent:

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook, by Eleanor Davis

I love volunteering at the library. The other day I found myself roped into hanging out in the children's section, shelving their series and "display" books, which usually means graphic novels. One of those latter books was this one, which I grabbed right off the cart and kept with me through all the rest of the sorting and shelving I did that day, just so no one else could take it from me!

And I am very glad I did. This is an excellent book! We have our hero, Julian Calendar (teehee), who is a Big Ol' Nerd but sees a chance to reinvent himself when his family moves to a new school district. Of course, being a Big Ol' Nerd is not a curable disease, and so Julian finds his new persona slipping away rather quickly. Luckily, there are some other kids in school who are equally as nerdy, and they group together to form a Secret Science Alliance (with an AWESOME secret hideout) with the goal of inventing things useful to 11-year-olds, like secret message pens and a flying machine. Unfortunately, these things are also useful to crotchety old inventors who are too lazy to do their own work...

I adored this story and the wonderfully crammed illustrations that go with it, and I'm pondering getting this for my 12-year-old brother who loves science-y things. There's so much stuff to look at that it will definitely do well under incessant re-reading, which is always a good thing. :)

Recommendation: For Big Ol' Nerds, especially those with ADD who will have lots of shiny things to look at.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hmm. I almost don't want to talk about why I didn't quite like this novel, because it might cause the same problem to others who have never read it. But at the same time, if someone is in the same boat I was...

Okay, so. Somehow, going into this novel, all I really knew about it was that it was a dystopian novel with an underlying secret akin to that of The Unit, which I loved. So I was expecting The Unit. This was a problem.

There is that plot component, yes, but it is barely hinted at throughout the book until all of that tension culminates in an interesting but very exposition-y confrontation.

What the book is actually about is friendships and other relationships — how they can get ridiculous and necessary when they last a long time, how it is difficult to break into new circles, how friends become much nicer after the passage of many years apart. The main setting is a boarding school, which of course intensifies these relationships, and even more so in light of the twist dystopia.

But unfortunately for me, I thought the twist would be untwisted far earlier, and spent too much time waiting for that. And then when I finally gave up on that and started reading the story for what it was, that's when the twist came in, all "surprising" and whatnot and it was a little too much.

I think this is a book I'll have to read again in the future to better appreciate it.

Recommendation: For people who understand (or want to better understand) the intricacies of friendships, and don't mind a little dystopia along with it.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Library Queue
Park Benches & Bookends
At Home With Books
things mean a lot

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

So. The movie version of this series came out a while ago, and I was intrigued but not movie-going-money intrigued, but my brother was like "OMGSCOTTPILGRIM" and so I decided to get the first book and see what it was about. Of course, the queue for it at the library was forever long, so it took me like a month or two to get it, and by then I wasn't really super-interested anymore, but then last week I realized it was due back at the library the day after I looked that information up, so I figured I'd read it.

And boy, am I glad it was short, both because I was able to finish it before it had to go back and because I didn't really like it. Now my brother is going to complain at me.

But... really. There's this kid... well, I say kid, but he's 23 and I'm pretty much that old too, so whatever. This kid, Scott Pilgrim, and he's dating some high-school chick, and he has a band, but then some girl starts entering his dreams, like LITERALLY, and then he meets her and he likes her but he has to fight her evil ex-boyfriends first but that's okay because Scott's the best fighter in Ontario which we find out when he's fighting the first ex and also there's some musical-style choreographed backup dancing fighting something....

That's pretty much the entire story. Sorry for spoiling it for you? But I'm still very very baffled. I think this might actually be something I'd like more if I could watch it. Onto Netflix this movie goes!

Recommendation: Good for people who don't need any of that fancy "logic" stuff interrupting their story. Also people who are rock-band-y nerds, I think.

Rating: 5/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

Before we get into this review, I must make a slightly rambling confession about how terrible I am at challenges this year. I quit two earlier this year for lack of caring, promising myself I would instead focus on the challenges I wanted to do. But somehow this Orbis Terrarum one just completely fell off my radar. It was looking like I would fail, but then I discovered that there were a few foreign books that I hadn't counted, them being from places like Canada and England, but even then I still needed one more. So I grabbed this book in audio form, intending to listen to it on the trip to Cleveland, but then I didn't, and then all of a sudden it was practically the end of November (the ending date for the challenge) and I was like, "Noooo I'm going to faaaaail," but then I found the book in print form at the library and I was like, "Yaaaaaay I'm not going to faaaaail," and then I read this in a few hours because it's rather short and finished the challenge with probably two hours to spare.

Ahem. What you should take away from that story is that I did not spend as much time with this book as one really ought to. It is strange and slightly difficult to follow at times, and while I think I understand some of what the book was trying to say, I am positive that I don't have it all. I think this is one of those books that you need to read several times before you can stop only pretending to know what it's about.

After reading number one, though, I can safely say that a major theme here is that everyone has something they need to do, and not terribly many people ever do that. The story follows along with a Spanish shepherd as he has a strange dream, finds out that the dream means he should go to the pyramids in Egypt and find a treasure, and then sets off to do that. He gets stopped several times along the way and thinks, "Ah, perhaps this thing that is not finding treasure is what I am really meant to do, I should just chill here for the rest of ever," but always something pushes him on to his goal, and he eventually makes it to the pyramids and also learns how to become the wind, which is a pretty cool trick, I'd say.

This theme is interesting, because at first when the concept of a Personal Legend (this thing you need to do) came up, I was thinking it was along the lines of following your bliss or doing what you want to do rather than what others want you to. But that's not it at all — there are many times when the shepherd knows exactly what he wants to do, but if it's not finding that treasure then something happens or someone talks to him to change his mind. So that's rather disappointing, because I'm sitting here not even knowing what I want to do, let alone knowing what strange path has been carved out for me that I ought to go seek out to find true happiness and fulfillment. Scratch disappointing, that's downright depressing!

But another interesting thing that Coelho touches on is that people get even more depressed if they figure out what it is that they ought to be doing but for whatever reason, actual or mental, are unable to do it. So I suppose I could be feeling worse right now!

This is definitely a book that I will read again sometime, and probably will tell other people to read so that they can talk about it with me.

Recommendation: For those with some time for deep thought and at least a passing interest in philosophy.

Rating: 8/10
(Orbis Terrarum Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Carnivorous Carnival, by Lemony Snicket

The last of the Unfortunate Events this time around. Not sure when we'll be moving on, but there are only four to go! We will make it!

In this adventure, the Baudelaires have hopped in Count Olaf's trunk after the burning of Heimlich Hospital, figuring that Olaf is good at evading the law and also knows something about their potentially living parent, so who better to follow than the guy who wants to kill 2/3 of them? Oh dear. In an ironic twist, the Baudelaires disguise themselves as carnival workers and pass undetected even right under the nose of Olaf himself. For a while.

So this one I like a heck of a lot better than The Hostile Hospital, largely because it makes me happy to know that Count Olaf is an idiot. The big thing is the not seeing through the Baudelaire's disguises, because come on, but also it turns out that Olaf has been seeing a psychic to find out where the Baudelaires have been hiding from him, but of course she's not actually psychic and is using things like newspapers to find the children. I would say that Olaf might be illiterate, but he did write a play that one time... nope. Just a lazy idiot. I would hate to think that a smart person was so evil.

Recommendation: Tim Curry. Precocious children. Violence and sloppy eating. How can you go wrong?

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Hostile Hospital, by Lemony Snicket

The second Unfortunate Event of our road trip! I may have possibly slept through part of this book, but I've read it before and Scott caught me up with what I missed, so I think I'm all right. :)

So in this one, the Baudelaires have escaped VFD just barely ahead of the law, hopping on a convenient bus that takes them to Heimlich Hospital along with a group of crazy hippie people who think that singing cheerfully about awful illnesses and handing out heart-shaped balloons will make patients feel better. I think it would make me more ill. Anyway, they sneak in and are again conveniently assigned to work in a library of records, in which there is conveniently located a Snicket file which mentions the Baudelaires, except that it's mostly missing. Oh, and also Count Olaf has figured out where they are and also wants this Snicket file which he doesn't know is mostly missing and he is pretty insane at this point and that is a bad thing.

This is not one of my favorites of the series, because I felt like there were just too many conveniences. I'm not usually too hard on a plot contrivance or two, but this book is just filled with unlikely things that help someone a bit too much. My disbelief fell right to the ground.

On the other hand, I like that Snicket delves into the good/evil grey area in this book, with the Baudelaires doing some things — trickery and disguise — that make them wonder if they're not being just as evil as Count Olaf. Snicket doesn't really give an answer, either, which I like a lot. The series is definitely getting more grown-up in ideas as it ages.

Recommendation: Again, Tim Curry. Come on. Also good brain candy.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge

This here is an excellent challenge for me, as I have been greatly neglecting the vintage mysteries as of late, except that one time that my book club read Gaudy Night and it was awesome. Definitely absolutely have to read more of these!

Here are the important rules:

*All books must have been written before 1960 and be from the mystery category.

*Challenge runs from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. Sign up any time between now and November 30, 2011.

*No matter what level you choose, please try at least two different vintage authors.

*The best part? A prize for everyone who completes their challenge. Once you declare your challenge level...you are locked in for that number of books. But you may change your list of books at any time. Let me know when you have met your challenge goal and I will send you a list of prizes (books) to choose from. Of course, the earlier you finish, the longer the list of books will be.

Challenge Levels:

In a Murderous Mood: 4-6 Books
Get a Clue: 7-9 Books
Hot on the Trail: 10-12 Books
Capture the Criminal: 13-15 Books
Take 'Em to Trial: 16+ Books

OR

The Golden Age Girls*: Read 5-7 books from female authors from the vintage years
Cherchez Le Homme: Read 5-7 books from male authors from the vintage years


Oh my! Okay, so. I really need to read more vintage mysteries, but considering how many challenges I am planning on participating in (no, really, prepare to see many more of these posts in the soon-time) and how I failed two already this year and am about to fail a third, I am going to stick with the "Murderous Mood" level, and it will probably also be a "Golden Age Girls" challenge, as my plan is to bust out the Christie and Sayers, whom I adore.

I am really excited about this! Must hit up the local used books store!

1. Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy Sayers (Review)
2. Dead Man's Folly, by Agatha Christie (Review)
3. Whose Body?, by Dorothy Sayers (Review)
4. Death of a Fool, by Ngaio Marsh (Review)
5. Overture to Death, by Ngaio Marsh (on audio) (Review)
6. Black Plumes, by Margery Allingham (Review)

Behemoth, by Scott Westerfeld

I would like to thank my connections at the Twinsburg Public Library for letting me check this book out while I was hanging out at my parents' house for Thanksgiving. This is one of those books that I can't find in Jacksonville, and I really wanted to read it, so it worked out quite well!

This is the sequel to Leviathan, which I read a year ago and loved a lot. To recap the basics, it's the Great War as it would have been fought if only the Axis had giant machines to fight with and the Allies had fabricated animals that did things like fly and poo shrapnel.

Right. In this book, our future archduke becomes a bit of a prisoner of war aboard the Leviathan and decides to escape; our girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy soldier is tasked with a secret mission that works but goes a little bad in that she's now stuck in Istanbul without a quick way back to her ship. Conveniently, his archduke-ness is also hiding in Istanbul, and they meet up again quickly to help some revolutionaries who might be able to help both of their situations.

I was not as excited by Behemoth as by its predecessor. Deryn, the soldier, is no longer as badass as she previously was... I mean, she's still fighting and doing awesome things, but she spends less time being like "I'm awesome and you can't argue with that" and more time mooning over his archduke-ness, Alek. I dislike mooning. I also wasn't as taken with Alek, though I'm not sure why... I guess I just felt that I didn't really know what was going on with him, between his men being deceptive and he being really quite daft.

I will probably read the conclusion to this trilogy, but I won't be waiting as excitedly as I was for this one.

Recommendation: If you liked Leviathan you will want to read this, and I recommend Leviathan to anyone who likes an alternate history or some steampunk.

Rating: 7/10

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Vile Village, by Lemony Snicket

Hey, look, another road trip happened! You'll be seeing this and two more Series of Unfortunate Events posts over the next several days. These books are just so perfect for driving — they're simple, they're engaging but not so much that you cause an accident, and they are easy to pick up again after you've taken a pee break. They should clearly list these qualities on the CD case.

Okay, so, we pick up on the V.F.D. thing in this book with a trip to a town called V.F.D., where the citizens have decided to take part in an orphan-raising program based on the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. Yes, you can groan.

The Baudelaires find a friend in the town handyman, who helps them attempt to decipher notes that are clearly coming from the Quagmire triplets but who is too "skittish" to do any good defending of the orphans when Count Olaf comes waltzing into town accusing the orphans of murder. Oh, snap.

In the last book, the series got an overarching storyline (finding V.F.D), but this book radically changes the way that the Baudelaires will follow that storyline, as they go from "orphans being shipped around the greater Earth area to increasingly inappropriate guardians" to "orphans running around the greater Earth area trying to find V.F.D. and also avoid the people who think they're murderers." I don't really remember the rest of this series very well, so I don't know if this is a good shift or not, but it definitely makes the series a bit easier to bear over the next couple of books, as you'll soon see.

Recommendation: I really like this series, even if it's not exactly "good." You should read this if you like sarcastic humor, and you should listen to this if you like Tim Curry.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Night Bookmobile, by Audrey Niffenegger

Oh, Audrey. I know we've had our differences before, but I was hoping that maybe if you wrote another book with a librarian in it, we'd be good as new. Sadly, I am still ambivalent.

This is a super-duper short story, told in a graphic format, and there's not much I can say without giving the whole thing away. Baaaasically, there's a thing called a Night Bookmobile, which is a sort of mobile library that comes when you need it. Or something. And it holds all of the things you've ever read in your life. And the main character, Alexandra, finds her bookmobile and becomes a little obsessed with it, as I imagine one might.

And so that's an interesting premise, but then the story goes a little crazy at the end, there, and a whole host of issues crop up that would be interesting to address but that do not get addressed. Niffenegger writes in the "After Words" that this is the first installment of a larger work, so I hope that perhaps I will get to see that larger work and that it will tell me what the heck is going on.

Recommendation: Eh, it's a quick read and it's certainly ripe for discussion... probably an interesting pick for a voracious reader.

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Mr. Peanut, by Adam Ross

This is a strange, strange book. I'm not sure what I think about it. I liked the concepts that Ross was working with, of Escher and tessellations and Hitchcock and disorientation; I liked the way he built up a million questions and seeming incongruities and then made them all work out, in one form or another, at the end; I liked that he gave me a nudge in the right direction when things got all literary and subtextual. I didn't like the characters, who were by design all very similar and possibly by design all really annoying; I didn't like the interlude with Sam Sheppard that didn't really go anywhere, by which I mean it didn't seem to move the story along and also it didn't seem to fit in with the story, at the end; I didn't like that Ross's nudges sometimes turned into pushes or slaps.

If you had asked me yesterday, when I was about halfway through, what this book was about, I would have told you pretty much what you'll see on the jacket flap: some guy called David Pepin is said, on the very first page, to be a continual day-dreamer of ways that his wife might die. He's a little morbid, that one. And then poof! A few pages later, his wife is dead, and the manner in which she died is either a suicide or a murder and it's pretty much impossible to figure it out. But a couple of detectives, including Cleveland's own Sam Sheppard, are working on it. Slowly. While dealing with bad relationships of their own.

But today... it's odd, because on the one hand I don't want to say too much for fear of ruining the intense maze that is this novel, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure that no matter how much of the plot or conceit I gave away there would still be something in this book that would surprise you. Because there is a LOT of stuff in here.

So I think I will talk about my favorite and least favorite parts: the Escher and the characters, respectively. Bad things first!

The characters are whiny as all hell. In an interview, Adam Ross said that he didn't consider his characters' marriages dysfunctional, because what's functional and also don't all marriages have their ups and downs? I can agree with him on that, and I didn't mind too much that his married characters were sometimes in love and sometimes not — I've certainly seen that enough in my lifetime.

BUT. I have never heard of anyone staying bed for five months to prove a point, what point I'm still not sure. And I swear, if the dead wife in this story were mine, I would be seriously contemplating her death as well. I cannot deal with people who don't use their words, and I especially cannot deal with people who use their words to say, "If you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you." Ri-freaking-diculous. And all of the female characters, and to a lesser extent the male characters, do this throughout the novel. Scott heard me loudly complain more than once about it.

Okay, good things. I wrote on the Twitter that the title page of this book is decorated with Escher, who is one of my favorite artists ever. This predisposed me to like the novel, and it also helped me get through a lot of the novel. See, it's broken up into bits and pieces, with some dude-wanting-his-wife-dead over here and some detectives-investigating-the-mystery there and some oh-hey-I-should-probably-explain-who-Sam-Sheppard-is-because-it-turns-out-he's-just-like-that-guy-that-wanted-his-wife-dead right in the middle. And then these pieces, they're sort of thrown up in the air and land wherever they want and there aren't any chapters and you just sort of have to hope that when you get to a new paragraph you'll be able to figure out what's going on. And that is SO Escher.

Oh, and one of those smacks to the face that Ross doles out is all but breaking the fourth wall to tell you that you should read this book to figure out the plot, then read it again to take notes on it, and then discuss it with people. And so I will do this! Thanks goodness for a book group.

Recommendation: Read this if you like or are at least intrigued by movies like Memento or Primer. Also very good for Hitchcock fans, I think.

Rating: 8/10 -- Most of this rating comes from the novel's structure. If it were just the murder-mystery plot or those darned characters it would be much lower.
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Devourer of Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich

The other day at the library, I asked a woman if I could help her find anything. She was standing in front of the "new mysteries" section, and she said that she'd read all of these already and asked if I could help her find a good action or adventure mystery. I was like... um...

Because I haven't read an adventure-y mystery in a really long time! Most of my fare is either classics or literary-style mysteries, neither of which would probably have appeased this woman. And in fact, I realized that of all the mystery authors who get multiple shelves with multiple copies of each book? I've read exactly zero. I decided I ought to rectify this, so I grabbed a copy of One for the Money and went to town.

Well. I suddenly remember why I like the classics and the literaries. Stephanie Plum is not a detective; she's an unemployed lingerie-buyer who conveniently has a bail bondsman cousin who, with a little blackmailing, is willing to let her "shag" (you would not believe how happy I was to discover the 1994 definition of that word!) a bail jumper for a cool ten grand. And this jumper is none other than some guy who diddled her in kindergarten and then again in high school. And he's a cop. Who killed someone. And Plum is totes going to get him. Somehow.

I will grant that it was interesting watching Plum be a complete idiot (V.I. Warshawski she is NOT) about... everything related to nabbing a bail jumper, and also to watch the strange cat and mouse game that she and the guy were playing. But the whole story just required this drastic suspension of disbelief that I just could not manage. Many things were incredibly convenient, many people were conveniently very stupid and/or bad at their jobs, and Plum seemed pretty much devoid of common sense and yet still managed to get her man.

It makes the brain hurt.

Please, suggest to me another popular mystery author, and perhaps a title of his/hers that won't make me want to cry over the inanity?

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Y: The Last Man Book 4, by Brian K. Vaughan

I ended up reading this one pretty quickly after the last because I seem to have gotten Scott interested in the series and thus I didn't want him stealing this before I got a chance at it. Because I'm territorial like that. But now I think Scott's going to end up reading them first...

Okay, so, book the first was all exposition-heavy and kind of annoying, but then book the second was a lot better with the action and the plot moving forward, and then book the third was pretty equally okay. But then I got completely squicked out and a little derailed by this book, and I can only hope the squicky stuff NEVER COMES BACK AGAIN.

I'm sure it was at least a little on purpose, but these weird scenes in which repressed sexuality is made unrepressed and some odd form of torture happens really made me cringe. It was just so... weird and awkward and so seemingly completely irrelevant to the story (which is actually how I feel about the Israelis in this series, too, now that I think about it) that I just wanted that half of the book (yes, half) to be over now!

Luckily, once it's done you can see that there was, in fact, a point to all the awkward and it actually makes me feel a little less annoyed with Yorick because he becomes a slightly less annoying person. So that's a plus. And the second half of the book is fairly interesting, with yet another set of crazy people and an equally crazy throwdown between them and our heroes (who are still Yorick, Mann, and 355).

So... I think I'm going to put this series away for a little bit and come back to it once I can repress those unrepressing scenes. Makes perfect sense, yes?

Recommendation: Ehhhhhh... let me get back to you on this. If it makes sense in the overall story, I'll give it a thumbs up.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Booking Through Thursday — Borrowing

Today's Booking Through Thursday asks... "Who would you rather borrow from? Your library? Or a Friend? (Or don’t your friends trust you to return their books?) And, DO you return books you borrow?"

That's a lot of questions! First, I tend to prefer borrowing from the library, because even though the library lets me keep things for a while it eventually wants them back or I have to start paying some serious fines (it's $0.20 per day, here!). With friends, there's usually not a set date for returning books except "as soon as you're done"... and so unless the book is something I am already interested in reading (like Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which I read the day I borrowed it), that might take a while.

Second, I'm pretty sure my friends trust me not to, like, lose their books or burn them or something, but I think they know it's going to take me a while to return them. :) I know that's how it is with books I've lent out, one of which I have been itching to read and am thisclose to checking out of the library. And third, of course I return them! I want mine back, so my friends get theirs back. Just sometimes it takes a while. Like how I'm returning a tape next weekend that my friend lent me... a long time ago. I would say possibly two years. And that I still haven't watched, but can no longer even attempt to do so because we got rid of our VCR. But I have kept diligent track of it, so I think that counts for something!

Y: The Last Man Book 3, by Brian K. Vaughan

More Yorick! Good times! Well, good for me. Not Yorick. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Let's see, who's a player in this book? We're still following Yorick, his monkey Ampersand, 355, and Dr. Mann on their journey to California. But there's a quick detour in Kansas when a terribly accented Russian shows up ready to rescue some male astronauts (well, one is obviously a cosmonaut) on their Houston-unsupported return to Earth. Which would be going fine, except...

The strange Israeli army people are back, apparently following the orders of Yorick's mother who thinks that 355 is going to do something terrible to Yorick... or something. It's not terribly clear. What is clear is that the Israelis' leader is bent on kidnapping Yorick for herself... not like that. Maybe like that? Okay, not as clear as I thought.

Who else, who else... there are some geneticists, which is cool. Oh! Right! And a troupe of actors who stage a play about the last man on Earth, make meta-commentary on this series ("If there's one thing I hate, it's crappy works of fiction that try to sound important by stealing names from the Bard"), introduce me to a work by Mary Shelley called The Last Man (which is on my TBR pile effective immediately), and piss off a bunch of Kansas ladies who really just wanted someone to continue their stories (you know, soap operas) for them.

OH. And then there is someone called Toyota who for some reason wants Ampersand. I imagine that will come back again quickly.

So all in all the series remains on a high level of ridiculousness tempered by an intriguing question and some fine illustration.

Recommendation: Yeah, you should probably pick up this series. It's pretty cool.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race

I haven't read The Daily Show staff's other book, America (The Book), but I've heard good things about it and also Earth, so when I saw the latter in the library browse area while shelving the other day, and most importantly when it was still there when I was leaving, I felt compelled to snap it up. And, because it was a 7-day loan book, I was even more compelled to read it right away!

Of course, "right away" doesn't mean "in one sitting," and so it took me the better part of five days to get through the 240-odd pages of insanity that is Earth. The book and the planet.

Part of that I blame on the conceit of the book — it's set up as a textbook for use by aliens who come to visit us but find that we've already killed ourselves off in some fashion. It's full of pictures and captions and "educational information" and even, wonderfully and nostalgically, one of those stamps on the inside front cover that we all had to fill out every year for all of our textbooks, with our name and the condition of the book. I had completely forgotten about those. Oh, how wonderful college would have been with free books.

Anyway. The other thing that I was made to remember about my grade-school textbooks is that they can be INTENSELY boring, even if the information is good, because it's just fact after fact, and in this case joke after joke, and it gets tedious after a while. I might suggest you get this on a 14-day loan, at least. Your brain will thank you.

When taken in the proper dosage, the factoids in this book are delightful and come in several flavors:

Amusing Truths
"This is Barb. She's the best. If you need to know where anything is, just ask her. Or call or IM her, or just email or send a text. Barb's great. Oh, but don't fuck with her yogurt in the shared fridge or she will cut you."

"It was a sad but universal fact of human life that any technology — no matter how incredible — eventually came to be seen as cumbersome. For instance, the first cordless telephone inspired awe. One year later, using the very same phone could only be seen as an ironic tribute to a time when we were forced to lug around comically giant cordless phones."

Depressing Truths
"[P]igmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot."

"While millions of us died of starvation and thirst, millions of others were so sated they could afford to use pies — round fruit or cream-filled pastries with enough fat content to sustain a human being for several days — as comedic projectiles, and water as giant slide lubricants."

Flat-out Lies
[On Monopoly money] "While not legal tender, this $100 bill was still widely used by hats, racecars, thimbles and Scottish terriers to buy property, pay taxes and post bail from the jail in which they were sometimes arbitrarily incarcerated."

"After winning seven gold medals Geraldo Rivera went on to become one of the world's most prominent reporters."

So... basically it's pretty much like The Daily Show. In book form. And without those "special reports" I dislike so much. If you can get through the pop-culture references and the sarcasm, you might even learn something!

Recommendation: If you like The Daily Show and you like reading very short tidbits of information, this is for you. If you are even slightly ambivalent to the comedy stylings of Jon Stewart et al., you should probably skip right over this.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Musing Mondays — What to Read

Today's Musing Mondays question is a thoughtful one...

"I was reading Eleanor Roosevelt’s book, “You Learn By Living“, via Google Books the other day, and came across a quote that really struck a chord with me. The quote said this:

“What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through in your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading.”
(pg. 7-8, “You Learn By Living” by Eleanor Roosevelt)

What do you think about this quote? Do you believe this to be true? If so, why and how? And, if not, why not?"

I've said a little bit on the subject before, but I will say again that I am a big fan of people reading what they want to read rather than what they think they should read. Reading in general is good, and you're going to learn new things and get new impressions from every book you read, even if you're not reading "literature" or whatever.

But at the same time, I would say that reading widely is what's really important for ideas and impressions. If you like mysteries, say (which is pretty much the only thing I used to read, back in the day), that's great, but don't spend your life re-reading those books, or reading only mysteries by Agatha Christie or Philip R. Craig or whomever. Read stories that are different, try new authors, look at books that are mystery but are for whatever reason shelved in fiction instead (these are now my favorite mystery books!). And move on from there! Even if you don't like everything you pick up (and feel free to put it down if it's not engaging you!), you'll be exposed just that little bit more to new ways of thinking.

Books That Followed Me Home

As noted in yesterday's post, I'm trying out a couple of things I might do for my library's blog, to help people find new books to read. Yesterday I did books that intrigued me but stayed on the shelf, today I'm looking at the books that have a new shelf home for the next six weeks.

Goodness knows I have plenty of books to read at home. Most of them are library books, and most of those find their way onto my shelf because I've heard good things about them from a friend or the Internet (which can often be a friend in these situations!). But sometimes during my volunteer shift, or after, when I'm wandering around the browsing area, something catches my eye and I know it's coming home with me. Here's what followed me out the library door this week; they're mine for now but they'll be back soon!

In the Shadow of Gotham, by Stefanie Pintoff
It was actually the sequel to this book, called A Curtain Falls, that caught my eye, with a dead chorus girl on a Broadway stage and a hint of a ferry disaster. But then I noticed that it was a sequel, and I set off in search of the first book, because I like reading things in order. Luckily, Gotham is no less intriguing, with the book jacket offering a murder taking place in the victim's own bedroom, in the middle of the day. And the victim is a math student at university, which promises some scholarly intrigue. It's also set at the turn of the 20th century, which means I can add some historical fiction to my sadly small pile of such.

The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge, by Patricia Duncker
I played in bands and orchestras for a really long time, so I was drawn to the "composer" bit of this title, and one of the characters is in fact a musical composer. This is also a mystery novel, which I like, and it promises to interrogate faith, immortality, and passion, which I would like to see. And I really liked the cover. I'm not sure that this will be near the top of my reading list in the very near future, but I'm pretty sure I'll like it when I do.

Killer, by Dave Zeltserman
An admission here — I wasn't really interested in this book for its title or cover, and I probably would have passed it over entirely if I weren't currently attempting to read a book for every letter of the alphabet using titles and authors. Z happens to be a toughie, so I really grabbed this only for the Zeltserman on the cover. But then I read over the back, and I perked up a bit. This book is about a Mafia hitman who turns state's witness and is released from jail, only to find that, you know, it's not paranoia if someone's really out to get you. I read a book along the same lines last year and liked it, so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field, by Dave Zeltserman
Zeltserman strikes again! This one grabbed me with its blurb from NPR: "There's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman." I recently read through a few of Cain's best-known novels and I liked them a lot, so I checked out the jacket flap on this book. It promises a slightly different feel than Killer — here we have a caretaker who wants to leave his job, but has to wait (for an unclear reason) until his son is able to take over for him. That's not terribly exciting, but this is: "[If] the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow — a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said..." That's a little creepy. I like it. I might read this one first!

Eye-Catchers

As I've mentioned previously, I'm going to be doing some readers' advisory stuff with the library I'm volunteering at, which is pretty delightful. One of the things they want me to do is put together a "volunteer column" for their blog, which is starting to come into its own. Very exciting. I'm not sure exactly what form my column is going to take, but I figured I'd throw up a couple of "demo" posts, as it were, and see what sticks! You might see what comes next up on the library blog at some future date...

It's one of the perils of volunteering at the library — you've got a cart full of books that you're tasked with putting back in their proper place, but nearly every time you pick one up, you find yourself thinking, "Hmm. That's an interesting title." And some of those times, you think, "That's a really interesting title. Let me just see what this here book is about," and then you're checking out the jacket flap and maybe the first page and then sometimes you even find yourself putting the book right back on the cart, so that you can check it out yourself when you're done for the day!

Terrible, I know. Luckily for me, and you, and the library, I have plenty of books checked out right now, so I can't take home every book that intrigues me. But if you want to head over to the stacks and grab one, I won't stop you!

Here are a few books that caught my eye the other day:

How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill
It can't be overstated how much I subsisted on Starbucks for the greater part of my college career. So I couldn't help but be attracted to this title, though I admit I was hoping it was going to validate my use of caffeine to write last-minute essays and solve last-minute problem sets. I guess not, though, as the subtitle to this is "A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else." Looks like it's more of a riches-to-rags story, which doesn't really pique my interest. I imagine, though, that if you've ever worked at a Starbucks-like company or if you've ever accepted a job just for the money, you'll probably find something to like about this book.

The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, by Don Winslow
I was intrigued here by the visual image I got of myself, trudging along some dirt path, possibly up a mountain even, on my way to find a mirror that was perhaps once used by Siddhārtha Gautama. Well, apparently the mirror is actually a lake, and that trail is probably metaphorical, but the plot still sounds pretty good: "Robert Pendleton, a biochemist and fertilizer expert for AgriTech corporation, has gone missing from a conference in San Francisco where he reportedly became smitten with a beautiful Chinese woman. After locating Pendleton and meeting the stunning Li Lan--and nearly being killed by an unknown assailant when the pair flee from him--Carey soon realizes that more than mere fertilizer know-how is at stake." The Carey mentioned here is Winslow's detective, and this is his second book; if you're the kind who likes to read a series in order, you'll want to start off with the book called A Cool Breeze on the Underground.

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by Sam Gosling
"Does what's on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away?" I'm afraid the answer to all of these questions is yes. Even worse, there's a book out there that anyone can read to find out just what all that stuff is secretly saying about you! Gosling professes to be able to tell how reliable a significant other is, or how committed an employee is to her company, just by looking at how things are arranged in medicine cabinets or cubicles. I'm not saying that you should start spying on your closest friends and neighbors, but if you're just interested in "getting to know them better," I think this book could help.

First Among Equals, by Jeffrey Archer
This one really only caught my eye because of a book by Jasper Fforde called First Among Sequels that I did not previously realize had taken its title from another book. Unfortunately, I don't think Archer's book is going to have anything to do with a book-jumping, time-travelling literary detective. Instead we have this: "Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength-and the will to realize his destiny...Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now it is Simon's chance to rise as high as those dreams allow...Ray Gould was born to the back streets but raised with pride-a quality matched by a sharp intellect and the desire to attain the impossible...Andrew Fraser was raised by a soccer hero turned politician. Now it's his turn for heroics, whatever the cost. From strangers to rivals, four men embark on a journey for the highest stakes of all-the keys to No. 10 Downing Street." I'm not terribly keen on historical or political fiction, but if you are, you might want to check this out.

Replay, by Ken Grimwood
I wasn't terribly drawn in by the title or cover on this book, but when it fell off of my cart I caught sight of the back cover copy, which proclaimed that the main character was going to get to live his life over and over again, in a 25-year loop, until he got it right. Yes, I know this was done to a lesser extent in Groundhog Day, but I LOVED Groundhog Day and also Replay did it first by six years and won an award doing it, so I think this book might follow me home sometime soon.

Speaking of books that followed me home, I'll have another post up tomorrow detailing what did find its way onto my shelf full of library books this week.