I was very eager to read Oliver Sack's "Awakenings", about a mysterious sleeping sickness that became an epidemic after the first world war. He supposedly had great success with a drug called L-Dopa that, I thought, cured these people. Sadly, this was not the case. Not only does he have no idea what causes this illness, but in many of his patient's cases, the L-Dopa was even worse than being in a perpetual vegetative state (at least in my opinion). It was horribly depressing without even the hope of a cure or at least an understanding of how to prevent it in the future.
"Confidential: Shocking True Story" by Henry E. Scott was mindless fluff of the worst kind, and I enjoyed it. He looked at the pre-runner to magazines such as "Star" and "People" and TV shows like "TMZ", "Confidential" magazine, which in the 1950s, ended the big studios hold over the media, at least for a few years. Confidential printed all the scandals that Hollywood tried to cover up, until they were eventually successfully sued and had to change format and lost readership.
I reread two Janet Evanovich books over the weekend because I needed the laughs. Normally around this time of year she puts out a between the numbers Stephanie Plum book, but this year she didn't. Oh, well, I'd rather reread my old favorites.
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