Whew, okay. I guess I've been reading a lot :)
"I'll Go Home Then; It's Warm and Has Chairs" is David Thorne's second book. I've read most of his first, and I keep up with him on his website. He is hilarious, and this book is full of his email dealings with people who just don't get his sense of humor.
"The China Study" by Dr. T. Colin Campbell was an amazing eye opener about the dangers of eating the typical Western diet and how, by introducing animal products into the rest of the world, we're starting to see rise in chronic illnesses that the native people didn't suffer from before. He certainly knows his stuff: his credentials are impeccable and he's been studying the topic for decades. On an unrelated side note: how frustrating is it to rent a library book and discover some moron has penciled or penned their idiotic remarks all through it? Seriously? Take 20 seconds and Google Dr. Campbell. If you don't realize that he's a prominent vegetarian author and don't agree with his views, then stop reading his book. Don't write your half-assed, unintelligent commentary all over his book. Do you think you're going to persuade me? I'm going to listen to some anonymous idiot with a pencil over a renowned medical doctor?. Luckily it was all in pencil (this time) and I have a big eraser :)
"Taco USA" by Gustavo Arellano looked at the rise of Mexican food in the US and the debate over what is authentic and what isn't (basically all of it). It was interesting and fun, he has a good sense of humor.
"Gone" by Michael Grant was really great. It's a YA dystopian novel I've been meaning to read for years and haven't gotten to until now. In the tiny coastal town of Perdido Beach, one day everyone over the age of 15 disappears. Left alone to their own devices, the bullies start picking on the weaker kids and everyone in town turns to Sam, who has always been sort of a natural leader, to help them figure out what to do. Then the kids from Coates' Academy up the hill show up and their charismatic leader, Caine, starts taking over. Like Sam and many of the other kids, Caine has special powers that have magnified since the adults disappeared. It doesn't take long before chaos ensues, fights break out, and Sam and his group are just trying to stay alive long enough to figure out what happened, if they can reverse it, and if they can keep Sam from disappearing on his 15th birthday in a few days.
"Divorced, Beheaded, Survived" by Karen Lindsey toted itself as a "feminist" interpretation of Henry VIII's six wives. Well, not really, and no new information for me here, but it was still well written and would be a good introduction for someone who hasn't read as much as I have. The problem I have with interpreting behavior based on our social mores is that things were different back then. You can't look at Kathryn Howard and say "oh, she just liked sex and Henry was an impotent old man". Yes, that's true and nowadays most of us wouldn't judge her too harshly, but Kathryn was a product of the 16th century and how they were brought up to think is very different. Not that I'm making excuses for Henry, because Lord knows I'm not, I'm just saying.
"Lady, Go Die!" by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins was good Hammer fun. Mike and Velda are on vacation in Sidon, Long Island, when they run across a group of cops beating up a little defenseless guy. Mike makes quick work of those punks and discovers the guy is a local beachcomber a little on the slow side named Poochie. Mike and Velda take him under their wings and get him the medical help he needs. Mike starts digging and discovers that the cops are up in a twist about a local wealthy widow who has gone missing, Sharron Weasley, and since Poochie is the closest person to her house they thought he might have seen something. Sharron turns up dead, and with the local corrupt police force in way over their heads, Mike dives in to sort things out. He kind of lost me when he introduced some other murders that were supposedly related, but the ending was great.
"Jeneration X" by Jen Lancaster was a bit disappointing. Most of the book seems to have been already discussed on her blog, which I read, so a lot of it wasn't new. It was funny the first time I read it, but rereading it a few months later had me wondering why she put it on the blog first. The new stuff was incredibly funny, as usual, and I enjoyed the overall snarky tone that she's so great at. I just wish there would have been more original stuff.
Reading Mickey Spillane put me in the mood to reread some Perry Mason mysteries. I don't know why, but it did, so since they're short I polished off three yesterday while relaxing in the sun. Can't think of a better way to spend a day off!
"Case of the Runaway Corpse" by Erle Stanley Gardner involved a presumed dead man crawling out his motel room window and escaping to parts unknown, leaving behind a letter supposedly implicating his wife as his murderer.
In "The Case of the Horrified Heirs", it looks like Lauretta Trent's greedy relatives are trying to poison the old girl by slipping arsenic into the spicy Mexican food she loves so much. When that doesn't seem to work quickly enough, they stage a road accident that leaves Lauretta's car in the ocean and Virginia Baxter holding the keys to the car that ran Lauretta off the road.
"The Case of the Dangerous Dowager" has Matilda Benson hiring Perry to pay off her granddaughter's IOUs with the shady businessmen running a gambling boat off the coast. Perry tries, but dealing with Duncan and Grieb isn't going so well. Dealing with them gets even worse when Grieb turns up shot dead with Sylvia Oxman's fingerprints all over his desk.
Okay, well that's it for now! Glad I got caught up and hope I don't get this far behind again anytime soon :)
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