Hilliker Curse; Fables: the Great Fables Crossover; Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall; Ones Who Hit the Hardest; Dexter is Delicious; Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen

First up: James Ellroy's "Hilliker Curse", his autobiography of why and how his relationships with women are so screwed up. We all know Ellroy is one very messed up individual (have I mentioned how much I loved his "My Dark Places"?) and this really confirms it. He blames himself for his mother's murder when he was just 10 years old, he's never gotten over it, and it's permanently messed up any interactions he has with the opposite sex. Fascinating but very, very sad.
"Fables: the Great Fables Crossover" by Bill Willingham was very funny. Jack of Fables (different series I haven't gotten to yet--but I will) and our well known Fable friends are out to stop Peter Thorn from rewriting history and wiping their universe out of existence.
"Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall" by Bill Willingham is a take on "Arabian Nights". Snow White is being held captive by an Arab sultan who plans to execute her in the morning. She entertains him with stories of many of the Fables's beginnings, and he delays her execution to hear her tales. It was great to get the back story on some of my favorite Fables characters!
The return of football means the return of football books! "The Ones Who Hit the Hardest" by Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne tells the story of the pride the town of Pittsburgh had (and continues to have) for their Steelers. The 1970s were a terrible time to be a blue collar worker in America, even moreso in Pittsburgh. It was a great story but the pace kept getting slowed down by the insertion of tidbits about the steelworkers union. It would have been better to leave that out.
"Dexter is Delicious" is Jeffrey Lindsay's latest Dexter (can't wait for the premier of the show next Sunday!!). I love the dark, snarky humor in Lindsay's books. Dex is now a daddy, to little Lily Anne, and his brother Brian makes a surprise return (obviously the books and TV show don't match up). Since Dexter has now sworn off the dark ways Brian steps in to instruct Cody and Astor, which doesn't please Dex one bit. He and Deb are after a tribe of cannibals and he is kidnapped by them and nearly eaten not once but twice. In the end, of course, Dexter returns to his deliciously wicked ways. For sister Deb, of course.
A wonderful biography of Queen Mary, Anna Whitelock's "Mary: Princess, Bastard, Queen" sets out to set the record straight and clear up some of the awful misconceptions about Mary's reign. She is of course overshadowed in history by her brilliant younger half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I, and rightly so, but Mary was brave and courageous in her own right and her own contributions should not be overlooked. Whitelock does conveniently try to gloss over the worst of Mary's actions, like the terrible burning deaths of people who dared question the Catholic faith, but all in all she does a beautiful job of showing how Mary Tudor really was her mother's daughter.

Batman: Haunted Knight; Batman: Long Halloween; Fables Vol. 10; Twilight at the World of Tomorrow

A couple of Batman graphic novels by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. "The Haunted Knight" showed me a very tortured side of Batman that I didn't know existed, and "The Long Halloween" continued that. While they were both good and I liked them, I still liked "The Killing Joke" better.
I missed Vol. 10 of Bill Willingham's "Fables" series when I was finishing them up a few months ago, so I went back and got it. I love Valiant Prince Ambrose (otherwise known as Flycatcher) and his story. So good.
"Twilight at the World of Tomorrow" by James Mauro was about the 1939 New York World's Fair, which took place on the eve of World War II breaking out. It was a bit uneven and inconsistent, and parts of it felt dragged out and padded while other parts felt rushed. Too bad, because it's certainly an interesting subject.

Murder Room; My Fair Lazy; Holidays on Ice; Batman: the Killing Joke

"The Murder Room" by Michael Capuzzo was so slow to start I almost gave up on it after about 70 pages of slogging through it, but I'm glad I finished it because it got much better. Once a month in Philadelphia a group of men, the best in their fields of forensic sciences and crime fighting, meet to discuss cold cases, and end up solving quite a few of them. True crime gold.
"My Fair Lazy" by Jen Lancaster details her decision to stop being such a lazy ass who sits around watching crappy reality television and get some more culture in her life. In typical Jen Lancaster fashion she goes way overboard with it but at least she chronicles her adventure in a humorous way. I have to applaud her point that life is short and we waste so many opportunities to do more with our lives. I feel guilty now for my own laziness :)
David Sedaris' "Holidays on Ice" was very disappointing. It's a collection of short essays about Christmas that are supposed to be funny. None of them were very amusing and I found one to be borderline offensive, about child slavery, sex abuse, and murder. And you know it takes a lot to offend me, if I can read Tucker Max without blinking!
"Batman: the Killing Joke" by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland was a beautifully illustrated graphic novel accounting how the Joker became insane. It was short but it was good, I liked it a lot.

Captive Queen; Red Queen; Hollywood; Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake; I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell; Dead and Gone

Finally, a few new ones that didn't suck! "Captive Queen" by the amazing Alison Weir was a fictionalized account of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Weir does her usual brilliant job of making the story come to life and she really couldn't have picked a more fascinating woman than Eleanor.
"The Red Queen" by Philippa Gregory was the sequel to "The White Queen" and told the story of Elizabeth Woodville's counterpart, Margaret Beaufort, mother to King Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. I always imagined Margaret was a bitch on wheels, and Gregory does nothing to disprove this notion. *Everyone* thought Margaret was a bitch. She really was the woman everyone loved to hate, so convinced in her righteousness of purpose of putting her son, with his incredibly weak ties, on the throne over people with better claims (like Henry's future wife and Elizabeth Woodville's daughter, Elizabeth).
"Hollywood" by Larry McMurtry was his third in the trilogy of memoirs, the other two being "Books" and "Literary Life". I didn't care for the first two, finding them too short and I had no idea who any of the people he was talking about where. "Hollywood" was better. It was still awfully short, but it was funny and at least I know who everyone was.
"Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" by Aimee Bender was better than I expected, since it's been getting such great word of mouth buzz I figured it would disappoint, but I liked it. It had an intangible quality that I can't quite explain and a bit of a sci-fi sort of feel to it that I wasn't expecting. It reminded me of "The Time Traveler's Wife" in that sense. Rose discovers on her ninth birthday that she can taste people's emotions in the food they cook, and her brother Joseph disappears without warning. She ends up learning how to cope with her strangeness and function in normal society, Joseph does not.
"I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" by Tucker Max was a reread. I caught part of the movie on TV the other night (it was atrocious, don't bother) and wanted to revel in his debauchery again, since I lead such a tame and quiet life. Hilarious.
And finally, "Dead and Gone" by Charlaine Harris, the Sookie Stackhouse book before "Dead in the Family" that I somehow missed when I was getting caught up on Sookie. It was pretty good and I enjoyed the way Sookie was able to realize she might actually need some help fighting off all the bad stuff that comes into her life. Just quit your beer slinging job and move in with your gorgeous husband, Eric, girl! Yeah, I know, I know--if she did that there wouldn't be a story anymore. FINE :)

Jigsaw

Another reread from Ed McBain. I sort of remembered the ending to this one but not really, so it worked out well. I'm reading a couple of brand new books right now, so no more rereads for awhile.

Lady, Lady, I Did It!

A reread from the fabulous 87th Precinct series by the late, great, dearly missed Ed McBain. I was trying to read a couple of new books I checked out, including the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series that's so popular right now, but damned if I just couldn't get into it at all. It bored me straight to tears about 100 pages in and I gave up. Life's too short to try to read things that aren't appealing to me. So I turned to the old standbys and pulled this one off the shelf. I actually remembered the ending, which is so rare for me, with rereads like this one, but it was a great story and I enjoyed it again. I just hope my next round of checkouts is better than the previous ones, otherwise I may just have to keep rereading McBain. Not that I would mind that one bit!

In which I apologize and catch up

Okay, we're going to gloss over the fact that I've been remiss and just catch up. In the last month I've read:
"Swan Thieves" by Elizabeth Kostova, of "The Historian" fame. I liked "The Historian" a lot, but this one I didn't care for. I didn't *not* like it, I just feel indifferent about it.
"Frankenstein: Lost Souls" by Dean Koontz I enjoyed a lot. It seems to be the beginning of a new series, and I'm excited about that.
"Fables, Vols. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12" by Bill Willingham. I missed Vol. 10 somehow, but the story has gotten really great. The Fables have gone to war and in Vol. 11 defeated the evil Emperor. There have been some casualties, like Prince Charming and Boy Blue, but I'm eager to find out what happens next. My only complaint is some of the artists have truly sucked.
"Sizzling Sixteen" by Janet Evanovich. Lately the Stephanie Plum series have been kind of mediocre, but this one I really liked, despite the lack of Morelli and Ranger hotness. This one had a lot of Vinnie (he's been kidnapped by the mob and Stephanie and Lulu and Connie have to devise a plan to rescue him) and I like Vinnie.
So then I reread "Seven Up" and "Two for the Dough", which were both fun. I hadn't read the second one in quite a while. I'd like to reread them all, but I have a huge stack of books I need to get to. Someday I'm going to take all that vacation time I have hoarded up and just overindulge on books :)
"Confessions of a Prairie Bitch" by Alison Arngrim, who played the evil Nellie Olsen on TV's "Little House on the Prairie", which was probably one of my all time favorite shows when I was growing up. I loved this memoir. Alison was hilarious and her look at the show and the actors she worked with was great. I'd love if she wrote fiction, I think it would be as quirky and fun as Christopher Moore.
I reread Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind", my all time favorite comfort read. That was the first grown up book I ever read, when I was nine years old. Every time I reread it (and it's been, sadly, many years) it's like visiting an old friend and spending a lazy Sunday afternoon on the veranda, sipping sweet tea and reminiscing. I needed that.
"Aqua Net Diaries" by Jennifer Niven was her look back at her very ordinary teenage years in a small Indiana high school. There wasn't anything crazy or wild about her and her friends, and that's what I liked about it: it's normalcy. Since I didn't go to high school I have none of these fond memories and I enjoyed hers.
"Dead in the Family" by Charlaine Harris is her latest Sookie Stackhouse book. I missed the one right before this, unfortunately, so I was a bit confused in the beginning, but I caught up quickly enough and enjoyed all the Eric hotness :)
And lastly, "Beastly" by Alex Finn, a YA updated version of "Beauty and the Beast". Since I've never seen the Disney film or really any other version of the story I can't attest to its faithfulness, but I enjoyed this version a lot. Even though the ending was predictable, the characters were so likable I was rooting for them and it made me glad when it all worked out.
Whew. Okay, I won't let that happen again, I promise.