The Neddiad

Daniel Pinkwater used to be a favorite of mine when I was a kid - had no idea he was still writing until I saw this. Grabbed it as a "read out loud in the car that the kids can hear" book. And that's pretty much what it was - If I was ten, I probably would have loved this. Lots of explanation of stuff that a kid might not understand, lots of description. Weirdly, this book contained the factoid that since "la brea" in Spanish means "the tar", when you say "the La Brea Tar Pits" you are really saying "the the tar tar pits". Weird because the last book I had read, Pinball Theory of the Apocalypse also contained that fact. Anyway... The Neddiad is the story of a boy named Ned and the adventures he had when his family moved from the Midwest to Los Angeles - sometime in the fifties, by the feel of it. Pretty fun stuff, but definitely written for a younger audience. I'll try to get Julien into it in a couple of years...

Book 55

The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse

Picked this up in a bookstore in McMinnville, OR because I was running out of reading material, and I was in kind of a "wacky fiction" mood after that last book. And it was - wacky, fun, and a pretty quick little read. It's the story of a southern California artist who is struggling with selling out within the crazy culture down there. Kind of unpolished, but fun.

Book 54

Crooked Little Vein

Whew. This was a twisted book. Fun to read, but wow. Probably didn't help that I had to read it out loud in the car to Mich (no kids along for this reading experience.) It's the story of a down-on-his-luck private eye (an admitted "shit magnet") who is hired by the heroin-addicted White House chief of Staff to track down an "Alternate constitution of the United States", of extraterrestrial origin... Still with me? Yeah, it's kind of twisted. Factor in that one of the early capters is about testicular saline injections, and it's just slightly bizarre. Sweet, too, in it's own way. Just hope I don't recommend this to you - probably means I think you're kind of a freak. In a good way, of course...

Book 53

Richistan

Not sure why I picked this book up - probably because of the cover art. I once had a collection of parodies of Grant Wood's "American Gothic" - probably why this caught my eye. Anyway, Robert Frank takes us on a journey through the world of America's "new rich", who he terms "Richistanis." From their businesses and finances to their hobbies and kids, it's an interesting glimpse into a demographic that I'll never really see otherwise. What's surprising (but not really so much) is that these people who insist on alligator-trimmed steering wheels for their private jets aren't so different from us - still human, with concerns about the future, their kids, their lives. Couldn't really put it down, actually.

Book 52

The World Without Us

The World Without Us was a book that I'd seen reviewed in a few different place - Outside Magazine, maybe Smithsonian? Sounded interesting, so I picked it up. The main focus is on how the earth would react if it were suddenly without human influence. The Weisman tracks down experts in many different fields to ask them th shed their insight on the question, and the results are pretty interesting. The thing that captivated me, though, were the places that the author found that, for one reason or another, have been missing humans for some time. The two examples that spring to mid are the Korean De-militarized Zone, where much wildlife is enjoying a human-less existence, and a city on Cypress (?) that has been left abandoned since a civil war. Haunting, and a good exercise that puts some perspective on things.

Book 51

Ghost Map

I picked this book up initially because it looked interesting, and only after I checked it out did I realize that I had read a previous book by the same author. I had really enjoyed Everything Bad is Good For You, but it seemed like a terribly different book. This seemed more in the style of Erik Larson's Devil in the White City or Simon Winchester's books.

Anyway, Ghost Map is the story of the discovery, in London, of how cholera is transmitted. Discovery is not quite the word; it was more like grudging realization. But it seemed a watershed moment in the scientific method as applied to epidemic tracking. This didn't have the romance of "Devil in the White City ( while reading it, I referred to it as "the poo book"), but it held my interest, and I learned a lot from it.

Book 50

Bad Monkeys

Saw this book come through at work the other day, and grabbed immediately. I read one of Matt Ruff's books (Fool on the Hill) long ago and loved it, but then read another (Sewer, Gas and Electric) and didn't like it as much. Knew I was going to like this one, though - the two blurbs from other authors were from Christopher Moore and Neal Stephenson, two of my all-time favorites. If Neil Gaiman had recommended it as well, I would have called in sick and read it it a day.

Tough book to describe. Reminded me of Moore's A Dirty Job - set a bit in San Francisco, kind of a conspiracy theory that noone knows about, but the story is recounted in conversations with the protagonist's prison psychologist. As a result, you are left guessing whether the story is intended to be true or not until the very end. Anyway, LOVED IT. It was over too quick, is my only complaint.

Book 49