Reply To: What are you reading?

[Ann]

Since I moved recently and have JUST gotten around to unpacking my books I haven’t read as much as I would have liked this summer, which depresses me greatly.

Lets see, I’ve been carrying Hodgman’s Areas of my Expertise in my backpack, trying to read a few pages whenever I can get away on my lunch break at work. Darin Strauss’s More Than it Hurts You is sitting unread on my shelf due to a tragedy hitting my family the day after I bought it, and it was still in my backpack when I rushed home that day. I want to read it, I just think it’s going to be a while before I disassociate the two things. It’s a shame, because I am fascinated by Munchausen by proxy. Maybe I’ll lend it to my sister, the psychologist in the family, to read first.

Also unread are a pile of Stephen King I picked up at the local used bookstore. People knock King, but they are good, fast reads. Maybe I’ll do a speed-read of ‘The Stand’ soon. Two Alton Brown Cookbooks need to be re-read for the science nerd in me. Instead of telling you what to do, he tells you WHY you do things in order, what’s the scientific reasoning and chemistry involved. It makes my closet science nerd heart happy. Best part of the books? Meat magnets showing the different cuts of meat. Rock. On.

And it is just about time for my yearly (yes, every year like clockwork) re-reading of all 5 books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. If you have not read this series by Douglas Adams, please go do so now right now. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Please remember your towel and Don’t Panic.

Last book I actually finished front to back was Max Brook’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War which I HIGHLY recommend. I was engrossed from the very first page and the book is, well, exactly what the title says: A collection of stories from the Great Zombie War. By the end, its damn near freaky and you are positive this really happened and braaaaaaaaiiiiinnnnss…

In a few weeks I will go and pick up two of my favorite guilty pleasures: Weird NJ Magazine (you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the girl!) full of the wonderful oddities, abandoned buildings and freaks of my home state and more tales of the Jersey Devil than you can shake a stick at. Finally, Vol. 17 of Fullmetal Alchemist. Wait, how old am I again?