I wouldn't read Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky before you read Wee Free Men, but I'd recommend reading both. They're both Discworld books, but meant for somewhat younger readers and not using a different set of Central characters (though this one hints at a few more of the regulars than Wee Free Men did.)
posted by kristin at 1:44 PM

Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly wasn't as good as some of his other books. It's about drug addiction from the point of view of the drug addict, as opposed to that of the people watching him. Not one I'll likely reread.

I think I'd rather have seen A Streetcar Named Desire than have read it, but read it I did. Not bad at all. The movie is now in my netflix queue, but it'd be fun to see it on stage sometime.

I liked Marjane Satrapi's Embroideries, though it's a very small book. It's another look at the role of women in Iran, though a more playful one than Persepolis.

I have a bad habit when it comes to books of short stories. I tend to read one, and then put the book aside for some long period of time. Monkey Brain Sushi is a case in point. It's a book of short stories by modern Japanese writers. I liked some of the stories a lot, others were ok, and others I barely remember because the I started the book so long ago. I picked it up originally because there's a story in it by Haruki Murakami, but I think I'm going to need to track down books by some of the other writers.
posted by kristin at 10:58 AM

Open Sesame is typical Tom Holt. Magic, England, Stories, but no Demons from Hell this time. Also typically, it was a fun read. Imagine having a magic ring that let you talk to inanimate objects. I think I'd rather not.
posted by kristin at 11:29 AM

Remake was definitely not one of Connie Willis's better books. Read Doomsday Book instead.
posted by kristin at 12:02 PM

Ha Jin's War Trash is the fictional memoir of a Chinese POW during the Korean War. Worth a read, though somewhat depressing.

Charles de Lint's Someplace to be Flying was a drastic change of pace from War Trash. It took me awhile to get into, but I think was worth the effort. Like the other book of his I'd read (Trader) this one is urban fantasy. No elves or swordfighting and set in a modern-day (but imaginary) North American city.

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd wrote The Deeper Meaning of Liff a dictionary to words that should exist but don't. Definitely not something to read straight through, but it had some funny points.

Affluenza as a book came after a PBS series of the same name (which I have a hold on at the library now). It's a look at our collective spending and saving habits. There wasn't that much I hadn't heard before, but it was a pretty good complement to Bowling Alone.
posted by kristin at 2:22 PM

Mark Salzman's Lost in Place is an amusing memoir of his teenaged years. It chronicles his attempts to learn kung fu, the Chinese language, and jazz cello.

Cory Doctorow's A Place So Foreign is a book of short stories. All a bit weird. All good. (I liked it better than Down and out in the Magic Kingdom). I'll have to read the rest of his stuff.

Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World is one of those books that was interesting, yet took me a really long time to finish since I rarely ended up reading much of it at a time. It talks about all the various ways that people ignore science, distrust science or disbelieve science, and how science is a good thing.
posted by kristin at 4:22 PM