author! author!

i was just thinking about sock zombies. do they eat, like, actual brains? or would they prefer handmade socks to munch on? i do actually own a sock zombie. i believe his name is horace. sadly, i don’t have a picture of him available.

but i do have some two-bit reviews of books i’ve read this year. mind you, it’s not an all-encompassing list. i know i’ve read more than this. but i’ll be dammed if i can remember the titles. huh. maybe the sock zombie did eat my brain…

anyway. and in no particular order. and not including textbooks, because i don’t think y’all need to check some of those out.

life and times of the thunderbolt kid – one of my favorite things about bill bryson is that he’s often able to tell a bawdy or obscene story with very little profanity. he’s just an amazing storyteller. this particular book is about bryson’s childhood, and his alter ego, the thunderbolt kid. i giggled quite a lot.

a round-heeled woman – i liked this book; it’s so unusual. a woman in her 60’s places a personals-type ad in the new york review of books, and write a book about her subsequent adventures. the titles is an old-school phrase that means something like ‘an easy woman’. while the author is up-front about what she wants, i don’t think she’s easy.

unaccompanied women – this is the follow-up to ’round heeled woman’. to be brutally honest, it really didn’t need to be written. i mean, i read it and didn’t feel like i wasted time on it, to be sure. but whatever i was looking for with this second book, i didn’t find it. would i recommend it? yes. would a guy like it? hm. probably not.

haunted – oh chuck, how i do love thee. i love how the cover of haunted glows in the dark. i love how the book is meant to have the ‘voice’ of several different authors. i love the sheer weirdness of the plotlines. i love that little bit about how saint gut-free got his name. and also, i love the story i heard about the reading somewhere in england where, with the aid of air fresheners that smelled of bacon, an entire audience was nauseated. i am a little weirded out by it, sure. but i love love love it all.

a long way gone – it doesn’t matter what kind of life you’ve had, or how rough your childhood was. in a game of ‘who had it worse’, ishmael here would win. having been a boy soldier and all. i don’t think it should be read all in one sitting. but i think everyone should read this memoir.

the five people that died during sex – i love lists. i also love random pieces of information. it makes me a good person to have on your team during trivia games. unless, of course, they involve television shows. then i’m worthless. but anyway! wanna know who died on the toilet? sure you do. need to know which political figures may have had three testicles? if you want to be an informed voter, you ought to. it’s just a factoid kind of book. i plan to be buried with my copy.

dead witch walking – the author was recommended to me by moi. and she writes a good story. i’m not sure i would have picked this up on my own. of course, for her i recommended anything by poppy z brite. and she read lost souls while eating. and it kind of made her ill. whoops. anyway, a story told in the time when witches, vampires and the like are in the majority.

the vampire lestat – okay. technically, i didn’t read this, i rented it as an audiobook. and since i had to give it back before i was done, i’m not sure how it ends. and further, i really loathe anne rice. having said all that, i plan to re-rent the audio book, because i rather like it and i’m curious what happens next. which is the whole point of a good book, yes?

don’t know much about history – i can’t say i like any of the other books in this series, but i think that’s mostly because i rented a few as audiobooks (hey, it gets quite around here at three in the damn morning), and the readers were so monotonous, i nearly fell asleep. this one, however, was interesting. i kind of never got into history as a kid, and i’ve carried this weird history-phobia with me for awhile. but i’m trying to atone. hence the history book.

drunk, divorced and covered in cat hair – oh, laurie, how we love you. i can’t say i loved this book, because it makes me feel bad. i mean, she gets divorced in the first chapter: how can i love that? laurie is a great writer, and she tells her story with the greatest air of humor. in that first chapter, she talks about how her skirt has done something bad, and she is forced to repair the damage with a stapler. in the bathroom. i couldn’t even begin to do it justice. and yes, i love and recommend the book. but i still feel bad doing it.

new pathways for sock knitters – yes, this counts as a book i’ve read. sure, it’s a book about sock knitting. and yeah, there are patterns. but dudes… it’s a great reference book on how to build a better sock. and some of those pictures make me wanna knit nothing but socks. there are chapters on socks from the toe-up, and socks from the top-down. and while i’m strictly a toe-up girl, i’m going to have to try a few of those top-down beauties. pictures, of course, to follow.

man, i know i’ve read more than this. but that’s all my wittle brain can think of at the moment. that, and soup.

mmmm, soup. thanks for stopping by.