Totally MAD : 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity

So I was perusing this slowly when Sparky arrived home from college. He spotted it...and the book disappeared for a week. I never finished it, and it's massively overdue, so I'll have to find it later to finish it. :D

All Things New, by Lynn Austin

I literally read 20 pages and was so pissed off by that point that I couldn't wait to get it back to the library. Talk about crappy writing and telegraphing everything that's going to happen in the next 200 pages. Too bad, because this is a subject ripe for good storytelling. Just don't crack me over the head with the religious drama, ok?

The Story of Ain't : America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, by David Skinner

Never got past page 25 of this book. Booorrrrinnngggg.

Strength to Love, by Martin Luther King Jr.

Sadly, I just never had the energy to read these sermons, although I really REALLY wanted to....

Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed, by John Skipp

I hit the last third of this and gave up...some stories were creepy, some were EXCELLENT, and some were blah. I just can't get back into it after putting it down a couple of weeks ago.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (on CD)

I wanted to like this book. It's based on Shakespeare (supposedly), it's about dogs and Wisconsin, lots of people gave it stellar reviews.

But oh.my.GOD the depression never lifts, the sense of oncoming doom is pervasive, and finally, on disc 6, when the dogs start fighting...I'd had it. No more bad news. No more heavy-handed suspense that builds and never really seems to lead anywhere. I can't deal with it. And come to think of it, I find Hamlet annoying too. I did really like Edgar and Almondine, at least; I can't say that about Hamlet-the-character.

Maybe it would be different if I read it with my eyeballs, but the days of me reading a nearly 600-page book are in the past--maybe in the future too. In any case, I'm moving to another book now

Cyberbooks, by Ben Bova

I tried, I really did; it's a great, forward-thinking concept--electronic book readers FTW, 20 years before they actually appeared on the market. But...the dialogue and plot are way too formulaic-SF and since that's not really my cuppa, I gave up about 50 pages in.

Simply Jesus, by N.T. Wright

Wouldn't mind giving this another try sometime.....

The Odds : A Love Story, by Stewart O'Nan

unfinished, too depressing

The Hunger Games Companion : The Unauthorized Guide to the Series, by Lois H. Gresh

I read a couple of chapters but it just wasn't working for me. Definitely written for teens who haven't read much older fiction. Well-written but I didn't finish it.

Don't Shoot, by David M. Kennedy

This was really interesting to read; every time I sat down with it, I was drawn in to the subject and the writing itself. The subject is how to deal with crime in ways that are not 'common sense.' Having an effect on crime means getting to know the area, the community/ies, the people, not "cracking down."

However, reading it at the busiest time of the year meant that I never got to spent more than about 5 pages with it before some new thing had to be handled. So, after 5 weeks and only 50 or 60 pages, I gave up. I hope to get back to it sometime though.

The Gospel in Brief, by Leo Tolstoy

Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy became interested in 'freeing' the scripture from the layers of religiosity inside of which he felt the Orthodox Church had encased it. So he retranslated and paraphrased the gospels as he felt they should read. This was happening in the midst of the great German discourse on who the historical Jesus really was, so Tolstoy had lots of people to help him over the translation problems since I doubt he learned Biblical Greek and/or Hebrew.

Fascinating that whenever someone decides to do this sort of project, it ends up creating a clearer picture of the person doing it than it does of Jesus.

In any case, I read about 1/3 of the book and the copy I had turned out to be defective--50 missing pages--and I just never got back to it; I sort of feel like I got the gist of it.

Overland West (vol. 1), by Will Bagley

I started this, ambitiously, and only got about 25 pages in. I think I'll wait for volume 2 since by then he will start talking about Colorado. ;-)

OK, that's not fair, because he already was talking about Colorado. However, this may be one of those things that works better on Nook simply because I can read it for a long period of time and spend some time thinking about it and making notes to myself as I go.

Science Secrets, by Alberto A. Martínez

I tried, I really did. My mind is just not on this track right now. It's well-written, and interesting, but I couldn't get into it. For 8 weeks!

House of Leaves, by Zampanò ; with introduction and notes by Johnny Truant

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Testing Your Personality, by Arlene Matthews Uhl

A book full of quizzes. It's terrifically overdue, so I'm taking it back, unfinished. Nothing very surprising in the results of the quizzes I did.

Number Freak : From 1 to 200 -- The Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed, by Derrick Niederman

Fun. I didn't finish it, because it's really super-overdue, but in spite of all the math stuff that I didn't understand--not a surprise that there's math in a book about numbers, eh?--this was a fun read.

One Amazing Thing, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (on CD)

Didn't finish it. Just didn't grab my attention or interest for long enough to keep at it.

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer; a retelling by Peter Ackroyd; illustrated by Nick Bantock

I threw this back, not because it wasn't well done, but because I seem to be in a phase of reading brainless books. This required too much work. Too bad: the translation is excellent and readable. I blame myself here, not the book.

The Best of Times, by Penny Vincenzi

Another one that has been sitting around. I realized yesterday that I don't really care for any of the characters. Great premise: what happens to the people involved in a massive traffic pileup after the accident. Why were they where they were at that particular moment? But...just can't care about these folks, many of whom are unpleasant people.