Here’s something new — I’m going to keep track of the number of books I’ve read as I go. That way, hopefully I won’t have to cull through the year’s posts in December to figure out how many I’ve read.

I have a new local library branch, and have become friendly with the “new & bestselling” shelves. They also have a great young adult section. This branch is bigger and prettier than my old branch, and I couldn’t be happier. Now, onward with the books!

1. The Magicians by Lev Grossman: This book is really hard to categorize. Some would say, “It’s Harry Potter, but in college!” But it’s not as fantasy-based as Harry Potter. Yes, the book starts with students learning about the existence of a magical college, but it’s more about the sullen coming-of-age than about the magic. The characters aren’t particularly likeable, so it’s more of a Catcher in the Rye than anything Potter-ish. Then they graduate, and make their way in the big bad world, and then the book takes a huge and unexpected Narnia-like left turn. Some parts of this book were good, some were a grind. 6 out of 10.

2. Under the Jolly Roger by L.A. Meyer

3. In the Belly of the Bloodhound by L.A. Meyer

4. Mississippi Jack by L.A. Meyer: Three more installments in the (currently 8-book strong) Bloody Jack series. These are books 3, 4, and 5. I only have three left, and that makes me sad! Here’s hoping Meyer writes more. You might guess from the topmost book in this stack that our heroine, who started out in the royal navy, launches into a bit of piracy. I’ve been calling these my “girl pirate” books ever since, even though they’re not all about pirates at all. In fact, each one has a distinctly different angle, and they all relate very different adventures with Jacky Faber, the heroine. And even the one I enjoyed the least, I still enjoyed. Jolly Roger: 9 out of 10 / Bloodhound: 9 out of 10 / Mississippi: 8 out of 10.

5. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: I plucked this one off the shelf at the library because the cover attracted me. That’s right, I judged. The plot is a simple twist: at 9 years old, Rose suddenly has the ability to taste people’s emotions in the foods they make. But Bender must be a Margaret Atwood fan, because it’s all treated as uneventful and normalish, and … nothing really happens. I mean, stuff happens, but nowhere near enough stuff. Her brother appears to have powers of his own, but it’s never really spelled out, and then he disappears. And the ending fizzles. The one good thing is that the brother’s best friend is described in such a way that I can picture the adorable Richard Ayoade portraying him. 5 out of 10.

6. Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle: So let’s pretend that all of the aliens and mutants from the sci-fi B-movies of the ’50s really arrived. And they settled in to have normal families. This is the story of J!m, a hybrid of two aliens, and also a sullen high-schooler. Seriously, besides the girl pirate books, January has totally been a month of reading the gut-wrenching tales of sullen teens. Anyhoo, in this book the story meandered, the characters were many and thinly-drawn, and the layout was a distraction. It could have been something wonderful, but it wasn’t. 5 out of 10.

7. The Compound by S.A. Bodeen: First off, I guess if I ever want to write YA, I need to get a middle initial. What’s up with this crazy trend? The book was a pretty quick young adult read — I tackled it in half an evening. When Eli is nine years old, his billionaire software-mogul father rushes the family to a hidden bunker (in Washington, where all the really good software moguls live), telling them that nuclear war has broken out. Most of the family makes it, although Eli’s twin can’t be found and is left behind. Fast-forward six years, when things are starting to go wrong, and the kids are starting to suspect that all is not as it seems. Which you totally see coming from the beginning. Suddenly, and in the course of what feels like one day in the book, Eli goes from spoiled brat to sensitive problem-solver, and figures out the whole mystery. Including some weird clues that are so preposterous it’s impossible to take them seriously. 5 out of 10.

8. Petty Magic by Camille DeAngelis: Evelyn Harbinger, a 149-year-old witch, spends her evenings putting on a glamour of her own youthful face and trolling for men in bars. Until she meets a young man who’s the spitting-image (and probably reincarnated soul) of her one true love, who died when they were both spies in WW2. It’s not a bad read overall, although a bit of a trudge in the beginning. Also, the Harbinger family is supposed to be American, but there are Englishisms all over the place. Still, it was a fun book with a decently developed universe. And it was a pleasure to read a lighthearted book with no sullen teenagers. 7 out of 10.

I finally found my sticky note with the list of the books I read in December, 2010. So here they are!

Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness: The last of the trilogy that began with The Knife of Never Letting Go, this one had much more action and interest than the second book in the series. It brought in an interesting third character’s point of view, and brought the series to a close in an open-ended but intriguing way. And hey, no “20 years later they’re married with babies” epilogue. 8 out of 10.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson: Third and final book of the Millennium trilogy, this was also much better than book 2. I’d say that the reader should treat books 2 and 3 as parts of the same larger story. The best part of this book is that it doesn’t start with 200 pages of exposition like the other two (although there are still points were three pages of introduction are given to a character who has one page of interactions, then is never heard from again). Since reading these books, we’ve seen the first two movies on the streamy Netflix, and I have to say they make good movies. Probably because they’re able to hack and slash and remove all of the boring stuff, and go straight to the plot. 7 out of 10.

Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card: The actual Ender stories got progressively weirder and longer, and I didn’t read the fourth of the set. But this book goes back to Ender’s battle school days, and tells the story of the side character Bean. Critics of Card no doubt complained that it’s another visit to his standard well of ultra-intelligent-child-in-a-world-he-never-made, but it was enjoyable. Another classic “good but not great” score. 7 out of 10.

Bloody Jack and Curse of the Blue Tattoo by L.A. Meyer: I picked up the first book in this (currently) 8-book series, Bloody Jack, because it was described as YA with a strong female lead. It turned out to be an amazingly fun little romp (and vastly superior to the crap these books share the Meyer shelf with). Mary “Jacky” Faber, a homeless orphan on the streets of London in 1800, cuts her hair off and joins the royal navy as a ship’s boy in order to get three square meals a day. Her adventures continue in Blue Tattoo, and it just keeps getting more entertaining. I’m in the middle of book four right now, and they’ve all been light, fun reads. Both books: 9 out of 10.

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi: This autobiography about di Rossi’s descent into obsessive eating, bulimia, and anorexia feels weirdly incomplete. It tells tales without giving enough backstory, and without enough coverage of how she finally pulled herself out of the spiral. The pictures included are pretty horrifying; I don’t remember when the 5’7”-ish actress made it down into the 80-lb. range. But overall, I wanted to know more about the causes and less the effects. 6 out of 10.

Mail-Order Wings by Beatrice Gormley: I had to ask the know-it-alls over on MetaFilter to find out the name of this book. I’d read it as a kid, and it always stuck with me. Turns out I must have read it many, many times, since everything was wildly familiar to me. A decent middle-grade book about being careful what you wish for. 7 out of 10.

Feed by M. T. Anderson: I don’t remember where I heard about this one (probably MetaFilter again). A young adult dystopian future where everyone has a chip implanted in their head giving them the “feed”, a constant stream of ads and banners and notices that would probably drive us all completely insane. But they’re implanted when very young, so they don’t know any different. An interesting concept, but not exactly my cup of tea. I prefer my dystopias more along the lines of The Hunger Games, and my constant-connection sci-fi speculation more along the lines of Daemon. 6 out of 10.

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal: A Regency drawing-room romance with a twist – the denizens of this world can use a sort of magic, pulling the ether to create glamours. Overall not a lot actually happens, but I guess that’s the drawing room for you. If you liked Soulless with its mix of English propriety combined with the supernatural, you’ll probably like this one too. And I have to applaud the fact that, of our spinster-heroine’s two suitors, she ended up with the one I liked better. 7 out of 10.

Why We Get Fat (And What to Do About It) by Gary Taubes: Finally, Taubes’ much-anticipated follow-up to Good Calories, Bad Calories is out. I’ve read GCBC twice, and I have to tell you, that sucker is both huge and DRY. This new book is a smaller and easier read, covering much of the science of GCBC but in a lighter tone. If you want to find out why I think wheat is the devil, and why 70% of what I eat is fat, this book will tell you why. 9 out of 10.

And so brings 2010’s reading to a close. That makes a total of 59 books for the year, just over one per week. I’ll have to try to best that number in 2011. (Although moving threw a monkey wrench in the works, since I was without library deliveries for almost a fortnight.) Onward, easy readers!

The previous book-pairs post was getting long, so I decided to throw these three books into their own post. After these, I’ll be all caught up on recapping my reading. This will also bring me to 49 books since I started this spate in April. So a big thank you to the Orange County Public Library for keeping me buried in words.

Naked Heat by Richard Castle: That’s right, there’s a second book. If you watch the TV show Castle, then you knew that already. I love the TV show, which is a lovely mix of fun and drama. This book was like an extended episode of the show, but with more sex and swearing. I gave this first book a 7, and I think this one improved on the formula. The mystery is a little less confusing, the relationship a little more complicated. And while the book is still a little light, at 304 pages it totally kicks the previous book’s 208 pages in the butt. 8 out of 10.

Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi: The fourth book in Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe actually covers the same time period as The Last Colony (which I gave an 8). It’s the same story, but told from the point of view of the lead characters’ teenage daughter. It’s a weird concept, but it actually works. Scalzi didn’t do too badly finding the voice of a snarky teenager, and it was a way to fill in some of the gaps (one of which was pretty big) in the previous telling. It could also be classified as a YA novel, but let’s not — I’ve read far too many of those already this month. 8 out of 10.

Island of the Blue Dophins by Scott O’Dell: I’ll wager that a vast majority of girls who grew up in the last 40 years have read this book. I loved it as a kid, and I just had a flukey urge one day to pick it up and read it again. It’s no longer part of my own library (though I still have most of my old, tattered Roald Dahl paperbacks on the shelf) so I had to get it from the public library. I remembered so much of it, and it was all so familar. And it kind of transported me back to the bookworm kid that I was. 9 out of 10.

For my next time-travel trip to my childhood, I’ve ordered Mail-Order Wings by Beatrice Gormley. The library doesn’t have it, so I actually bought a used copy online. I remember loving the hell out of this book, and that it was also creepy and weird. Alas, I didn’t recall the name, so I asked over at Ask MetaFilter. I love them — in 8 minutes I had the title I sought. Fantastique!

A lot of this batch of books will be paired. I didn’t necessarily read them in pairs, but I’ve been digging my way through a lot of series lately.

Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins: books two and three of the Hunger Games series. You may recall that I gave a rare 10 to the first book, The Hunger Games. The second book, Catching Fire, picks up with the right amount of exposition, then rolls right into upping the stakes. I hate to be a spoiler machine, so I’ll just say that this shit gets real. We meet some new characters, some of them quite lovely. And the book ends with a huge awesome cliffhanger. Some of it feels a bit like rehash of the first book, but overall it’s a good middle child in a 3-story series. It’s no The Empire Strikes Back, but it’s certainly no Temple of Doom. Moving on to Mockingjay — it’s a very different book from the previous two. And … it’s hard to stay spoiler-free here, but of course you’d expect that some characters you’ve grown to like will die (how could you not expect that, when the first book was about a game show where everyone kills everyone else). I know that some readers absolutely hated this third book, and recommend that people stop at the end of Catching Fire. I enjoyed the book for the most part, but there were some weird dull spots and oddities. Also, if you hated the epilogue in the last Harry Potter book, you’ll hate the epilogue in this one, too. Overall: Catching Fire: 9 out of 10 and Mockingjay: 8 out of 10.

The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness: These are the first two of the three-story “Chaos Walking” series. I’m starting into the third book, Monsters of Men, today. Anyhoo, these books were recommended by commenter Frazer, and at first I thought, “The Knife of Never Letting Go? What the hell kind of title is that?” Yes, the title is weird. But the book is amazing. Despite the main character, Todd Hewitt, having a poison name*. Hewitt is a 12-year-old growing up on a distant planet colonized years ago by settlers from Earth. His town is entirely comprised of men, since apparently an alien species released a virus that killed all the women, back when Hewitt was a baby. Also, everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts, which are referred to as their Noise. Hewitt and his talking dog (oh yeah, the animals talk here too) happen upon a girl about his age (who has no Noise), a survivor from the crash of a scout ship from the next wave of settlers. They end up on a long, painful journey in which Hewitt learns that almost everything he was taught was a lie. Again, don’t want to spoil too much. For the first couple of chapters, I was perplexed by Hewitt’s unschooled dialect and the weirdness of how they used different fonts for people’s Noise. But I quickly got sucked in, and really enjoyed the book. The second in the series, The Ask and the Answer, picks up immediately where the first leaves off (on a cliffhanger, natch) but feels more filler-ish than it probably needs to. I mean, you could sum it up with: new people are met, old people are dealt with, some rebellion, and Hewitt learns a little bit how to control his Noise. It’s still a great excursion into parts of Ness’s world we haven’t seen before, but I’m hoping that book 3 has more action and content, and not so much plodding around. The Knife of Never Letting Go: 9 out of 10 and The Ask and the Answer: 8 out of 10.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson: Okay, so I’m the last person in the world to read these books, I guess. And there’s not bad, don’t get me wrong, but I really don’t see how they’ve become these international phenomena. Maybe it’s in the translation. Still, they’re decent intrigue-mystery-police procedural books. The characters are interesting, that’s for sure. And I’ve learned some important things about Sweden: there, everyone drinks endless cups of coffee, smokes like a chimney, and eats the most grotesque sandwiches (Liver and pickle, anyone?) all the time. Oh, and the second book showed me that everyone does their grocery shopping at 7-Eleven. Even for fruits and vegetables. Larsson’s style takes some getting used to; the first third of each book is exposition, the second third is setting up eight thousand different storylines, then the last third kicks the action into high gear and brings everything together. It’s just getting through that first third that’s the bear. Apparently the third book has less expo and more action, so I’m looking forward to that. Above everything else, I wish Larsson hadn’t relied on the trope of just barely missing someone or something by moments so much. In the second book, it’s almost a running joke. These were good, but not great, and as such both get the same classic GBNG score. 7 out of 10.

Cat’s Eye and Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood: No, these aren’t sequels. But they’re both by Atwood, so I threw them together. Here’s the thing: I like some Atwood books a lot. I have copies of The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake on my bookshelf. (Year of the Flood, while not apparently a sequel to Orxy and Crake, takes place in the same universe.) But her style is always very much about ordinary-ish people doing ordinary-ish things, so unless the circumstances around those people are of interest to you, her books may cross over into boring territory. Cat’s Eye is about a painter and her recollections of her childhood. People have told me that it’s an amazing book about how cruel children, especially girls, can be to one another. Yeah, I guess so. Mostly it was memories of an ordinary-ish person having an ordinary-ish childhood, and the one half-year where her friends maybe bullied her, kind of, sort of. Perhaps I’ve missed the point. It bordered on boring for me, but I slogged through to finish it because I actually didn’t finish Year of the Flood. I made it almost halfway through, and realized that I just wanted to read other books more. I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters, they all did mundane things, and nothing really happened. Cat’s Eye: 5 out of 10 and Year of the Flood: unfinished.

*Okay, so you know how sometimes there are names that come up, and it feels like everyone you’ve ever known with that name has been a big jerk? Or even worse, that there’s been one person so toxic in your life that their name is forevermore poison to you? Yeah. For me, “Todd” will always and eternally be poison, thanks to just one guy. So it was really hard to read that name repeatedly.

It’s not often that a person gets a chance to be part of a big internet experiment. So when the opportunity popped up, I grabbed! Here’s the deal: four writers got together and wrote a horror/gore/humor novel. Together! They’re putting it up on Amazon, and they offered a free e-copy to anyone who wanted to review it. On release day (tomorrow, the 19th) they’ll link to all the reviews, all the reviews will link to the book, and we’ll all also post our reviews to Amazon. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Will it be a smash? Will it tank? Time will tell. That said, here’s what I thought of the book itself.

The book is called Draculas, written by (in alphabetical order) Blake Crouch, Jack Kilborn, F. Paul Wilson, and Jeff Strand. (Yes, the cover makes it look like there are two authors: Crouch Kilborn [I used to dance under that name] and Strand Wilson.) And really, if you’ve ever been involved in creativity by teamwork, you’ll know how nearly-impossible it is to create something decent with just two people, let alone four. The fact that it all flows fairly well together shows how skilled these guys are.

The premise is a basic one: a group of people in a secluded hospital must fight off vampires, with more and more people becoming bite-infected as every tense moment passes. But the book flies beyond basic thanks to a couple of facts: these authors aren’t afraid to get good and gory, and they can write pretty good humor with their horror.

There are no chapters in this book — each section is headed with the name of the point-of-view character. That’s how these guys were able to collaborate so well — everyone took a few characters, and intertwined details from each others’ sections. Genius! So even if (like on Lost) there are characters you don’t care much for, you’ll soon be into a storyline with one of your favorites. Although it can get confusing in parts, before everyone’s cemented in your head (the two leading ladies take a while to sort out, and I also got one of them [Jenny] confused with a side character [Janine] for a little while). But once you figure out the gun-nut cop, the lumberjack, the spoiled brat, the depressed party clown, the arrogant doctor and all the rest, there’s someone for almost everyone to root for (whether you want to root for a human, or a dracula).

I don’t want to spoil too much, but if you’re in the mood for a dark horror novel with a light twist, you could do much worse than Draculas. Especially for the Kindle price of $2.99.

Before I rate the book, I have to mention the extras. This was the first book I read using the Kindle app for Android, and these guys really took advantage of the electronic format to give the reader great bonus materials. Not only did they include deleted and altered scenes, full short stories, and excerpts from the authors’ other novels, but there’s also a huge section containing the emails they sent back and forth as the novel was developed and written. It was a great behind-the-scenes peek at how this kind of collaboration can happen.

The cool extras bumped my rating up a point; you know me, always giving sevens for books I like (but that I don’t find earth-shattering). That means this one gets 8 out of 10.

Wow, am I behind on rating books. I have a list 12 tomes long, and I think there may be a book or two that I forgot to write down on my little Post-It. I’ll try to be brief with this dirty dozen.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein: The book itself told me that it’s one of the most important sci-fi books ever written, so I figured I should read it. It started out really well, and I thought it was headed for a rating of 8 or better. Then … it got weird. And religious. And while I think the religious content was actually meant to be read as some sort of anti-religion, it still made me cringe. So first half good, back half weird, overall 7 out of 10.

Songmaster by Orson Scott Card: It’s almost as if Card was trying to recapture the magic of Ender’s Game — this book is also about a young boy with rare talents learning rare skills, and his voyages into the big bad universe. Good, but not groundbreaking like Ender. 7 out of 10.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith: This was the first book I’ve read in the new rewritten classics/classic characters genre. And this one, as opposed to stuff like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, isn’t just a classic novel with alterations; it’s a well-researched history of Lincoln with a fictional overlay. Despite the actual history and biography, it’s light and fun and a nice fast read. 7 out of 10.

Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game by Tilly Bagshawe: I’ve read a good number of Sidney Sheldon novels; some of them have permanent places on my bookshelves. They’re all a combination of sex, violence, drama, mystery, and leading ladies with tons of moxie. It appears that Tilly Bagshawe has studied her Sheldon well, and crafted a decent sequel to Sheldon’s 1982 Master of the Game (which is one of the paperbacks in my collection). It’s just as cheesy and tawdry as a real Sheldon novel, which I appreciate. 7 out of 10.

Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness by Tilly Bagshawe: This second Bagshawe/Sheldon book isn’t a sequel to any preivous Sidney Sheldon work. It appears that his name is attached only because Bagshawe is again writing in the Sheldon style. She also grabbed plot points galore from other Sheldon works, and cobbled them together in this new book. Still, it has the money, mystery, and moxie of an actual Sheldon book, and I actually didn’t see the surprise twist coming. 7 out of 10.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens: This was an easier read than another atheist tome, Can We Be Good Without God (because that book got incredibly repetitive — basically “yes” over and over, with details). But it was still frustrating in its way, probably because I didn’t need any convincing regarding the premise. Still, this book included a lot of religious history and interesting facts. 7 out of 10.

Halfway there, and everything’s earned a 7 so far. That’s so weird! Good books, but not great books.

Under the Dome by Stephen King: This book was HUGE. Almost 4 pounds, over 1100 pages. I didn’t want to read it in bed (too easy to give myself a drowsy concussion) or lug it to and from work with me, so I tackled it over a weekend. And it was another great King book, with a classic King premise: a large, isolated group full of good people and evil people, and the way that the good figure out what the evil are up to … all while a mysterious something is happening. My problem is that King needs more editing. Just because you’re Steve King doesn’t mean you are exempt from editing out the dull parts. There were times reading it that I couldn’t believe that only three book-days had passed; surely they must be weeks in by now! 7 out of 10.

Blameless by Gail Carriger: This is the third book in the “Parasol Protectorate” series, with all books set in a steampunky Victorian London populated with werewolves and vampires. The first book, I enjoyed. The second felt like a lot of filler, and contained one of my most-hated romance tropes. This one brought the leads back together and answered some questions, but a lot of it felt like setup for the fourth book. I’ll read number four as well, but I’d recommend others stop after #1. 6 out of 10.

Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs: I’ve never seen the TV show Bones. But I figured I’d check out the first of the Temperance Brennan novels, since there are a bajillion of them. And while the TV Brennan is apparently young and lovely, the book version is a middle-aged divorcée who may work with the police force, but doesn’t appear to have any police-related common sense. I finished the book to find out whodunit, but I never need to read another of these books. Blah, humdrum. 4 out of 10.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: I don’t know how I missed these books before. I heard about the series when the third book, Mockingjay, was about to come out. And boy howdy am I glad I found them! I mean, this first book is a young adult sci-fi novel set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian future … with a game show to the death. How could it not rock? And rock it did. Characters, plot, pacing — I loved it all. 10 out of 10.

Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk: Really, if you’ve read one of his books, you’ve read them all. Quirky and vaguely unpleasant people do quirky and vaguely unpleasant things in a book written in a quirky and vaguely unpleasant style. 6 out of 10.

The Fire by Katherine Neville: This book is a sequel to The Eight, a copy of which is part of my permanent paperback collection. Aside from the common trope of sequel-about-child-of-original-leads, it was decent. Not as great as The Eight, but full of fun nonetheless. Neville’s style of telling the main modern-day story interspersed with a related historical story is always interesting. 7 out of 10.

I got a copy of Stephen King’s Under the Dome from the library. It’s HUGE. Almost four pounds, which makes it hard to read in bed due to cumbersomeness and the high chances of giving myself an injury due to drowsy book-dropping. So I’m having to dedicate time in the reading chair. Still, it’s hard to find a way to hold the damned thing without it pressing into my guts.

This one book is a prime argument for getting a Kindle this holiday season. Or maybe an Android tablet that runs the Kindle app. Either way, food for thought.

Five other books are on my to-review list, but they’ll have to wait. Because while Under the Dome is really heavy, it’s also really good. Really overly wordy as well, but that’s just the Steve King way.

In TV news, we watched the premiere of the 21st season of Survivor last night. Looks like it’s going to be a good season. I’ve proposed that Scott and I start a new thing — pick the winner after the first episode. Although we went with a potential winner from each tribe, since you never know when one tribe is totally going to dominate the other. So our episode-1 winner selections are Marty (old) and Sash (young). It’ll be intersting to see how well they do.

I guess I should also pick a winner for America’s Next Top Model, since I’ve only seen one episode so far. I have to consult the list of ladies on the CW Web site, because I don’t really know anyone’s name yet. Since this season is all about the “editorial” look, I’m going to go with Rhianna. Because she’s weird-looking, but not the weirdest-looking of the bunch. Just watch, she got eliminated in last night’s episode.

Today is Sunday for us, since our days off are Wednesday and Thursday every week. I’m planning on going through my closet and dresser, getting rid of stuff that’s the wrong size or I just don’t wear. I predict three bags full for the Goodwill. Also on the docket: cleaning out expired medications and nearly-empty bottles and containers from the bathroom. Which is something we all should do, right? That Sudafed from 2007 isn’t going to throw itself away. And neither is that hairspray that doesn’t hold, as well as that body glitter from three Halloweens ago.

So 2010 is turning out to be the year of utilizing my public library. They make it so very easy, since I’m able to request books and they’re delivered right to my front door. At one point, I had 12 library books stacked up on my desk. Fortunately, the to-read stack is only 4 high now, with two books currently being read. Progress!

But this means that I’m way, way behind on reporting what I’ve read. So here’s a huge glut of books I’ve read recently. I’ll leave them linkless, as I have faith that you can find them on Amazon or your other favorite book source if any sound interesting.

Nanny Return by Emma McLaughlin and Nikola Kraus – This follow-up of The Nanny Diaries (which I own, and have read several times) takes place 12 years later. Nan is married, pondering children of her own, weaving her way through a work-world that, again, seems a little too over-the-top to believe. She also gets tangled back up with her former charge, Grayer X (who has turned into a grade-A douche) and the rest of the X family. Just like in the first novel, nobody around Nanny is a likeable character, but for some reason I didn’t mind it in the first. I did mind it in this one, and found it to be a tolerable read, but I won’t ever need to read it again. 5 out of 10.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby – What a shocker — a Nick Hornby book about an awkward relationship and something related to the music industry. In this one, a washed-up American singer/songwriter and the girlfriend of said s/s’s biggest fans strike up a sort of pen-pal email exchange. The characters were more uninteresting than unlikeable, and the ending left me wondering, What the heck? I don’t mind an ambiguous ending, but this one was ambiguous for no real reason. But I guess since I didn’t really care all that much for the characters, it was easy to walk away without caring too much what does, or doesn’t, happen to them. 5 out of 10.

Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran by Andy Taylor – How could I not pick this one up when I saw it on the shelf? Although Andy Taylor has always been, for me, the least important (and least swoonworthy) member of Duran Duran. Turns out, according to this autobiography, he was the driving force behind much of the writing, made most of the important decisions, regularly told the other lads when they were making huge mistakes, and just plain ended up having too much integrity to stick around when things got sour. Shocking, that the guy who paints himself as the most important member of the band is also the guy who is the only one who’s quit the band twice. There was some good history in the book, but it was all surrounded by a splash of douche. 5 out of 10.

Talking to Girls about Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield – Gang, this is NOT a book about Duran Duran. It’s one of those my-quirky-youth memoirs, tied together through the strange use of the music of the ’80s. Every chapter is titled with a different ’80s song, and Sheffield’s anecdotes from his teen years link loosely (or, sometimes, very loosely) with that song. Bottom line, he lived the life of a teenager in his teenage years, listening to music that a teenager of those teenage years would listen to. Oh, those crazy teens and the teen things they do! I quit one-third of the way through and tossed it on the go-back stack. 2 out of 10 (unfinished).

The Last Colony by John Scalzi – Third in the Old Man’s War series, this book picks up where the first two left off. With the lead Old Man, and one of the main characters from The Ghost Brigades. Scalzi’s universe continues to be a fun one to read, and this novel (like The Ghost Brigades) is more of a mystery than a space-war book. Characters, pace, and story were all great. I haven’t put the final book in the series on hold yet, partially because of the stack in front of me, and partially because I want to savor this universe. 8 out of 10.

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card – Third in the Ender series, and the worst so far of that series. The second book, Speaker for the Dead, left us in a cliffhanger that showed exactly what to expect for this third book. Sadly, the book is probably half again as long as it needs to be; too much of it is full of people wondering, people pondering, and people discussing what they’re wondering and pondering. And sometimes arguing about how what they’re wondering is in opposition to what someone else is pondering. Card covers the same questions several times, until finally at the end everything gets figured out surprisingly fast. I don’t think I can handle another book like this one, so I’ve gone ahead and read the Wikipedia synopsis of book four, Children of the Mind. Now I don’t need to read it. 6 out of 10.

Breathless by Dean Koontz – I picked this one up off the new-release shelf. I’ve liked quite a few of Koontz’s books in the past, but it seems like he’s really cranking them out these days, and the quality is going somewhat downhill. This book flashes between several unrelated characters, who (shockingly) all come together in the end. But a couple of those characters weren’t really all that interesting, and I only read their chapters because I was waiting to see how they related to the characters who were vaguely interesting. An uneventful first-contact-with-aliens story, but nothing to rush to the bookstore for. 6 out of 10.

The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us From Violence by Gavin de Becker – I’ve seen this book recommended many, many times, so I figured I’d give it a read. It’s actually quite good, showing how we’ve been taught that to be “polite”, we will frequently ignore our own instincts. And it’s true — the few people in my life who have triggered my spidey-sense, even though other people seem to like them and the look and seem normal, have turned out to be major creepazoids. Fortunately, I didn’t feel shy about telling the boob-grabber to back the hell off, and I didn’t have a problem personally blackballing the guy who told a work colleague that on an out-of-town trip he was “finally going to get some of [me].” This book is a good read for both genders, and will probably be a real eye-opener for both. 8 out of 10.

The New Space Opera 2 (Collection) – This is a volume of short stories from a variety of authors. I likes me the sci-fi, and I likes me the space opera, so this was a really good read. both John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow had entries in this volume, which was what made me check it out in the first place. Now I’ll have to get volume 1 as well. Out of 19 stories, I only sped past three, which is a really good ratio for me. The 16 I completed ranged from good to fantastic, with a couple that I wished were fleshed out into full novels. 7 out of 10.

WHEW! There we go, 9 more books down. Now I can toss the Post-It on which I was building a list, and start a whole new Post-It for the rest of this stack. Read on, easy readers!

Once again, I’ve received way too many books from the library, so I’ve been reading like a fiend to tackle them all before they’re due. I’m grouping the sci-fi here, and the fluffy stuff will be in another post. So, onward!

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi: As you may recall from a previous post, I’ve read a couple of John Scalzi’s books and enjoyed them. But those were the more lighthearted books; I wasn’t sure I would be as delighted with the heavier material, namely the four books in the Old Man’s War series. But like his stuff I do, so read this book I did. And I was silly to be worried — this book was just as excellent as the lighter stuff. He’s created a fascinating universe, where humans can volunteer for the colonial defense (a badass space army) at age 75. They’re made physically fit, trained, and sent out to fight pretty much every other race in the universe. It’s almost, dare I say it, an Ender’s Game for the senior set. Scalzi has taken the sci-fi trope of training-space-soldiers and put a very cool twist on it. In full disclosure, Scott is reading this book right now, and said, “This lead characer, John, is kind of a Mary Sue, isn’t he?” I didn’t feel that, but there it is. 8 out of 10.

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi: I was going to read the latest Nick Hornby book, but then this arrived on my doorstep, and poor Nick got bumped. It’s the second book in the Old Man’s War series, set in the same universe with a couple of the same characters. But a much different angle; more of a mystery combined with sci-fi war and adventure. And again, it was a really enjoyable read. (I’ve put the third book in the series in my request queue.) Three alien races are coming together to attempt to wipe out humankind, and a human traitor is behind it. The special forces (also called the titular ghost brigades) are tasked with finding out where the traitor is, and what his plans are. The story moved along at a great clip, and the ending gave just a glimpse into the possible content of the next book, which I can’t wait to receive. 8 out of 10.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card: I enjoyed Ender’s Game immensely, so I promptly requested the second book in the series. It took a very long time to get to me; the line of library requests was oddly long. And I’ll say this right off the bat: this book is incredibly different from Ender’s Game. And at first, I had a really hard time getting into it. While the first book was about children learning to be soldiers, this book starts out about biologists studying an alien race. Eventually Ender himself enters the scene, and the book comes together not as a war book, but as a sci-fi murder mystery. Once I finally realized how completely opposite this book was, I got a lot more into it. I wish I’d known in advance that it was nothing like Ender’s Game — it might have taken less time for me to settle in. For me, then, the back half of the book really took off and got interesting. My biggest issue overall is that most of the characters had given names and nicknames, and a lot of their nicknames were similar. I spent a lot of time thinking, Wait, now who was that again? Card also pretty plainly telegraphed what the sequel would be about, and even led me to guess about some of the relationships that would develop. We’ll see if they come about the way I think; I’ve put book 3, Xenocide, on the hold list. 7 out of 10.

Onward with some fiction! Both of these books are written by John Scalzi, the shiny-new president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. I was altogether unfamiliar with Scalzi, until Wil Wheaton posted a blog post with a ghastly, horrifying, magically awesome painting, inviting readers to head over to Scalzi’s blog to find out the deets. So scoot over I did, and found John Scalzi to be an intriguing writer.

Since he’s friends with Wil Wheaton, and other friends of Wil Wheaton whom we’ve met have turned out to be really hoopy froods, I scampered over to the library Web site and put a couple of his books on hold.

Agent to the Stars arrived first, and was a great introduction to John Scalzi’s humorous sci-fi writing. A benevolent alien species wants to approach humankind in peace, but they’re smelly. And look like slime. One look at The Blob lets them know that it may not go over well, which leads the aliens to get a Hollywood agent to make the introductions.

I ripped through this book, because I didn’t want to put it down. The characters were fun, the situations clever, and the writing very witty. There were a couple of really glaring typos (which was also the case with the other Scalzi book I read), which is always distressing. And three female characters in the first part whose names start with M, which got a tad bit confusing. But considering that this was Scalzi’s first novel, written partially just to see if he could indeed write, it’s an amazing effort. A load of fun, and 8 out of 10.

The second Scalzi book I received was The Android’s Dream. On a future Earth where alien races are welcomed, a political incident arises when the Nidu species requires a specific genetically created sheep for a ceremony — the Android’s Dream sheep. (A nice nod to Philip K. Dick there.) The only problem is that someone’s killing off any and all of the sheep. Enter Harry Creek, a state department employee with a past both in the army and as a hacker. The perfect combination to find and protect Robin Baker, the only woman with a connection to the sheep needed to prevent interstellar war.

Again, the mix of humor and sci-fi was excellent. And again, I sped through this book in one day, in order to find out what happens. It tickled the same sci-fi funnybone as Douglas Adams — a nice, dry wit. 9 out of 10.

I’ve put my next Scalzi book on hold — The Old Man’s War, which is apparently the first in a set of four (the next are Ghost Brigades, Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale) more serious books. I hope he still has some of his humor, even if the material is a bit heavier. We’ll have to see if they strike me the same way his lighthearted books have.