David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Gregory A Prince

Excellent. A fascinating look at DOM and the church during his administration.

Dream Country (Sandman, Book 3) by Neil Gaiman

Meh. I was disappointed because the second one was so good. It was really short, only three tales, and none of them thrilled me.

The Doll's House (Sandman, Book 2) by Neil Gaiman

Excellent. Definitely much better than the first one. It was fairly disturbing, but I liked it.

The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

I'm not really into comics, but I've read everything else by Neil Gaiman (quite possibly my favorite author), so it was time to give his Sandman series a try. It took a while to get into it, but I enjoyed it.

The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark

Very interesting. I plan to look for more books by this author.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

SPOILER WARNING! DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED!

So good. Very good. Book 6 kind of sucked. I didn't object to Dumbledore's death; I objected to how boring the book was. Therefore I worried that the conclusion to the saga would be a disappointment. I'm glad I was wrong.

Fred's death is the saddest to me, followed by Lupin's. I was not shocked by Lupin's death, but I honestly was not expecting Fred's. I was actually kind of glad that Dobby died just because he's so annoying, and yet I cried as I read of his burial and small memorial. I'm glad to see depth to Dumbledore, and am glad to see that Snape really isn't evil, and I'm glad Ron and Hermione lived (though surprised the both made it). I'm surprised Harry lived. I love that Neville is a hero.

I generally don't like epilogues that jump years into the future, and this was no exception. We are given every indication that Ron and Hermione will end up together and Harry and Ginny will end up together and, hey, what do you know, that's what happens. Why bother jumping into the future to show that? It should have ended with Harry wanting to go to the Gryffindor tower to lay down. If she wanted the epilogue, she should have actually shown info we didn't already basically know.

All in all, this was a very good conclusion to the saga. It's been a lot of fun. I would be very happy if JK Rowling writes another series in that same world - not about Harry and Ron and Hermione, but other new characters unrelated to them. I really, really love the world she created.

Psion by Joan D. Vinge

I read this in high school and loved it, so I wanted to reread it to see if it was as good as I remembered (though I remembered nothing about it other than I loved it). The conclusion? It is indeed an excellent book.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Chilling, terrifying, fascinating. A very good book. I desperately wanted to know what destroyed the planet, but can definitely see why the author left that out - it doesn't matter to the story. When it ended, I desperately wanted to know what happened next.

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan

Mundane. Boring. It's a tale of a middle-age woman with two grown children. Her husband informs her that he's fallen in love with someone else and is leaving her. Two days later she is fired from her job, an event related to her husband leaving her, as they worked at the same company, and the woman he fell in love with was her assistant. (The book is set in London. If it were somewhere in the U.S., the firing would have been immediately followed by a lawsuit.) And then a couple days later her cat dies. She accepts it all and moves on. That's it. That's the entire story. I don't know where revenge comes into it.

I would give it a medium rating because I really like the author's use of language. It is very appealing. She is also good with characterization. If she can take her talent with language and characterization and find a good story somewhere in her mind, she could be very, very good. This tale, however, was dreadfully dull.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America by Chris Hedges

Not very good. It was basically an anti-evangelical Christianity book. I’m not really a fan of evangelical Christianity, but this was seriously over the top. It wasn’t at all what I thought the book was about when I bought it.

One of his arguments was that evangelical Christianity was a cult because they befriend converts. No! The bastards!

Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo by Lawrence Anthony

Excellent. I found out about Babylon's Ark from a story last weekend on CBS Sunday Morning about Mr. Anthony and what he did for the Baghdad Zoo, and I just had to read it. It is indeed a moving book. Paragraph to paragraph I was alternately horrified at the cruelty of humanity and moved to tears by the kindness of humanity.

It begins when Mr. Anthony is watching the U.S. bomb Baghdad before taking it. He owns and lives at a game preserve in South Africa, and man who loves animals, and knows that wartime is particularly cruel to animals in zoos, as they are completely abandoned to die horrible deaths from starvation or thirst. He knows he can't do much about the war, but he can - hopefully - help the animals. So with some outright lies, stretching of the truth, and luck, he manages to get to Baghdad just after the American troops. He gets to the zoo and finds it in worse shape than he expected. Nevertheless, he gets to work, doing all he can to save the animals that remain (most having been taken by looters for food or sale on the black market).

The time sequence in the book isn't clear - he discusses events at various places in time - but it seems like what he did takes a year or more. However, the whole thing, from the time he arrived in Baghdad until the zoo opened once again to the public with healthy animals, was a mere 4 months. It is amazing all that took place in those four months. Six weeks after the zoo opened, he returned home to South Africa, the zoo fully in the hands of the Iraqis.

In the final chapter of the book, the author steps out of the tale of his experience and onto a soapbox. Though I agree with much of his perspective (that we humans are currently poor stewards of the Earth), it was kind of annoying and I skimmed through that chapter rather than read it. Still, it is a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent book simply because it is easy to skip, and also because I feel hard-pressed to chastise him for taking the chance to rant on his soapbox after what he did and saw in Baghdad.

So definitely read this book.

Life of Pi By Yann Martel

Very, very good. It started slow, and I actually wonder if it would be even stronger as a short story, but still I like it as a novel.

Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses: A Memoir By Paula McLain

Very interesting, and also very sad. This is the true story of a girl and her two sisters, one older and one younger, who were abandoned by their parents. They lived with their grandmother for a short time, but then she turned them over to the state. They then grew up in foster families, where they were never really anything other than outsiders and sometimes abused. Only when they were adults did their mother come back into their lives, and they found out she’d remarried and had a whole other life without them, but they reconciled anyway.

This book was depressing because I ached that these girls did not have love from family growing up. They did have each other, though, and it seems that is the only way they emotionally survived.

Life: The Odds: And How to Improve Them By Gregory Baer

An amusing simple read. It goes over the odds of things - good and bad - happening in your life, like marrying royalty or succeeding in starting a business or dying from various deaths. Around the middle, I started getting bored and skimmed over some of the chapters. Some of them were quite fascinating though.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Funny and enjoyable. I enjoyed his writings of his wanderings.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

Loved it. I do enjoy his books. This describes his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail (he doesn't hike all of it, but he certainly hikes a large chunk). This book was fun to read.

Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology by Donna Jarrell and Ira Sukrungruang

Meh. I had such high hopes for these fat/fat acceptance books, and they all came highly recommended, but none of them met my expectations. This one was no exception.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Loved it! I love apocalyptic stories, though, so I'm an easy target for this book. Still, it was excellent.

Stick Figure by Lori Gottlieb

Interesting.

Body Wars: Making Peace with Women's Bodies, an Activist's Guide by Margo Maine

Meh. Didn't really do anything for me.

Stick Figure: A Personal Journey Through Anorexia and Bulimia by Christine Fontana

Pretty good. It was an interesting world to read about.

Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco

Meh. A couple of the essays were pretty good, but most were boring at best.

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman

Some hits, some misses. Overall a good read. I have yet to try his graphic novels (I know, I'm a bad fan), but his novels are more to my taste than his short stories. Still, there were some good ones.

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Interesting. So obvious (to others, anyway). Giving it a try.