Hey, I read a little, too

I know I focus on TV, big time. Especially during the Fantasy Football season when most of my computer time is spent on my teams (I'm #1 in one league and #2 in the other, so it's paying off).

But I also find time to read. I go on spurts where I read a ton. The last month has been one of those times.

I've promoted library use before, and I will again. If libraries have done anything for me beyond expanding my horizons, so to speak, they also force me to read. Because unlike when I buy books (which doesn't happen so much anymore-- which is okay since I've got hundreds on shelves at home), when I borrow them from the library, I have to take them back.

So I usually end up reading them.

Here's what I've read in the last few weeks:

The Van Halen Encyclopedia, C. J. Chilvers.
I'm a big Van Halen fan. Probably a bigger fan than most. I have every album, nearly every solo work any member has done, an enormous collection of magazines with interviews of any band member, and I've also tried to keep up on the goings on of the members throughout the years.

C.J. Chilvers is a mega-fan. This labor of love must have been an enormous undertaking. He's listed every album, release dates, dates they went gold, platinum, diamond. He's got every album of every member (including Hagar and Roth's solo work, and albums Cherone has been on). He's got as many tour dates as he could dig up (and even gives the usual set list-- or any aberrations).

There's a ton of info in this book.

I plan to hunt down a copy and buy it for my book shelf someday. That's probably the highest recommendation I can give.


Sir Apropos of Nothing, Peter David.
I'm a long-time Peter David fan. It began when he revolutionized the comic book The Incredible Hulk (which I was really lucky to get in on just as he started his 10-year run). I was the owner of some of his earliest work in books (the great Knight Life) until a copy I lent out never came back (it took me years to track down another copy). I can't/won't claim to have read all of his novel work; I'm probably closer to having read about half his work. Apropos, at 500 pages, is, by far, his longest work, and did he ever pack in the story.

Apropos is about as low in the medieval food-chain as one can get (bastard son of a whore who lives in the back room of a tavern), and he's not a very heroic character by any means. In fact, his entire existence is to exist. So he's not about to stick his neck out for someone else. David uses a first person narrative, which is about the only way an outwardly unsympathetic character can gain any possibility of sympathy from the reader. It works very well.

As can be expected in a fantasy novel (which this one is very accessible to any reader), Apropos finds himself in an adventure (actually, a long string of many adventures). I won't go into detail, but let's just say there's enough here to sustain an entire series of books.

As with most Peter David books I've read, the tone of the book is very playful. There's loads of humor and wordplay, and that can be a little offputting to some. I'll admit, once in a while the names pulled me out of the book briefly. Names like Apropos, Sir Umbrage (Apropos "had to take Umbrage"), Queen Beatrice (who likes to be known as Bea; Queen Bea), and King Meander (whose kingdom is a gypsy-like caravan; you know, it meanders from place to place). But that's a small quibble. There's also a number of pretty graphic scenes, some of which involve battles (or Apropos' ways of getting out of battles) and some of which involve sex (no Penthouse-style stuff, but it was in stark contrast to the rest of the book) which probably hit so hard because the book is so playful otherwise.

But I really did like this book, and I've got the next in the series (Woad to Wuin) on hold at the library.


Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth, Jenny McCarthy.

Yes, that Jenny McCarthy. The hot blonde, who may not be a great actress, but knows what she's good at-- being funny.

McCarthy took a chance and wrote this book for women. It's a chance because she can pretty much hook a readership of men (although there's no pictures in this book), but women are usually a little less forgiving to let a "hot chick" with no medical or writing experience tell them about pregnancy.

But McCarthy immediately puts herself down and shows she's no different than any other woman, and I'm sure she did a good job (as she's got two more books published since this one). You see, she had the worst pregnancy of anyone I've ever read or heard about. I can't imagine everything that goes on to women when they're pregnant-- even though I'm married to a mother of two-- but Jenny let me into her world.

And she didn't use flowery language. She had to pee like crazy, she puked, she was constipated, she feared crapping on the bed at the hospital (which many women do when giving birth, I guess) and she had much, much more bodily stuff go on that I probably should know.

I can't say this was a great book, but it was fun-- and very easy (and fast) to read. I liked it enough to start reading her next book Baby Laughs.


And saving the best for last:

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks

I don't really dig zombie movies. I've seen a few of the better ones (the original Night of the Living Dead and the comedy Shaun of the Dead) and I like the comic book series The Walking Dead, but zombies don't really do it for me.

But I really, really liked this book.

Brooks takes a very unique approach to this book. Imagine the earth was overrun by zombies, and humans had to fight back. Imagine the humans won (at least have made the planet nearly 100% zombie-free). Now imagine a journalist travelling the world and recording the stories of politicians, soldiers, military leaders, fathers, mothers, children, heroes, scumbags, astronauts, and on and on about their experiences during the Zombie War.

This entire book reads like dozens of people telling their stories. Each story is a few pages long, and all together, they tell a very whole tale.

I found the premise brilliant and very engaging. Each story tells a different piece of the war, or how the zombies acted, or how people reacted. Each storyteller comes from a different walk of life. Many stories move the plot along, others tell a very emotional tale, and a few even gave me the creeps.

I highly recommend this book. It's another easy one to read. As I said, each story is only a few pages long, so it's easy to find a break to set the book down if you're short on time.

But I'll say it is a very difficult book to put down. It pulls you in.

The only quibble I have is that there wasn't a timeline at the end of the book. It's not necessary to the story, but as a reader who was fascinated by the world, I was hoping for a way to really see how long the war took (was it three years? five? it was less than ten?) and how the zombie invasion progressed and then was repelled.

But I suppose I'll have to read it again, and maybe this time, I'll note the places/events as they're told so I can have a concise overview of the war.

Or maybe I'll cheat and Google it...