The Android's Dream (John Scalzi)

A complicated and fun SF story about aliens who are maneuvering for control over their own government and Earth as well, aided by humans who want to rule the planet as their governors. All that stands in their way is a resourceful ex-military diplomat, a pet shop owner, a few honest diplomats, an odd religion, and a sentient computer (or maybe two). A droll, tongue-in-cheek style smooths out the twists and turns, making the whole journey very enjoyable.

On Stranger Tides (Tim Powers)

This was recommended by someone (I don't remember who) as their favorite ghost-pirate story, and I guess I'd have to agree with that. I loved his mythic fantasy "Last Call" and didn't much care for his magic spy thriller "Destiny," and this fell somewhere in the middle. Jack Shandy's transformation in a few months from angry Englishman seeking revenge to supremely powerful magic wielder, pirate, and skilled sailor was a little too much do me to buy, but the action was good and the darkly fantastical atmosphere well drawn.

The Cheese Monkeys (Chip Kidd)

This is an odd little book, but interesting, about a young man who decided to major in art, though he's not sure why. His first semester he falls for a wild, dangerous, challenging young woman who enjoys pushing boundaries and everyone's buttons. His second semester focuses on a graphic design course they both take, taught by a man who is even more wild and challenging. The author has a lot to say about Art, Design, and the differences between them, but the book is mostly about their relationship, which is frustrating and baffling. I can't say I enjoyed it, really, but I was fascinated in an appalled sort of way, and the writing itself was fine.

Halting State (Charles Stross)

This is also a re-read of a past favorite (I'm in comfort-book mode, I guess, as the semester is winding down). It's a mind-boggling trip through the virtual realities of near-future Scotland, opening with a bank in the online world being robbed by a party of Orcs and a dragon and going sideways from there. The story is action-packed and the mystery is gripping, as it explores how the digital world has changed us fundamentally (one character, looking around Edinburgh, notes that it looks pretty much as it has looked for about a hundred years, but underneath the stone and glass all the nerves and muscles that make things work have been ripped out and completely replaced). I enjoyed it.

What's the Worst That Could Happen? (Donald Westlake)

I've read this before, and loved it just as much the second time! Max Fairbanks, a spoiled, rich egomaniac, caught Dortmunder red-handed in a botched small-time robbery, and added insult to arrest by laying a claim to a ring Dortmunder's lady May had given him. "What's the worst that could happen?" he asked, smugly. The rest of the book answers that question, as Dortmunder and his gang of quirky crooks make it their single-minded mission to relieve Fairbanks of the ring, and whatever else of value they could take in the process.

On Food and Cooking (Harold McGee)

I was looking forward to reading this famous book about the science of food. It fulfilled all my expectations and more - much more - too much more, in fact. I got so bogged down in all the details of the chemistry, history, linguistics, and so on that I found it tough going. Maybe I'm not as much of a science geek as I'd like to think, but I was looking more for practical cooking techniques with their scientific foundations, and less for the full college-level scientific analysis of every fiber and component. I wound up abandoning it early.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Helen Simonson)

This delightful novel focuses on a thoroughly proper upper-crust elderly Englishman whose brother dies. This simple event forces him to recognize complex issues of prejudice, family, greed, and love that he had resolutely ignored. Touching, warm, and true.

Eugene Onegin (Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin)

This English translation of a famous long novel by the Russian writer is quite remarkable. I don't know any Russian so I don't know how it compares, but the poem I read seemed quite natural in English, following an intricate rhyme scheme but still unforced, colloquial but not trendy. Nonetheless, I'm just not big on poetry. I was drawn into the story of the ne'er-do-well rake, bored with society and countryside alike, playing games with the affections and friendship of others, driven by a callous joke to killing his young friend in a duel and then spiraling downhill. But I kept getting distracted by the rhyme and stanza structure; I would have been more immersed in the story if it had been prose. Also, I couldn't identify with anyone in the story; everyone was cruel, or foolish, or histrionic, or otherwise just made me want to shake them. So I guess I'd have to say this was not for me. I'm glad I read it, though. That's what book clubs are best at; inspiring me to read things I otherwise wouldn't.

The Help (Kathryn Stockett)

In Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, the lines between white folks and the black women who clean their homes, cook their meals, and raise their children seem inviolable. This novel describes how one white woman's ambition to become a writer leads her to cross those lines, enlisting a dozen maids to tell their stories in a book that threatens to tear their society apart. Though simplistic in many ways, the story rings true. Stockett has captured the voices and the attitudes of her characters spot-on and built a world that is compelling and uplifting even as it breaks your heart.

The Invisible Gorilla (Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons)

An accessible, scientifically supported, and fascinating look at the many ways in which our intuitions mislead us. The authors explore the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, causation, and potential to show how the cognitive processes that normally serve us so well can, under the right circumstances, lead us dangerously awry. This book is a wonderful exploration of how our minds work, and how they don't, that gives us a glimpse behind the curtain of the mind. Highly recommended for anyone interested in cognitive psychology, or anyone who thinks (or thinks they think).

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)

This mystery thriller, set in Sweden, starts out slowly with a focus on a journalist involved in financial reporting, but a few hundred pages in suddenly takes off with the investigation of a decades-old missing person case and a deeply dysfunctional but powerful family. The violence was intense, graphic, and appalling, but it made for gripping reading. Though the focus was on the journalist, the most fascinating character was "the girl with the dragon tattoo," a thoroughly intriguing, kick-ass, flawed but stalwart young woman. I will definitely read the other books in the series to learn more about her and her background.

The Broken Window (Jeffrey Deaver)

A typically exciting example of the Lincoln Rhyme series, full of Deaver's usual twists and turns. A fiendishly clever serial killer uses the kind of data collected online about each of us not only to track his victims, but to frame others for the crimes. He is only caught after targeting Rhyme's cousin to take the fall for his latest killing. This is as much a warning about issues of cyber-privacy as it is a murder mystery.

A Taste of Fame (Linda Evans Shepherd & Eva Marie Everson)

This was an impulse selection at the library, and it was a mistake. Nothing against the book or the authors, but it's not for me. A group that started out as a bible study class morphed somehow into a catering club (not any kind of a formal business - women are just good at food, you know?). Through an unlikely set of circumstances they wound up as contestants on a national TV cooking contest. They are sure to win, collecting $1 million (for the church capital fund, of course), becoming closer together and resolving their personal issues in the process. I gave it about 40 pages before moving on. I found it too "chick-lit" - too much about girls hanging together, worried about husbands and kids and boyfriends, and clothes and jewelry and food.

Ordinary Injustice (Amy Bach)

Bach describes problems with America's criminal justice system by analyzing four situations in depth: a county in Georgia providing ineffective defense to indigent suspects, a highly respected judge in upstate New York thrown off the bench for routinely denying rights to people in need, a prosecutor in Mississippi who arbitrarily decides to ignore inconvenient cases, and another prosecutor turned defense lawyer who raised questions, freeing men he had sent to jail decades before, raising the ire of lawyers and police. In each case, she sees the problems stemming not from a few bad actors, but from well-intentioned people trying to get by in a broken system. The problem is that too many important legal decisions are made in secrecy, without any oversight, under conditions that focus on moving cases through the system efficiently, not on justice. This is a scary, important book.

Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond)

An ambitious and largely successful attempt to illuminate some of the complex historical forces that drove some human cultures, largely Eurasian, to develop so much faster than others since the end of the last ice age. The main factors he identifies are environmental; Eurasia had a larger suite of plants and animals suitable for domestication, an east-west axis that made it easier for crops and livestock to diffuse to nearby regions with similar climates, and few natural boundaries to this diffusion. As a result, farming and husbandry developed earlier and spread faster there, supporting denser human populations and therefore more innovation (and more deadly germs from the animals, to which they developed some resistance). The author supports his thesis with a great volume of data that is exhaustive, not to say exhausting.

The Birth of the Mind (Gary Marcus)

Subtitled "How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexity of Human Thought." A fascinating description of the current science linking genes to psychology. Working from molecules up, the author describes how the brain, and therefore the mind, is specified in our DNA. It's not hardwired, but flexibly prewired, through general recipes and autonomously functioning agents. It makes the whole system awe-inspiring!

The Road to Ruin (Donald Westlake)

Classic example of a Dortmunder story. He and his band of merry crooks devise a clever plot to steal the classic car collection from a sleazy ex-corporate executive who has ripped off everyone who ever had dealings with him. Unfortunately, several other groups have devised clever plots of their own. All these plots collide in the usual hilarious fashion. Lots of fun, and some great lines. (The executive is safe from the law because "You can't touch these guys, every one of them is surrounded by a moat filled with man-eating lawyers.")

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread (Don Robertson)

A gentle, nostalgic story set in 1944. A 9-year-old boy decides to make a trek across Cleaveland to bolster his courage and self-respect. He winds up dragging his little sister in a borrowed wagon, and arrives just in time to be part of a great explosion, during which he proves his courage for real. The disaster was real, and the stories of all the people it affected are equally real, and sad. The writing style has it's oddities, partly because of the times (it was written in 1962, set in 1944), but also for idiosyncratic reasons (many words, such as selfrespect, are run together, and everyone is given the same, complete name each time). I enjoyed it but didn't love it.

Burn Me Deadly (Alex Bledsoe)

Sequel to "The Sword-Edged Blonde," an interesting mix of sword-and-sorcery fantasy and hard-boiled detective story. When sword-jockey Eddie LaCrosse picks up a young woman who escaped from someone, she winds up dead and Eddie spends the rest of the book trying to find out why and deliver some justice. This one's more sword than sorcery, and there are some graphic torture scenes that are hard to take, but it's still a good read.