Bedbugs

Oh man. If you know me (and you do because, let's face it, this blog ain't no Dooce), you know that when I see a mattress on the side of the road I give it a wiiiiiiide berth. In New York, in Boston, in any city where students are crammed into tiny apartments where they spend their days swapping fluids with anything that moves (or so the media has led me to believe), bed bugs have taken hold. Every year, the students flee, they deposit their urine (I *hope* that's urine?) stained mattresses on the streets, and the bed bugs flex their haunches and prepare to launch onto whomever is so foolish as to walk within 2-3 feet. ALSO they never die. ALSO they can live in books. BOOKS. Bedbugs, you wound me to my CORE!

To sum: This book is scary & gross. The characters are well-developed, and there are some great twists and turns. Also if you get bed bugs, we can no longer be friends. Sorry.

4 tiny spots of blood on your pillow out of 5. Huh. Weird...

UFOs

Oh. My. GOD. Let me just say that I believe everything I read, and am also easily frightened, so I should have not picked up this book. But I did, because I enjoy having thoughts like "Can't let my leg fall over the side of the bed because the ALIEN WILL GRAB IT!"

This book will tell you all about the hundreds of sightings by people who know the difference between the reflection of Venus/swamp gas/weather balloons/balloon boys, and actual crazy metal cigar-shaped light-up hyperfast hovering ALIEN SPACE CRAFT. Aiiieeeee they're here and they're going to probe us.

Does Obama know? Does FLOTUS know? Flotus save us! Dazzle the aliens with your sparkle converse and sick dance moves while Barack herds us into the secret bunkers under the Rocky Mountains!

4 tinfoil hats out of 5.

The Panic Hand

These stories - so great. So WEIRD. They zig and zag all over the place but you always end up somewhere awesome. The story "Friend's Best Man" won the World Fantasy Award and stars a dog that can predict the future. A magic dog! Look, I can't even go into all the details beyond the psychic dog, the story with God as a housekeeper, the imaginary friend who is alive...it's all good. Kelly Link and Aimee Bender owe some big debts to Carroll - if you enjoyed their short stories I would definitely pick this up if you can find a copy.

Friend's Best Man = 5 magic Jack Russell terriers out of 5.

The rest of the book = 3.5 raging World Fantasy Awards after-parties out of 5.

Oprah

Oprah A Biography by Kitty Kelley is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere! A "friend" lent me this book in an effort to make me hate Oprah (I say "friend" because what kind of true friend would want you to hate Oprah?). BUT, here's my beef - yes, Oprah is a narcissist with delusions of grandeur (but she is kind of grand, so maybe it's not a delusion). HOWEVER, the stories that try to make you hate her are all like "I used to work for Oprah and, the nerve, she used to ask us what extravagant presents we wanted and then GIVE THEM TO US." What a narcissistic bitch. Oprah: Do you need a librarian? Call me. I'll organize all your back issues of O Magazine. I don't think it's weird that you're on the cover of every single one!*

This book could have used more Gayle & Stedman though. I think we all know that they're really the ones pulling the strings.

3 dates with Roger Ebert out of 5.

*Ok, it's a little weird.

The Help and Mockingjay - a Books with Birds on the Covers Twofer

So you'd *think* that these books have nothing in common. One is the final book in a trilogy about an emo girl with badass archery skills fighting an evil government, the other is about...holy crap as I am writing this I realize it's about an emo girl with badass writing (interviewing?) skills fighting an evil social system. My system of pairing books together based on the animals on their covers WORKS.

Anyway, the battle against the evil social system that was segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s was definitely the more compelling of the two. The Hunger Games trilogy could not have ended on more of a whimper. One of the evil forces Katniss had to fight against was black goo. GOO. Goo doesn't have the villainous charisma of a pudgy bigoted socialite like Hilly Holbrook. Anyway, read the first two Hunger Games books, spare yourself the last one which is fighting goo but mostly just sitting around like a whiny B saying "Gale, Peeta, Gale, Peeta". Read Battle Royale instead - now *that* was a book about high school students fighting each other to the death!

Oh, just see the movies when they come out.

Mockingjay: 1 sad-sack emo angst-filled teenage inner monologue out of 5 (except really 5 out of 5 of those because that is all the book is! But also, it's terrible. So, 1 out of 5).

The Help: 3 WASPY bridge parties out of 5.

A Dance with Dragons

Awwwwww yisss. I was 21 when A Feast for Crows came out, y'all. In a perfect world, I would have still been sleeping off my 21st birthday hangover when A Dance with Dragons was published. Instead I had to wait SIX GODDAMNED YEARS to figure out what the hell happened to Tyrion after he

*SPOILER ALERT*

Killed his own damn father with a crossbow to the gut. SIX YEARS of not knowing what kind of shit sandwich Jon Snow and Stannis were slapping together up on a wall of 700 motherfreaking feet of ICE. GODDAMN IT. SIX YEARS OF NO DRAGONS.

*Deep breath*

Ok, I'm over it. I respect the process. I realize this isn't so much a review as a nerdgasm word vomit rage cloud so let me throw out some key takeaways:

• You should probably start from the beginning and read Game of Thrones, immediately. THEN watch the HBO series. The HBO series is not a substitute for reading the first book. What is this, high school English?! Read first, enjoy Sean Bean later. Trust.
• This book has plenty of Tyrion being Tyrion, don't worry. I know, I told you not to watch the HBO show instead of reading, but all I see is Dinklage now when reading Tyrion's POV - and it's great. The world needs more Dinklage.
• The dragons have gone from adorable to scary - these are not your adorable neighborhood Pixar-like beasts. Plenty of face-melting going on.
• Daario is kind of annoying, no? Just me? I can't get behind a blue-haired sexy person - I am picturing him so emo. Maybe like a medieval Pete Wentz?
• The main point I took away from this part of the series is that being in charge kind of sucks. Undead foes can especially complicate things. Obama - take notes!
• If we have to wait 5+ years for the next book I will be very, very sad. If I can get knocked up, give birth, and have the kid potty-trained and talking before you write the next book - that's too long, George. That's not my plan, by the way - but the point still stands.
• If it doesn't have a map at the beginning, 25 pages of ridiculously complicated family trees at the end, and an entire WIKI to tide you over in between books; then, honey, it ain't an epic series.

4 deliciously armor-clad Sean Beans out of 5. FOR THOSE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOKS & SEEN THE SHOW THAT IS A CRAZY IRONIC SCORE.

Damn it, seriously - when is the next one coming out?

Thinner

Jenny Craig ain't got nothing on this jam. Forget counting calories, or points, or working out - ALL you have to do to fit into those skinny jeans is run over an old Gypsy lady with your car and wait for her pissed-off family to curse you.

Only Stephen King could make losing weight easily into a creepy story. His next book should be about someone getting a raise...they don't deserve! Nightmares-ville.

4 new belt notches out of 5.