Lonesome Dove

This book is like a stew. BEAR WITH ME PEOPLE! This is going somewhere.

Day 1 of stew: This stew is okay. It's stew - what do you want me to say? It's simple and it's filling.

Day 2 of stew: Sure, this stew isn't fancy. But I was working as a professional business lady all day and it's nice to be able to heat up a comforting bowl for dinner.

Day 3 of stew: This stew keeps getting better & better. All the flavors are coming together. Stew - you keep surprising me! I am glad I have a giant tub of you in the fridge.

Day 4: What a long day. I am glad I have you, Stew. You are coziness personified. You are like an old friend.

Day 5: STEW THERE IS ONLY ONE BOWL OF YOU LEFT! I'm not ready to say goodbye! At the beginning you felt like you would last forever...but I see now how short-sighted I was. *single tear*

Day 6: There is no more stew. RIP Stew. I'm sorry I took you for granted in the beginning. I could make you again, but it won't be the same as the first time. Goodbye. Goodbye...forever. *sobs*

Additional notes on Lonesome Dove that don't fit into a stew metaphor (believe me, I tried):

• Fantastic character names. Pea Eye! Newt! Dish! Soupy! Dang, now I feel like I probably could have worked those names into a stew metaphor. Lazy, Jane!
• The dialog is amazing enough to make you want to slip snippets of it into your own conversations. This will result in an uncomfortable silence when you're on a conference call at work with your New York office about the Q4 budget and you say, "I doubt it matters where you die...but it matters where you live."
• This is the type of novel that is rightly described as "epic," and an "opus." Epic & Opus would also be acceptable character names in a Larry McMurtry novel, I think.

5 grizzly bear fighting bulls out of 5.

Game Change

Reading this book is worth it for the moisturizing effects of the John Edwards chapters alone - the grease oozing off of the pages has made my skin smoother and my hair more lustrous (but not so bouncy that anyone would accuse me of a $400 salon visit).

There was enough drama, back-stabbing, and general bitchery in the 2008 elections to make an episode of the Real Housewives look like Romper Room. The highs were dizzyingly high (Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention!) and the lows were mind-blowingly low ("I can see Alaska from my hooooouse!"). This book is the treasure at the end of the rainbow made of Hilary Clinton's pantsuits. Bring on November 2012 - this book already showed us Obama's faults & failings in the run up to the elections, so I really can't wait for the inside scoop on Mittens Romney - not to mention Herman "There's A Lot of Women I Didn't Sexually Harass" Cain, Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann, Rick "Brokeback Style" Perry , Newt "Child Janitor" Gingrich, and Rick "Santorum" Santorum. OH GOD WRITE GAME CHANGE: 2012 IMMEDIATELY PLEASE.

4 "you betcha's" out of 5.

Columbine

This is a great book, for which I can't really write a quick & cute review. For obvious reasons, I hope. Dave Cullen is quick to say that he's never called this the "definitive" book on what's arguably the most famous school shooting in American history, but I can't imagine any one will write another one that unpacks the tragedy so eloquently and in such a deeply-felt way. I had a really weird, pained expression on my face the entire time I was reading this, and I couldn't put it down. It's also a great read for anyone interested in how the media gets it wrong sometimes; with insights into the 24 hour news cycle, eyewitness testimony, the power of a martyr, and much more.

5 stars out of 5.

The Devil in the White City

Fairs! What could be more fun?! Tilt-a-Whirls, that Viking Ship thing, and excellent representations from my favorite tiers of the food pyramid: Fried Things and Sugar Delivery Systems. I will always love getting effed up on some cotton candy and then being spun around violently by a ride that looks like a rejected transformer and is operated by a drunk teenager. That's just the kid in me, I guess! But this book taught me that fairs have a dark side, and it's America's First Serial Killer. H.H. Holmes was a scary dude with a literal house of horrors. He  would just pick off people at the fair as they exited the world's first Ferris Wheel, burning them with buckets of molten cheese. And that's why we call deep dish pizza Chicago-style! The end.

Nah, it was much less dramatic but still very gruesome and creepy. Erik Larsen doesn't talk once about pizza. Even though I really love reading about psychopaths (exhibits A, B, C...etc), my favorite part of this book was actually the Ferris Wheel stuff. There is a story about a guy who had a panic attack while it was rising into the air and basically tried to bust out one of the windows, just a little bit of history repeating.

4 mid-air freak-outs out of 5.