Bossypants

Do you want to know if your new lady acquaintance is a potential best friend? Ask her if she thinks she would be friends with Tina Fey, IRL.* If she responds with "Dude if Tina Fey knew me we'd totally be best friends!" then you know she is cool enough to maybe be your biff. Tina Fey: The New Litmus Test for Assessing Friendship Potential.

This book is so great. So great and funny. I especially enjoy the chapter on Tina's dad, Don Fey, who my grandfather would have probably wanted to be best friends with. SEE - it's genetic.

You know what's weird? I have a great for reals best friend and she kind of looks like Tina Fey. And she says Liz Lemon-y things like "I'm terrified that someone might be crying in the Starbucks I'm working in right now. ROBOT NO WANT EMOTION."

Life is great.

5 terrifying man arms out of 5.

*In Real Life. As opposed to fantasy life, where you are TF are already best friends who solve mysteries together and are heiresses to an ice cream fortune. And Amy Poehler is there too, naturally.

The Emperor of All Maladies

Remember in Kindergarten Cop where Arnold says "It's not a too-mah!"? This book is a point-by-point rebuttal of that statement proving that, most likely, it is a tumor.

You'll learn a lot, you'll cry, you will not laugh, you'll come face to face with your own mortality...

Be prepared to spend some time feeling for lumps and bumps after reading, is all I'm saying.

3.5 irregular moles out of 5.

Secret Historian

How do you not pick up a book subtitled "professor, tattoo artist, and sexual renegade"? I kind of want that on my tombstone (but I'll probably end up with "reader, eater of kettle corn, bad dancer").

Samuel Steward taught at a Catholic university, wrote gay pulp fiction, documented all of his sexual encounters, became a tattoo artist, and had "encounters" with Rock Hudson and Rudolph Valentino - AND MORE. And not in that order. His life was full of sadness and passion and craziness and sailor uniforms (so many sailor uniforms!). He had a tattoo of a winged penis on his shoulder. DUDE. Dude.

Do not read this book on public transportation, because you WILL get to the insert with the photos in the middle. Not safe for work or bus.

Samuel Steward aka Phil Sparrow aka Phil Andros - RIP. You crazy bitch.

4 gay sailors out of 5.

Life

I love Keith Richards. The man is basically a walking pickle, at this point. But that pickle has some great stories! I skipped some of the in-depth descriptions of chord progressions and musical arrangements - get to the scandals, Keef! Even the scandals were kind of sweet sounding when described in Keith's "aw shucks, I guess there was some heroin involved but man no one got hurt and, you know, it was the 70s, man" way.

4 bottles of Jack Daniels out of 5 - chased with a line of coke.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

I love horror fiction (erm, as opposed to horror non-fiction? Like Glenn Beck books? Anyway...) but I have been derelict in my reading of the original "weird fiction" writer, HP Lovecraft. I knew as much about him as I knew about other famous HP's (HP Steak Sauce and HP Laptop That Always Overheats), so I decided to pick up this little collection. I enjoyed it - quaintly creepy (like Precious Moments figurines!) and with a lot of evocative descriptions of slimy drippy huge gross monstrous things.

Things to avoid in life, according to HP LC:
1. Musty odors. To survive in one of his stories, remember this helpful rule: If the odor is musty, your old timey bicycle best not be rusty! Because you should drive away thusly!
2. Odd geometry. If the structure be crazy, don't be lazy! Because you should get away, baby!
3. New England farmhouses. UNLESS you are antiquing. I have no rhyme for this. The rhymes were a mistake.

Three and a half extraneous "h"'s out of five.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This story needed to be told, and Rebecca Skloot was absolutely up to the task. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer decades ago, but her cells, taken without her knowledge or permission, have lived on in laboratories around the world ever since. Researchers have shot them into space and blown them up with nuclear bombs. Their production and sale has made millions of dollars, and caused billions of dollars in damage by contaminating other cell culture. Henrietta's family had no idea her cells lived on after her death - and Skloot expertly delves into the consequences of their finding out and the ethical issues that all human cell research presents.

I'm still donating my body to science, though. I'm definitely not getting into space any other way.

4 dividing cells out of 5 (so, 8 cells out of 10).

Hell House

Hey, let's go spend the week at this place called Hell House. Sure, it's called Hell House, but it's a really nice mansion and this old guy will pay us some money if we stay there for a week. Don't let the name Hell House freak you out! Haha, yeah the windows are all bricked up, that's weird. I think the last people who lived in HELL HOUSE were kind of eccentric. What's that? Murders? Insanity?

Oh yeah, maybe that happened...

...Hey, look how much air I can get jumping on these great feather beds! At HELL HOUSE! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

3 groping disembodied hands out of 5.