Small Favor by Jim Butcher

The latest – geez, tenth -- Harry Dresden book. Winter fairies something something missing mobster something evil demons, insert explosions where appropriate.

Sorry. I read this book in less than thirty-six hours, while simultaneously getting over law school exams and a hangover, and packing everything I own. It was exactly the right reading choice for that situation, for everyone's reference. I mean, it's a Harry Dresden book – a 350 page string of magical battles in increasingly bizarre and urban picturesque locations, punctuated by tarnished hero angst and a lot of sarcasm. There are days when that's exactly what you need, you know?

So did the TV show get canceled? That would be a shame, because I seem to recall it spontaneously developing some awesome at the end of the twelve-episode run.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

A meandering, rather disorganized, but amusingly footnoted tour through what our bodies can do after death: practice for surgeons, automobile safety tests, fertilizer, etc.

This one I read in less than thirty-six hours while unpacking all of my worldly possessions. My attention obviously wandered, but I tuned in enough to take in a reasonably interesting book suffering for the presence of its author. It's not that I object to Roach making jokes about corpses. I'm totally with her on this one – the person has departed, and what's left is purely in the realm of the pragmatic. I don't object to the jokes for being in bad taste – I object to the jokes for just being bad. Go snigger behind your hand like a twelve-year-old on your own time, Roach, and leave me with the interesting bits.

Leaves me suspicious of trying her new book on sex research. Someone please tell me Roach has tuned her funny at all?

ETA: Wow, I really just don't have a nonfiction category to tag this with, do I? Though, all things considered, a "dead people" tag would actually get a fair amount of play around here.