from NoveList PlusFey, T. (2011). Bossypants. New York: Little Brown & Co.

ISBN: 9780316056861

Rating: 3Q4P

Readers' Annotation: Tina Fey shares her life as only she knows how; making us laugh.

Summary:  Tina Fey, an actor and writer, best known for her role on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live shares the lessons she learned all the while making sure she isn't taken too seriously.

Evaluation:  Even readers who are not Tina Fey fans will find themselves laughing out loud while reading her autobiography.  Fey doesn't get hung up on the details of her life, but she hits the high points that can humorously teach all of us a lesson.  She is a master at making fun of herself while making us think.

Genre:

• Popular Non-Fiction
• Autobiography

If you liked Bossypants  try...

Books

• Belly Laughs by Jenny McCarthy
• Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fischer

Movies/Television

• 30 Rock (Television)
• Baby Mama (Movie)
  

from NoveList PlusRoach, M. (2003).  Stiff: the curious lives of human Cadavers. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

ISBN: 9780393050936

Rated: 4Q3P

Readers' Annotation: A look at what really happens to human's physical bodies after they die.

Summary:  Author, Mary Roach, explores what happens to human cadavers in a variety of environments.  She recounts the real history of body snatching and what really happens at a training conference for plastic surgeons along with so much more.  Each chapter looks at a different aspect of the physical life after death for a human body.

Evaluation:  For me this book really changed what I think should happen to me after I die.  Roach writes a thought provoking, darkly humorous, non-fiction book on our society's customs relating to the human body after death.  Readers' interested in science as it relates to American culture will be interested in this book.  Readers' will be amazed at all the possibilities for their body's life after death.

Genre:

• Popular Non-Fiction

If you liked Stiff try...

• The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
• The Undead by Dick Teresi

from NoveList PlusLewis, M. (2003). Moneyball. New York: W. W. Norton.

ISBN:  9780393057652

Rating: 4Q4P

Readers' Annotation: Billy Beene, general manager of the Oakland A's manages, to have the best record in baseball with the smallest budget.

Summary:  Billy Beene, general manager of the Oakland A's, develops a new way to look at baseball recruiting.  He has to otherwise he has no hope of competing with the ball clubs with the big budgets.  He must do something different.  With the help of his assistants, Bill James, and James' annual stats newsletter, Baseball Abstract, Beene makes the changes he needs to put together a winning team with a very small budget.  The traditional scouts, players and coaches are skeptical, but his method works and leads to embarassment for teams with bigger budgets and less success.

Evaluation:  This book will appeal to baseball fans who want to know more about the game, especially the economics of the game.  The author, Michael Lewis, weaves the personal story of Billy Beene with his professional experiences and the larger story of baseball in the early 2000s.  Readers may get bogged down in the details of the math.  I found myself skimming at times when the story got too technical and math orriented, but I also found that I now understand more about baseball then I ever thought I would.  Moneyball will also appeal to readers who like to read books before they see the movie.  The movie adaptation of the book was released in 2011.

Genre:

• Popular Non-Fiction

If you liked Moneyball try...

• other books by Michael Lewis
  • The Blind Side
  • The Big Short
• License to Deal by Jerry Crasnick
• The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri

I think I have cured my reader's block.  This week I spent more time online reading about reading then I actually did reading!  I have added a few more books to my list and also figured out a method to my reading madness for the summer.  This summer Sacramento Public Library is giving away an iPad2 for the grand prize for the adult summer reading program.  I could really use a free iPad2, so why not let the the library summer reading bingo cards lead my reading this summer. 

Based on what I've read so far, I need to read a biography next to complete a diagonal on my first bingo card.  I have a couple memoirs on my list, but not biographies specifically (I'm not sure it matters, but I wouldn't want to lose the iPad2 on a technicality). So, I went hunting for a new biography to read.  I revisited NoveList this week to help a friend of a friend find books for her 4th grader and had forgotten how much I enjoy exploring NoveList.  Back to NoveList I went today after I finished reading A Dog's Purpose.  I am not a huge of nonfiction, but I do enjoy narrative nonfiction and went looking for a narrative biography.  I found a few, but the one I was most interested about is In The Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson.  I had read another book by Larson a few years back, Devil in the White City.  I listened to it and loved the way Larson integrated historical details into the story of a serial killer in Chicago in the early 1900s during the World's Fair.  For me I know that listening to a book like this is better for me, kind of like watching a documentary or listening to someone tell me a story.  This leads me to a bit of dilemma... I am listening to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at the moment.  I've heard great things about it and am enjoying it, so I didn't want to ditch it.  It also fulfills a square on my bingo card "read a classic", but that isn't in the row I am working on at the moment!  I remembered my friend, Amy B., gave me the paperback of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn about a year ago and it has sat on my bookshelf sense then.  Dilemma solved, I will read the paperback of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and listen to In the Garden of Beasts; making sure I finish In the Garden of Beasts first, which shouldn't be a problem since I have lots of things to keep me busy, but allow for audiobook listening.

What are you reading/listening to next?  Have you read either of the books I mentioned above?