Here are some mini-reviews of the reading material I bathed myself in over vacation. I tell ya, one week is not enough.This year I tended to gravitate to non-fiction, which is sort of weird because I was feeling crushed by too much to do... so I might have expected to dive into a bunch of summery, beach-type reading. Curious.

Anyway, here's what I made it (mostly) through on our week of sipping Bombay Saffire's & tonic while pouring printed matter into our heads.

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories - Chuck Palahniuk. The man who brought you Fight Club knows how to spin some mean and freaky non-fiction. An essay on guys who build their own castles, Marilyn Manson reading Tarot cards, and perhaps most disturbing, the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival. It is a strange world out there and Palahniuk is quite good at tracking the weirdness down and describing it. A quick and interesting read.

Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell. Vowell, Ms. SmartAss extraordinaire, takes us on a tour of the United States via the tourist sites related to our assassinated presidents: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Part travelog, part history, part social commentary, this book is pure Vowell. (P.S. Somehow, knowing what Vowell's voice sounds like just adds to the fun).

The Wisdom of Solitude - Jane Dobisz. Now this is pure summer getaway reading. Except that instead of hanging out at the beach Dobisz embarks on a Zen retreat in a New England cabin... for 100 days... in the middle of winter. Days beginning at 3:15 AM. Days filled up with sitting, walking and working meditation periods. I don't know if I'd be able to put myself through it (even as much of an introvert as I am) but it was fascinating to read about.

In Praise of Slowness - Carl Honore. Sensing a theme here? I picked this one up at one of my favorite bookstores, Rue Cottage Books in Southwest Harbor, Maine. Owner and author Niki Fox stocks a great general collection of books. Her specialty is writing related to ecology and technology issues. This is the place to pick up some reading on Ned Ludd, for instance. Slowness surveys the general increase in spead of modern day living, the negative effects of associated technological 'advances' and what some people are doing about it, the 'Slow Food' movement, for one.

The Hungry Ocean - Linda Greenlaw. This is Greenlaw's first book, written back when she was a swordfish boat captain running out of Gloucester, MA. Equally as entertaining as her Lobster Chronicles, but not nearly as funny as All Fishermen Are Liars.

That's it. The week passed in a couple of eye-blinks, but we had a great time revelling in print.

Edited: PC
First posted on Mark Is Cranky