This is a pretty good suspense book. It reminds me of the plot of a season of the show 24. It’s very current – referencing a fictional presidency after that of G. W. Bush and the Iraq war, which I found novel.

This is an excellent book on the creation and use of grids in typography and design. It’s very traditional and rigid Swiss design, but it’s well explained with tons of examples. I now plan to buy a copy to have for my own design library.

This is an account of one town’s experience of 9/11. Middletown, NJ had the highest number of people killed in the towers of any town in the country. One group in particular that the book talks about is a small group of widows who pushed the US government to do more to understand the 9/11 plot and prevent future terrorist attacks. It’s a well written and interesting account from some who were in the towers during the attacks, the widows, the organizations established to help the families of those killed (sometimes in surprising ways), the police who worked to recover all the remains from the site after the disaster, and more. It’s a surprisingly broad and interesting perspective. I guess the one thing that struck me as missing was male widows. Each of the many widows discussed in the book was female, and that struck me as odd. Perhaps there weren’t any male widows in Middletown specifically, or perhaps it was an author bias. I don’t know. But it was still an interesting and worthwhile read.

This is a new character from Patricia Cornwell. It’s not one of the Kay Scarpetta mysteries or one of the other silly series she tried out. This new character is pretty compelling, despite the fact that he’s inordinately handsome and an amazing detective (why can’t they ever be normal people?). However, the book is very short and I don’t think it serves the story well. When it ended I felt that the case against the bad guy was underdeveloped and thus the ending was premature.

This is the latest in the Joanna Brady series from J.A. Jance. It was enjoyable as usual and less bothersome that some bits in her last few books. There is some completely unrealistic content regarding things Sheriff Brady does while 9 months pregnant (gun fights with bad guys including running, leaping, and laying on her stomach), but realism isn’t really what we look for in these books, is it? ;-)

I watched Must Love Dogs for the second time earlier this week. I bought it used on DVD when we were walking around the Ave with Piper and her husband recently.

It is a fun John Cusack movie that makes me smile and laugh. It’s certainly not his best film, but it’s enjoyable and not as annoying as some of his recent romantic comedies like America’s Sweethearts and Serendipity.

This is a well acted movie, but perhaps not as well done as some that came before it on similar topics (for example, A Beautiful Mind starring Russell Crowe). I think it perhaps just lacked some depth and thus some credibility.

This is a well-written piece that is either an alternative reality or a future piece, I never decided which. It’s set in the UK and I can’t say much more because part of the interest in the story is figuring it out as it slowly unfolds. It’s an interesting and different tale, though not fast paced or terribly eventful. The ending left me wishing for more, but it’s probably still a worthwhile read. Now I’m on to less worthy, but more engrossing, reading. ;)

I have no strong feelings about this story, except to forewarn you that the narrator’s voice in the audio version is a little annoying and takes getting used to. This is a story of a ‘tween’ Army brat getting used to a new town and developing a crush on an older guy. I suppose it’s a coming of age story, but not a particularly eventful one.

This is a mystery written by romance author Nora Roberts, writing under the pen name J.D. Robb. It’s an Eve Dallas mystery, which I think is a series. If you like the other Eve Dallas books then I see no reason you wouldn’t like this one. It was a decent, though unremarkable, mystery. It is set in the future and I can’t figure out why. Nothing about it’s future context does more than add a little novelty. It doesn’t substantially impact the story. Also, Detective Eve Dallas is of course a very wealthy and remarkable woman, as is so common in these ongoing mystery series these days. Yea, it’s not that great a book. But it’s an enjoyable “trashy” read.