This book is a new concept compared to Sheppard’s usual fiction, in that it’s a short book, almost like a long zine that you can buy for cheap and read in one pass. I read this during the New York blackout, and it hit the spot because it immersed me in another world, of a Navy dropout at the end of his rope, drinking mouthwash for alcohol and trying to think back as to what went wrong. It’s like a good short story, but long enough that you get some detail and depth. I also like how he tied it into his book Small Town Punk, but also described another side of the Sarasota world. This is great stuff and well worth the sub-$10 price.

I have to admit I don’t know anything about “chick lit”, but I bought this book after reading the author’s web page for years and wanting to see the final result of her work. Carrie Pilby turned out to be a good story built on a premise of this 19-year-old woman living a life alone in New York, a city of millions – that sounds impossible, but it happens more than you’d think in this fast-paced world. There’s a lot of sarcastic or ironic humor among the descriptive view of Carrie’s life and how she observes those around her from the unique perspective of someone who graduated college early and spent most of her life away from the mainstream. What I liked most of all about the book was the plot, and how her psychiatrist had her put together a set of goals that eventually pull us through the book, setting up the different threads within. That made it a real page-turner for me. Like I said, I don’t know much about chick lit and I don’t know if this book is indicative of others in the genre, but I suspect that it’s ahead of the pack and I personally found it a good read and worth checking out.

Way back when, Coke test-marketed a drink called Surge, and I loved it. It was green, and didn’t taste like Mountain Dew, but it had lots of go to it, and as a writer who often spends the wee hours trying to stay awake in front of the typer, I appreciated that. In fact, it got to the point where I couldn’t write without the stuff, which is about the time I moved across the country and to a place where they didn’t make Surge. And then it vanished forever.

Now, six or so years later, they put out this “new” drink Vault. Well, let me tell you this: Vault is Surge. It’s just a different label. Maybe the marketing is different; now they have to call it a “hybrid energy drink”, to catch people onto it. But it’s the same stuff. And it’s good, and I can find it at my local PathMark without paying ten bucks a can on eBay. So that’s good. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that, because the stuff could vanish just as fast as it appeared…

I started wanting to consume this book because I’m preparing for a trip to Alaska (but not the Aleutians – I’m not that rich) and a brief mention of the book was in a Frommer’s-type guide.

Once I started reading it, though, I realized the book is genius. One, it reads more like a movie than a history text. Second, it’s almost like a real-life version of Catch-22, with planes bombing empty islands and AA guns going on alert when flocks of geese spook the primitive radar sets. It’s truly a tragedy of comedies, or comedy of tragedies, or something. But it’s a real page-turner.