Asking: A 59-Minute Guide to Everything Board Members, Volunteers, and Staff Must Know to Secure the Gift, Newly Revised Edition

#1135
Title: Asking: A 59-Minute Guide to Everything Board Members, Volunteers, and Staff Must Know to Secure the Gift, Newly Revised Edition
Author: Jerold Panas
Year: 2013/2014
Publisher: Emerson & Church
Pages: 108

Escape from the Antarctic (Penguin Great Journeys)

#1134
Title: Escape from the Antarctic (Penguin Great Journeys)
Author: Ernest Shackleton
Year: 2007
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 90
Country: Antarctica

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

#1133
Title: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Author: Mary Roach
Year: 2013
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Pages: 352

Fun enough, though not as thorough as I'd have liked (e.g., virtually nothing about bile, the liver, the kidneys and other organs with metabolic function). It also kept promising to be gross, and it wasn't. I don't need it to be gross, but with that promise, I expect more about the composition of feces or urine-drinking cults or what have you.

Little Lake (Armenian Poetry XIX-XX Book 1)

#1132
Title: Little Lake (Armenian Poetry XIX-XX Book 1)
Author: Bedros Tourian
Translator: Alice Stone Blackwell
Year: 2012
Publisher: GS (Kindle)
Pages: 33
Country: Armenia (better exemplar)

I can't locate originals to see what Tourian's writing is really like, but this jangly translation in ABCB rhyme is jarring. The imagery seems trite and immature. Okay, he died early. However, he's apparently much-loved in Armenia, which might speak to the translation or might speak to classical Armenian poetic sensibilities. 

Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles #1)

#1131
Title: Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles #1)
Author: Colin Meloy
Illustrator: Carson Ellis
Year: 2011
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Pages: 541

This low middle reader had its moments of charm and interest. However, it moves so slowly that it's almost unbearable.

Summary: Kind of Narnia, kind of Vinge's sapient dogs with guns from A Fire upon the Deep. In Oregon.

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape

#1130
Title: Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape
Author: Jenna Miscavige Hill & Lisa Pulitzer
Year: 2013
Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins
Pages: 416

Yes, she whines, and her escape is more "nerve-wracking" than "harrowing," but Miscavige's story of the institutional abuses and coercion suffered by Sea Org members is consonant with those told by other ex-Scientologists. It's worth reading.

Lock In

#1129
Title: Lock In
Author: John Scalzi
Year: 2014
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 336

Best preceded by Scalzi's novella Unlocked, a Working/World War Z-style prequel that provides the history on which this novel rests. Lock In is in the style of his The Android's Dream and Agent to the Stars--clever badinage and snappy repartee dominate the dialogue, and characters work together with a synchrony that reminds one of Heinlein's ex-military men.

I read this in conjunction with articles on HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and Ebola, which was a good set of reflective readings. I recommend Sacks's Awakenings as a companion piece for heightened pleasure.