books, again

I just started reading Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You). Pretty darn funny so far. I'm on page viii: "Because this book is for America's Heroes. And who are the Heroes? The people who bought this book. That bears repeating. People who borrow this book are not Heroes. They are no better than welfare queens mooching off the system like card-carrying library card-carriers. For the record, we're not offering this book to libraries. No free rides."

For the record, I just borrowed this book from our library. So call me a card-carrying library-card carrier. (Though I actually don't. I have my number memorized. You don't seem surprised, for some reason.)

I've just finished The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. It's a humorous and surprisingly respectful account of Mr. Jacobs' attempt to live by as many biblical rules as possible in the course of one year. I found it an entertianing and enlightening way to learn about all sorts of biblical rules, including the contradictory ones. And I enjoyed following Mr. Jacobs' story of the spiritual effect his quest had on him--his transformation fron an agnostic secualr Jew to a somewhat spiritual mostly-agnostic secular Jew.

I'm also reading Rasputin's Daughter, which is pretty good so far (I'm on chapter 2), for those of you interested in the more conventional topic of Russian-revolution-era historical fiction.

Of course I'm reading manga, too--I'm about to start D. Gray-man, and Fullmetal Alchemist v. 14 is on its way to me. If you want to try manga and are brave enough to jump into something fairly involved, it's an excellent alternate-world fantasy about alchemy, the use and misuse of it, and the quandaries and efforts of two teenage brothers, their friends and acquaintances and enemies. The art is very good, and the characters are wonderfully three-dimensional and will likely crack if not break your heart--and make you laugh too. Best new (to me) manga I've read this year! I'm glad my anime-club members kept raving about it so that I finally tried it. Husband won't try it, but he did watch half of Mad Hot Ballroom with me--an excellent documentary about lower-economic-class NYC kids (4th and 5th grade) learning ballroom dancing and competing with each other and other NYC public schools. Boy can some of these kids dance!

Enough recommendations. Back to work for me...