Willpower: rediscovering the greatest human strength - Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney

Drop dead healthy - A.J. Jacobs

The stupidest angel - Christopher Moore

The stupidest angel: a heartwarming tale of Christmas terror - Moore, Christopher

Summary: When a boy witnesses the murder of a portly, Scrooge-like real-estate developer, he believes the victim is Santa Claus and wishes for the man's recovery, and when the haphazard angel, Raziel, grants the wish, unexpected occurrences result.


BookPage Reviews
A dose of holiday jeer
Most Christmas novels suffer from an overabundance of sweetness or a glut of requisite miracle making. Not Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel. In fact, Moore starts off with a tongue-in-cheek warning claiming it may not be the best gift for the grandmother or child on your list. Then again, if your intended isn't afraid of satiric one-liners, twisted small-town goings-on and zombies intent on Christmas cheer, then maybe Moore's latest is the best present out there. In fact, it's more of an anti-Christmas story than anything else, meaning he does a good job of sending up the genre, shaking up all that is normally accepted—heavenly angels, red-cheeked children, eggnog by the fire—yet still creating a place and a cast of characters that is entirely festive and spirit-filled. Not for the faint of heart, The Stupidest Angel is wild in its telling (stoner lawmen, Vicodin-drenched fruitcake) and fantastical in tone (the cemetery dead trade barbs) but most definitely original and likely to join Moore's other books on the list of cult favorites. Copyright 2004 BookPage Reviews.

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Secondhand souls - Christopher Moore

Summary: Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone -- or something -- is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He's trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall "meat" waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind...


LJ Express Reviews

Charlie Asher, widowed father, death merchant, beta male, is back. One year following his heroic death fighting harpies and saving San Francisco from the forces of darkness (A Dirty Job), Charlie finds his soul trapped in a 14-inch-tall body that looks like something out of a nightmare. Meanwhile, his sister Cassie and her wife are raising his young daughter, Sophie, who may be the living embodiment of Death. However, Sophie's protective hellhounds have disappeared, the deadly Morrigan are back, the souls of the dead go uncollected, and a man dressed in yellow seems to be everywhere, causing mayhem. Charlie needs a new body before he can reveal his not-dead state to his friends and family, figure out if Sophie can still kill with one little word, and save the day. Verdict Moore has written a solid and darkly funny sequel that will delight fans as they catch up with familiar characters and follow Charlie and his friends through another adventure. Expect demand from Moore devotees, and have the previous book ready for new readers, too. What's more, the cover glows in the dark, and who could resist that? [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]—Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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The Martian - Andy Weir

The Martian - Weir, Andy

Summary: "Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old 'human error' are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?"-- from publisher's web site.

Booklist Reviews
Remember Man Plus, Frederik Pohl's award-winning 1976 novel about a cyborg astronaut who's sent, alone, to Mars? Imagine, instead, that the astronaut was just a regular guy, part of a team sent to the red planet, and that, through a series of tragic events, he's left behind, stranded and facing certain death. That's the premise of this gripping and (given its subject matter) startlingly plausible novel. The story is told mostly through the log entries of astronaut Mark Watney, chronicling his efforts to survive: making the prefab habitat livable and finding a way to grow food, make water, and get himself off the planet. Interspersed among the log entries are sections told from the point of view of the NASA specialists, back on Earth, who discover that Watney is not dead (as everyone assumed) and scramble together a rescue plan. There are some inevitable similarities between the book and the 1964 movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars, but where the movie was a broad sci-fi adventure, the novel is a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man's ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Riveting. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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Chasers of light - Tyler Knott Gregson

Chasers of light: poems from the typewriter series - Gregson, Tyler Knott

Summary: One day while browsing an antique store in Helena, Montana, photographer Tyler Knott Gregson stumbled upon a vintage Remington typewriter. Standing up and using a page from a broken book he was buying for $2, he typed a poem without thinking, without planning, and without the ability to revise anything. He fell in love. This book collects some of his most insightful and beautifully-worded pieces of work, typed onto found scraps of paper, or created by blacking out the words on the page of a book.

The epic made simple. The miracle in the mundane.

He fell in love.

Three years and almost one thousand poems later, Tyler is now known as the creator of the Typewriter Series: a striking collection of poems typed onto found scraps of paper or created via blackout method.Chasers of the Light features some of his most insightful and beautifully worded pieces of work poems that illuminate grand gestures and small glimpses, poems that celebrate the beauty of a life spent chasing the light.
- (Penguin Putnam)

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What If? - Randall Munroe

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions - Munroe, Randall

Summary: The creator of the popular webcomic "xkcd" presents his heavily researched answers to his fans' oddest questions, including "What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?" and "Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?"


Library Journal Reviews
Have you ever wondered at what point in history there were too many English-language books to read in one lifetime? Or what would happen to the Earth if the Sun didn't exist? Munroe has your answers. A former NASA roboticist, the author launched the weblog xkcd.com, which purposely has no phonetic pronunciation, in 2005. The blog's blend of math and science, sarcasm, and stick-figure drawings has gained a loyal following. (His etching of someone who reads a book on juggling, tries to juggle, fails, and immediately trashes the book is especially poignant.) In 2012, Munroe started answering reader-submitted hypotheticals using Internet research along with his own knowledge. That series, "What If," is the focus of this witty nonfiction debut, which features a plethora of new black-and-white cartoons. VERDICT Those who enjoyed the irreverent style of Allie Brosh's best-selling memoir, Hyperbole and a Half, will enjoy Munroe's serious and silly musings on everything from science to romance.

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Hollow city - Ransom Riggs

Hollow city - Riggs, Ransom

Summary: Having escaped Miss Peregrine's island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends must journey to London (circa 1940), the "peculiar" capital of the world. Illustrations feature vintage photography.


Kirkus Reviews
Along with picking up the action where it left off in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Riggs fills in background detail while adding both talking animals and more children with magical powers to the cast. With evil wights and murderous hollowgasts in hot pursuit—and only days to save their beloved Miss Peregrine from permanently becoming a bird—Jacob and his nine young (in body, if not age) companions fling themselves through time loops to Blitz-torn London. The growing attachment between Jacob and kindhearted fire-conjurer Emma turns out to play a crucial role in the plot. After a brisk round of chases, captures, escapes and bombings—capped by a devastating reversal—the two end up separated from most of their allies but with a new talent that just might save "peculiardom" from its seemingly all-powerful enemies. As before, the author spins his tale in part around a crop of enigmatic vintage trick or portrait photographs, including two men (corpses?) sharing a bed with skeletons, a pipe-smoking dog and a staring girl with a huge hole through her midsection. Though less of a novelty here than in the opener, these still add distinctly creepy notes (even when the subject is supposedly comical) to a tale already well-stocked with soul eaters and tentacled monsters. Less a straightforward horrorfest than a tasty adventure for any reader with an appetite for the…peculiar. (Fantasy. 11-14) Copyright Kirkus 2014 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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