My Favourite Books

I am unable to write summaries of books- believe me, I have tried and failed. Therefore, I am going to take summaries from Amazon.com.

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart...

Why I enjoyed this book: Full of sarcastic wit with a crazy, yet funny, story.

Micheal Slade, Bed of Nails

Isolated in the Riverside Insane Asylum is the Ripper. He believes he's the notorious butcher who terrorized Whitechapel more than a century ago. In the black hole of his imagination he reenacts the crimes. In the darkness of his heart he still craves the thrill of the kill. Thank God he can't escape. Unfortunately, in Riverside, there is no God...

Why I enjoyed this book: There is SO much going on in the 430 pages of this book, from an imprisoned man who thinks he is Jack the Ripper to his chosen minions who act out his desires in a variety of ways. There is cannibalism, a lot of blood and gore... people who get their heads bashed in while exploring an underground part in a cemetary. It is too awesome for words - just read it if that sort of thing interests you.

Dan Brown, Angels and Deamons

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is shocked to find proof that the legendary secret society, the Illuminati--dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science and condemning the blind faith of Catholicism--is alive, well, and murderously active... Pitting scientific terrorists against the cardinals of Vatican City, this well-plotted if over-the-top thriller is crammed with Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama.

Why I enjoyed this book: The Illuminati symbols are readable either right-side up or upside-down and look incredibly cool. I also found some of the events in the book wickedly evil yet interesting. Hired assassins for the Illuminati out to obliterate the Catholic Church with a secret new weapon? Corruption in the Church? Now that sounds like fun...

Mary Roach, Stiff

"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty.

Why I enjoyed this book: A very informative, amusing, and insightful look into the 'lives' of human cadavers. Covers a wide field of what is done with those who donate their bodies to science, including car crash testing, cremation, displays at museums. The study of decay in a human body, as done at the "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (more information of which can be found in a book called Death's Acre), I found to be most interesting.