Angry Little Girls by Lela Lee
Hehehe. This book is a comic book of very angry little girls. Oh god are they angry. And disenchanted. And psychotic. * Sigh * reminds me of college…

Material World: A Global Family Portrait and Women in the Material World by Peter Menzel

These photo essays are short pictorals of an average family in various countries around the world. Menzel found families willing to bring the entire contents of their houses out so he could photograph them. The images are fascinating and startling. Vignettes, like TVs around the world, keep the book from seeming too bleak. Included on the 3-4 pages on each family are stats. on the average income, life expectancy, literacy rate and birth rate for each country. Personal interviews are also included - interesting, strange and often sad.  Women in the Material World contains much of the same information and images as Material World, though presented from a woman’s perspective. Check them out and see how the other 98% lives.

Loretta Lux

Whoooo, creepy! Remember that little kid that was supposed to be Scully’s daughter in X-Files but everyone hated her because she was so creepy? Well, that little weirdo has nothing on Lux’s models. Lux’s children are how I imagine seraphim would appear - beautiful forms, but also terrible, dangerous and otherworldly. While most of her models are young children, they have the pale and grave faces of those who have seen too much of life already. Their perfect outfits, dreamy backgrounds and emotionless faces are inhuman. Lux’s few self-portraits do little to relieve the mind; she is as creepy as her models. 
http://www.artnet.com/artist/162851/loretta-lux.html 

Fabulous Jewelry from Found Objects by Marthe LeVan  and The Jeweler's Directory of Decorative Finishes by Jinks McGrath

I ran across a copy of Fabulous Jewelry in the Kohler bookstore. In a country of excess in a season of too much, the idea of recycling everyday found objects into functional art is both appealing and intriguing. Admittedly, the chances of me wearing a Elizabethan collar made of playing cards or a necklace of toothpicks are pretty slim. However, less showy chapters show how to take old scrabble tiles, pretty bottle caps, broken glass and other bits and bobs and clean them up to use as jewelry elements. They even have a chapter on making those plastic snap-bracelets that we used to wear in middle school! Both books are visually interesting, but more importantly, include actual step-by-step directions on creating jewelry and finishing the pieces with everything from basic tools to soldering irons. Hooray for hands-on books! 

The Blackbird Papers by Ian Smith

When the going gets tough, some of the tough read cheesy murder mysteries. I grabbed this one at random (ok, the cover was red and shiny).  Blackbird turned out to be one of the best and most imaginative mysteries I have read in ages. While most mysteries fit into a category of one or another (cozy, medical, true crime), Smith doesn’t pigeonhole himself. The plot is good and fast moving, lots of action without getting really squishy, bits of interesting science and medical fact thrown in and realistic, filled-out characters. The only complaint I have is that this is Smith’s first book and it is recent. Nuts.