Hey Folks - I'm not dead yet! My book reviews took a short hiatus this winter while I dealt with a client from hell. Work was insane right up to the very last minute before we left for vacation. After months of working evenings and weekends, I promptly got bronchitis within seconds of landing in London. That'll teach me to relax! I am finally calm, don't hate (most of) my clients and can breathe without wheezing. Life is good. I also hit a rich vein of good books. Starting one dud after another in Feb. and March just seemed to compound my misery. But here they are - lottsa books pour voux!

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder - Lawrence Wescheler

This was one of the books I read in Feb. and was kind of waiting on it to see if my friend would come through on his quest. Alas, it was not to be. He got sick.  Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder is a strange little book on a real-life "museum" - the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Stuffed with wonders such as the Sonnabend Model of Obliscence, laying out reality in a cone format, information on various and sundry strange animals, a scale creation of The Ark, and a recreation of the Platonic conception of memory, symbolized as a set of hands holding a bird. Clear as mud, right? Visitors to the museum will be greeted by colorful dioramas, pamphlets and other literature and even narrated displays. What many will not catch is that most of the museum is pure confabulation. Displays are made up, descriptions and text borrowed from other museums and displays created by the owner, Mr. Wilson. Taking the concept of an unreal museum a step further, Wilson actually creates and publishes books, which he then bases his displays on. Often funded as a performance art piece by befuddled grants groups, Wilson not only runs his museum but often lectures on his gibberish theories. Packed with big words, assurances that the audience is well-versed in the theories already, and backed by his books and museum, Wilson has bamboozled audiences of scientists around the country. Great fun, really bizarre I really hope Pete gets around to visiting. Heheheehe.

A Perfect Mess - Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman

Abrahamson and Freedman attempt to dispel the myth that mess is time-consuming and a sign of a lazy person. Mess, they argue, is in fact conducive to creativity, time-saving and a sign of a healthy mind. Using examples of everything from the ease and ability a messier person has in finding files readily at hand on their desk - as compared to someone who has spent hours filing everything away, to brilliant scientists like Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin after forgetting a petri dish on his desk over vacation. Mess, disorder, chaos all create random connections in the mind, fostering creativity and creating visual and physical reminders of other things. Chock full of great stories and examples on mess, plus plenty of bone-picking with professional organizers, this book is a panacea for anyone who has no problem with a few books are papers here and there. After all, our heaps are fostering creativity and making us work faster. Sweet!

American Prospects - Joel Sternfeld

American Prospects is a nifty collection of photos from the 70s and 80s by a master photographer. Sternfeld focuses on contrasts of human objects placed existing in nature - a huge rock obstructing the view of a business office, towns dotting empty prairies, a rotting refinery in the desert. Some images are peaceful - nature retaking human creations, other amusing - a woman sunbathing on the beach with a line of battleships behind her, and still others are shocking - a firefighter choosing a pumpkin from a farm stand as the house behind him burns. Beautiful and eerie. 

I Am Plastic: The Designer Toy Explosion - Paul Budnitz

I was kind of vaguely aware of designer toys, having been dragged through numerous comic shops by friends. However, the "figurines" from popular comics cannot compare to these pricey gems. Divided by designer, I Am Plastic showcases some of the fantastic and bizarre creations from companies across the globe. Created in tiny batches (hundreds at most) and with painstaking detailing, each of these "toys" costs a small fortune. Often based on nothing more than an artists imagination, the designs run from smoking bunnies, unhappy tofu driving cars, teddy bears attacking people, and anthropomorphic beings of all sorts. Creepy, funny and crazy stuff.

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman  - Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

I know, let's have a comic book. And lets have lots of villains, lifted directly from Victorian literature. Right, and since we lifted lots of villains, lets also lift a bunch of other characters and make them heroes - kind of. And let's set it in Victorian London. And then when it sounds totally ludicrous, let's illustrate it with fantastically well-drawn images. So there too. And then let's sell the rights to make a completely awful movie. Oops, ok, the last one was a pretty bad idea. But the comics are great.

Reaching Climax And Other Towns Along the American Highway - Gary Gladstone

By the same photographer who shot and wrote Passing Gas is another fantastic collection of photography. Choosing towns with silly and often obscene sounding names, Gladstone and his spent months driving the country, hoping these towns still existed and then photographing them and their residents. Some residents are deeply amused by their town names - Funk sells teachers announcing "I'm going to Funk U in the fall!" while others are embarrassed or non-plussed by the names. After all, the town of Cheeks still has plenty of Cheeks living there. The pictures are excellent, but I enjoyed the short interviews and stories Gladstone provides even more. A good book to tide those of us who love road trips over until the next time we hit the road.

Nature Girl (Karl Hiaasen) and The Big Bamboo (Tim Dorsey)

I hit two of the unholy Floridian trinity (Dave Barry being the third... yes, that Dave Barry) within a week, so I can't be held accountable for my actions. Both books live up to their own bizarre standards and fit the much loved Florida template. Wacked out lunatic hero-ish? Yup. Dorsey focuses on Serge A. Storms, his psychotic history-loving mass murderer. While The Governor does not appear in the Nature Girl, Hiaasen more than makes up for it with his uber-protective and delusional mother Honey Santana. A plethora of Florida history and nature worked into plot? Yep. Both of our anti-heroes blither on about famous landmarks, characters and natural wonders of Florida, all fast being paved over. Evil villain so snarky that whatever nasty things happen to them (and they do) you feel a great and thorough satisfaction? Yep, sticky ends all around. Great, high-speed vacation reads.

To Air is Human - Björn Töroque

We saw the transcendent movie Air Guitar Nation at this year's Madison film festival. Despite the International Air Guitar Championships existing for over a decade, an American had never competed. The makers of Air Guitar Nation follow the first two American contenders - C-diddy (the Asian fury) and Björn Töroque. The credits mention Björn's book, so of course I had to pick it up. Sometimes funny, often kind of sad and pathetic, Töroque explains his interest in competing in air guitar, his inexplicable burning to win and his dissatisfaction with his real career and life. While Töroque often comes off petulant and jealous in the movie, his book is very human. Anyone reading it can understand the desire to be the best at something, especially when the rest of life seems so tiring and mundane. ROCK!

They Call Me Naughty Lola - Personal Ads from the London Review of Books

Oh dear lord, I'm amazed the Brits manage to mate at all if this is what is out there. These real, honest and often completely horrifying ads have appeared in the LRoB.

It takes a real man to wear a dress. It takes a revolutionary to wear those shoes with that blusher. Box no. 3194

Slut in the kitchen, chef in the bedroom. Woman with mixed priories (37) seeks man who can toss a good salad. Box no. 7421

Whatever you're looking for, you won't find it in any of these other ads. But if you like early-morning trips down the Thames, Sunday-morning pastries, Saturday afternoons in Richmond Park and spur-of-the-moment trips to Scotland, then join me, sensitive M, 48, I won't be participating in any of these sojourns, because most of my time is spent journaling the activities of my neighbors for the daily reports I submit to my local council as part of my ongoing war against sound pollution and overhanging conifers, But you should be made aware of the options open to you if my vigilance becomes inexplicably tiresome to you. By that point, of course, it will be too late and you'll have become one of Them. It's only a matter of time before you have your own paragraph in my report. The pencil is always sharpened at box no.9390.

The Rejection Collection - edt. Matthew Diffee

Ever wonder what the thousands of cartoons that get rejected from the New Yorker look like? Well, let me tell you - tasteless, obscene, vulgar and wickedly accurate in a totally non-pc way. Featuring some of the best and brightest to grace the pages of the New Yorker, this book made me laugh like a hyena. Accompanying each set of rejected cartoons is a short survey sent to each cartoonist filled with personal cartoon-ing related questions. These surveys are often funnier than the actual cartoons - though only by a hair. Not a coffee table collection to leave out if in-laws are coming over.

Graceland - An Interactive Pop-Up tour - Chuck Murphy with a forward by Priscilla Presley

OH. DEAR. GOD. I never had any strong desire to see Graceland until I snagged this doozy from the pop-culture shelves. You know those glittery white jumpsuits Levis used to wear? Those look tasteful and subdued compared to Elvis's dear old home. The pop-up recreations of rooms add a garish third dimension to a place where bad taste was raised on a pedestal and celebrated. Oh good, now I think I want to go to Graceland for real. * Shudder *

Jpod - Douglas Coupland and Deep Storm - Lincoln Child

Coupland and Child are two of my favorite authors but I was rather disappointed by both of their newest books. Jpod seems slightly stale, though the base story is pretty interesting. For some inexplicable reason, Coupland felt the need to inject himself as a character in the newest book. What seemed like a silly self-referential joke in the beginning soon becomes irritating and confusing. The addition of pages and pages of numbers and words to illustrate puzzles the Jpod geeks play with each other merely bulks the book up making it look far larger than it is. Coupland IS a very good author - check out anything earlier than this book to see what I mean. The same applies to Child's new book. Within the first chapter I had predicted the big woo-woo secret in the book and within a few more pages had nailed the finale. Again, read some of his older stuff.