A month of wonderful reads left and right. Lots of good nesting and hibernating books, seeing as the Midwest got winter a month earlier than usual.

One Red Paperclip - Kyle MacDonald

I first became aware of the ORP project when I heard a mention of it on Alice Cooper's radio show (yes he has a show, yes he is quite funny). Unemployed dreamer Kyle MacDonald decides he is tired of sponging off his patient girlfriend Dom. Faced with the choice of finding full-time employment or providing for her in a creative way, MacDonald starts http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com. Over the course of a year, MacDonald plays the "Bigger and Better" trading game, eventually ending up with a house of his very own. The press goes nuts in both the US and Canada and MacDonald bemusedly gets swept along. What I find most about the book is MacDonald's careful consideration and ground rules for what constitutes a good trade. He coined the terms "funtential" - how much fun is included in the trade. MacDonald is truly a nice guy who thoroughly deserves his house.

See You in a Hundred Years - Logan Ward

We saw Ward speak at the WI Book Festival last month and he was equally as amusing as AJ Jacobs, though a bit more low-key. Having thoroughly burnt out on the hectic lifestyle of New York, Ward and his wife decide to drop out for a year and experiment with living from the land. The caveat being that everything they use/eat/own for a year is pre-1900. Like many folks, Ward and his wife found the idea of moving to the country and living the simple life idyllic. At times Ward does have moments, and even days, of pure bliss and peace. These are interspersed with hours of farm chores, pumping water, starting fires, grinding coffee, baking, nasty goats, domineering horses, frozen diapers and all the other joys of a 1900 farm. This book should be required reading for anyone planning to "retire" from civilization and to "live the good life." Remember, watch the goats before they headbutt you.

Some Danger Involved - Will Thomas

I really enjoyed Thomas' series of books featuring enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his Welsh assistant Thomas Llewelyn. While their clients are often wealthy aristocrats, the people they associate with and investigate live on the margins of proper Victorian British society - Jews, Asians, Irish terrorists and the poor and destitute of Limehouse. Good plots, likable characters and some really wonderfully underhanded fighting tricks.

American Hair Metal - Steven Blush

This book is worth it just for the cover. Blush gives you an up close and personal look at the biggest, hairiest and most famous metal bands. Each page brings a band with still bigger hair, more makeup, hazier lenses and thickly studded leather outfits - all brand spanking new. Coupled with horrendous fan letters and quotes from the bands, the book is hysterical and wind-blowingly awful. "I see our group reaching the top and staying there for a long time..." - Michael Sweet - Stryper (1986)

Michael Palin - Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

A thick 600+ page book, Palin's Diaries start slowly but become increasingly engrossing. Covering the very first year Python starts making shows until the release of Life of Brian, Palin describes Python's ever-increasing popularity. Palin writes with a witty, kind and endearing voice as he describes the vast extremes in his life. One day he is being flown on Concorde to New York to fill a SNL show, the next he detailing one of his children's birthday parties. Like Kyle MacDonald (One Red Paperclip) he spends a great deal of time considering his life options and weighing what is selling out and what is best for his creative career and family. While Python squabbles continually amongst themselves, Palin presents them as all talented and funny friends, albeit with vastly different goals. Peppered with meetings, meals and events with the other Pythons, good friend George Harrison, Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide) and other British notables, you'll soon be drawn into Palin's world.

Spoiler: This chunk of diaries end before Chapman's illness and subsequent death. So no need to have that axe hanging over your head like it did for me.

Money Changes Everything - Edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Shappell

Offill and Shappell edited another book I started a few years ago, The Friend Who Got Away, a collection of stories by women who had "broken up" with a best friend and which I found too depressing to finish. Money Changes Everything, while definitely having its depressing moments, also has some wildly good ones too. Twenty-two writers talk about their material wealth (or lack thereof) and how they ended up there. From trust-funds to schooling paid with porn-writing to "the money train" arriving, all sides of the stickiest of subjects are represented here. An engrossing look at one of last still-taboo subjects in America.

Pontoon - Garrison Keiller

Told in his gentle, rolling monologue, Pontoon is all one can hope for in a Lake Woebegon story. Looney characters gently drift through, some angst on a small-scale Lutheran level, gentle teasing of Californians and many familiar names and faces. Interestingly, I think this is the first Keiller book where a Lake Woebegon resident leaves and this is found to be a positive thing. Sweet, funny and oddly out there.