Mary Roach, however, is concerned with none of that. Whether you’re eating a farm-raised chicken named Sarah — whose hobbies including pecking, clucking and the occasional egg — or spending an evening attempting to house a 40-piece McNugget meal is of no concern to Roach. She cares only about what happens after.

Gulp, like each of Roach’s books before it, is focused on the details of a fascinating and yet under-appreciated element of science, in this case the voyage of sustenance from one’s fork to one’s toilet. As always, Roach has trolled countless original sources to come up with a list of engrossing (and often gross) issues, things like “What’s the relationship between smell and taste?” and “Can you eat with your butt?” She tackles each gamely, and her detailed chapters are full of impressive research, valuable consultation with experts, and fabulous juvenile humor. For example:

“Of all the so-called variety meats, none presents a steeper challenge to the food persuader than the reproductive organs. Good luck to Deanna Pucciarelli, the woman who seeks to introduce mainstream America to the culinary joys of pig balls. ‘I am indeed working on a project on pork testicles,’ said Pucciarelli, director of the Hospitality and Food Management Program at—fill my heart with joy!—Ball State University.”

Classic Roach. Gulp is full of tidbits like this, though it doesn’t lack for deeper scientific dives either. And as always, the true stars are the people, the scientists and doctors and researchers who can expound on the diverse intricacies of saliva, or show you a pair of laboratory-issue farting pants. Roach also speaks at length with a prison inmate, who shares with her all the ins and outs (so to speak) of “hooping”: smuggling contraband into the building via your…backdoor. She even talks to Elvis’s doctor. Indeed, another selling point for Gulp: In this book you will learn a great deal about how hard it was for Elvis to go No. 2.

More than any of Roach’s past books, Gulp in this way vies for the gross-out factor. Reading on the train yesterday, I had to angle myself away from the guy next to me, lest he see the diagram of stool types I was examining. At the same time, there’s something hilarious and refreshing about Roach confronting us with all the nasty nitty gritty of something so mundane as eating and going to the bathroom. After covering death, the afterlife, sex, and space, Roach has in Gulp aimed for something more relatable, though under-discussed. …Perhaps in some cases understandably so.

I first fell in love with Mary Roach after reading Stiff, her debut book about the employment of human cadavers in everything from car-crash simulations to body farms. It’s a book that forced me to rethink my historical aversion to nonfiction, and the book that made me decide I want to donate my body to science. Some people may think it weird, but I find something darkly hilarious about imagining my dead self behind the wheel of a road-untested 2065 Toyota Prius, or being the final exam upon which a nervous 22-year-old med student’s anatomy grade depends. (“Don’t worry,” I will think to him or her from the beyond. “I’m pretty sure everything’s in there.”)

Gulp isn’t as a good as Stiff, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s still very good. Roach introduces us to fascinating history, and the most endearing and dedicated people who, for all their social skills, must still have a hard time at cocktail parties (“…and then I inserted the food into the fistulated cow…”) Roach seems like a fun person to know, and reading her books isn’t just learning, but learning through her eyes. She makes science quirky and light, even when it’s gross or sad or even cruel. She manages to find the amazing in everything, and that’s something.

TITLE: Gulp
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AUTHOR: Mary Roach
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PAGES: 352 (in hardcover)
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ALSO WROTE: Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing for Mars
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SORTA LIKE: Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing for Mars
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FIRST LINE: “The sensory analyst rides a Harley.”

Sedaris released a new book of essays this month, the bizarrely named Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, which I bought with all the speed and joy of a stoner hitting up Taco Bell for his or her first Ranch Dorito Taco. And although LEDWO is chock full of traditionally hilarious Sedaris observations—on everything from the restroom situation in China to the litter situation in rural England—I found myself suffering from a prolonged sense of déjà vu. Indeed, the majority of the essays featured in Sedaris’ latest contribution to the bookshelf have been published before, most of them in the New Yorker.

Now, I’ve got nothing against authors double-pubbing their essays—Nick Hornby has an entire series of books based on his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column in The Believer—but it does take some of the joy out of acquiring a new collection from one of your favorite writers. Sedaris in particular covers subjects so mundane on their face that one can’t help but remember his past contributions to the essay genre—never have I thought to myself “Now, who wrote that piece about the predatory habits of Normandy house spiders again?”

In fact, and it pains me deeply to say this, LEDWO feels in general like a bit of a throwaway, the Sedaris equivalent of Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing (which I panned when it came out, and will continue to pan — though I feel guilty about it — despite her death).  Excluding for a moment the repeated essays, the book also features several short stand-up bits meant to be read by kids doing what I can only deduce is something like essay-slam-poetry (Sedaris notes in his prologue that this is something he’s discovered teens do with his work). These pieces—though written from the perspective of patently non-Sedaris personas (a pregnant teenager, an enraged homophobe)—still have typical DS flair, but are something of a strange addition, and their sense of irony is less subtle than one might be used to in the Sedaris oeuvre.

Even within the essays proper, Sedaris seems to be phoning it in, and often flits from topic to topic in a manner that suggests he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d set out to write about. And while he can do all of the above with uncanny humor—he’s still David Motherfucking Sedaris, after all—the result sometimes feels muddled. Absent is the kind of thoughtful and hilarious focus applied to “Letting Go,” Sedaris’ essay on quitting smoking, or “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” his piece on learning French (though LEDWO’s “Easy, Tiger,” first published in the New Yorker, covers similar territory.)

Of course, the book has its gems: “Understanding Understanding Owls” focuses on Sedaris’ attempts to get his boyfriend Hugh a stuffed owl as a Valentine’s Day gift. (The NYT review described this essay as “creepily unfunny” but I was all about it.) And perhaps the best piece arrives towards the end of LEDWO:  ”Day In, Day Out” chronicles Sedaris’ long history of keeping journals, and their contents go a long way towards explaining why he has such a particular flair for observation. (A list of such journal entries includes things like “5/15: Lisa puts a used Kotex through the wash, and her husband mistakes it for a shoulder pad” and “4/6: I write down my e-mail address for Ian, and after looking at it he says, ‘Oh my God. You have handwriting just like Hitler’s.’ Note: what kind of person knows what Hitler’s handwriting looks like?”) Finally, as always, Hugh’s indirect contributions to the book are perfect, and make me want to rent out the couple’s guest bedroom for the better part of a year just for the opportunity to eavesdrop on them.

Being a professional humor writer (essayist, author, whatever) must of course be frustrating; at some point, you begin to run out of material. But this is what makes David Sedaris who he is: When you can turn a trip to the dentist, or an experience in airport security, into something poignant and insightful and hilarious, you theoretically have a near-infinite universe of things to write about. And so perhaps this is why LEDWO feels like a bit of a let-down. When Sedaris is on, he’s on—while reading this week, I’d [obnoxiously] text my friends his better bits, stuff like “My new passport photo made me look like a penis with an old man’s face drawn on it”—and so when he’s off, or just slightly less on, it feels like an affront. Like Beyoncé putting out a bad album, or Jesus coveting his neighbor’s wife.

So I suppose it’s not entirely fair to Sedaris, these lofty expectations, or the fact that LEDWO being pretty good was somehow mitigated by my expectation that it be great. These are things I’ll have to think about, or better yet bring up with him the next time we’re trapped on a roller coaster together. Which I hope is soon. Really really soon.

TITLE: Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls
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AUTHOR: David Sedaris
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PAGES: 288 (in hardcover)
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ALSO WROTE: Me Talk Pretty One Day, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
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SORTA LIKE: The above
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FIRST LINE: ”One thing that puzzled me during the American healthcare debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be.”

Though my experiences have been generally benign, I started experimenting with e-love a solid five years before it became acceptable among 20-somethings, and so at least in the beginning found myself interacting with a cast of truly special characters. There was the 6’8 guy who said approximately eight words during our entire dinner, the 32-year-old who still lived with his mom, the aspiring actor whose idea of a date was watching an episode of Law & Order he’d appeared in, and, perhaps most memorably, the baby-faced graphic designer who cooked me dinner and then tried to discretely do cocaine for the remainder of the evening. Even now, as the hipsterfication of OkCupid has popularized it as a source of potential romance, I find myself exhausted by the prospect of reading through 100 profiles of bearded guys whose interests include whiskey, bicycles and afternoons spent artistically fraying their jorts.

But despite having such a limited tolerance for, well, anything that requires emotional fortitude, I do have immense respect for people who tough it out, and pursue the online dating thing for years on end. John P. Gavin, author of the rather directly titled Online Dating Sucks….but it’s how I fell in love, is one such person.

ODS is by and large a compendium of online-dating advice columns Gavin wrote for a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper, interspersed with introductory explanations of what was going on in his life at the time. The book begins with Gavin’s wife leaving him — a darkly comic scene you might expect to open a quirky romantic comedy starring Steve Carell — and ends with (spoiler alert?) love.

So what are Gavin’s great insights into finding “the one” (or at least “a one”) online? Predictable, if still poignant. ODS treads on well-worn territory — dudes lie in their profiles, dudes date many girls at once, dudes are sometimes/often only interested in sex — and for the most part simply encourages women to work with and around these occupational hazards of the Internet slash men. Instead of agonizing over a guy’s words (or emails), pay attention to his actions. Instead of over-expending energy on weeding out potential “players,” focus on the connection and take things as slow as you want to. And for the love of God, don’t quit your job and buy a condo in his neighborhood until you’ve met face to face.

ODS has some nice moments, and a few crucial no-nonsense observations. (I’m sorry ladies, there is just no real way to know ahead of time whether a guy will call you after sex.) Perhaps most impactful are Gavin’s frequent reminders that everything up to an actual sit-down with a dude is potentially (and probably) bullshit—not just his claims to be 30 years old, gainfully employed and “an avid windsurfer,” but maybe his entire personality and character, the pre-date blanks of which women tend to fill in with sunshine and rainbows.

Where ODS struggles is in its format. The decision to package and introduce the columns feels clunky and unnecessary, and the intros’ nostalgic tone seems premature; half the columns were written in 2012. Most importantly, without the benefit of separation, the columns’ central themes are oft-repeated, although Gavin’s ability to express those themes improves over the course of the book. Overall, he would have been better served splitting ODS up in a different way, and perhaps breaking out of the column format altogether. (Personally I think Gavin should have run with a glossary approach; the portion of one column he spends deconstructing dating profile phrases like “Let’s just see what happens” is easily the best part of the whole book.)

Of course, the real lesson of ODS is its finale, which is also the reason for the book’s heavy-handed title. After years of questing for love on the Internet, Gavin finds it, and so we’re to conclude that all the perils of online dating — the weirdos, the assholes and the countless sit-downs at Starbucks — are worth it, because in the end you just might find the one. Which is essentially the standing argument for regular dating. Indeed, for all the convenience and opportunity of e-romance, it’s ultimately just as complicated and frustrating and tiresome as meeting people in bars, or at bookstores, or while fighting over Whole Foods’ last carton of organic soy milk. Dating isn’t intimidating  because you’re meeting people online or at a party; it’s intimidating because you’re meeting people, and the vast majority of those encounters won’t come to anything. So I suppose in the end Gavin’s ellipses are necessary, though the “Online” may not be. Dating does Suck….but you can’t drag your male friends to weddings forever.

TITLE: Online Dating Sucks…but it’s how I fell in love
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AUTHOR: John P. Gavin
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PAGES: Kindled
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ALSO WROTE: n/a
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SORTA LIKE: He’s Just Not That Into You meets You’ve Got Mail
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FIRST LINE: “It’s May 2001, and I’m sitting out back.”

People always ask me if they should bother reading these books, and the answer is: It depends. Do you like absurd plots and a murder-to-novel ratio of approximately 24:1? Do you enjoy a narration style that feels only a few degrees shy of a fifth-grade diary? Do you like sexy vampires? If the answer to any of the above is yes, then by all means, read the Sookie books. They’re like cotton candy–saccharine, fluffy, and delicious.

But if you’ve got something pesky like “standards,” or simply don’t have the time, worry not: I’ve got you covered. Here’s everything that happens in the Sookie Stackhouse world. [SPOILERS SPOILERS LIKE LITERALLY A BILLION SPOILERS]:

1. DEAD UNTIL DARK 

Sookie Stackhouse is an obnoxiously perky telepathic waitress who has a hot brother named Jason and a grandmother that gets violently murdered in their kitchen. People are constantly getting murdered around Sookie, who always endeavors to solve these murders, even when they aren’t inflicted upon her immediate family. Early in DUD, Sookie meets Bill, a sexy vampire. They fall in love, a love that lasts through roughly six other attempted murders. Also of note: 1) Eric, the sexy (everyone is incredibly sexy) proprietor of local vampire bar Fangtasia, and regional vampire sheriff (yup). 2) Sam, the sexy owner of Merlotte’s, where Sookie works. Entrepreneur, gentleman, shapeshifter.

2. LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS

The book opens with a murder, because of course (I would really like to know the per capita murder rate in Bon Temps, Louisiana.) Then Sookie is attacked by a maenad — like a mythical pig-woman — who’s actually pissed at Eric, who can’t be bothered because he already signed Sookie up to use her mind-reading to help some other vampires in Dallas. That investigation leads to Godrick, a really old - but also sexy - vampire who’s been hanging out with The Fellowship of the Sun, a “church” that’s more like the gay conversion therapy of the vampire world. There’s an infiltration of the fellowship, and a culminating battle royale. Also a maenad-induced orgy.

3. CLUB DEAD

Bill disappears, and Eric enlists hunky werewolf Alcide to accompany Sookie to a vampire bar so they can troll for information. While there, she meets Russell Edgington, the vampire king of Mississippi, and Debbie Pelt, Alcide’s jealous ex (Alcide is interested in Sookie; for reasons that escape me, all men usually are). After a big bar fight, Sookie ends up recuperating in Russell’s mansion, where she and Eric find and rescue an imprisoned Bill. In a bit of classic bad luck, Sookie and Bill end up in the trunk of a car together and when he wakes up from his torture-induced vampire blackout, Bill almost kills her in a hungry blood rage. Perhaps fairly, Sookie dumps him. 

4. DEAD TO THE WORLD

Three weeks after the Bill breakup, Sookie runs into a confused Eric, who’s lost his entire memory. Eric’s right-hand vamp Pam explains that a coven of witches is responsible for the amnesia, but who really cares because memory-less Eric is now sensitive and vulnerable and therefore even hotter and Sookie, well, get it gurl. She takes Eric in “for protection” and they protect each other pretty often, sometimes in the shower. Finally, some vampires, other witches and Alcide’s werewolves band together to fight the coven. Eric gets his memory back, and Sookie is bummed to lose their slow-jams lovemaking. In other news, Jason becomes a werepanther.

5. DEAD AS A DOORNAIL

Someone is going around town shooting shifters, including Sam, who’s forced to borrow a bartender from Eric while he recuperates from the wound. Eric sends Charles Twining, who turns out to be a hitman actually sent by another vampire to kill Sookie. This other vampire — who I feel compelled to mention is named Hot Rain — has a vendetta against Eric, who he believes was inadequately punished for killing a different vampire in defense of Sookie way back in book 1 or 2. Meanwhile, Eric helps Sookie get Tara out of a weird situation in exchange for Sookie telling him about all of their sensitive lovemaking. Because of course post-amnesia Eric has amnesia of his amnesia. Charlaine Harris don’t play.

6. DEFINITELY DEAD

Sookie has a new boyfriend, a weretiger (yup) named Quinn. They go to New Orleans to settle the affairs of Sookie’s recently murdered vampire cousin and while there, Sookie meets Sophie-Ann, the (vampire) queen of Louisiana. There is some central plot involving a murder attempt and its thwarting, but most importantly Sookie discovers that Bill has been lying to her (vampires, they’re just like us!) He did not just so happen to wander into Merlotte’s all those books ago, but was in fact sent there to glean information on Sookie. In other “WTF” news, Sookie finds out she’s part-fairy, and the irresistible nature of fairy blood at last (finally, thank god) explains why men are drawn to her despite the fact that she’s patently annoying.

7. ALL TOGETHER DEAD

Sophie-Ann is accused of murdering her husband, the (vampire) king of Arkansas. Sookie knows she’s innocent, and so agrees to attend some sort of vampire leadership summit and mind-eavesdrop on people to see if she can suss out the culprit. Because when a vampire says “Hey, do you want to come to a big vampire meeting and use your invasive super power to implicate another vampire in a royal murder?” the answer is always “Most def.” Sophie is ultimately let off the hook, just in time for the summit hotel to explode because the Fellowship of the Sun planted a bunch of bombs. Sookie manages to save her vampire buddies, though Sophie-Ann loses her legs in the blast. Her probable ability to push a wheelchair at vampire superspeed goes unaddressed.

8. FROM DEAD TO WORSE

Sookie helps Alcide’s werewolf pack sort out some werewolf politics, as Eric surrenders to Felipe de Castro, the (vampire) king of Nevada, who is angling for Arkansas and Louisiana now that Sophie-Ann is weak and legless. Also Quinn disappears to handle some family business — just know that a “were sanatorium” is a place — and his absence/baggage nudge Sookie back into the [strong, chiseled] arms of Eric. After a brief subplot involving Jason’s failing relationship with his cheating werepanther wife Crystal, Sookie rescues Felipe de Castro from a would-be assassin and earns his respect, and interest. Because who couldn’t use a good vampire king in their corner?

9. DEAD AND GONE

Since it worked out soooo well for the vampires, shifters and werewolves decide to go public. After Sam makes the rather melodramatic decision to reveal his true nature by changing in the bar, Merlotte’s waitress Arlene quits. Also a membership of the Fellowship of the Sun, Arlene later tries to kill Sookie via crucifixion (ambitious, I’ll give her that), but fails and is arrested. Meanwhile, Eric tricks Sookie into vampire-marrying him to keep her from being snatched up by Felipe de Castro. Meanwhile meanwhile, a fairy war is afoot! Fighting breaks out between warring factions of the fairy race, who have differing opinions about the existence of half-breeds (like Sookie). After being tortured for information on her fairy great-great-grandfather, Sookie is rescued by Bill and Eric. Shockingly, no one has yet decided that she’s simply more trouble than she’s worth.

10. DEAD IN THE FAMILY

Just when Sookie and Eric are finally getting the hang of their relationship, Eric is visited by his maker Appius, who drops off his “brother” Alexei for Eric to talk some sense into. (Alexei has problematic hobbies, like murdering people). Meanwhile, Sookie’s [hot gay stripper] fairy cousin Claude comes to stay with her, and she tracks down Bill’s vampire sister to give him blood so he can recuperate from silver poisoning he got at the end of Book 9. A bunch of different plots (generally murderous in nature, mostly directed at Sookie) converge at the Stackhouse …house, where basically everyone is killed except the people (and vampires and werewolves) we care about.

11. DEAD RECKONING

Being Sookie Stackhouse means having at least three grudges held against you at any given time, and so Sookie spends the novel settlings scores with Sandra Pelt (jealous ex-girlfriend of Alcide) and Victor Madden (representative of Felipe de Castro/general asshole). She also learns a bunch of stuff about her fairy-ness, as Bill proclaims his undying love (see what I did there?)

12. DEADLOCKED

Felipe de Castro comes to town to see WTF happened to his boy Victor, who Sookie, Pam, Eric and Bill killed. Eric throws Felipe a party by way of distraction, and Sookie catches Eric feeding on a human who later ends up dead on his lawn. On top of the alleged murder, Sookie discovers that Eric was commanded by Appius to marry the (beautiful, rich) vampire queen of Oklahoma, and that he hasn’t exactly jumped through hoops to rid himself of the decree. She (Sookie) also finds out that she’s in possession of a cluviel door, a bit o’ fairy magic that basically give her one free wish. Whilst vaguely debating using the door to save Eric from his “arrangement”, Sookie gets caught up in a werewolf fight, during which Sam is mortally injured. She uses the door to save his life, and Eric storms off. Or like..glides off really quickly, but you know what I mean.

13. DEAD EVER AFTER

And that brings us here, to the end of a decade-long series whose ridiculousness is matched only by its author’s refusal to limit herself to one, three or even ten types of supernatural beings.

At the beginning of novel #13, Arlene is killed, and Sookie must a) go about being Sookie and discover who did it, at least in part because otherwise she’s the prime suspect and b) contend with Eric’s impending marriage, and his general grumpiness over Sookie’s cluviel door decision.

The final chapter in the Sookie saga is formulaic, a predictable conclusion that wants for a bit of general closure (even Harry Potter gave us a 19 Years Later, Charlaine). And yet, Harris does answer the only question we ever really cared about, and the ultimate romantic fate of our plucky heroine is the one spoiler I won’t give away.

Charlaine Harris is no Lionel Shriver; she’s barely a J.K. Rowling. But with the writing abilities of an imaginative 18-year-old, and the vocabulary of a gifted fifth-grader, Harris still manages to create a world — a world where vampires and werewolves are integrated into modern politics; where thwarted murder plots occur as frequently as thunderstorms; and where attractive, powerful and self-sufficient men fall head over heels for a perky waitress with a ponytail. True Blood only taps into half of the zany off-the-wall and utterly ridiculous plot lines that populate the Sookie books, and for that reason alone, the woman deserves mad props.

TITLE: Dead Ever After
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AUTHOR: Charlaine Harris
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PAGES: 352 (in hardcover)
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ALSO WROTE: The other Sookie Stackhouse books
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SORTA LIKE: The other Sookie Stackhouse books
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FIRST LINE: ”The New Orleans businessman, whose gray hair put him in his fifties, was accompanied by his much younger and taller bodyguard/chauffeur on the night he met the devil in the French quarter.”

And so it was with this in mind that I approached Waiting to Be Heard, the memoir for which Amanda Knox received a reported $4 million. (Admittedly, I also suspected it would make for an entertaining blog post.)

If you’ve been living under a rock—a rock with no access to Nancy Grace or the Huffington Post—Knox, better known as “Foxy Knoxy,” was charged with the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a British student killed while the two lived together during Knox’s semester abroad in Perugia, Italy. The case, as presented by the prosecution, is a story of sexcapades gone wrong: Knox is said to have tried to initiate some sort of orgy/Satanic sex ritual with Kercher, accompanied by her (Knox’s) boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and acquaintance Rudy Guede. When Kercher refused to participate in said sexcapade, Guede raped her, and then Raffaele and Guede held her down while Knox slashed her throat. Knox then returned to her boyfriend’s apartment, woke up the next morning, and “discovered” the body upon returning to her flat.

Rudy Guede

Knox and Sollecito were convicted by an Italian court in 2009, after having been in custody since 2007. Each served an additional two years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2011, primarily because of dubious practices on the part of the police and the prosecution. In March of this year, the Italian Supreme Court overturned that overturning, though it remains to be seen if Knox would return to Italy for a retrial. In the meantime, Guede is serving a 16-year-sentence after his DNA was found at the crime scene, on and inside Kercher’s body.

I suspect that the vast majority of people who paid attention to the Knox case won’t read her memoir—it does clock in at nearly 500 pages, and much of the content would be repetitive to those already familiar with the proceedings. But Knox goes to great lengths to clarify elements of her story that are often cited as evidence of her guilt, including her use of drugs, confusion during interrogation, refusal to leave Italy after the murder, and alleged sexual deviancy. WTBH may be redundant for the Knox aficionado, but it’s nothing if not thorough.

There remains a great deal of confusion surrounding the scientific aspects of Knox’s case—experts disagree about whether DNA found on the edge of a knife belonging to Sollecito matched Kercher’s, or DNA found on a piece of Kercher’s bra was Sollecito’s. Moreover, the vast majority of solid evidence was collected poorly, or weeks after the murder took place. To these accusations, Knox maintains a constant “impossible,” and so much of WTBH is instead focused on the elements of the case that have to do with her character. They are as follows:

1. Knox as Sex Fiend. There’s an excellent op-ed in the New York Times this week by Frank Bruni (of Born Round fame) that discusses the double-standard applied to women when talking about sex and sexual history. For the most part, Knox was painted as something of sexpot during her trial, a claim backed up by the following information: 1) She had a few one-night stands, one of which resulted in her contracting oral herpes 2) She brought a vibrator with her to Italy, which she kept in a clear makeup case in the bathroom 3) In the days after the murder, she was seen buying underwear with Sollecito.

I’m sorry, are we not in the 21st century? Was Knox not a college student? Did this not all occur in a country whose men have a reputation for being just this side of skeevy? As a fellow 20-something, I couldn’t help but read WTBH and imagine the kind of stuff that might get dredged up as evidence of my own (nonexistent) sexual deviance. At the very least, there are some photos I’d want to untag.

2. Knox as Drug Addict. Since Knox admits that she and Raffaele had smoked hash on the night of Kercher’s murder, much has been made of the “drug-fueled” nature of their alleged crimes. To this again I say: Whaa? I’ve heard stories from friends of “wild” nights on hash, most of which end with “and then I fell asleep,” not “and then I tried to initiate Satanic sex and violently murdered someone.” Sure, Knox’s confession that marijuana “was as common around our house as pasta” might raise a few eyebrows, but come on. Come on. Pot? If anything, the defense should have used this as evidence in Knox’s favor. If Amanda smoked as often as she says she did, there’s no way she was getting high enough to go all blackout-murderous-rage on anyone. More importantly, on the list of “best activities to do high,” murder comes wayyyy below staying in and watching a movie. Murder takes so much effort.

Knox and Sollecito

3. Knox as Total Weirdo. Perhaps the most important thing working against Knox during her investigation and conviction was her behavior. She didn’t return to the States after Kercher’s body was found, suggesting in the book that it was because she wanted to stay and be of help to the police (not evidence of her indifference towards the murder). She didn’t show a lot of emotion during interrogations, she hung all over her boyfriend, and she made a few awkward jokes in the presence of police and investigators. All told, she came across as kind of a weirdo, and ambivalent about the fact that a heinous crime had been committed just a few doors away from her bedroom. (Btw, a lot of this boils down to inane he-said-she-said stuff. For example, much was of made of Knox “doing cartwheels” in the police station while waiting to be questioned. Knox claims she was having a conversation with a guard about yoga, and showed him she could do the splits when he asked.)

In her book, and in an interview with Diane Sawyer that aired last week, Knox points out that different people react to tragedy in different ways, and that her difficulty expressing emotion (in a country that prizes it) doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. I have to say that I’m kind of Team Knox here. Sure, I’d like to believe that in the face of a violent crime I’d be all sobby hiccups and runny mascara, or that I’d feel compelled to stop living my daily life, but really, who knows? Knox appears to be more outraged by the murder than saddened by it, and considering she’d known Kercher just a few months, that frankly doesn’t seem entirely crazy.

But just so I don’t come across as a total Knox apologist, I should mention that there are definitely parts of her story that don’t jibe, or are at the very least hard to accept. At one point during her interrogation, Knox changes her testimony, saying that it’s possible she was at the flat that evening, and that she has vague memories of meeting up with her boss Patrick, who she thereby implicated in the murder (Knox was later convicted of callunia—basically Italian slander—and forced to pay Patrick 22,000 euros. Slander is also the reason WTBH wasn’t published in the UK, as she accuses police of treating her poorly during the investigation).

No matter how much duress Knox claims to have been under—days of interrogation with no lawyer and little sleep, being questioned primarily in her non-native language—I find it hard to imagine feeling compelled to change my story so dramatically. In WTBH, Knox says she was fatigued, confused and desperate to stop being yelled at. (She also tracks down an expert on false confessions to back up her mistake.) Knox essentially claims the police strong-armed her into imagining the incriminating scenario, and says she spent the subsequent days telling anyone and everyone who would listen that she wanted to recant. A dubious chain of events, to say the least. I also don’t know that it would have taken me nearly as long as it did Knox to realize that I was a suspect in the investigation, or to ask for a lawyer. I watch alot of Law & Order; I know how these things works.

There’s no question that Knox was naive, and in many moments immature. She made a lot of stupid decisions before the murder, and a lot of tone-deaf decisions during the investigation and trial. Even in the book, she comes across as unaware of others’ perception of her, and many of her attempts at self-preservation/self-sufficiency read as aloof. She seems, overall, like a girl wholly unprepared to face public scrutiny. But in reading WTBH, it’s hard to make the leap from “weird and insensitive” to “psychopathic killer.”

Knox’s boss Patrick

Indeed, after spending last night in a culminating k-hole of Knox coverage online, I still find myself believing in her innocence. Not rabidly, but by default, because I can’t seem to get convinced by the evidence against her. Using the Occam’s Razor test—the simplest answer is usually the right one—this case could go either way: It’s true that murders are usually committed by people close to the victim, and it’s true that Knox knew Meredith Kercher better than most. But murders are not usually committed by normal college students from Seattle, or by potheads, or by women. I’d also like to think that if Foxy Knoxy were as cold-blooded and analytical as the prosecution/press seems to think, she might have done a slightly less half-assed job of cleaning up after the crime.

Of course, I fully accept the possibility that I’ve been duped, swayed by Knox’s clear-headed (and generally okay) writing. Because WTBH is just that, focused and direct, characteristics that make it a decent testimony but at times a tedious and plodding book. WTBH feels like a pent-up exhalation of breath, a long-winded anecdote whose details would seem pointless if so many of them weren’t ultimately brought up during her trial. The book is banal but never terrible, and at its most interesting when Knox documents her time in Italian prison.

I can’t say that Knox comes across as the nicest person (certainly not the smartest) or that she doesn’t bear responsibility for how convoluted the Kercher investigation became. And I certainly think it’s deplorable that she implicated someone innocent, stress-induced hallucinations or not. But in writing WTBH, Knox accomplishes what I imagine she set out to do: Presenting her side of the story, and countering 95% of the claims made against her. If she is a psychopath—which I suppose she’d have to be, if she were guilty—then she’s a fine one. A fine one, indeed.

TITLE: Waiting to Be Heard
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AUTHOR: Amanda Knox (with probably some help)
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PAGES: Kindled
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ALSO WROTE: n/a
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SORTA LIKE: Other Knox trial books
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FIRST LINE: “I walked into the ancient Perugian courtroom, where centuries of verdicts had been handed down, praying that a tradition of justice would give me protection now.”

I suppose it started as one of those things that was mildly and inoffensively true, like maybe I hated having to read The Great Gatsby for school, or maybe I got a bad grade on a quiz about The Great Gatsby, or (most likely) I simply decided to dislike it for the mere accomplishment of being contrarian (I mean come on, is it really the best novel of all time?) But for many years, I told myself — and others; believe me, and others — that I didn’t really care for its rich white people plot, or its vapid characters. I suppose I said it so often (as often as The Great Gatsby comes up in daily life) that it became more of a truism than it ever was originally, like swearing you hate yogurt and then realizing one day that you haven’t actually eaten it in 15 years. Long story short, I owed Gatsby a reread, and I may have been a little (a lot) swayed by the prospect of seeing Leonardo DiCaprio play yet another poor scrappy white guy trying to scam his way to success.

As it turns out, I barely remembered the story, which (I don’t know, just in case) is about the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a wealthy Long Island bachelor who throws lavish parties and says “old sport” more often than was even socially acceptable in the 20s. I’d also forgotten how short TGG is, more of a novella than a novel, and in some ways more of a thriller than a romance. It is indeed — if not the most magnificent work of genius in the history of all time — a very classic feeling book.

Of course, today’s Gatsby wouldn’t have a mansion (to refresh your memory, slash spoiler alert, he turns out to be a petty criminal who’s spent years creating a nouveau riche personality in the hopes of impressing and re-seducing his lost love Daisy). Today he’d have a lot of flashy and/or suggestive Facebook photos, and he’d leave his relationship status as permanently “complicated” but poke Daisy at least three times a week. (Frankly, the technological perils of today would take Gatsby’s cringeworthy loneliness and turn it into something even more sad, but not in a tragic F. Scott Fitzgerald way. I mean like I Have Sex With My Car sad.)

This time around, my favorite part of TGG was the end. As Carraway goes to great lengths to round up Gatsby’s friends for his (spoiler alert) funeral, it becomes clear that Gatsby didn’t really have friends. And the beauty of the character Fitzgerald has created is that you’re not really sure whose fault that is: Gatsby’s? For being a disingenuous braggart who only made acquaintances that might help him financially, or enable him to get closer to Daisy? Or his acquaintances’,  for never bothering to know Gatsby behind his facade, and only using him for his garish generosity? …Maybe I was right all along and the book really is about rich(ish) people and their rich(ish) problems.

So I stand by my feelings that The Great Gatsby is not the best book ever, but Jay Gatsby is one of the greatest characters in literature, admirable and pitiable in equal measure. Maybe I should go back and reread more authors who I’ve long considered among my least favorite. For all I know, I wouldn’t actually rather die by shark bites than ever read another book by Virginia Woolf.

TITLE: The Great Gatsby
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AUTHOR: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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PAGES: 180 (in paperback)
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ALSO WROTE: The Beautiful and Damned, This Side of Paradise
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SORTA LIKE: Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Notebook
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FIRST LINE: “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

Indeed, we as Americans (we as humans?) appear keen on filing the Marathon incident away into a pre-determined folder of Why Bad Things Happen. Was it terrorism? Was it politically motivated? Were they lonely and alienated in their non-native country? Were they tired of being asked for donations every time one of their friends ran a 5K? Were they just crazy?

A byproduct of my extremely cynical worldview (on a crocheted pillow, it would boil down to something like “People are awful human beings”) I don’t find myself as preoccupied with the Tsarneav brothers’ motive. Since there is nothing they could say or reveal (rather, that Dzhokhar could say or reveal) that would make me go, “Ohhhh, well that totally makes sense then,” their reasons for wreaking havoc in this country — which never appears to never have treated them with anything worse than apathy — are somehow frivolous to me.

Taking it a step further, I sometimes feel that attempting to publicize their justifications for the bombing does little except give those justifications undeserved exposure. Yes, I suppose I’d like to know whether they were linked to a broader group with additional targets, but then again maybe not. Maybe some part of me would like to trust that the authorities will suss that out, and leave the rest of us to forget the name Tsarneav post-haste, to drop the duo into the bucket of Stupid Awful Idiots Who Did Terrible Things But Otherwise Don’t Matter, not the bucket of Terrorists Whose Ideology We’ll Talk About for Decades to Come and Who Have Basically Defined Our Foreign Policy. It’s a tough balance — seeking justice for the victims, preparing for the possibility of a next time, and yet also finding a way to lessen the impact of these people, to avoid giving them the attention they so desperately want. It feels like getting bullied at school and being told to ignore it, that they’re only trying to get a rise out of you, that reacting is how they win.

I suppose the ideal solution is somewhere in between, something that allows us to get a degree of closure without elevating the plotting of a disturbed 19-year-old to a global terror threat, or a referendum on Islam. I also suppose that sometimes, in certain cases, it may matter why a killer kills, which brings me to A Thousand Cuts, one of my San Fran pick-ups and the first book to make its way out of the intimidating GABST kitchen table book pile.

A Thousand Cuts tells the story of a fictional school shooting in England, during which a young history teacher marched into an assembly (on bullying, no less) and shot one teacher and three students before turning the gun on himself. The story unfolds via an omniscient narrator, but interspersed throughout are the statements of various witnesses and acquaintances of the deceased: teachers and students from the school, parents of the victims, etc. What emerges is both a poignant portrayal of a school-shooting aftermath (coordinating memorial services, reporters hounding bereaved parents, faculty shouldering the task of resuming daily life) and, over time, a portrait of a teacher in distress. Without giving away too many details, suffice it to say that newbie history teacher Sam Szajkowski was bullied — by teachers who didn’t like him and by students who didn’t respect him. Indeed, what becomes clear over the course of A Thousand Cuts is that Szajkowski had a motive, one that almost, almost made me go, “Ohhhh, well that totally makes sense then.”

A Thousand Cuts is only a few years old (2010) and it’s a testament to the apparent longevity of school shootings that it could have been released yesterday. Moreover, we are still constantly facing the question of what makes a person kill people–numerous people, violently, en masse.  And I can’t help but feel that for all the individual answers we’ve gotten — religion, politics, plain old-fashioned crazy — we don’t feel any closer to processing events like Boston, or to making sense of them. Personally, I don’t think we can, any more than we can truly get inside the brain of a serial killer, or a Nazi, or a warlord. I also don’t know that I want to get inside those brains.

This is a pretty bleak period in our nation’s history (interpret period to mean month, year or decade, depending on your level of pessimism) and thus a great time to read A Thousand Cuts. It’s not the most subtle book — on occasion, its themes feel almost shouted –  but maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe we shouldn’t tiptoe around the issue of whether the “why” matters, and if it does when and what are we supposed to do with it. Because I find it hard to believe April 15, 2013 will be the last time we have to ask.

TITLE: A Thousand Cuts
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AUTHOR: Simon Lelic
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PAGES: 294 (in paperback)
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ALSO WROTE: The Child Who, The Facility
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SORTA LIKE: Tana French writes We Need to Talk About Kevin
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FIRST LINE: “I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.”

If you’re having as much trouble with the last five days as I am, let me make a humble suggestion: Read a good book. Something that takes you out of yourself for a little bit. Watch a great movie; look at some fabulous art. Not to minimize or ignore the seemingly daily horrors being foisted on us by people/guns/bombs/nature/fertilizer, but because you should do something to glorify the good and beautiful in life, and not the vile and tragic.

In the meantime, here are five positive(ish) stories from the Worst Week Ever. Because everyone could use a little good news.

1. This Message in a Bottle Totally Sort Of Worked
While cleaning debris from a beach in Croatia, surfers found a half-broken bottle containing a message written by a Canadian man in 1985 to a woman named Mary. “Mary, you really are a great person. I hope we can keep in correspondence. I said I would write. Your friend always, Jonathon, Nova Scotia.” An uplifting story, though I think Jonathan’s friends could have clued him in on the intricacies of mail.
[Reuters]

 2. Now Everyone Can Meet Hot Brazilian Women On the Beach
Reuters photographer Sergio Moraes wrote a really nice photo blog about “Praia para Todos” (Beaches for Everyone), an NGO-sponsored project in Brazil that makes the Barra da Tijuca beach on Saturdays and Copacabana on Sundays accessible to the physically disabled. This story warmed my heart, and made me think sand-covering beach-length ramp-makers should be looking into wider distribution deals.
[Reuters]

3. You’re Going to Be Able to Learn Sooo Much More Stuff From Your Couch
This week marks the momentous birth of the Digital Public Library of America, a 2+ year project aimed at centralizing the resources of all the country’s libraries, archives and museums. Said John Palfrey, co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society (which launched the library): “We aspire to establish a system whereby all Americans can gain access to information and knowledge in digital formats in a manner that is ‘free to all.’” An admirable goal, and totally doable: In less than five minutes, I learned that this 1890s leather vest was way ahead of its time.
[The Atlantic]

4. Tylenol is Actually the Fountain of Youth for Your Brain
A team of psychologists from the University of British Columbia revealed findings that suggest acetaminophen – the primary ingredient in Tylenol — can help certain people overcome the fear and anxiety they feel when contemplating their own mortality. This is great news for anyone who can’t afford weekly therapy sessions, and also seems like a much more work-friendly option than Ecstasy.
[The Week]

5. If All Else Fails, Maybe We Can Leave? 
Astronomers have discovered two planets that appear capable of supporting life. Orbiting a star 1,200 light years from here, in a constellation known as Lyra, the planets are about half as large as Earth and presumably very similar to it in terms of galactic makeup. Of course, chances are humans will never actually get to them, but just in case: It’s all of us on one planet, and Donald Trump on the other, right?
[New York Times]

In my defense, I did buy nearly 40 new books over the last two weeks, books that have been relegated to a “special” pile atop my kitchen table, where I hope to be reminded on a daily basis that the endgame of buying dozens of unneeded (but oh-so-wanted) new books is that one must eventually get around to reading them. But I suppose dusty used paperbacks — who have spent their recent years crammed in overflowing bookshelves all over the West Coast — should be grateful to have a new and slightly more spacious headquarters in my tiny apartment. They should be thanking me, those books. I gave them a home.

But anyway, I’m stalling. The truth is that it’s very difficult to read on vacation, even when your vacation is pretty much entirely dedicated to books. And so it wasn’t until halfway through my second week of GABST that I decided to get cracking on Light, the last in six-book young adult series by Michael Grant. After all, I’d stampeded through the preceding five books in the span of about two months last year; no point in resisting now.

Now, don’t be discouraged by the dramatic selfies populating the cover of Light and the other Gone books: These aren’t (or aren’t only) silly novels about teen romance. Mostly the romance (between lead bro/teen hero Sam and annoying know-it-all Astrid, and between evil megalomaniac Caine and head biotch Diana) is a subplot within the Gone books’ much broader story arc: that of a nuclear accident whose fallout resulted in the sudden disappearance of everyone over the age of 15, plus the sudden appearance of an opaque dome that trapped the remaining babies/children/teens in a town-sized confine while also spawning a series of human and animal mutations that are in equal measure awesome and deadly. I mean, say what you will about 16-year-olds navigating the confusing trenches of young love, but post-apocalyptic politics and nuclear-grade genetic mutations are plots that know no terminology like “young adult.”

In any case, since it’s not exactly easy (or helpful) to review the sixth book in a series, and there’s certainly not much I can reveal from Light’s plot that would make sense to someone who hadn’t read books 1 through 5, let me instead take this moment to offer a more general congratulations to the young adult genre, whose proliferation was obvious in the various bookstores I visited during Great American Bookstore Tour. Say what you will about teens and their texting, teens and their Snapchat, teens and their Bieber (an author, btw), but the numbers suggest that either a) young adults are definitely reading, and maybe more than ever before or b) old adults are reading a lot of young adult books. At the very least, hopefully c) all of the above.

I suppose there’s room for debate on whether books about supernatural star-crossed lovers, or to-the-death televised tween battles, are going to create the intellectuals of tomorrow. But personally I don’t think it matters. My love of reading — which has since expanded into nonfiction, science writing, historical books and the occasional poem — started at the bottom, with Dean Koontz and R.L. Stine (no offense, guys). The point of great YA fiction isn’t to make kids smarter—it’s to make them love books. To make them fall in love with reading, to the point that they stay up late, huddled under the covers with a flashlight, just to find out whether the Hardy Boys solve their ten-billionth mystery, or if God eventually tells Margaret that he is indeed there.

The point of YA fiction is to get kids so excited about books that they’ll overlook all the boring/weird/mediocre/downright shitty ones they’ll be forced to read between the ages of 10 and 18. So excited about books that they’ll return to them once the overbearing weight of College Reading is lifted (even I barely finished books as an undergrad). And so excited about books that it will become unfathomable to them—by the time tedious old adulthood rolls around—to not at least pick up the occasional James Patterson, or jump on the (honestly, ageless) Harry Potter bandwagon.

So to that end, bring on the Twilights and Hunger Games and Gones. Press forward with saucy “New Adult” semi-erotica and barely-tolerable novelizations of video games. I find it hard to believe that today’s teenagers will be any stupider for reading these books instead of Goosebumps, or Christopher Pike, or Judy Blume. Most importantly, at least they’re reading.

TITLE: Light
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AUTHOR: Michael Grant
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PAGES: Kindled
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ALSO WROTE: The other Gone books
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SORTA LIKE: Stephen King writes YA fiction
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FIRST LINE: “The little girl’s hair caught fire.”

In some ways I can’t believe that the Great American Bookstore Tour is over. I’ve been planning and talking about it for so long that I wonder how I’ll convince people I’m an interesting person who does interesting things after this. But in other ways, it feels like I’ve been gone forever, and looking back I almost can’t believe that Seattle was two weeks ago, not two months, or that I took my gorgeous trip to Alcatraz last Friday, not last year. I think I ultimately wound up with an ideal vacation — one that included plenty of opportunities for kicking back — but I also packed my days with interviews, eating, sightseeing and bookstore visits, and it’ll be hard to top my 4-mile-a-day walking average once I get back to New York (even though it’s New York).

Now, let’s get misty-eyed. I knew going into this trip that I was going to meet some amazing people, people who have dedicated their lives to an industry with decades (centuries?) of historical tumult, people who have spent 10, 20, even 30 years in a retail business with low profit margins and limited salary potential. And indeed, I met people who came to book-selling from department stores, from banking, from food service. I met people who have been in the book business for most of their lives, and people who can’t foresee a time when they won’t be. I saw stores that have revitalized neighborhoods, brought communities together, and fought for free speech. And that’s all before you consider their workaday mission: disseminating knowledge and ideas, expanding minds, and convincing people of all ages and backgrounds to spend their hard-earned money on books, not because (or not simply because) it’s necessary for the stores’ bottom line, but because these people want to exist in a world where everyone reads, where everyone is as enthralled by the written word as they are. Independent booksellers are like your friend who just saw a movie they loved; “you have to see it,” they tell you, not because of what’s in it for them, but because they want for you that experience, that excitement, that love of something truly great.

The final haul, divided by city.

For me, bookstores have always been places of comfort, caverns of potential escape, avenues into new worlds or refreshing glimpses into worlds we already know. I love their ordered clutter, their smell, their promise of possibility. And so to go on this trip was a privilege; to set foot into these spaces, carefully curated by people all over the country, was an honor. That most of said people were not only willing but eager to speak with me was incredible, and their enthusiasm only exacerbated mine. Rather than facing bookstore fatigue, I’m overjoyed to think that I have merely scratched the surface here, that I could do this once a year probably for the rest of my life. Perhaps I have already, in the corners of my mind not discouraged by things like “cost” and “vacation time,” begun ruminating on a GABST Part Deux.

But from this inaugural journey, I feel that there are two takeaways I want to impart (there are actually many, but two that I can wrap my mind around on a Friday morning). The first is that book-selling, and specifically independent book-selling, is hard work. I saw owners and CEOs out on the floor, talking to customers and ringing up purchases, not because (or not simply because) they enjoy doing it, but because they must, because they all wear a thousand hats and do a thousand things, because no task is too small, because delegating isn’t always an option.

More challenging still, booksellers’ product changes constantly, to the tune of 200,000+ new models a year (in the U.S. alone) and they are expected by their customers to keep up, to stay knowledgable and helpful and to know where to look when they don’t know the answer. Unlike a hardware or grocery store, whose staff isn’t expected to get you excited about hammers or eggs, bookstore employees are supposed to be infectious; they’re supposed to love reading and make you love it too. For some of them, for many of them, this comes naturally. But the bar is set high, and the countless people I encountered who are meeting it impressed me every single time.

The second takeaway is this: Reading is not dead. Yes, we love our iPhones and iPads and televisions. Yes, we think and work in shorter bursts, and our attention is frequently divided, and reading — especially long, focused reading — is an easy thing to lose along the way. But there’s a strong streak of optimism running through the independent bookstore community, and it’s not fueled by ignorance or denial. These stores have loyal customers; they’re in the black. They create and enhance communities of existing readers, and they help develop the readers of tomorrow. One need look no further than the explosion in young-adult literature to realize that, as Paul Yamazaki of City Lights told me, this is not an “either/or” situation, but an “and/and” one. We can tweet and text and watch TV and play Bewejeled and we can read. Many of us — not everyone, but many — already are.

Finally, even though this is just a silly personal blog, and even though there’s no need on silly personal blogs to include acknowledgments, I feel that I must thank people. People like Peter Aaron at Elliott Bay, and Miriam Sontz at Powell’s. People like Paul at City Lights and Joyce Meskis at Tattered Cover and Patrick Marks at The Green Arcade. Each of them took time out of their busy lives for me, and not merely because I said the word “Reuters,” but because they were excited to, and in love with the idea of this trip. They showed me around their stores, and let me peek behind the scenes. They introduced me to their employees, and indulged my (silly, unimportant) opinions on book publishing. They were all so very lovely and generous and amazing that I feel blessed (a word I very rarely use) to have been able to share even the smallest amount of time with any of them. Reading isn’t dying because we as a society still love books — their offer of escapism and emotion and impact — but it’s also not dying because of people like them.

GABST TOTALS:
Cities visited: 6
Bookstores visited: 27
Books purchased: 37
Laptops broken: 1
Bookstore t-shirts purchased: 3
Wyoming sweatshirts purchased: 1

THANK YOU FOR READING. OVER AND OUT.