Books I’m Browsing

The Harlequin: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 15, by Laurell K. Hamilton
Yeah, I know, the last couple of them really sucked. (Pardon the expression.) But there was a sweet spot for this series, when it was as addictive as cocaine-sprinkled brownies. I keep hoping Ms. Hamilton will find her way again. (The Meredith Gentry series does nothing for me.) I have yet to find another paranormal fiction line that amuses me so much, and I have read some real dogs of books trying. Hence, hope springs eternal. But I’m buying it used.

Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking,
by Thomas E. Kida
This looks extremely interesting. I’m always very interesting in understanding why people – including me- think and act as they do, and this books looks to be all about the debunking of pseudoscientific crap pushed at us by, say, Madison Ave and the Bush Administration.

The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive, by Joan Kelly
Looks like an interesting twist on the more common pro-domme memoir.

The Art of Detection (Kate Martinelli Mysteries), by Laurie R. King
I prefer Ms. King’s books about Sherlock Holmes and his wife (!) to the modern-day stuff, but she creates good characters and has a knack for building up tension and dread in a thriller.

The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession, by Chandler Burr
I don’t wear perfume. For one thing, I have a not-very-acute sense of smell, so I’d probably put on too much and make people’s eyes water in elevators. Also, alcohol-based perfumes leave tiny brown blotches on my skin wherever I’ve applied it. Some kind of allergy, apparently. I tried the essential oil thing for a while, but really, between hair products and lotion, I’m sweet-smelling enough anyway.

But I like knowing how things work. Publishers Weekly says: “Nobody knows for sure what makes our noses work the way they do, not even the $20-billion-a-year perfume industry's legions of chemists, whose jobs depend on appealing to those noses. So what happens when Luca Turin, a likable scientist who happens to possess an unusually sensitive nose, proposes a new theory of smell that promises to unravel the mystery once and for all? That's what readers find out in this often funny, picaresque expos‚ of the closed world of whiffs, aromas and odors-and the people who study them.”