Somewhat crude illustrations, in a Far Side-esque style, but with a few cute ideas. Points for self-reference, but ultimately the poor copy-editing turned me off too much to go back for more.

Pretty good. Mildly informative and entertaining, but came off a bit weak after my recent reading of Stumbling on Happiness. This book provides some insights as to why we do some things that make sense, but isn’t quite as deep or as engaging as the other. The anecdotes in Sway are pretty good (especially the airplane one, and the $20 auction, although it’s the third time I’ve encountered that one in recent history, so it’s lost its punch), and it’s a short read, so I’d recommend it, but it’s not an absolute must-read.

Pretty good. I was a little unenchanted by the very beginning, but found it picked up. Truss definitely has a sense for comedic situations, and they way in which the involved characters snowballed all together was quite good, really. A lot of funny bits in here, and the basic story was pretty amusing. Unfortunately, it ran a little longer than it had to, and the book probably would’ve been better without the arrival of the last two characters. Still, I’m encouraged, and am looking forward to reading her other novels.

This was a bit of a disappointment. There was some general Manga overview and history, with small amounts of exposition in each of several sections (boys’ manga, girls’ manga, etc), which then devolved into a laundry list of sample works, with very little text. I became bored with it fairly quickly.

It was pretty good. I adapted a Williams-Sonoma strawberry and rhubarb pie recipe to make it (basically swapping out the berries). The flavour was acceptable, but really not a tonne better than a blueberry pie. Good things: saskatoon berries are easy to pick at a local farm. Bad things: the seeds are a little more prominent than they would be for blueberries. Also the funny looks when you tell people what the pie’s made of…

Tremendously informative and fun. Gilbert does a great job of guiding us on a tour of our brain – how it deals with what it remembers, what it experiences, and what it fabricates. We learn how those factors combine to influence our ability to predict our future happiness, and with this knowledge, see why our predictions often go astray.
The concepts flow smoothly, in logical progression, and are well-illustrated, with examples of studies performed to derive the theories being discussed.
Oh, and it’s funny – Gilbert’s tossed my idea, formed when reading Freakonomics, that researchers should be paired with professional writers, on its head.

A must-read for those of you who have brains.

Not bad, but not as good as the start of the series. I found the adventures a little more pedestrian this time, without the wonder of having the kids learning about themselves, their parents, and their powers. The idea of AA for teen heroes was cute, but I didn’t find there was enough behind me to thrill me.
Overall, an acceptable continuation, but I don’t think it would draw in new readers.

I made this using the recipe from The Perfect Scoop, and it’s very good. Extremely easy to make, with very little prep time, and it looks fabulous and has great flavour. I didn’t have any vodka or kirsch in the house, so omitted them, and so the treat is a little hard. I think I’ll pick some up before making this again, but I’m not disappointed with the way it is now.

Pretty good. Certainly cute and entertaining, in a “book written for young readers” kind of way. The story didn’t have an incredible amount of depth, but did present a few ideas about the natures of gods and ice and rainbows, and some of the dialogue was funny.

Not terrible, although I feel let down ‘cos I was expecting great things from Bendis. I was really put off by the apparent lack of editor on the title – grammar/punctuation mistakes abound at the beginning, and certain characters’ names changed spelling. Also, I didn’t really get a whole lot out of the bonus material (which took up half the book).
The storyline was okay, and the art generally pretty good – I liked the use of shadows. The conclusion left me a little flat, though, and I can’t get over how Deena is apparently the only person in the city who doesn’t have Lois Lane syndrome – she can identify people even if they obscure a portion of their face.