Gross America:

Gross America - Your Coast-to-Coast Guide to All Things Gross (Featuring Brains in Jars, Frozen Dead Guys, Candy-Coated Insects, the World's Only Poop-fueled Streetlamps, and much more!) By: Richard Faulk
Non-fiction: travel 250 pages
Book Count: 24

This book is a lot like the show "Mysteries at the Museum" but only dealing with gross things.  Sadly, there is apparently no gross things in my state and the near-by states are filled with museums filled with STDs. It includes things that you would expect in a book like this; the Mutter Museum, the SPAM Museum, and the Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum.  And it includes less famous things like; a restaurant named after a cannibal, flameless cremations (which are a lot like pressure cooking someone into goo), and a biography bound in the subject's own skin.

At Large:

At Large By: Lynne Murray
Fiction: Mystery 288 pages
Book Count: 23

Josephine Fuller is a plus sized women that is comfortable in her skin.  But when she runs into the husband of the woman that her ex-husband was last with, things go down hill fast. First, she gets fired from the charity that she was volunteering at. Next her ex's lover gets killed and she's the one that finds the body. From there she is at the center of a murder mystery that leads her to piss off a group of vegan lesbians, get offered a job in the pron industry, have her home cleaned by a medium, and much more. Over all I liked the book, but the ending seamed a bit hurried.

Murder in the Place of Anubis:

Murder in the Place of Anubis By: Lynda S. Robinson
Fiction: Mystery, Historic 218 pages
Book Count: 22

As you might have guessed this book is a murder mystery that takes place in ancient Egypt.  It takes place during the reign of King Tut and deals with the issues that his father/father-in-law Akhenaten caused with his changes to the country's religion and capital, and is not just in King Tut's lifetime because he is so well known. This book is the fourth book in the series, but is a read alone book.

Point Your Face at This:

Point Your Face at This By: Demetri Martin
Non-fiction: Humor, Art 288 pages
Book Count: 21

This book is a collection of humorous pictures. Which made the book reading for this book that I attended interesting, as you really can not read the book out loud. So, in short always go to book reading for books without words.

The Tinkerers:

The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great By: Alec Foege
Non-Fiction: Biography, Econ, History, Science 198 pages
Book Count: 20

This book is on America's history of tinkering, how it changed history and modern tinkering.  It deals both with physical tinkering and non-physical tinkering.  It does this by telling the story of many different people, groups and products connected to tinkering.  Some things it covers include Edison (although it is light in pointing out what a jerk he was,) the PARC corporation, MP3s, derivatives, Angry Birds, Ben Franklin, and Segways.

400 Calorie Fix:

400 Calorie Fix By: Liz Vaccariello
Non-fiction: Food, 414 pages
Book Count: 19

I read this book as a friend recommended it as a book that was helpful for eyeballing the size of food and the number of calories in it.  They did not recommend the diet itself.  After reading the book I can see why.  The book does have a number of useful guides to how big a serving size of different things are and it does help you see the number of calories in different things.  But the diet itself is something I can not believe would make it past the ask your doctor first stage.  For starters the author suggests that you eat 400 calories at a time (hence the book title). This works fine if you are having 4-6 meals a day, but for when you are dieting they have a 2 week plan where you eat 3 meals a day, or 1200 calories. Even they point out that you need to take a vitamin with this, as it is impossible to eat all the nutrients you need with so few calories.  And the recipes that they have in the book, for the most part do not use the swap outs and changes that most diet books use.  For example the meal salads will be 2 cups of lettuce and then a couple of tablespoons of cheese and nuts, using up all your calories on small amounts of high calorie foods instead of large amounts of different low calorie veggies.  A meal might be a couple of deep fried chicken wings and a beer or it could have 2 peaches for a side, because that's how many calories are left, and the fact that most people wouldn't eat two whole peaches at one time is irrelevant.  They also make the outrageous claim that you won't feel hungry on this plan even though you are on a starvation diet and their preset 2 week meals has days where both your lunch and dinner are a salad or a sandwich so it isn't even varied foods.

Hungry Souls:

Hungry Souls Supernatural Visits, Messages, and Warnings from Purgatory By: Gerard J. M. Van Den Aardweg

Non-fiction: Religion 151 pages

Book Count: 18

First a religious book of ghost stories is either the most boring book of ghost stories, or inversely the scariest. It's not scary as it is all true stories most with some level of documentation and often told by religious people who gloss over all the strange noises, moving objects, odd dark humanoid forms that make ghost stories scary. (Not that the author isn't saying that those things and other things that people think about when talking about ghost or even other paranormal events aren't true. As he is.) But it is also the most scary in that the ghost often describe their suffering in purgatory, or in one case Hell, which is worst then some dead guy jumping out and yelling "Boo!"

As you can tell this book is mostly a theology book that deals with the afterlife by telling stories of people that came back. Some stories are from near-death experiences, some from souls in Hell or Purgatory, and a couple from Heaven. It also deals with the Purgatory Museum in Rome, which is a part of a church that has things like prayer books with hand prints burned into them from visions/ghosts/souls of people in Purgatory. Mostly it’s a lot of dead people asking family members or holy people to pray for them, and then some important theological information relating to their requests.  It has a large number of in depth footnotes and also a bibliography of books in multiple languages.  Also although unlike many religious books having to deal with ghosts it’s answer isn’t “they are all fakes” or “they are all demons” it does point out that like all supernatural visions and visits it’s not something you should try and force to happen by doing things like going to a psychic.