The Guns of August / Barbara Tuchman, 606 pp.

It's easy to see why this 1962 work, outlining the first month of WWI, is still so popular.  Although the prevailing image of that war is of long, static years in the trenches, Tuchman lays out the action-packed beginning of the conflict and the circumstances which led to the later stalemate.

Told from the point of view of the politicians and generals who directed the action, this is amazingly suspenseful stuff.  I love Tuchman's flair with language:

Joffre arrived early at Laon...to lend him sangfroid out of his own bottomless supply...

With their relentless talent for the tactless, the Germans chose to violate Luxembourg at a place whose...name was Trois Vierges (three virgins)...


Rennenkampf...could not, fling himself after the fleeing enemy to pluck the final victory...

And if Tuchman makes frequent use of received cliches about the national characteristics of the various players - the Germans are rigid and brutal, the French passionate and prone to bursting into tears, the Russians sloppy and powerful, and the English self-interested and perfidious- she balances this out with an immense amount of detail about each of the many actors in this drama so that the effect is lively and (almost) fun.

The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman, 402 pages

Since he was a small child, Quentin has been obsessed with the Narnia-esque world of Fillory, brought to life through a series of kids' books. When he's a senior in high school, he learns that magic is real and that Fillory may not be as fictitious as he once thought. He's soon admitted to Brakebills, a mysterious and highly competitive magical university, where he learns to hone his magical abilities, particularly while dealing with the massive hangovers he gets from hanging out with his close-knit group of carousing friends.

Since a large chunk of this book involves a regular person suddenly gaining entry into a previously unknown magical world, there are plenty of comparisons between The Magicians and Harry Potter. But make no mistake: the sex, drugs, alcohol, and gritty danger of The Magicians make it a poor comparison. Both the Magicians trilogy (of which this is Book 1) and the Harry Potter series have their place in the world of fantasy novels, and both are fantastic, (and yes, both involve magical schools) but that's about all they have in common. I can't wait to see what's next in this thoroughly engrossing series.

Dante's Divine Comedy

Dante's Divine Comedy / adapted by Seymour Chwast 127 pgs.

Brilliantly illustrated version of Dante's Divine Comedy.  I picked this up because the authors name is so interesting and, of course, who doesn't love a good story about hell?

5 @ 55: the 5 essential legal documents you need by age 55

5 @ 55: the 5 essential legal documents you need by age 55 / Judith D Grimaldi & Joanne Seminara 141 pgs.

This book is short and sweet with just enough hair raising examples to make you take their advice seriously.  The idea is that by 55 you are at a solid place in your life to make decisions about your health, your assets and how to leave things if you become incapacitated.  All of the advice comes from lawyers who have handled estates law and seen the worst and best case scenarios. I'm sure the advice is good - don't wait to deal with these issues.

Once in a great city: a Detroit story

Once in a great city: a Detroit story / David Maraniss 457 pgs.

Focused on 1963, this is a story of everything great in Detroit.  A manufacturing powerhouse thanks to the Big Three auto makers, visionary city leaders that came VERY close to landing the 1968 Olympic games, Motown, promising civil rights and race relations...it is really a city on top of the world.  So what happened?  Maraniss shows that signs of the upcoming problems were around even in 1963.  Detroit took it on the chin in many ways following its years of glory...could that have been prevented?  Was the decline inevitable?  I think Maraniss does a good job of discussing the change that was going on even as the city was on top.

Ban en Banlieue

Ban en Banlieue / Bhanu Kapil  190 pgs.

There are words on each page of this book.  They are all words that I recognize but put together, they seem to mean nothing to me.  I guess I'm just not smart enough to understand this book....at all.  I'm willing to accept this and move on with my life.

Get in Trouble

Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link, 336 pages.
Kelly Link's stories are so imaginative, so fully formed, and so engrossing that I found myself wishing this was a far longer work. The stories are so different, all in their own complete world, each exploring themes of our relationships with the world and with others, but each looking from a different angle, skewed in such a way that you see something that you hadn't imagined before "Secret Identity" has a twist that I won't discuss, but it's told by a young woman ("almost sixteen!") who may have misled her thirty-two year-old online boyfriend ("he's not a pervert"). He may have misled her, too though, and not about his age.
"Origin Story" unfolds with a super-hero returning to his small-town home and reconnecting with his high-school sweetheart who was also his first sidekick. Again, everyone has their secrets.
I listened to over half of this on downloadable audio. The stories are each read by a different narrator and they are uniformly excellently done.
Great reading, great listening, great fun.
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Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Munroe, 61 pages.
Randall Munroe, best know for his online comic XKCD, expands on one his most popular of those, "Up Goer Five" with this series of drawings explaining plate tectonics, skyscrapers, the human body, and datacenters, all with the explanations given using only the most commonly used one-thousand words.Fun and informative.
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The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Art of War by Sun Tzu, 178 pages.
Our Overdrive catalog has an audio version of this (presumed) 5th Century BCE work by "Master Sun."
This classic work, laying out military theory in 13 parts, from planning, tactics and maneuvering and marching an army, through the use of spies has inspired despots, freedom fighters, generals and angry teens throughout the ages.
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Olympic Butter Gold

Olympic Butter Gold by Jonathan Moody, 94 pages.

Award-winning poet and high-school teacher Moody has published a collection of fun, lyrical, and engaging poems thematically linked by references to superheroes, Eighties Hip-Hop, popular culture and its intersection with B-Boy culture (or the other way around) all melded with his life. He brings in references to his military upbringing in many of the poems, like "Operation Just Cause, 1989" and "Deployed."
Later, in the section entitled ""Lovelust a la Mode" he reminisces about a former girlfriend;

"At Elgin Air Force Base, rumors
about my frist girlfriend traveled
at the speed of sound. . .

She doesn't know who her real
folks are. It's a toss-up
 between Bessie Smith
& Charlie Parker, but she has more
Godfathers Than the Zulu nation."

His poems in the last section, "Ronda Final (Already)," express Moody's thoughts about, among other things, race, rap, and the fault-lines in America around these topics. Poems like "Gothic Barkley," and "2084 (from Ghetto Fabulous to Ghetto Facsist)" give this collection a strong finish.