"An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth"

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything (Col. Chris Hadfield)

A pretty interesting book that's easy to recommend, if not quite demand that you run out and pick up now. The book is mostly a autobiography of Hadfield's life, mostly centered on his last mission to space on the International Space Station. Mixed in is almost comedically Canadian common sense advice (make sure you're doing your own job well, etc). I don't really know that I have much more to say about this; I liked reading it, and the advice isn't bad. Um, I guess this review's a small bite.

Grade: B

"Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader"

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (Bradley Martin)

I'm torn about this book; it's divided roughly into thirds, with one being very good, one being interesting but dry, and one being pretty boring and pointless. The first third is a biography of Kim Il-Sung, covering from his birth up to his son taking over most of the power in Korea, and this part's easy to recommend as the author gives a interesting and informative history of both Kim and the development of North Korea. After this the book goes into the second section, which is a large batch of interviews with defectors. This kind of primary source is pretty interesting at first, but between the sheer volume of them and the fact that the author just presents the interviews without any kind of narrative thread eventually made me start skipping pages. 

This comes to the last section of the book, which I just recommend skipping; the author speculates on the future of North Korea, and it seems like the book's editor didn't read this far as it's quite disjointed. A large part of it also deals with the question of who will succeed Kim Jong-Il, which was a good question in 2006, but has been answered pretty definitively at this point. 

All of this makes a book that's difficult to recommend. I would say get it out of the local library, read the first half, and return it.

Grade: B

"Helsreach"

Helsreach (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

Like most of the SPACE MARINES BATTLES series, this book is basically a novel-length, ummm, space marine battle. That's not a bad thing - the best ones, which include this book, have enough character development to give the reader someone to root for before they spend 300 pages hitting Orks in the face with a crozius. This particular book lands firmly in the good-not-great pile, although I have to say it's towards the top of that particular heap; ADB manages to pull off the often-attempted but rarely successful technique of following around a bunch of different POV characters. That being said, this is still a novel-long battle; go in knowing what you're getting and I think it's a pretty solid bet you'll be happy with it.

Grade: B+

"Faith and Treason" & "God's Secret Agents" two-fer

Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot (Antonia Fraser)

Apparently I forgot to ever review God's Secret Agents; since it covers some of the same territory as as Faith and Treason, I guess I might as well talk about them both.
Not knowing anything about either one of these books, I lucked out by reading God's Secret Agents first; this book is much larger than the other, and happily it does a lot of scene-setting. It mostly covers the Elizabethan age, with James coming in at the epilogue. Faith and Treason is much smaller, and picks up about where God's Secret Agents leaves off, dispatching Elizabeth in the introduction, and is almost exclusively about James assuming power and the Gunpowder Plot itself. I recommend both books, as they really do work well together, and the story they tell is quite interesting (if incredibly grim at times). That being said, Fraser assumes enough knowledge that I'd probably feel lost without having read God's Secret Agents first. My only caveat is that both these books go into gory detail about the caught Catholics getting tortured; reading about them getting dismembered was no less wince-worthy the second time, unfortunately. Still, I recommend both books, although you might want to slip a palette cleanser in between.

Grades: A

"A Book of Jean's Own!"

The Onion Presents A Book of Jean's Own!: All New Wit, Wisdom, and Wackiness from The Onion's Beloved Humor Columnist (Jean Teasdale)

This is a book pretend-written by the Onion's intentionally bad humor columnist Jean Teasdale, and it's pretty easy to figure out if it's for you: Just take a gander at her columns (and her website!) and see if you're amused. The book is basically Jean in concentrated form, and I liked it enough to polish it off in one sitting. My only suggestions would be to flip past the recipes (the joke appears to be the insane amount of butter that goes in), and don't listen to Jean's advice that you can skip around the book; there is a narrative thread running through the fake cat journals and Rick's lists of things that annoy the shit out of him that does come to a head at the end.
All in all I liked this book pretty well, and was surprised to see that the Amazon reviews are fairly mixed. I'm tempted to put this down to price; if I'd plunked down the MSRP of $18.99 I don't know that I'd be too pleased, but at $2.31 (with free shipping!) I'm pretty happy.

Grade: B