Five-Minute Mysteries, Ken Weber

Short mystery stories you are supposed to solve yourself, answer key in the back.

I only got three or four of these, either because I missed the vital clue or it was based on something I knew nothing about.

Norb, Daniel Pinkwater & Tony Auth

This collects all of the daily strips from the short-lived newspaper comic Norb. Norb was created by Daniel Pinkwater and Tony Auth and ran for about a year. Its run ended on my sixteenth birthday. I had never seen Norb, because it wasn't in either of the newspapers we got at the time. In fact, I never would have heard of the strip if I hadn't read about it in a collection of Pinkwater's essays.

Norb is a mad scientist with a pet unthawed pygmy mammoth named Eugen (OY-gen). He and Eugen hang out with the girl next door, Rat, and have adventures, such as Eugen being kidnapped by a rock star or going to a poetry reading.

As the strip goes on, more characters are added to the cast.

It's a strange strip, funny and interesting. I wish there was more of it. I understand there were also Sunday strips, but I guess there's no way to see those.

Murder Plus

Collection of true crime stories from old pulp magazines. Most of them are quite interesting.

Lost Echoes, Joe R. Lansdale

Harry is sick when he's six years old, and gets a weird ear infection. When the pocket of pus in his ear pops, that seems to be the end of it. But then he notices that sounds trigger things in his brain. He will see and feel things that happened to people when he hears a noise made by the incident.

Harry doesn't know how to handle this thing, and when he gets older he starts drinking to numb it. Then one night Harry sees a drunk guy kick the shit out of some men planning to mug him. Once the men are all on the ground, the would-be victim takes their money.. and passes out.

This is Tad, a guy with his own problems. Harry and Tad become friends, start helping each other not drink. Tad also teaches Harry some stuff about martial arts that slowly helps Harry let the smaller sound-memories wash over him.

But trouble is waiting as Harry's love life turns to shit and his childhood love comes back to town and asks for his help.

This is a hell of a book, funny, violent, and really well-written.

Uncivil Liberties, Calvin Trillin

Collection of essays has some funny stuff, but most of it focuses on political events that happened when I had no idea what politics was, so it can be hard to follow.

I've got to start updating more often, writing all these in a row is killing me.