Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan

A couple weeks ago I realized Shaun Tan had more than one book out and immediately ordered as many as I could from the local library. This is the first non-picture book that showed up, and it's wonderful.

Tales is a collection of weird, wonderful, somewhat sad short stories with perfect illustrations. The book is sold for kids, but I would recommend it to anyone.

The Tightwad Gazette, Amy Dacyzyn

A collection of articles from a newsletter the author runs--or ran, in the 1990s. Some of the suggestions seem good, most of the recipes seem gross.

Apparently Dacyzyn wanted to save money because she wanted six kids, a house in the country, and a sense of smug superiority. All of this is stated in the text if you don't believe me. Toward the end of the book there's a whole thing about "tightwad ethics."

I think this one is getting rotated back into the library sale.

Bad TV, Craig Nelson

The introduction is overly long and over-self-congratulatory. There are some glaring factual errors. I enjoyed most of the book anyway.

The topics covered range from the soaps to TV movies, kids' shows to drama, and all that crap in between. And I have to keep it as this damn book's got the only picture I've ever seen of that character from my dad's past, Froggy the Gremlin.