Shock Value, Jason Zinoman

In the 1970s, horror movies began to change. This book tries to chronicle that.

There are a few factual errors, but the stuff on the movies is really interesting.

Fiction Ruined My Family, Jeanne Darst

This book should really be called Alcohol Ruined My Family but I guess the title they went with was catchier?

Author tells of her life as the child of two alcoholics--her mother depressive and rooted in the past, her father a literature snob who couldn't sell a novel and wouldn't get a real job. She grows up to be an alcoholic too, and it takes her decades to figure out that creativity and booze aren't necessarily connected.

You're Not Doing it Right, Michael Ian Black

Black's memoir is sometimes painful to read, and often really funny.

Death of an Artist, Kate Wilhelm

When a talented artist is murdered, her mother and daughter enlist the help of the new guy in town, who used to be a cop, in proving the artist's greedy husband killed her.

This is really compelling reading.

Black Angel, John Connolly

A junkie prostitute is tortured to death. The killers picked the wrong whore, though--the dead woman was Charlie Parker's dangerous friend Louis's cousin.

The trail leads them to an amateur ossuary, and further to a cult that believes that fallen angels walk among us. Meanwhile, Charlie is losing his new family.

Very compelling, but the part where the guy is sitting on a motel bed in his vest probably created a different picture than Connolly wanted. What he meant was a sleeveless undershirt, a tank top. What I was picturing, however, was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waistcoat.jpg

Still not completely comfortable with the American idiom, I see.