Before I get to the reviews, I have to mention the goodness of bloggers! Yesterday, I checked the mailbox and found a surprise book waiting for me: I mentioned earlier that Katrina of Stone Soup offered to buy me a book. Well, I e-mailed her back three books I’ve had my eye on and told her to surprise me. Lo and behold, she bought me the most expensive one: a shiny, brand-new hardcover with gloriously silky pages (the publishers did a great job on this one) and that never-been opened crispness and smell.  In case you can’t tell by the picture, it’s Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power.  I saw it in B&N down in San Antonio and was almost salivating: I love Samantha Power (she also wrote the Pulitzer-Prize Winning A Problem From Hell: American in the Age of Genocide), and I’ve been very curious about Sergio Vieira de Mello since I read about his death in Assassin’s Gate (he died when insurrgents in Baghdad blew up the UN building in 2003). I haven’t started reading it yet (because I know I won’t stop, so I’m waiting until I finish How to Read Like a Professor -another book I have from the kindness of a blogger, in this case Andi), but I did flip through it, and while it deals with a very important subject matter, for now I have just one observation: Vieira definitely lived up the ‘Brazilians are hot’ stereotype. There are pictures in the middle of the book, and one of them is him as a young man, shirtless and grinning. Yowza-if I can find a copy of it online, I will.

Also, you may have noticed I’m in the middle of reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I was scared of it at first, but now I’m loving it! I just wrote up a rrrreeeaallllyyyy long post (even by my standards) on all of my impressions from the ‘Fantine’ section (the first 300 pages). I noticed a bunch of connections between the social questions Hugo’s writing about and modern society, so I think it’d be a great discussion if other people want to join in. Hint, hint: go on over to the reading group blog and scroll down to ‘Thoughts on Fantine’ (because my titles are always so creative). Or just go read it if you happen to be craving one of my ridiculously long posts on a book.

Because these reviews today are the opposite of ridiculously long! In my desperate attempt to try to get caught up w/ all the books I read in March and couldn’t blog about, I realised I had to prioritize. So my very favourites, that I haven’t seen reviews on other blogs, are going to get the all-star single post treatment. Others are going to have to be content with a couple of paragraphs in a combination post. And some are getting the ’six word’ treatment, which I also used last month. This doesn’t reflect whether or not I loved them, so much as whether or not other blogs have reviewed them. I gave Wodehose and Wallace five stars, and Borchet four.
Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehose: intelligent British butler + thoughtless young gentleman = hilarity. (See Danielle’s Sunday Short Story post for more)
Free For All by Don Borchet: librarian discusses funny and tragic patrons (See Iliana’s review for more-speaking of which, thanks again Iliana!)
The Watermelon King by David Wallace: stunning, distinctly Southern, modern fairy tale (see Nymeth’s review, which caused me to mooch it in the first place; I agree with her-it’s one my favourites of the year!)
Cat’s Eye by Maragaret Atwood: exploration of girls, their psyches, and the women they become (that was more than six words, but since it was a challenge book, I feel that’s ok! See this list of all the reviews by people doing the My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge)
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks: celebrates music’s profound effect on humans (See Ted’s two posts on it, which helped convince me to pick it up at the library)

Oh, I almost forgot-April’s Estella’s Revenge is great-so go read it! Now I’m coveting A Bottle in the Gaza Sea and The Year of Living Biblically.