• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell: How does one approach the fifth book of a favorite writer? Each book brings the fear that it won’t be as good as the last. Never fear with Thousand Autumns. While it might seem slow to start, Mitchell spends time creating layer upon layer of detail. It’s a very mature novel, one that I appreciated fully only at the end.
• The Reversal by Michael Connelly: A new chapter in Conelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series finds defense attorney Mickey Haller recruited to be prosecutor in a high-profile case of a child murderer, who’s just been released after 24 years in jail.  There’s never any doubt that he did the murder, but Connelly excels at building courtroom drama suspense as well as the tension in investigating a old case. Harry Bosch is back as well, leading the investigation.
• The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker: This book is mesmerizing. I can already imagine the film version with lots of empty landscapes and lone sheep grazing. The novel begins thirty years after Helmer has to return to the family sheep farm after the death of his twin brother Henk. He moves his elderly father upstairs and begins remodeling the house in a minimalist style. Then Riet, his brother’s fiance, shows up and asks that he let her son come live on the farm. Oh, his name is Henk, but he’s not Helmer’s nephew. Henk’s arrival throws things off course. There’s a surprise in the fourth part that I won’t ruin here. It’s a quietly humorous and tender novel.

I’ve been remiss in mention the various books I’ve read over the past week or so. Here’s a sentence or two about each:

• The Patterns of Paper Monsters by Emma Rathbone: A really strong debut novel written from the perspective of a 17 year old in a juvenile detention center. Jacob narrates his romance with Andrea; their romance is conducted through eye rolls, and stolen moments in a place with no privacy. She’s certainly a writer to watch.
• Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik: The 6th book in the Temeraire series finds Laurence and Temeraire exiled in Australia. One of my favorite series, it’s Patrick O’Brian with dragons. The historical details make the exploration of Australia all the more interesting. I wish I had read it slower, now that I have to wait a year for another!
• Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky: Dermansky excels at writing those characters whom if you met in real life, you might find exasperating at first but you find yourself liking the  more you know them. Marie is just out of prison, a live-in babysitter for a childhood friend–only they’re not really friends as it turns out–and she makes some odd choices.
• West of Here by Jonathan Evison: Okay, I really  really really liked this book, but wasn’t sure how to review it. I loved his previous novel All About Lulu and was not disappointed with this book. I won’t explain the complicated plot here. Just go read it when it comes out. I promise you’ll love it.

One of my first jobs in high school was working at the gift shop in the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville AL. I hated my uniform but I loved learning about space travel, especially the daily lives of the astronauts. In the early days of the Gemini project, you would be stuck in what amounts to the front seat of the car for several days. In the shuttle, you at least had some room to maneuver, but what did you do all day when you weren’t doing science stuff? And what if we ever send people to Mars? That’s a three year trip in a cramped cabin. Sure, lots of people think about the bravery and heroism of astronauts. But I wanted to know how bad they smelled after a week wearing the same space suit. And how did they go to the bathroom in space? Or wash their hair? And why was their food so gross?

Mary Roach knows. In Packing for Mars, she goes on board with space monkeys, watches video of austronaut auditions, reads archives of isolation experiments and studies of what happens when you put three people in a small room for a week and don’t let them change their clothes. She eats meals designed by veterinarians for minimal excretory output. And yes, she visits the center where astronauts train to use the space-commode.

As with Stiff and Bonk, her earlier books about death and sex, Roach answers questions most of us aren’t quite brave enough to ask. The story is a combination of amazing, hilarious, and amazingly hilarious. The chapter on space bathroom technology alone is worth the price of admission.

Mr. Bookdwarf reads almost as much as I do and wanted me to share some short reviews:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: I loved Bender’s previous novel An Invisible Sign of My Own but in this one, she’s really come into her own. It’s an absolutely compelling story of a girl growing into an upsetting and uncanny talent of tasting the emotions of the people preparing the food she eats. Her mother’s unfulfilled and lonely; her brother is furious; her friend’s mom really is as enviably good as she seems. How she eventually learns to deal with her abilities, and the way in which the rest of her family fails to manage their own oddities, is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

How Did You Get This Number? by Sloane Crosley: Sloane Crosley is the nonfiction essayist for the Tina Fey generation. Smart? Very. But also so severely dyslexic she can’t read a clock even in her twenties, and willing to document in self-deprecating detail how far she’ll go to hide it from everyone else. Canny? Of course. But not so wise that she doesn’t believe every lie she tells herself, at least for awhile. The sharp edges of her humor seem to suggest that laughter is really more of a coping mechanism, just barely preferable to binge drinking, pilates, and serial homicide.