Bangkok 8 (about 1/3 through so far) is well balanced fun. It's been a while since I've read a thriller. It has surprising similarities to The Music Room (two posts ago) actually. 1) Both start with deaths and 2) Both narrators are far more introspective than I, for some reason or another, expect. Aside from its introspective moments (which don't detract from the book at all), Bangkok 8 is so far a terrific detective thriller. And again, oddly like music room, the shift in and out of the narrator's present set of events make the past as vivid as the present. A near death experience in the present has about the same immediacy as a visit to the monk in the past. Given the meditative nature of the narrator (Buddhist half-caste detective repenting for his past, as well past lives), this seems appropriate.

And on the other side, The Reluctant Metrosexual isn't terribly wonderful. A few chuckles here and there but the humor seems forced, the cynicism and bitterness contrived, and the adjectival lexibatics easily matched (and bettered with little effort I'm sure) by my more eloquent acquaintances such as TAC, Supernal, Shryh, or even the humorous ramblings on Gizmodo.

The first third of The Elegant Universe, a book about superstring theory for the lay man, has not been about superstrings at all. Those familiar with the basic ideas of relativity, quantum mechanics, particle phyics, and cosmology (I'm talking BASIC here) will find these chapters re-enlightening: not easy to be jaded by the greatest ideas in physics in the 20th century, especially ones which require drastic revolutions of our world view. And impressively, Brian Greene does a good job of explaining these in precise, clean, and concise fashion, even if it's your 40th time thinking about time contraction using the Einsteinian rocket ship and bouncing lasers. The move into superstring theory promises to be exciting.

The Idiot's Guide to Wine is, while not written for an idiot, sometimes disappointingly vague. After throwing out a few terms one could use, for example, the author goes on to say "you must trust your own tongues. Use your own adjectives, but start with these." Gustatory description aren't easy and rely on the questionable culinary experiences of the reader at best but telling readers to throw around these accepted adjective doesn't help the image of wine tasting as being equivalent to watching the king's new robes. The section on how to taste wine does not teach you how to taste wine but rather tells you how others have tasted wine, generally. Not terribly helpful but perhaps that can't be helped. Hopefully, the sections on individual varieties of wine, their histories, and stories will make for more informative reading.

Whew. OK, I'm taking bets on which book I'm going to finish first. Winner gets...uh...that book =P