My Library

Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs used to be smart. «in high school and college, [he] was actually quite cerebral.» Covering pop culture at Entertainment Weekly, then highbrow pop culture at Esquire drained his brain. He wanted to feel smart again. So, he decided to read the Encyclopedia Britannica all the way from a-ak to zywiec. Actually, he stole the idea from his father, an attorney and prolific author of law books, who tried the same feat but only made it to the mid-Bs. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World is the story of his year long quest.

Keep reading →

In The Devil Inside, Jenna Black invites the reader into the world of exorcist Morgan Kingsley, a world where demons operate openly, so openly they're regulated and controlled by law. Kingsley's job is to exorcise the demons that break the law and possess the unwilling and she is one of the best at it. These are and aren't the demons we know. The premise is that these supernatural beings are the basis for the demon mythology, but they aren't simply fallen angels. In fact, Black never makes it entirely clear just what a demon is - of course not, this is the first novel in a series.

Keep reading →

You may be tempted to put down Tom Reynold's Blood, Sweat, and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulanceafter reading the tragic story in the prologue. Don't. This book based on a compilation of posts from his popular blog Random Acts of Reality, does have its share of tear jerker stories, but balanced by enough humour to help the reader maintain sanity and see how Reynold's maintains his as a member of the London Ambulance Service.

Keep reading →

The Charlemagne Pursuit: A Novel by Steve Berry is a historical conspiracy novel centered around the Piri Reis map; a group of mythical beings, The Watchers; the disappearance of a top secret Navy submarine and a conspiracy stretching from Charlemagne's court to Hitler's bunker and into the highest levels of modern American government.

Keep reading →

Harold Schechter is a professor of American literature and culture and an acclaimed true crime author. In Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago, Schechter brings readers the tale of one of America's first serial killers. H.H. Holmes, or Herman Mudgett as he was more prosaically named by his parents, operated from a base in Chicago in the time of Jack the Ripper, but his crimes spread from Texas to Toronto and east to Philadelphia.

Keep reading →