Mood:  cool

I recently finished and finally returned Lost Cosmonaut: observations of an anti-tourist by Daniel Kalder to its owner.  The time I took reading this superb book has more to do with my digging myself in deep with my to-read pile and nothing at all to do with the pacing of the book itself.  I thoroughly enjoyed the view point here and the little bits of culture and invention.   Kalder talks about the Russian translation of his book on his Gaurdian column here.   

I've also been reading The Japanese Disease: sex and sleaze in Modern Japan by Declan Hayes.   I have to admit, it is so very dense that if I were still a lazy and overloaded college student, I probably would have problems with it.  As I am no longer that person, I am enjoying the massive amount of information packed into each page.  I especially like how the author ties the human transgressions of all nations into an exploration of one nation.  Both the big picture and the smaller one are presented here. 

Finally, I get continually distracted from The Japanese Disease by reading Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and other prized professions of the Ancient World by Vicki Leon.  This is really just to satisfy my desire for small, digestible chunks of historic trivia, and it delivers very well.  

While these represent only a small part of the to-read stacks on my coffee table and surreptitiously shoved under my couch, these are the books I've been spending the most time with lately outside of my lanugage learning texts.  And I recommend all three!