Pre-Europe: 13-18

Books I read before leaving for Europe in July and never recorded:

13: The Drops of God, volumes 1 & 2, Tadashi Agi & Shu Okimoto

Wine manga. Yes, indeed. Apparently this crazy thing increased wine sales in Japan significantly. Every time a new wine appeared in the serialised manga, it would sell out all over Japan. (Is it any good? Not really. But it's culturally stupendously interesting.)

14: Azumanga Daioh, Kiyohiko Azuma

The television series is delightfully quirky. The manga it was based on is very similar. The short episodes make it surreal.

15: Read 'Em and Reap, Joe Navarro

Blah, blah, blah. Typical FBI twit writes like a self-important...FBI twit. The material is interesting, though.

16: Letterati: An Unautharized Look at Scrabble and the People Who Play It, Paul McCarthy

I don't remember this very well, I'm afraid. I don't even know if overall I thought it was good or bad. I do know I skimmed a lot, because I've read a lot about Scrabble and competitive Scrabble in the past year and much of the material was familiar. Best part: the four-page chapter on Ping-Pong/table tennis. Ping-Pong was a Parker Brothers trademark, PB organised tournaments in the 20's, players broke with PB in order to use their own equipment, table tennis was born.

17: Death Masks, Jim Butcher

Whatever. More fluff.

18: The Pink Panther, Marvin Albert

I love it! I had never read the book.