The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

As an audio book, I swear this was at least 100 hours long. I think it was really about 30 but it seemed to take forever. I now realize that there are sections of Dan Brown's novels that I skip and you just can't with an audio book.

Nevertheless, this was a pretty good book. Although the end seemed a little preachy and would have been something I would have skipped.

Robert Langdon is back, this time in Washington DC as a favor to his old friend, Peter Solomon. He's there to give a lecture but finds himself embroiled in yet another one of his adventures. Really, it's amazing how adventurous being a Harvard professor can be. The Lost Symbol focuses this time on the Masons. This was actually interesting to me as I recently learned that my grandfather was a mason. I'm curious now how much of this "history" in the novel is real and how much is made up to make an entertaining book. Peter is kidnapped by Mal'akh, who desires to become the ultimate demon and thinks the ancient mysteries of the freemasons will help him.

There were several plot twists that made me go WTF? although one of them it was obvious that it couldn't have really happened. All in all, entertaining enough to keep me listening for an ungodly amount of time.

The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell

For some reason, I now forget the Scarpetta books almost as fast I as read them. Which is a bad thing now since Cornwell keeps pulling old plots and characters from the past to make starring appearances in the new books.

Scarpetta has a dead body of a runner on her table that is causing her problems. Nothing about the crime looks right and the Biograph watch that was left on the body is more confusing when there isn't any information (on the internet) about it. Lucy and Berger are together and having problems. Lucy, aside from Benton, is my least favorite character. And unfortunately, her and Benton feature pretty prominently in this book. Scarpetta now appears as a guest on CNN on a regular basis and the case of a missing socialite, Hannah Starr, is the only questions Scarpetta is being asked. And is werewolf guy back?

The book seemed to move along at a good pace, which is good considering how disjointed all of the cases and the plot were. However, Cornwell actually managed to tie everything together at the end in a way that actually was entertaining and made some sense.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

My first foray into the Sookie Stackhouse series which has been made into HBO's True Blood (which I probably won't get from Blockbuster for a few more years). This was actually a cute book, not serious or heavy. Something of a beach read.

Sookie is a waitress in a local bar and has the unique ability to read minds. She does her best to stay out of people's heads and even calls her ability a "disability". Vampires have just become legal citizens and the folks in Bon Temps are eager to see their first vampire.

Enter Bill. How that's a name for a vampire, I don't know, but his name is Bill. Bill and Sookie end up as a couple while trying to figure out a series of murders that have suddenly happened in Bon Temps.

Quick read, cute characters.

Spook by Mary Roach

Mary Roach has already tackled sex and corpses, now she tackles the afterlife. Spook was actually pretty good in Roach's typical fun but scientific way.

Roach explores reincarnation, whether a soul exists (is it the big toe? or the sperm?), how much a soul weighs (surprisingly a lot of tests to determine this), ectoplasm, mediums, etc. She actually got to speak with Allison Du Bois, who is the basis of the TV series Medium.

I still don't believe quite a bit, and neither did Roach, but I do know that sometimes faith and belief is not based on fact or anything provable. It just is.

The Gods Drink Whiskey by Stephen Asma

For the majority of people, Buddhism is linked to Tibet and the Dalai Lama. In this book, we learn about Buddhism in Cambodia called Theravada Buddhism. As it turns out, associating Tibetan Buddhism as "the" Buddhism is like associating Mormonism as "the" Christianity. Only about 6% of the world's Buddhists are Tibetan Buddhists (out of roughly 400 million Buddhists).

Asma was invited to teach Buddhism at the Cambodian Buddhist Institute to a select group of students. He covers his journey through a new country and new version of Buddhism in this really well written and engaging book.

*Tibetan Buddhism encourages deities when in reality Buddha did not want deities. People should be focused on themselves and achieving nibbana (enlightenment or cooling - having a cool heart). Although holy relics are still sacred to Theravadan Buddhists - such as Buddha's eyebrow or tooth.
*The title of the book comes from the fact that whiskey is offered up to the spirits to keep the peace. Families and businesses have little spirit houses where they make offerings to keep the bad stuff from happening to them. And in this case, spirits like whiskey.
*Theravada Buddhism is mixed with a bit of Hinduism and most still worship Vishnu and Shiva, even though Buddha says there are no gods. Most religions are a mix of others and one would probably be hard pressed to find a pure religion.
*Theravadan Buddhists meditate on corpses. This is to pound in the fact of impermanence. I don't think I want to do that.
* Cambodia is a hot mess. Politics, assassinations on the streets, Khmer Rouge. It's no wonder the peace of Buddhism is practiced.
*Penises aka phallic symbols are worshiped by some.

There is a ton more information and it's all very interesting and gives a great perspective of religion in Southeast Asia.

Rough Country by John Sandford

Another fuckin' Flowers book.

Virgil is an official favorite now, along with Davenport. Flowers gets called off his vacation to check out the body of Erica McDill, a woman found shot in the head in the water. McDill was staying at the Eagle's Nest, a women's retreat but also apparently something of a whorehouse, without the madam. Flowers digs deep, almost ends up having sex many times with a suspects sister (doesn't he always?) and finally solves the case. Doesn't he always?

Interesting twist at the end, which was nice. While I suspected who the killer was, I didn't guess the sordid history of the killer. And the fight at the end, with a classic Tyson ear biting, was pretty priceless. Poor fuckin' Flowers didn't get exactly what he wanted after all though.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

An incredibly written book, this took over 20 hours to listen to. I can't imagine what the actual book weighs.

On Beauty is a story of the Belsey family and the Kipps family. The Belseys are Howard, a white professor at Wellington, his wife Kiki, a large full of life African/American and their 3 childeren, Jerome, Levi and Zora. Howard is an academic enemy of Monty Kipps, all well as long as oceans separated them. But the Kippses end up moving to Wellington, outside of Boston, so Monty can teach at Howard's university.

What happens between and around all of this is a story of people coming together while other people are falling apart. The only really likable character, in my opinion, is Kiki. While everyone around her is making horrible decisions, she's trying to hold everything together. When the Kippses end up moving down the street from them, Kiki befriends Carlene Kipps, the matriarch of the family, who is also very ill.

There's too much to give away here, but I won't. It made it a better story having everything uncovered to me and I hope others can experience it as well.