The season is not only upon us, it's in full swing! My heroes at NPR have put together some fantastic Best Books of 2010 lists, including Best Book Debuts, Best Mysteries, Picks from Indie Booksellers, and more. Check out their lists of recommendations and then check out the books at the Kenton County Library!

Eating has always been a big part of the holiday season. My family puts out snacks, then appetizers, salad (nutrition!), the meal, and then dessert. Then there are candies and cookies available around the clock. And I end up saying "Why did you let me eat so much?" to whoever is close by (because I couldn't possibly blame myself :)

Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni details his lifetime love/hate and out of control/in control relationship with food. Bruni's big Italian family is highly competitive when it comes to who can put the most and the best food on the table. Saying no to offered food is an insult to the cook who is expressing their love by putting an incredible meal on the table.

Trying to find a way to master his cravings, Bruni eats in secret, pushes himself to go running and exercise at the gym, and is thwarted in his attempts to eat healthy by working on the crazy campaign trail. Buffet food everywhere! Oddly enough, it's when he takes the job as restaurant critic for the New York Times that he finally decides that portion control along with exercise are what works for him. I like that Born Round looks at eating and body image from a male point of view, but I think it will appeal to anyone, especially those who have struggled with the numbers on the scale.

I just found an interesting mystery blog out of New Zealand called Crime Watch. The blogpost from Thursday, November 18 refers to an article from The Guardian about settings for mystery books, written by crime fiction expert Maxim Jakubowski. I'm posting "The Top 10 Crime Locations" according to Jakubowski. For the full article, including explanations for these choices, click here for guardian.co.uk.

1. Los Angeles in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939)
2. London in Derek Raymond's I was Dora Suarez (1990)
3. New Orleans in James Lee Burke's The Neon Rain (1987)
4. Paris in Fred Vargas's Have Mercy On Us All (2001)
5. Bologna in Barbara Baraldi's The Girl With the Crystal Eyes (2008)
6. Brighton in Peter James's Dead Simple (2005)
7. Miami in Charles Willeford's Miami Blues (1984)
8. San Francisco in Joe Gores's Spade and Archer (2009)
9. Oxford in Colin Dexter's The Dead Of Jericho (1981)
10. New York in Lawrence Block's Small Town (2003)

There are books I have to be ready to read. I don't just mean "in the mood for". Rather, I refer to books that I know are going to be painful or emotionally draining for me to read; those that cause a visceral response. But read them I do, because when I know about all the bad things that happen in the world, it makes the good things seem even better.

Recently I decided it was time to read the highly acclaimed Night by Elie Wiesel. An autobiographical account of Wiesel's internment at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps in 1944 and 1945, it is a short work of true life horrors. Although the people in his town were warned of the coming atrocities, they thought it was too terrible to be true. Elie and his father were separated from their family (who they never saw again), forced to work with a meager amount to eat and little sleep, Elie experienced as a teenager things that should never happen to anyone, anywhere. His love for his father is strained by contempt for his father's sickness, which in turn causes Elie no end of shame. Night is harsh, frightening, shocking and just unthinkable, but through it all there is a desperate love, camaraderie from shared experience, and for some, a bittersweet survival.