One Night Stand (or the other)

Apart from The Bookman's Promise by John Dunning, my night stand looks pretty bare this week. The other side of the bed is a different story. My husband always has a plethora of interesting reads.

Two I'm browsing this week when I grow tired of the whole crime scene-scene:

Supercharge Your Memory by Corinne Gediman and Francis Crinella
Do you remember Highlights for Kids? This is sort of like Highlights for grown-ups. Graphically pleasing, this book offers a smorgasbord of activities from recalling olfactory memories (remember that rotten carrot your mother put in your kindergarten lunchbag?) to redrawing abstract designs (was the squiggle above or below the circle thingamajig?). You'll have fun, fun, fun, till your Daddy takes your T-bird away.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell
A fan of Mitchell (especially Black Swan Green), I swoon over everything he's written. Thousand Autumns is no exception. At almost 500 pages, this epic travels to Nagasaki Harbor and immerses us (sometimes too intimately) in the sights, sounds, and sighs of the colorful cast and crew that work for and about the Dutch East Indies Company. If this weren't novel enough, the story ventures further inland when the love-interest of the title character becomes enshrined in a remote convent. You'll be itching to find out how the last samurais face the impending interests of the British Empire.