Finished:
V for Vendetta, Alan Moore
See You Later, Christopher Pike*
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling*
French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano

Reading:
The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien
1968: The Year that Rocked the World, Mark Kurlansky
The Ohlone Way, Malcolm Margolin

V was of course wonderful, I liked it as much as Watchmen, if not more. Both are books I highly recommend to bookworms who haven't yet discovered the joy of comics and are dismissive or maybe even a little afraid of them. These are great examples of how comics can be intelligent and literary and interesting and fun and exciting and relaxing all at the same time--and easy to follow, to boot (because I know I'm not the only reader who was initially turned off of comics because she couldn't tell what the hell was going on between all the POW!s and WHAM!s and crazy shit splashed all over the page).

See You Later was my favorite Christopher Pike book when I was a kid (I read Christopher Pike obsessively once my mom finally convinced the librarian she was OK with me reading YA books when I was technically supposed to be confined to the J section), and I got a bug up my butt to read it again while listening to "Dreamline" by Rush, because I've always associated the two. Found a used copy on Amazon and finished it about an hour after it arrived on my doorstep. Reading it, I realized why I loved Christopher Pike so much when I was younger--it didn't really feel like a book written for kids. I guess I appreciated not being written down to, because so many YA books don't hold water once you hit 14 or so, and most of them are sort of condescending even when you are the right age. I also realized while reading it why I liked the prematurely-cancelled sci-fi show Odyssey 5 so much--it's the exact same plot. :) If you've seen O5 then that spoils the book for you, but somehow I don't think any of you were planning on rushing out and buying it--if you even know who Christopher Pike is, then you've probably already read it. (If you haven't seen O5, though, you should do so if you ever get the chance. It was originally on Showtime, and you can sometimes find reruns on Showtime Beyond and HDNet. It was a good show, so good that you'd think it was on Fox, given how abruptly it was cancelled. The "end" will kill you--imagine if Battlestar Galactica (the new series) were cancelled after the recent mid-season cliffhanger, that's the kind of pain I'm talking about--but it's still worth it.)

There's nothing much to say about my re-read of Goblet of Fire, except that it helped confirm my optimistic interpretation of what happened (vis-a-vis the person who did the thing, not the person who the thing got done to--him I'm not optimistic about) at the end of Half-Blood Prince.

I got French Women Don't Get Fat from the library because it had been recommended to me by several people, but I wasn't really sure what it was about. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't a diet book written by the CEO of the American distributor of my favorite Champagne company. It was an interesting read in that she's a very confident woman who seems very satisfied with her life, and I always appreciate that attitude in people even when others would take it as conceit. But the idea of The French Woman--which every other French Woman is supposedly exactly like--as this mythological creature of perfection was a turn-off, and the diet advice was common sense (move more, drink more water, eat quality food rather than junk) mixed with exactly the type of gimmick she spends most of the book denouncing (a Magical Leek Soup consisting of water and leeks that you're supposed to eat for an entire weekend during the induction stage of your diet). So I'm quite glad I didn't spend any money on this book, and it's not something I'd recommend unless you're starting to get desperate and feel like you need a book to tell you how to lose weight, because I will say that her methods make a lot more sense than the rest of the crap out there.