Leviathan and Behemoth

I couldn't get this book out of the boy's hands.  He stayed up way past his bedtime.

Colin says:  I thought these were very good books.  They are based on events in a real war.   There are also some strange things made up, giant robots and monsters, both human creations.  I can't wait to read the next story.

I think it's steampunk for kids.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series

It is always a great pleasure to give your child something to read that you loved dearly growing up.  I am currently reading "The Trouble with Jenny's Ear" to my girls, a book I remembered fondly from when I was about their age.  I also started Lauren on Roald Dahl, in particular the non-Charlie books.  My favorite is still "Danny, the Champion of the World," the least fantastical of his books, although Lauren is currently reading Matilda, which seems a really perfect book for her.

But the really entertaining thing has been watching Colin plow through the many books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series over the last month.  You would hear him moving from chuckling to laughing out loud in the evenings and every once in a while he would come in and read aloud a passage that he thought was particularly hilarious.  He delighted in this series, and I am sure he will again, as he has also recently discovered the joys of rereading.

Also:

The Poisoner's Handbook

This I saw one day walking through Costco and just grabbed it and put in it my cart.  This is the story of the beginnings of forensic science, in particular the beginnings of forensic toxicology.  It is told through the cases solved by the New York City Medical Examiner's Office in the 1920s mostly, as the dedicated, and undervalued employees there solved cases of poisonings with all new and never tried methods. It's the kind of non fiction I like best, where you learn the science through the stories, and the stories were pretty tasty.

I also learned that there was a speakeasy operator during prohibition called Belle Guinan or Texas Guinan.  According to the internet (and we know we can't really believe the internet) this was, in fact, the inspiration for Star Trek's Guinan.  Just so you know.  (In another book, Cutting for Stone, I learned that Ferengi is an Ethiopian word meaning foreigner.  Who knew you could learn so much about Star Trek from reading non-Star Trek related books!)