Read in August

Another short list this month, and again a lack of reviews of most of them; recovering from the rigors of Book-A-Day is taking vastly longer than I expected.

Or, maybe, I'm just naturally lazy, and I'm finding my own level.

Either way, here's what I did get through this past month, as the summer ground onward and we were beset by earthquakes and hurricanes:

• Rick Geary, The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti (8/1)
  
• Sara Varon, Bake Sale (8/2)
  
• Gilbert Gottfried, Rubber Balls and Liquor (8/2)
  I neglected to write anything about this book at the time, so now -- more than three months later -- I've noticed that, realized that this book is too slight (and too forgotten, at this point) to make a real post, and just started typing here.
  
  It's a comedian's memoir, filled with the obvious high points of his career -- his famous "Aristocrats" joke at a roast right after 9/11, his time as the Aflac duck, his more memorable movie roles, various events on Hollywood Squares -- and filled out with a lot of details about how he was a weird kid with few friends and no real aptitude for anything constructive. If you like Gottfried's act, you'll enjoy the book -- as I recall, he did have a ghostwriter, but it's all in his voice. (Without having to actually listen to his voice for hours on end, if you understand me -- unless you spring for the audiobook, I suppose.) This is very much what it is, and it's the kind of thing that you probably already know if you'd be interested in.
  
• Roger Langridge, Fred the Clown (8/3)
  
• Lawrence Block, A Drop of the Hard Stuff (8/8)
  
• Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (8/14)
  
• Dan Wells, I Am Not a Serial Killer (8/22)
  
• Stan Nicholls & Joe Flood, Orcs: Forged for War (8/23)
  Look for my review in the December 2012 issue of Realms of Fantasy.
  
• Jiro Matsumoto, Velveteen & Mandala (8/24)
  Look for my review in the December 2012 issue of Realms of Fantasy.
  

I wrote the above -- but none of the reviews of the actual books I read, as you may note -- a couple of days before the actual hurricane hit, which shows in the flippant tone. (I'd definitely put it differently now, but it's not worth rewriting.) My expectation was that I'd spend that last week of August alternately reading books and writing about books, with time out to do frivolous activities with my family. And let that be a lesson to all of us about what happens to plans.