Winter Break Books!
Just to put them down, I might make greater comments later... (though if from this list, you can give me book recommendations, that'd be great too)

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Christopher Moore (I love the quirky quasi gonzoness)
The Divide, Nicholas Evans (Totally a ripoff of American Pastoral, so hard to evaluate on its own terms)
The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson (Really interesting, but not as dynamic as most of Bill Bryson's stuff, more A Short History of Nearly Everything than A Walk in the Woods)
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom Robbins (Read this book before about 5 years ago, but loved it again the second time, and Tom Robbins is so crazy that I had forgotten most of it anyway, but definitely recommend it)
The Tell-Tale Horse, Rita Mae Brown (Not mind blowing literature, but made much more fun to the references to various things Virginia, cute and frivolous)
Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld (I can see why the same people that read the Times articles on hookups found it shocking and interesting, but I was sort of like eh, and the main character wasn't uberlikable)
Things I Overheard When Talking to Myself, Alan Alda (My mom liked his other book, so we got this one from the library. It's mainly just him making comments on speeches he has made over the year. He's all about liking what you do, but that's pretty easy to say for an actor, right?)
Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver (I'm a Kingsolver fan, and I love books about identity, as always, but it was a touch preachy, not as good as The Bean Trees, definitely, which this book is a sort of sequel to, but still has some Tucson shoutouts)
First Impressions, Nora Roberts (Pretty much what one expects from ole Nora, though not one of her better books. But I love my happy endings)
The Constant Princess, Philippa Gregory (I love Philippa Gregory, and this book lived up to my love. And made me really want to go to Spain and see the Alhambra.)
Imperium, Robert Harris (Really interesting, a sort of fake biography of Cicero, made me read up on the Romans, who I have really dreadful knowledge of, obviously meticulously well-researched, two thumbs up)
Slam, Nick Hornby (More of a young adult novel than his normal stuff, it was ok, but not really notable, either)

...I think that's it. Oh, one of those eyewitness books about Ancient Rome, too, after Imperium. It's kind of crazy thinking about how far downhill the medieval stuff got after Rome. The fundamentalists should take a lesson from that or from even the inquisition in Spain to see what happens when you denounce science and intelligent thought in the name of heresy...

Hope everyone had a lovely new year!

EDIT: And now the Joy Luck Club. Lovely. Should have read it years ago.