Siege: Castles at War by Mark P. Donnelly and Daniel Diehl

Looks like this book was created as a companion volume or in conjunction with a program that aired on the History Channel. It is framed around an imaginary seige of a "typical" castle during the Hundred Years War. If you are interested in the mechanics of castle building and attacking this will provide plenty of detail. I have to say that I abandoned it for a while at about the 2/3 point, and struggled when I returned to it. The info is great, but detailed to the point of tediousness, with four examples where one would do. Still, if you care for this info it is a great resource, therefore ***

RUSE Enter the Detective

This book features the first six chapters of the ongoing series. I hope it continued. The setting is like a fantastical version of Sherlock Holmes's London. The detective is very Holmes inspired. The narrator is a female Dr. Watson but with supernatural or science-fiction (it isn't clear but I'm leaning toward the first) -like powers that she seems not to fully understand. It was fun to read and I'm going to look for sequels. ****

Searching for the Sound by Phil Lesh

If you want the best book on the Grateful Dead, read Dennis McNally's; if you want a sensationalistic inside scoop that concentrates on drug use and the negative, read Rock Scully's; if you want the best book about music by a member of the band, read Mickey Hart's; if you want the best look at the acid tests and the Dead's part in them, read Tom Wolfe's. If you just want to make the mosaic image you have of the Dead a little clearer, go ahead and read Phil Lesh's. **

Raymond Chandler Playback

Raymond Chandler Playback adapted by Ted Benoit, illustrations by Francois Ayroles. This is not Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Playback, but an adaptation of the never-produced film script he wrote and later adapted himself into a Marlowe novel (it may be his worst Marlowe, and I didn't realize until I read the introduction to this work that by the time he was writing the novel he was rewriting the same story for about the fourth time and bored to tears with it even though it had made him a mint of money). As a Chandler student I loved the introduction, but Ayroles' illustration style doesn't help this work much IMHO. Still, Chandler at his worst is better plotting and characterization than most modern graphic novel writers at their best. For fans of graphic novels and/or Chandler ***
Here's a link to a Thrilling Detective page on Chandler. Maybe this is a good place for me to state my conviction that when it comes to the hard-boiled detective story Dashiell Hammett created the road, Raymond Chandler roared down it in a low-slung coupe, Ross MacDonald paved and flattened it into a superhighway, and all anyone else has been doing for the last thirty years is riding in circles on it on a bicycle.

Greetings from E Street by Robert Santelli

You can probably tell by the title and the picture that this is a "biography" of the E Street Band. If you are a fan of Bruce Springsteen you'll love it. It's also full of pockets and foldouts with facsimiles of posters, backstage passes, set lists, and all kinds of cool stuff that you can take out and hold in your hand. The version I checked out of the library doesn't look like the picture above; I wonder if that is a slipcase? If you like Springsteen and the band the only thing that could have kicked this up a notch would be a companion CD and/or DVD ***+ It made me want to get out all my old Springsteen and listen to it in a marathon, then run out and buy some more.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Bill Bryson is a very funny man, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid might be his funniest book yet.
I liked his books on language, loved A Walk in the Woods and his collection of columns, enjoyed all his travel books, and even appreciated his science book, but, yes, this is his best *****
Check out this link from his publisher for an animated excerpt from the book.