Yes, "best ass" and "freshman class" DO rhyme. Good observation.

I'm reading this young adult book, Thirteen Reasons Why. It's the story of a high school boy listening to tapes made by a girl who committed suicide. It's a very good book--good characters, great plot. I'm about a third of the way through and have no idea where it's going.

I got the book out of the library, which is adding another layer to this experience, because someone who read this before me wrote notes in the margins. She's clearly a teenager, from the comments (and female from the handwriting). And I'm loving seeing her comments. Now I know how the target audience feels about it all.

It seems clear that she wanted other people to read this. I mean, first of all, writing in a library book. But this was hammered home by what I just ran across: She wrote something, and erased it. She'll write that Skye is a cute name, and that she had this "epic hang out" with someone, but she erased that a character who decided to stop wanting to be part of anything sounded kind of like her. And yet, having the entire school calling the main character a slut wasn't that bad--not bad enough to cause the character to kill herself ("I mean, what happened sucks, but life goes on...").

It's intriguing, and I'm looking forward to continuing reading this book with some company.

And yes, I'm bolting the door tonight

In Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence, Bill James (best known for his work in sabermetrics in baseball) integrates popular crime stories going back more than 200 years with his thoughts on popular crime itself--as a reflection of society, how it influences society, the problems with our judicial and penal systems, motivations of serial killers, what makes certain stories more fascinating than others, what it should take to convict someone of a crime.

He has a very personable way of writing that may turn some readers off, but I largely enjoyed it. My problems with the book were that it's too long and that he blows through so many cases that it's hard to keep up. At the end of the book he'll reference a story from 300 pages earlier; despite having gotten through the book quickly, I can't remember the details. He also sometimes assumes a level of familiarity with some of the larger cases (Sacco and Vanzetti, I'm looking at you) that the reader may not have.

James has a tendency to state things as facts that aren't, and he never fails to let his opinion be known. But his writing is good enough and he generally provides the backup that I don't really mind. His thoughts on the Kennedy assassination (one of the very few discussions of a political crime he gets into) were particularly interesting, as well as his theories on the social cycles of the country in the last 100 years or so.

And if you're interested in reading more about many of the crimes he discusses, James lists the books written particularly about that crime and gives his thoughts on them. And he doesn't hold back. For example, "Fatal Vision was a very successful book that a lot of people like, but the problem with it is that you could edit out 75% of the book without losing a single fact or insight" (p. 305).

I also can't help but be bemused by his rating system of crimes--categorizing it, then numbering its fame. The baseball stat geek crept through a bit.

So if you're interested in true crime, I definitely recommend picking this book up and giving it a go...but be prepared to skim through some bits.