What I'm reading right now is Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Lint was good (though the joke erodes as one reads it through), as was Boring Postcards USA (lives up to its name), Mary Roach's Spook (a good, clear-eyed look at misguided, sometimes scientific (sometimes way pseudoscientific) efforts to pin down the afterlife (do not miss her footnote on the intrinsic curiousity of cows), all pretty much failures), Trollope's glorious The Way We Live Now, Kirn's somewhat Trollopian Mission to America (the blurb makes it sound like its central concern is religion, but it's really more about all forms of consumption, overconsumption, and the lure and absurdity of money).

Not so good were James Herbert's Others (beautiful moments throughout, and brave choices throughout (the narrator is seriously deformed, and his love interest suffers from spina bifida), but kind of treacly and new agey), and Gaiman's Endless Nights, which was pretentious, precious, and obvious.