Expecting so much activity from me in one weekend? I can be wildly unpredictable.

It was an entertaining read. Two men share a prison cell, one a pedophile (a gay man) and the other a political prisoner. In order to pass the time the pedophile recounts various movie plots, all fascinating, and all centering on a beautiful woman. Meanwhile, the prison officials secretly promise the pedophile a pardon if he can extract anything useful from the political prisoner.

But.

I think something major passed me by. Maybe it was hidden in the pages and pages half taken up with footnotes, the ones I only skimmed. I have something against footnotes heavily used in comtemporary fiction. But in this case, something tells me they were significant.

Maybe I'll just rent the movie.

VERDICT: A great read, even without the footnotes, but an ending that left me wondering what the heck I missed.

Books featuring unconventionally (that is, unattractive) female protagonists are too far between. I get so tired of reading about women who step out of glossy magazines. How common are stunning women? Not that common. So get over it.

Mary Gooch, very overweight, gets thin, thanks to a digestive worm, during her senior year of high school. She slims down and becomes temporarily gorgeous, enough the school football hottie asks her out and the two of them eventually marry. Once the worm passes Mary gains the weight she lost and more, but her husband's love goes beyond her physical appearance.

Mary, seriously depressed, keeps eating. And eating. And eating, growing enormous. Still, her husband stays by her side. But eventually he comes to question if he's able to make her happy, and how long he can stand being with someone so cripplingly depressed.

VERDICT: Once again, a good read, this time requiring no footnotes. The plot's engaging, the characters mostly realistic (does the high school hottie ever marry the formerly overweight girl?), but there's a bit of hoky in the plot. But only a bit. It's a good, lighter read, not without a few flaws.

And, War and Peace. I've progressed to the 200s out of 1,000 plus pages, and it continues dense but satisfying. Slowly but surely.

Finding reading time from here through the holidays: priceless.