jmcg is a staff member who, with insistent prompting from ta and inkonvellum, will hopefully be providing more recommendations for Read This! She may even be tempted to write a profile! But for now, this is what she’s got for you…

Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV
by Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting

Brought to you by the folks at Televisionwithoutpity.com, this “encyclopedia” of television shows, performers, cliches, catchphrases, trends and inaccuracies is non-stop laughter. Typical entries include: “Cosby sweater,” “show killers,” “Brady Bunch, Musical Stylings of” and “Sexual Tension, Ruination of Show by Resolving.”

If you like TV and better yet like making fun of TV, you’ll LOVE this book!

Ella Minnow Pea
by Mark Dunn

It’s described as a “progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable.” A story told chapter by chapter (or in this case letter by letter) with fewer and fewer letters of the alphabet, it’s a delightfully quick and creative read.

I Capture the Castle
by Dodi Smith

Written in the ’40s, the reader peeks into the private thoughts of a teenage girl living with her family in an abandonded English castle. It’s a timeless, funny and beautiful story of love, family, fantasy, heartbreak and happiness. Much better than those Judy Blume books that I read as a teen!