Book hangover
I've been reading like crazy. I finished Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven this past weekend. It was pretty engrossing and he has an easy, informal manner of writing that makes it easy to dive into the subject matter. It was enjoyable and I learned more about Mormonism than I knew before (which was not much). After reading it, I feel like everything is about Mormonism now: HBO's Big Love, NPR pieces I've been hearing recently, Mitt Romney.

This morning I finished wolfing down Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here, which was really powerful. He followed two young boys in the Chicago projects for a couple of years in the mid-80s and there's a lot of heartbreaking stuff in there. Your heart yearns for good things to happen for the boys, but there's a lot of emotional beat down. I tried to google the boys' names to see if I could find out what's happened to them since, but nothing. The epilogue does say that the profits from the book was used to set up trust funds for the boys after they finished high school. They've got to be in their 30s now.

I started Courtroom 302 today, about a year in a courtroom in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courts (alliteration, anyone?). I love hard-nosed social issues reporting, and so far this is in that vein. So far, so good. In fact, I'm about to take a shower right now and then head out and read in the sun now.

Further books on my list: In Cold Blood, Helter Skelter, and Ordinary Resurrections.

p.s. Funnily enough, as I was scanning the channels this afternoon, the 1993 TV version of "There are no children here" is on Oxygen, starring Ms. Winfrey herself. I hadn't even realized that they made one! I've been watching for it for the past three minutes, and it's definitely drama-ed up. Meh.