I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Harry Potter fan. I love fantasy books as well as thrillers and mysteries. And I still hold a soft place in my heart for the young adult genre, which kept me company during those lonely nights as an awkward and socially inept teenager. So when Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight Saga, was released last month to much acclaim and publicity, I knew that I had to check out the series. And so I picked up a copy of Twilight, the book that started it all. As a bona fide bookworm, I consider myself well-read. And although preferences can definitely come into play when reviewing a book, I like to think that...

I'd written before that science and mathematics were never my forte in school. Which is unfortunate, because I love learning the facts and figures behind our amazing world. This is precisely why I get overly excited when I watch a program (hello, Discovery, History, and the National Geographic channels!) or read a book that can explain things to me in straight, matter-of-fact, and entertaining ways that do not make me want to gouge out my eyes. A few years ago I picked up a book called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Roach takes a macabre and often shushed topic to investigate the science and industry surrounding death...