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I was reading a synopsis of this novel, and it sounds pretty interesting. It is a mystery featuring a sheriff and his attempt to stop a thief who wants to steal three expensive bottles of wine. It sounds somewhat stupid initially, but it gets better and there is lots of intrigue and plot twists and all the good things that make a mystery book so engaging. You can read more about it by clicking the image link below!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the final installment of the Harry Potter series. I remember when Harry Potter first came out, and it seemed like it was so far off until its end. Well, time moves despite the will of any human, and in due years the series did indeed conclude. However, Death Hollows may well be the most entertaining and exciting of all J.K. Rowling’s novels, and most of it takes place outside of Hogwart’s. All the loose ends are tied up, and everything ends… well, if you don’t know, then you should read it!

Beautiful Boy is a novel by David Sheff about his experience dealing with his son’s (Nic) addiction to crystal methamphetamine. It truly is heartbreaking, and I can’t imagine what it is like to be a parent and have your child go through something like this. The way he describes his torment is incredible, and the book would certainly be helpful for other parents going through the same crisis.

The novel starts off describing Nic’s birth and his childhood. It goes through his early experimentation with alcohol and cannabis, until it finally reaches the point where he tried methamphetamine. From that point on, it was a downward spiral of theft, deceit, drop-outs, rehab visits, and pure terror and suffering. Addiction affects much, much more than the addict. It affects their families tremendously, and the aggregate cost of addiction is devastating for the economy. Ironically, one of the drugs Nic first tried, cannabis, can probably greatly alleviate his addiction to other drugs. Smoked cannabis has some medicinal properties, but a concentrated cannabis extract known as hemp oil can cure essentially any disease, by working within one’s endocannabinoid system. It has worked to cure other mental disorders, and since addiction is at its base a brain disorder, I am positive hemp oil could cure that too.

I enjoyed reading it, and now I have moved on to his son’s book, Tweak. I will review that after I have finished it, but already it is much more intense and descriptive than his father’s. David Sheff can only write from his perspective, but the perspective of the addict himself is extensively revealing.

Besides being a popular video game series, there are also many books about Halo, each of which I will review. I just realized, while looking up the Fall of Reach, that two new Halo books have been released, which I will have to get around to reading.

The Fall of Reach (by Eric Nylund, thought I’d put his name out there) tells the story of how the Master Chief and hundreds of other Spartans were developed. The story starts out before the Covenant have even been encountered, and the Spartans were actually trained to take out space pirates. Once the Covenant show up, the human race finds a better use for their breed of super soldiers.

In the Halo Universe, humans have migrated to hundreds of other planets. Reach is a world with the primary purpose of building intergalactic spaceships, and is one of the most heavily defended human planets in the Universe. Based on the title, the reader can conjecture what happens when the Covenant attack it.

Fall of Reach is a great origin story of the Spartans, and it leaves off right before the beginning of the first Halo video game. The subsequent novel, Halo: The Flood, is a novel version of Halo: Combat Evolved.

Needful Things is a novel by Stephen King, about an unusual man named Leland Gaunt who comes to the town of Castle Rock and sets up a shop called Needful Things. By preying on the residents’ deepest desires, he manipulates them to carry out his destructive and deadly plans.

The book focuses on the relationships Gaunt develops with the townspeople, and how he coerces them in to doing horrible things. When someone would come in to his store alone, he would show them the item they want most in the world, such as a rare baseball card or Elvis’s sunglasses (which were both actual items in the book). These things would normally be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, but Gaunt gives them away free in exchange for doing a favor or prank on someone, such as cutting their tires.

Through his dealings, Gaunt carries out an elaborate plan to literally destroy the town. The intricacy of the manipulations is incredible, which is why Needful Things is probably my favorite Stephen King novel. I am bewildered that such an amazing plot could ever be developed by a human mind, but it was. I watched the movie of Needful Things and it did not do the book justice, but that’s because there simply was not enough time.

I highly recommend that any human who has ever lived read this book, even if they are already dead or illiterate. Check it out!