For many Americans, the standard meal is cheap, tasty, and fast. Many people go out to eat (fast food or sit down), order take-out, or grab something from the freezer. In Food, Inc. filmmaker Robert Kenner examines the costs of putting convenience and value  over nutrition and environmental impact.

Food Inc. It’s the movie that has gotten people to stop eating certain foods and to start eating healthier. Some people simply gawk and gasp at how unhealthy the food processing world is and continue to live their lives, but for others, it is a life changing experience. Food, Inc. reveals surprising , and shocking, truths about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here. Food, Inc. lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry and exposes the highly mechanized process that has been hidden from the average American consumer. Who is allowing this secret to be hidden from the typical consumer? Well, it is done with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Appalling huh?

If you have not seen it already, Food Inc.is definitely a documentary that you want to look into.

What also is available is Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It. This book was created to be a companion to the movie, and it does an amazing job at taking the movie one step further. Through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers, this book will continue to exploit the food industry and to encourage people to change the world by changing how they support the food industry. It consists of 25 essays on topics ranging from biofuels, to agribusiness, to nutrition, to so-called “frankenfoods,” to pesticides and hormones, and global hunger. All of the essays are written by experts. One author included in the book is Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (2006)!

If you have already seen the movie and you would like to learn more, I would highly suggest looking into ordering this companion book to Food Inc.

One can say with quite a bit of confidence that Dan Brown is an acclaimed author of thriller fiction. The author of several #1 bestselling novels, his novel The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide. His work has been published in 51 difference languages, and he is considered one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People according to TIME Magazine.

His most famous character is Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist who commonly finds himself solving a murder, consequently uncovering secrets, dangerous situations, and sometimes treasure! A reader will find Robert Langdon in three of Dan Brown‘s novels: Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), and The Lost Symbol (2009).

Angels & Demons opens with the discovery of a respected physicist Leonardo Vetra, which draws Robert Langdon onto the scene. This doesn’t prove to be easy; the Illuminati, a secret society whose name was founded branded onto the body of Vetra, seem to have discovered a new form of power: antimatter. Langdon must try to stop the Illuminati from destroying the Vatican City.

The Da Vinci Code was published (and takes place) after Angels & Demons, though the movies were produced in the reverse order. In this novel, Langdon works with Sophie Neveu to investigate a murder in the Louvre, which uncovers a battle between two powerful, secret societies. Readers will be stunned by how intelligent, intricate, fast-paced and simply brilliant the novel is.

The Lost Symbol became the fastest selling adult novel in history shortly after its release. Similar to the way the novel flew off the shelves, the novel is fast-paced, all taking place in a time frame of just half a day. After arriving at the U.S. Capitol to deliver a lecture, an object appears that Langdon identifies as an ancient invitation that brings its recipient into a long-lost world, complete with more codes, secrets, and of course, a terrifying villain.

Films for Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code have already been produced, featuring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. A film adaptation of The Lost Symbol is already scheduled for a 2012 release, with Hanks returning for the role of Robert Langdon.

Birdie Lee, aka Super Mom, does all the things you’d expect from someone with that title — run a home, serve as PTA secretary, chaperone school dances, and hold down a full time job. But it doesn’t stop there. She is also, literally, a superhero.

She doesn’t set out to become one — she’s happy with her job at Marvel Fine Foods. But while using a mixture of bleach and ammonia-based cleanser on a stain (don’t try this at home, wannabes), she passes out and wakes up hours later with the cleaning power of ten thousand Swiffers. She can also sense when children or teens are in danger or about to misbehave, and set them straight with her Merciless Gaze.

Soon she’s making headlines: GIRL SAVED BY MYSTERY MOM, MYSTERY WOMAN BREAKS UP TEEN SEX PARTY, and even BATHROOM AT BUS STATION GETS OVERNIGHT MAKEOVER.

Birdie’s comic fan son Martin discovers her secret and designs her a costume. “But how am I supposed to fight crime in high heels?” she asks, as any of us would. “Oh, I thought of that,” he says, “Dr. Scholl’s foot cushions!”

The story wouldn’t be complete without villains (Birdie’s obnoxious ex isn’t really evil enough), a scheming couple who market “patriotic” junk food and video games with subliminal messages.

But, for me, the story takes second place to the comedy. The heroics are always mixed up with the everyday. Birdie fights crime, but still worries when her best friend is mad at her, her son doesn’t like her boyfriend’s son, or she doesn’t trust her daughter’s date. The mailouts she gets from the Justice League of America include promos for a timeshare resort. (It’s “a perfect spot to unwind and get away from that evil archnemesis”.)

If you’re too mature to read comics (and this book does have some adult-only content), or if you just want a laugh, try Confessions of Super Mom.

Here is a rundown of this week’s newest book releases.

Self-Improvement

More Time For You (Rosemary Tator, Alesia Latson)

Rosemary Tator and Alesia Latson have been in the business of teaching their clients how to handle their stress to become effective leaders. In More Time For You, they will share their secrets and teach you how to handle stress so you become one, too. The book shows how to make better and faster decisions according topriorities and how to handle distractions and interruptions, among others.

History

King Philip’s War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance and the End of Indian Sovereignty (Daniel R. Mandell)

Daniel Mandell explores the colonial expansion of Indian sovereignty for decades and how it affected their society. He also reveals the shifting relationships of and between the Natives and colonists. King Philip’s War is a great account about the war that greatly affected Native-Anglo relations and the United States of America.

Fiction

Motion To Suppress (Perri O’Shaughnessy)

Nina Reilly, a lawyer from San Francisco, has just left her husband and her old job and relocated to a simpler life in Lake Tahoe. To start her new life, she decides to help out a friend, Misty Patterson, divorce her abusive husband. But when the husband turns up murdered, Nina’s case quickly changes to a murder case. And there are big, blank spots in Misty’s memory, making it harder for Nina to defend her. Will they be able to bring back Misty’s memory and find the identity of the real killer before it’s too late?

Business

Traders, Guns and Money (Satyajit Das)

A finance expert, Satyajit Das shows us, in Traders, Guns and Money, an exposé on the culture, games and deceptions played out every day in trading rooms with other people’s money. From an insider’s view, the book gives us a lowdown on the business of trading and marketing derivatives.

Nonfiction

Portraits and Persons (Cynthia Freeland)

Cynthia Freeland, a leading philosopher of art, discusses and answers fascinating and fundamental questions on art and the art form in Portraits and Persons. A widely published Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Freeland answers through philosophy how the art form is made.

Don’t forget to check these books out on your next book shopping trip!

Do you enjoy reading satirical articles? If so, I bet you would love (or already love) The Onion. Haven’t heard of it? The Onion is a complete news network that features articles and videos that are partially or entirely fictional. They are typically parodies on traditional newspaper articles, featuring both local and international news. For example, a recent article in their sports section was entitled, “Florida Marlins Delay Game Until Their Fan Shows Up.”

The beauty of the news produced by The Onion is that while the facts they report are fictional, the articles are clearly well-constructed, written by an informed author who simply wants to poke fun at a topic; it’s not just random news solely based on someone’s imagination. The Onion boasts itself as “America’s Finest News Source.” And of course it is. Who else could accurately report an article by the title, “Childbirth To Be Area Woman’s Least Painful Interaction With Daughter”?

So, what if the Onion News Network came out with parodies of not just small news articles, but entire books? You guessed it, they already have. Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of Planet Earth is a parody of the standard desk atlas created by the staff of The Onion. You can bet that this book is packed with humorous and stereotyped description of different countries and smaller regions.

Prior to the making of Our Dumb World, The Onion came out with a different book: Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America’s Finest News Source, which is naturally also a satire, but this time of the major headlines of the 20th century. It can be a parody of the other end-of-the-century retrospective books published by serious magazines, such as Time.

If you’re okay with dry humor and a few (okay, more than a few) pokes at government (that of others and our own), cultures, and other “sensitive” topics, then reading The Onion can be a breath of fresh air. (That’s a bit of a contradiction.) The staff of The Onion knows quite well that some news is begging to be mocked. This is their calling, and they take it quite seriously.

I have decided that I need more bookmarks in my life.

When I am studying for a class, I spend so much time flipping back and forth between the back of the book where the answers are, the part where the questions are, and various sections in the chapter were the text is. It is an interesting sight to see. Sometimes I can balance all the pages in one hand while using my calculator, pencil, and eraser in the other hand while other times I will just use everything in sight as a bookmark.  One time, I was at home studying for an exam and I ended up using my cat’s tail to mark a page that I needed. Okay, I lied about that one–I’ve used her tail more than just that one time.

The most common bookmark in my household is a purple one with a hand drawn giraffe on it. It was a simple laminated piece of paper with a hole punched out at the top and a ribbon strung through and tied in knot. The artist? My sister. She had won an elementary school bookmark competition and they had printed of a lot of copies of it for people to have.

Instead of picking up makeshift bookmarks along my way, I’ve decided that I should make some bookmarks. I know that I could just grab a sheet of paper every time I went to go study and rip that up into smaller sheets, but that doesn’t sound like so much fun. I also know that I could go out and buy some, but that seems a bit much for me. However, a classy bookmark could be a great gift for a book lover.

Making paper bookmarks is easy. Just grab a piece of 2×6 inch tag board or thick paper, put whatever you want on it (keep it relatively thin), punch a hole a the top, and tie on a ribbon! Bead ribbon bookmarks are a little more expensive, but they make for great gives. All you have to do is wrap cellophane tape tightly to form a needle so beads could be threaded easily, tie a knot at one end, put your beads on, tie a knot at the other end, and pull off the cellophane. Simple!

In college I studied English literature; this, of course, meant I was subject to vast amounts of literary criticism.  Reading some of this material made the prospect of having my legs waxed with duct tape sound appealing.  During this time I also developed my undying love for music and began to listen with more intent and analysis than was probably healthy.  I always wished there was a way to bridge the two, then I graduated and those dreams took a backseat.

This past spring I discovered the 33 1/3 series at a conference and my dream became a reality.  There are people out there more neurotic about music than myself; I just had the decency to not commit it to paper.  These authors/critics/musicians take classic albums and synthesize them the way W.H. Auden compared literary sea creatures in The Enchafed Flood.  Writers will submit ideas about albums for approval and then batches are printed each year.

The series refers to the revolutions per minute a standard vinyl LP makes on a turntable; this series is for the truly diehard album fan.  No two books are written alike and each writer takes a different approach.  Some give song by song analysis, others use interviews with bands, some give personal accounts of how the album changed their life, others use it as a chance to shed light on a piece of work long forgotten.  Whatever the case, if one of your favorite albums is on this list, chances are you’ll enjoy the reading.

Here is a sampling of artists: Dusty Springfield, Elvis Costello, Jeff Buckley, The Kinks, R.E.M., DJ Shadow, James Brown, Radiohead, Joy Division, Abba, Prince, The Band, Stevie Wonde, Joni Mitchell, Beastie Boys, Captain Beefheart, Slayer, Elliot Smith, Tom Waits and a host of others; they are up to 74.  These are not easy to find printed by Continuum Press, and range from $8.95 – $12.95.

Here are this week’s newest releases.

Fiction

Red Queen (Philippa Gregory)

Red Queen is a fictional account of Margaret Beaufort, future queen of Scotland, from the time she was an innocent nine-year-old, full of grand dreams of her own, to an unloved wife and widow at 13, and a mother at 14, determined to give her son everything, even if it could cost her her life.

Business

Mentor Leader (Tony Dungy)

“Your only job is to help your players be better.” Tony Dungy heard this from one of his earlier mentors and has been his guiding principle ever since. This simple principle has led to his success as a leader and coach in the NFL. Dungy shares the seven keys of mentoring leaderships and how it’s effective.

History

War (Sebastian Junger)

Sebastian Junger recounts his experiences as a single platoon in a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He gives breathtaking insights about war and its truth and the fear, honor, and trust shared among the troops on an everyday basis.

Nonfiction

Women In Politics: Outsides and Insiders (Lois Duke Whitaker)

Using a feminist theoretical framework, Women In Politics discusses and analyzes gender differences in the political world.

Here is a line-up of the newest releases.

Entertainment

Sliding Into Home (Kendra Wilkinson)

We all know Kendra Wilkinson as one of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends and one of the stars of The Girls Next Door. In Sliding Into Home, Kendra talks about growing up without a father, messing up and how she recovered to  graduate from high school. She also talks about life with her husband, NFL star Hank Baskett and their newborn son, and their secret relationship while she was still living in the Playboy Mansion.Learn more about Kendra in this riveting and entertaining biography.

Mystery

Star Island (Carl Hiaasen)

In Star Island, twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye has been living a rock star life since she was fourteen, including the drugs and alcohol. Ann DeLusia is Cherry Pye’s stand-in or “undercover stunt double”, who fills in for Cherry Pye whenever she’s too wasted. And it is also Ann DeLusia who gets kidnapped by an obssessed paparazzo. Now, Cherry Pye’s entourage must rescue Ann before the public and Cherry Pye finds out about her.

Business

Mojo: How To Get It, How To Keep It, How To Get It Back If You Lose It (Marshall Goldsmith)

“Mojo is the moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it. This book is about the moment—and how we can create it in our lives, maintain it, and recapture it when we need it.”

This Mojo toolkit enumerates fourteen practical tool to achieve both happiness and meaning in business and in life.

Children’s Fiction

My Little People School Bus (Doris Tomaselli, Carolyn Bracken)

This little playbook explores early learning concepts by transforming the little people school bus. The book teaches about shapes, colors, counting and opposites. Recommended for infants and preschool children.

Fiction

One Day (David Nicholls)

Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have just met in 1988, and they must go their separate ways after tomorrow, their college graduation, but they cannot stop thinking about each other. They begin to lead separate lives but they find themselves still attracted to each other and they strike up a unique relationship.

Non Fiction

97 Orchard (Jane Ziegelman)

Jane Ziegelman takes us into a journey of five families around the turn of the century living in 97 Orchard St. New York. Germans, Italians, Russians and other immigrants used food to adjust better to life in New York. Pretty soon, their American neighbors begin to seek them and welcome them into their land.

The Colorado Kid is a novella by Stephen King published in 2005. Although it has been out for several years, it just now came to my attention when the Syfy Network launched Haven, a weekly TV program loosely – really, really loosely – based on the novella. The first couple of episodes were good enough to get up my curiosity about the book.

The Colorado Kid is a quick read at just 184 pages in small book format, including an explanatory/apologetic/defiant afterward by King. More than most books, The Colorado Kid depends on characterization and story-telling more than story itself.  The plot revolves around two older newspapermen, Vince Teague and Dave Bowie, relating the story of a twenty-five-year-old unsolved mystery to their young intern, Stephanie McCann.

King weaves an interesting tale of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of James Cogan, a stranger from Colorado who had no good reason to be found on a beach in a small town in Maine, much less found dead on a beach in a small town in Maine. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will tell you that the mystery remains unsolved. Unlike Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes books, there is no last minute deduction, no previously overlooked clue at the end of The Colorado Kid.

The enjoyment of The Colorado Kid is in the small town character of the newspapermen telling their tale to their eager young intern. With every “ayuh” and “nawp”, King proudly highlights the small town charm of a Maine Islander that captures the attention of those of us “from away”.

If you’re looking for another terrifying tale from the Master of Horror, you’re going to come away disappointed. Aside from a dead body on the beach, there’s nothing even moderately scary about The Colorado Kid. If your enjoyment of a mystery depends on the cleverness of the solution, this book will disappoint. But if you’re looking for an easy read and a glimpse into an American culture different from anything you’re accustomed to, you may appreciate this deconstruction of the mystery genre.