I have a huge stack of books that I own but haven't reviewed yet. I'm making a list here for two reasons: first, because I'm about to pack them away as we're moving to our first house in a week (!!) and second because I need something to remind me exactly which books I need to review. I sold six boxes of books the other day and I feel like it's hardly made a dent.

So, without further ado, book reviews you should expect to see between now and the end of the year, god willing and the creek don't rise. The list is subject to updates if and when I find another secret cache of books.

Doppelganger, Marie Brennan
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
How to Ruin a Summer Vacation, Simone Elkeles
Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots, Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik
Flowers from the Storm, Laura Kinsale (reread)
Indecent, Sarah Katherine Lewis
Butchers Hill, Laura Lippman
Every Secret Thing, Laura Lippman
In Big Trouble, Laura Lippman
The Last Place, Laura Lippman
The Sugar House, Laura Lippman
Midnight Rain, Holly Lisle
Tiger Eye, Marjorie M Liu
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Origin in Death, JD Robb/Nora Roberts
Survivor in Death, JD Robb/Nora Roberts
Warsworn, Elizabeth Vaughan
Lost Calling, Evelyn Vaughn

In 1998, Steve Bogira spent a year in Courtroom 302 of the Cook County Courthouse on Chicago's south side. Over the course of that year, he gets to know the judge who presides over the courtroom, the deputies that are in charge of all defendants that come in and out, the public defenders and the prosecutors who are assigned to the courtroom, and most of all the defendants themselves, who make more than one trip in and out of the courtroom's revolving doors.

This book is a searing look at the justice system in our country, and I think it would be especially interesting to you guys from Chicago who read this. Bogira takes the reader into a side of the courtroom that a most people would never see. The casual racism, the defendants who come back to the courtroom again and again and again, all of it -- it's heartbreaking to read that we live in a country where people are treated the way they are for things like petty drug crimes. He also ably covers the history of Chicago's courtrooms.

The centerpiece of the story is the case of Frank Caruso Jr., who was arrested for the hate crime of beating a pair of young black teenagers who happened to be walking through the Bridgeport neighborhood. But there are even parts of this story that are surprising and upsetting. It leaves the reader questioning if justice can ever be truly done.

Courtroom 302 -- five out of five.

I got my first haterade reply to a book review! (It's for Smashed, by Koren Zailckas)

It's been ages since I got called a smug bitch, at least by someone anonymous. Usually it's right to my face.

I went into this story not really sure what to think. On the one hand, I love teenage coming of age stories, but on the other, class system, prep school, blah blah blah.

I'm not really going to describe the plot here -- suffice it to say that it starts when Lee Fiora, a middle class girl from Indiana, convinces her parents to send her to an exclusive prep school in New England, and follows her through graduation. She can often be a passive bystander in her life, but I think Sittenfeld has painted a fascinting picture of an exclusive subculture that most of us won't ever get to see.

I did have a bit of a problem with her framing -- she makes it clear that the story is written when Lee is in her late twenties, but the constant "much later I found out" kind of detracted from the experience of, well, Lee's high school experience.

I did thoroughly enjoy this story.

Prep -- four out of five.