Pennyworth Books

Excerpted from the book “Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You” by Tonya Zavasta. The book is available at: http://www.beautifulonraw.com

Jean Kerr, American author and playwright wrote: Im tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. Thats deep enough. What do you want an adorable pancreas?

Jean Kerr was closer to the truth than she might have realized. Every outside organ of the human body is eligible to be called beautiful, but because internal organs are ordinarily seen only by surgeons, they get excluded from the beauty contest. If our internal organs were observed, we would describe them in terms of attractiveness, and normal color and shape would be considered beautiful. You need only compare pictures of normal healthy internal organs with pictures of their infected and diseased counterparts in the medical books to convince yourself that health and…

The Tale of Genji: The world’s first novel

Written by the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century, *The Tale of Genji* is a classic work of Japanese literature concerning the son of a Japanese emperor, his romantic life and the customs of aristocratic society at the time. Called alternatively the world’s first novel, the first modern novel or the first novel to be considered a classic; precisely which is a matter of debate by those who make a living debating such things. Nobel Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata named *The Tale of Genji* “the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it.”

*The Tale of Genji* was written for Japanese women of the yokibito, or aristocracy, and possesses many of the elements found in novels today: a central character, major and minor characters, well-developed characterisation,…

But none quite like Christopher Moore. The newest slice of twisted humor from the perennial literary all-star is once again a confectioners gift to the rabid masses, always waiting for one more Moore novel to devour.

A Dirty Job, his newest and darkest (yet endearingly deep) novel to date is a tangle of Beta male vs Death. Or Beta male as death. Really, it’s a tale of death, and not just the madness with which we associate it, but with which every aspect of society looks at it. He does an amazing job of compiling and piecing together more than just one or two perspectives here.

First we have the protagonist Charlie, the jittery second hand store owner whose wife died giving birth to his daughter. He’s left alone and confused, and more than anything afraid of the myriad ways he might lose his daughter as well. Of course, Moore being Moore,…