Now, I really don't know what to do - which book to read next. I have my list of books from the Man Booker committee but three new trashy books have come out from trashy authors that I really enjoy:

* The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill 307 pages published by Soho Crime In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. Lao national coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun, a man in his late 70's, and his wife, Madame Daeng, are sent along to supervise the excavation. The road to those remains is circuitous, as is everything in communist-ruled Laos. As usual, Dr. Siri doesn't disappoint. The curious combination of taking place in 1970's Laos and a doctor who never wanted to be a coroner is a delight.

* Dexter's Final Cut by Jeff Lindsay 368 pages published by Doubleday   Hollywood gets more than it bargained for when television's hottest star arrives at the Miami Police Department and develops an intense, professional interest in a camera-shy blood spatter analyst named Dexter Morgan. Mega-star Robert Chase is famous for losing himself in his characters. When he and a group of actors descend on the Miami Police Department for "research," Chase becomes fixated on Dexter Morgan, the blood spatter analyst with a sweet tooth for doughnuts and a seemingly average life. To perfect his role, Chase is obsessed with shadowing Dexter's every move and learning what really makes him tick. There is just one tiny problem . . . Dexter's favorite hobby involves hunting down the worst killers to escape legal justice, and introducing them to his special brand of playtime. I LOVE Dexter, my favorite serial killer. AHHHHH! The end left me in the air!

* W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton 496 pages published by  Marian Wood Book/Putnam  Wasted lives, wasted time, and wasted opportunities are at the heart of this twenty-third entry in the long-running Kinsey Millhone series (and I have read all of them). Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him. Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes. This is a very good whodunnit!

My only option is to read one good book from the Man Booker list and then a trashy book from the list above. That will give my brain a chance to recover from all the heavy reading and brain-freeze. Do other people go through this?