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How sweet they are
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD
By Jill Conner Browne Random House AudioBooks, $25.95 ISBN 0553756869
By Jill Conner Browne Random House AudioBooks, $25.95 3 hours, 0553756850
Measuring up
By Ken Adler Simon & Schuster Audio, $26 6 hours, ISBN 074352666X
Capitol offenses
By Stephen Horn HarperAudio, $25.95 6 hours, ISBN 006051602X
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I usually don't review self-help or self-improvement audios, but I have to break my self-imposed rule for
Jill Conner Browne, the first and foremost Sweet Potato Queen and the founder of an institution unlike any other
in the galaxy. Jill has reigned supreme in Jackson, Mississippi, for the last 20 years and has most graciously chosen
to share her invaluable, inviolate, irrefutable, irresistible, irreverent advice with other women (and any man smart
enough to listen up)—and let me tell you, this is not advice you'll get from your mama. The Sweet Potato Queen's
Book of Love and its inimitable sequel, God Save the Sweet Potato Queens, read by her very own regal
self, contain everything a female person needs to know, and then some—including the real recipes for the world's
best, cure-all comfort foods—Chocolate Stuff and Fat Mama's Knock-You-Nekked Margaritas. If you listen in the car,
be careful! Driving under the influence of the SPQs is bound to cause fits of laughter and dizzying, dazzling shocks of
recognition.
Stories of little known but highly important scientific discoveries have become a unique, often best-selling, genre.
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World, Ken Adler's wonderfully
detailed chronicle of the development
of the metric system, is just such a story, filled with suspense, adventure, intrigue, high drama and personal tragedy.
In 1792, two renowned astronomers set off from Paris, traveling in opposite directions, through a country embroiled in
the roils of revolution, hoping to extract the length of one meter from the exact measurement of the curve of the earth
between Paris and Barcelona. It was painstakingly difficult work, and they met obstruction and suspicion everywhere.
Ultimately, they achieved their mission: They established the meter that was to become the standard measure for "for
all people, for all time." Bryon Jennings' narration, well-measured in tone and timing, gives this saga added life and
excitement.
Stephen Horn's latest, Law of Gravity, is one of those
edge-of-your-seat-how-will-they-get-out-of-this mystery-thrillers, aided and abetted here by Dylan Baker's first-rate
performance. It stars easy-to-root-for characters—an on-the-skids Justice Department lawyer who sabotaged his own
career by putting truth before politics (an inside-the-Beltway no-no) and a retired New York cop who joined the force to
put things right and still believes in his purpose—and some really nasty, stop-at-nothing bad guys. Add a well-turned
plot involving a possible spy scandal that might implicate a wealthy, super-ambitious senator with presidential yearnings
and his even more ambitious wife, some suspect suicides, multiple murders, high level political shenanigans and an FBI
agent who may or may not be on the side of right, and you've got the right recipe for a high-voltage whodunit.