I’m not fat. I’ve never had to diet. Except for the odd foray into cross-dressing on Halloween in San Francisco’s Castro district, I’ve never worried about slipping into a size 8 evening dress. And I’m not a fan of graphic novels or books. But as soon as I picked up The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude, A Memoir, by Carol Lay (Villard Books, 2008), I was charmed.

Do churches cause asthma? That’s the wierd conclusion of a sweeping study of 287 Chicago neighborhoods published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.