FEBRUARY 2016 BOOK LIST

1."One Summer: America, 1927" by Bill Bryson / A / **** / Kindle
I read this book as my future brother in law mentioned on a post on facebook that this was the best book he'd read in 2016.  My sister also read this book this month.   
This is my second Bill Bryson book. The first one I read was, "Notes from a Small Island".  I totally laughed out loud through that one.  This one wasn't as funny but was soooo interesting. My family was getting really annoyed as I kept saying, "Did you know that... (insert random useless but interesting fact)".  Like OVER AND OVER. It was just as bad as the time I read "Devil in the White City".  But really it is amazing how much happened within just a few short months in 1927.  He addresses everything from Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Prohibition, the great southern floods, the start of tabloids, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, the first talking picture, and the origin of the great depression.
This book was kinda fun for me personally as part of it was about Al Capone and we visited Alcatraz this month. Another major part was about Babe Ruth, and I just signed up Nathan for his first Babe Ruth league in baseball (the other years have been Cal Ripken leagues).  I love when books and real life combine.
The interesting thing I took away from this book was not all the history and factual tidbits that will someday help me win jeopardy but rather that life was just as scary and unsettled and unsure back then as it is now. The government was corrupt and sometimes messed up. The streets weren't always safe.  Other countries didn't love Americans. People were just as obsessed with celebrities. We have a lot of similarities even though this was 90 years ago.  But one difference is how hopeful and confident Americans seemed to be despite their struggles.

"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold / A / ***/ Kindle
There was as lot about this book to love.  The narrator is a murdered teen (Susie) revealing her tragic story and gruesome end from her resting place in "heaven".  She continues to watch as her family and friends fall apart and then ultimately try to heal. She watches as her murderer continues to go free.
I also really liked the suspense of waiting to see how the guy would be brought to justice, and the development of her father and brother.
But there was also a lot I didn't love, especially the ending.  It was just weird... and implausible. The author had this great story idea, but chose to take the story in a completely different direction.

2."Saint Anything" by Sarah Dessen / YA / ***1/2/ Kindle
I love Sarah Dessen.  I love the real characters and the real stories that she continues to delight readers with.  She writes dialogue like a master. Best of all, her stories just feel so hopeful. They all follow the same formula... girl with a problem, girl is lost, girls finds great people that bring her into their "family", part of group involves a boy... girl falls for boy, everything works out. I know this sounds boring, but I have read and really enjoyed all of her novels (even though I couldn't tell you which novel was which as they are very similar). They are poignantly sweet (and refreshingly "clean").  They are also easy to devour and easy to love.  That being said, while I loved the characters in this novel, I didn't feel as emotional about the whole story as I usually do. Maybe there wasn't enough drama or angst or something.  And it annoyed me how the main character didn't stand up for herself more. I kept waiting for the story to arc to the time when she did, but that never really happened.  Despite this, I was glad to have another Dessen story to enjoy.

3."The Passage: A Novel (Book one of the Passage Trilogy) by Justin Cronin / A / **1/2 / Kindle

If you know me well, I'm drawn to apocalyptic fiction. I love playing the "what-if" game on what I would do to care for myself or my family if the world fell apart.  In different books there are different reasons as to why society falls apart. I've read books with nuclear bombs, global warming, disease, war,  aliens, and abuse of power being the vehicle that skidded the human race to the edge of extinction. This book is one of the "science screws up big time" books.  The government is trying to make a superhuman and ends up with these creepy vampire like things that are super powerful, super fast, and glow green.  They also like to eat people, which causes the bitten people to turn into something similar to their makers. They also have unnaturally long lives. Their weaknesses are that they cannot got out in sunlight, and they have a hive mentality. It is like the author took a frankenstein approach and slapped together vampires, zombies, and werewolves. That glow.

The story took wayyy to long to set up. The first third of the book (which totals nearly 800 pages I found out later... it's so hard to tell with Kindle until you've been reading FOREVER across the Mojave desert and realize you're still only 40% done) sets up the government experiment, the FBI agent that gathered the original test subjects, and the origin of the little girl that was the final test subject and who was the carrier of the "cure".  While the story needed to be developed, there was waaayyy to much extraneous detail and dialogue going on here.  It was just paced funny, with long sections that really didn't progress the story any.

The second part of the book told the story of a community 75 years later that live behind a set of high walls in the deserts of California (which was funny to me as I was reading this book as we drove through the exact area). They are protected at night by bright lights that are run by electricity generated by large windmills, but the storage batteries are about to fail.  I was introduced to a whole new slew of characters and I had a really hard time keeping them straight.  Basically the California group is trying to figure out what to do to survive when the mysterious girl with the cure just suddenly shows up. She looks human but there is definitely something different about her. It isn't until later that they realize she can communicate and somewhat control the creepy glow things. They decide they need to get her back to the original testing site in Colorado.

All of this sounds great, right? And for the most part it was.... but there was a lot that just, well, wasn't so great. The story would be trucking along and then would meander off into craziness. And the conclusion was just hokey.  And while it sounds weird to declare the ending of a story about mutant glow in the dark evil doers was just too unbelievable and strange, that is exactly how I feel.  I almost resented the time it took me to finish this book.

4."The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams / A / **1/2 / Kindle
As a rabid fan of Harry Potter and as the mother of children who are obsessed with Doctor Who, I can never judge anyone who is completely caught up in a fantasy world. I can't believe I didn't know about this book that basically has inspired a whole generation of fans.  According to one website I looked at, EVERYONE knows that the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and basically everything is "42".  I just didn't really know what to think.  I do feel I need to read the book over again as it was obviously not what I was expecting and it was really really short (224 pages). The combination of the two makes me think I didn't take the time to revel in what has been called "inspired lunacy".  Because I did really love the tongue-in-cheek humor that just felt totally "british".

5.I was here by Gayle Forman / YA / ***
I admit I had to look this book up on Amazon as I couldn't even remember what it was about. 
From Goodreads: 

"When her best friend, Meg, commits suicide by drinking a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything—so how did she miss the signs of Meg's depression? But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there’s a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington. About Ben McAllister, the boy with a guitar and a sneer, and some secrets of his own. And about an encrypted computer file that Cody can’t open—until she does, and suddenly everything Cody thought she knew about her best friend’s death gets thrown into question."

I didn't love the book, but I did like it well enough. My biggest hang-up was (spoiler) that Meg was severely clinically depressed and her parents knew it and Cody's parents knew it and even her college roommate and new friends knew it... but Cody, who was her BEST FRIEND FOREVER didn't have any clue.

6. Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys / YA but should be A / **
Another YA book that should be listed as an A book. Josie is 17 ... smart... hard working... and the daughter of a prostitute. She dreams of attending college and getting away from her neglectful mother.  If I remember right, there is a mystery to be solved as well.  This book just didn't have any type of emotional hook for me.  It just felt really flat. I also want to say that I felt some of the content was inappropriate for this age group of readers.