NOVEMBER BOOKS

1) The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe / JF / **** / Hardback
I read this one over Thanksgiving because Emily was reading it, too.  I should have been cleaning or decorating but I was WORN OUT.  So while Darren and the kids were out chasing Pokemon, I sat in the midst of boxes and ribbons and torn up packing paper and re-read my childhood favorite by the light of my library tree.  Those few of you that actually read this blog may know that "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"  was one of my favorite books as a child. I have read and re-read the entire series. I actually remember reading this book for the first time. It was my first "fantasy" type book, and I still remember that feeling of being totally enraptured and swept away. Before that I'd read practical (wonderful) books like "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Bobbsey Twins".  Now all of a sudden there was a secret country in a wardrobe.... with a magic faun that wore a scarf and served tea.... and a beautiful castle on the sea.  I loved Lucy who was just my age and was just like me but was brave.  She is still one of my favorite characters.  I think also this is one of my first books that introduced the struggle of good versus evil in the world - and it is interesting that many of my favorite books since then have this same underlying theme (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Mortal Instruments, etc).  Anyway, it was a delightful hour or so spent re-visiting the big old house in the English countryside and the wilds of Narnia.

2) Blood Red Road (Dust Lands Book 1) by Moira Young / YA / **1/2 / Kindle
I love me some post-apocalyptic dystopian stories.
In this book you don't really know what happened to make the world the way it is (the author briefly references plague, famine, war) or who made it that way (the previous civilization are called "The Wreckers" which I LOVED as ain't THAT the truth).
The story starts when four riders appear out of nowhere at the small homestead inhabited by our main character, Saba (18), her twin brother Lugh, her father, and her 9 year old sister. The riders kill the father and take Lugh.  The rest of the story focuses on Saba's journey to get her brother back.
This book certainly had  tons of adventure - and it had a lot of delightfully flawed characters.  But despite this, I just didn't love it.   I was waiting to be caught up and tumbled and gloriously spit out on the other side.  But it just didn't happen.  The scenes felt rushed and flat, the sentences terse and factual.  And too much improbability combined with stuff that just didn't make sense. Despite this, I will read the second one. Why? I don't know.

3) Breathe by Sarah Crossan / YA / ***1/2 / Kindle
This book has your typical dystopian elements - an oppressive government, duped citizens that have given up their freedom, and rebels on the outside trying to make things change.
In this one, the world's forests were cut down to create the farmland necessary to feed the worlds burgeoning population.  The result of this is that the oxygen levels drop so low that people start to die.  A corporation called "Breathe" builds large bio-sphere domes for the rich, with some poor people allowed in by lottery to do the menial work.  Now, several decades later, things are not well in the dome.  The lower class is charged for any extra oxygen they consume beyond what is needed to live and work. They can't walk far, exercise, or engage in normal human behavior without literally paying the consequences.  The book tells the story of how a few teen friends discover that maybe the world outside is not as bad as it seems and that they are being lied to in the interest of corporate greed.  They discover the rebels and decide to join up.
This one felt like it had too many recycled plot elements that I've read before... and that would be okay if it was done BETTER. But it just wasn't. It was choppy and full of inconsistencies which ultimately left me disappointed. I MAY read the sequel, but not sure.

4) A Night to Remember by Walter Lord / ***1/2 / Kindle
This book was our book group selection for the month. It tells the story of the Titanic. It is not a historical fiction selection, but a re-telling of the night based on in-person interviews and formal reports. I have always been FASCINATED by the Titanic, so I of course enjoyed this book.

5) Fractured: A Slated Novel, Book 2 by Teri Terry / YA / ** / Kindle
Kyla is starting to remember more and more about her past life. She remembers she was part of an anti-government terrorist group and is highly trained in weapons, surveillance, and espionage (like WHATEVER -  I have done a lot of mental eye-rolling with this book). As many people as are randomly killed and "disappear" in this book, it doesn't make sense that Kyla who was supposedly public enemy number one would be "slated" rather than killed by the government.   My other problem is that the author is constantly revealing new information through fractured dreams that Kyla experiences as she starts to remember what was erased.  This makes sense I guess, but the formula is just so overused as a means of revealing new information that I could barely slog through it.

6) Between the World and Me / Ta-Nehisi Coates
This book evoked so many strong emotions in me that I had to talk over a lot of it with Darren (my poor husband... one day I'm talking about the dumb things people do when trying to survive an apocalyptic event and then the next day I'm ranting about racial inequality in America.  He gamely follows along and gives me insightful things to ponder. I love this man and his brain).  The author wrote the book in the form of a letter to his son about what is means to grow up black in America.  He relates a lot of his own deeply-felt experiences from his lifetime.  

What I learned from this book:
I have the luxury of thinking about race when it suits me. African Americans do not have that same luxury.

The American dream is not the dream of everyone, not just in the realization but in the actual desire ( I don't know why this was shocking to me but it was).

I have been acting racist by trying not to act racist (I'll explain this later).

African Americans experience American society differently than I do.

African Americans didn't create this reality but are expected to repair it.

One of the most helpful things to me from this book was reading Coate's explanation that some of the reasons inner city black youth do the things they do is because they ultimately feel unsafe and are just trying to exert some type of control in their life. This was eye opening to me and felt like it rang true. He had numerous examples.  I have to admit that as a white person (that I now realize does not and will never fully "get it"), I have watched the news on the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns and thought, "WELL WHAT DID THEY EXPECT THE POLICE TO DO????".  It is only over the past 10 months or so as more and more reports are coming out on the news regarding police violence, that I have come to think maybe something really is going on and there really are problems in some areas.   Do I think, like the author, that there is a systematically constructed and maintained assault on black people? No.  But he did make me aware that there have been proposed solutions to "black" problems that really benefited white people (such as housing projects).

Now to explain how this book made me realize I've been acting racist.  I see a black person in the store (this doesn't happen much in Richfield). I want to make sure this person knows I am not racist in any way shape or form. Racism is ugly and ignorant and I do not want to be any of those things. So I go out of my way to be friendly. To smile. To initiate conversation and show how cool and non-racist I am. This book made me realize that even though I'm being positive, I'm totally treating this person differently because of the color of their skin .... which is inherently racist. ARGHHH.  Talk about a light bulb moment. 

I didn't agree with everything Coates said - in fact there was a LOT I didn't agree with.  He felt the Civil Right Movement was a myth, and the idea that African Americans can someday live a life without fear is a fallacy.  I'm sorry, but you can't tell me that things are not better than they were 50 years ago, let alone 150 years ago.  That being said, there is still a lot to be done.

I loved this book as it made me think. I want to read it again. I also really didn't like this book -  because man, truth can be hard and dark, and sometimes it was too hard and dark.  I felt the author was candid and honest, but it felt like he believes there is no solution and that it is all just hopeless.   As one reviewer stated, "Coates' has no faith in America or its dream".  His words felt cold and bleak - and sometimes struck me as an angry rant. And maybe that is necessary in order to help us get our priorities straight ... because honestly, I feel sick for our country. The author does not want to give any comfort as it, in his eyes, would be a false comfort. But I have to much (maybe unjustified) faith in people and the ability to change. It is probably because I'm religious and our capacity to change and improve are ingrained on my soul. So even though things are an ugly mess,   I do feel there is hope.  I have to feel this way.  And this is why I was ultimately disappointed with this book... that while it helped me realize the problem is bigger than I realized, I am still left not knowing what to do to help.


7) Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
I needed this book. I loved this book. I devoured this book. I ordered this book for myself from Amazon for Christmas and put it under the tree with a tag that said, "TO SONJA FROM OZ" (Oz is my kitty).

First of all, the book has beautiful red edges. RED!  To whom did she sell her soul to get this and why has it not been done more often? It was stunning. Second of all, it was just as good as the first book (which like never happens).  I love this author.  Bardugo is compelling. She is clever.   She writes my kind of characters (as apparently I have a vulnerability for cunning, ruthless, and unapologetic bad boys).  She leaves you wanting more.   I want to be a modern day Rumpelstiltskin and lock her up and make her spin more literary gold. Except that would be creepy.

8) Salt to the Sea: a novel by Ruta Sepetys
After being disappointed with the last Sepetys novel, I was hesitant to pick this one up. 
Set in the last days of WWII it was a story told from four different points of view (which normally I don't like - but this time it was done really effectively).  The four different characters have vastly different back stories, but Sepetys combines them into a compelling tale of friendship, survival, and human decency. It ends with the sinking of the ship the Wilhelm Gustloff, which is the single greatest tragedy in maritime history and surprisingly one that I'd never even heard of.  Sepetys is a powerful storyteller that isn't afraid to pack a punch.

September and October

I hardly read at all in September. I'm not even sure why. Even though Nathan had two soccer games per week and two football games per week, this usually gives me prime opportunity to get in a few pages as I'm riding to games or waiting for games or waiting for practices to be over.  But for some reason this really didn't happen much this time. Once his sports were over, I found myself reading more.  I haven't read anything from the Goodreads list for months now..... 

So anywhere, here is what I did read. I know I read a few more but I honestly can't remember what they are. I remember reading one as an ePub book on my computer and it was such a lovely story that when I was reading it while on break at work I was fighting the tears and emotions. It always concerns people when they walk by your cubicle and your sobbing. Well normally it would but it happens quite frequently at this job. HAHAHA.  But now I can't even remember what in the world it would have been that I was reading.  Pioneer doesn't track your history, so I can't go back and figure it out.  But anyway, I'm rambling. Here is the list for September and October:

The Last Star (The 5th Wave #3) by Rick Yancy  / YA / *** / Book
I know I read this book. I can't remember much about it. I remember how it ends. I remember I decided the main character, Cassie, was kinda annoying.  Which is sad because in book 1 she was great.  And as for the whole plot arc,  I still don't even know if I got what happened. And considering I reread the first two just to try and figure it out, I'm not really happy about that.  The characters were talking in cryptic circles the entire novel. I was soooo confused.  So in summary, this book 1)took me a million years to read.  2)consistently put me to sleep 3) made me angry 4) was ultimately forgettable.

Slated by Teri Terry / YA / *** / Kindle
Another dystopian novel. In this world, the Government doesn't jail teens for violent behavior, they give them another chance by erasing their memories.  They get a second chance - a clean slate (which is why the book is called, "Slated").  In this story, Kyla is joining her new family, her new school, her new life. She is closely monitored to make sure she conforms to her new life.. But of course whispers of her past are echoing in her mind.  She doesn't know who to trust, including herself.  It was interesting... I'll read the sequel.

We are Unprepared by Meg Little Reilly / *** / Kindle
Oh man I love my apocalyptic books. Each book has a different cause of disaster (virus, nuclear war, aliens, etc).  This one was global warming that created a giant series of storms.  The interesting thing about this book is that instead of taking place AFTER the disaster and tracking how society falls apart, it instead takes place BEFORE society fell apart. The premise of the book is that when people actually have some warning about the fact that their life is going to totally be destroyed, people react in entirely different ways. Some ignored it. Some turned into avid "preppers". Some become religious fanatics. Some become violent.  Exploring the "before" was a new take on the cautionary tales I love.  My problem with this book was that it was told from the perspective of Ash and I really didn't like the guy.  The author tried to make it appear that he went threw some painful growth but the guy had such an ego he had to point out his growth non-stop.  So in summary the plot was great, the main characters were awkwardly developed, and you never can have too many canned goods. The end.

Zeroes by Scott Westerfield, Margo Lanagan, and Deborah Biancotti / YA / *** / Kindle
Zeroes is about a group of six teens that have "special powers" or abilities. They have found each other and their differences have bonded them.  While it wasn't as good as some of the other books by Westerfield (I love the "Uglies" series, it had a great underlying premise... that power has a price. These kids have powers, but these powers are inconvenient, usually get them in trouble, take practice, and are sometimes painful.  I also like that Westerfield made some of the characters deliberately unlikable. I am sure the series will expand on this and we'll see some growth.  This book would make a fantastic TV series.


The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay / A / ***** / Book
I started reading this book again because Emily was reading it. I've read these books over and over again, so I was able to put it down and pick it up again over the last six months.  This was the book I would curl up in my chair in my office and read when I had insomnia.... so it is a good thing that it took me months to re-read it again. I love this author.  

The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay / A / ***** / Book
This is the sequel to the book above. Once I finished, "The Summer Tree", I just kept going in a mad rush of delightful revisiting.  These books were more "flowery" than I remembered, but I still love them.

The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay / A / *****
The last book of the Fionovar trilogy. This is an epic story full of strong characters.  Each of Kay's books is based on a period of history, and this one focus on Britain and King Arthur.  

Three Wishes: A Novel by Liane Moriarty / A / **** / Kindle
Witty. Sometimes hilarious.  Always real.  I enjoyed this story of three sisters (triplets).  The story starts with a climatic fight between the three, then jumps back in time to set up the big event.  Moriarty is just good at character writing. This was not anywhere close to my favorite book of hers, but I did enjoy listening to it.  I did not like the little vignettes told from the point of view of a few strangers, but I would imagine that triplets usually do cause a stir.  

The Last Letter from your Lover: A Novel by JoJo Moyes / A / **** / Kindle
I loved loved loved the first two-thirds of this book.  Devoured it.  Then the story breaks your heart before jumping into a whole different story. It felt really jarring.  Even though everything ends well, I wasn't satisfied and felt actually a big exhausted.

Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin / A / ***
An Irish girl leaves her small town in Ireland and travels to a new life in America. The story takes place after WWII, and tells the story of a young woman finding her way in a new country.  She has to get used to being without her family, living in a boarding house, getting around a big city, and her new job as a shop girl,  The story has a lot of charm, but I ended up really really being dissatisfied with the main character, Eilis.  My awesome friend and co-worker Kerry read the book, and felt angst about the story as well. She found the following review that perfectly sums up what we were feeling:
 "...the story itself is so lacking in depth, with unrealized characters. Eilis, the protaganist, offers so much potential for the author to plumb the history of the immigrant -- their myriad reasons for coming here, the struggles to make it, the ties to their home country.  Instead, life basically happens to this girl, with no real effort or participation of her own. She doesn't desire to come to America but it's conveniently planned out for her (including a job and home for when she arrives), she doesn't fall in love but rather comes to accept the love of another. I kept waiting for her to grow into and express her own intentions, to make her own decisions, but alas, even the ending is simply an acceptance of circumstances."

AUGUST books

I didn't read much this month.

It is because I was a total COUCH POTATO while watching the Olympics. Seriously I think I watch more TV during the Olympics than I do the entire four years previously PUT TOGETHER. My love for the Olympics is totally one of my "things" that define me as a person - which is weird as I am NOT athletic. 
AT ALL. Which is why I have a book blog and not a fitness blog.



One good thing about being glued to the TV is that my foot that I hurt in DC finally got enough rest to start getting better.  Go figure?

After the Olympics I felt like such a slug that I went crazy and painted two more bedrooms and the mud-room.  And I built some awesome shelves like the ones below for Nathan's new space.  And I have been working de-junking the house.  Which doesn't leave much time for reading. 



So that being said, I'm surprised I got in as many as I did.

Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight / A / **** / Kindle
This is the second book I've read by Kimberly McCreight (the first being, "Reconstructing Amelia"). While both have different stories, they both contain the same problem - implausibility.  The world is so big and so complex that we are surprised when there are weird coincidences, like the time we went on a cruise and our next door neighbors were on the same trip. We always say, "What a small world!" but really this is incorrect.  It isn't that the world is small, the situation becomes memorable because it is so unusual. In this book "Where They Found Her" the main characters are so crazily linked that it made you just go WHATEVER.  
My other complaint with this book is that nearly everyone is a "bad guy" in some way.  It reminded me a bit of the book "The Girl on the Train".  It is done for the shock factor and the almost required surprise plot twist, but really it was unnecessary in this case.
Now... besides all of this.... it was a very engaging read.  I really do like this author's writing style and character development.  It was a book that, once started, I did not want to put down.  I would absolutely recommend this book despite all my internal eye rolling.

The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick / A / ***1/2 / Kindle
I listened to this book on the way to SLC for meetings. It contains four very unique stories with a strange common denominator - the shape of the spiral.  Sounds crazy, right? Well it was definitely intriguing.  The stories are about a neolithic cave girl finding a spiral on a cave wall, a woman accused to witch craft in the 1600's, a doctor in an insane asylum focusing on a patient deathly afraid of spirals, to a man on a spaceship traveling to a new colony.  It was a history and science lesson on spirals and the Fibonacci sequence (yes I did some google searching after reading this book.. they really are EVERYWHERE) with a twist of science fiction at the end.  Most of all this seemed to be a story of obsession.  It was a really really fascinating book that was well written and very engaging.  The third story was the best one by far.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell / YA / *** / Kindle

Anyone who actually bothers to read this blog should know that I don't really review the books I read, I just word vomit my thoughts about each one.  And this book, at first, made me want to vomit. 

I should back track a bit and tell that I really like this author. She is a strong author that writes strong characters and tells stories that I think need to be told.  

I picked up this book based on the strength of her previous books. And speaking of her previous books, in one of them called "FANGIRL" Rowell tells the story of a girl named Cathy who loves to write fanfiction. Cathy writes fanction on a series that sounds very very similar to Harry Potter in a very tongue in cheek way.  The book Carry On is Rowell sharing the final fanfiction that was "written" by her fictional character Cathy who wrote about another fictional character "Simon" that was first created by another fictional author, Gemma. Confused yet?  Ya, me too.

I did not know any of this when I started the book. I had read Fangirl so I actually remembered some of the characters from the fan fiction (Simon and Penelope and Baz) a little.  I decided to give it a go.  After 40 pages I was totally disgusted... so disgusted at how it was such a blatant wrip-off of Harry Potter that I went to Goodreads to read all the one star reviews just to give voice to my anger.  And what I found is a lot of people saying.... be patient... just keep reading... give it a chance.  So I did.  And after about 50 pages I really got into the story. It moved away from it's Harry Potter roots to it's own story.  And it was engaging. And I didn't want to stop reading. And while I think it is the weakest of Rowell's books I've read, I still actually ended up liking it. I also have to add that some of it was just dang funny... especially the names of the spells.  They are a word nerds dream.  So my final thought is that Rowell is still awesome at teenage stories.

Three Times Lucky by by Sheila Turnage / JF / **** / ePub
Oh I liked this one.  It was full of quirky and interesting characters, had a smart and sassy heroine, took place in a charming and eccentric small town, and had a fun mystery to solve.  This one was a Newbery Honor winner and I can see why. This book reminds me why I read fiction for younger readers.

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney / A / *** / 
The premise of this story is really depressing.... four siblings are set to inherit a large trust fund (nicknamed "The Nest") when they find their mother has spent the majority of it on rehab and a tort payout for their irresponsible brother.  The story follows the other siblings in the aftermath of not having the funds they expected to solve their self-inflicted problems. But the underlying foundation of this story is family - not just that the people who you love the most can hurt you the most, but how we can make choices to love and forgive. It is about the ties that bind. I liked this one. It had solid, real characters who grew as the story progressed.

Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan
I didn't love this one. It was described as a "deliciously smart revenge thriller" but I felt it was unbelievably RIDICULOUS.

This story was so unbelievably ridiculous.  A 14 year old girl is on a cruise, where she meets a girl who happens to look just like her, and a cute boy that she falls in love with.  Bad guys come and shoot everyone on the whole ship, except our girl and her new bestie.   After a week floating in the ocean, her bestie dies in her arms just hours before the bestie's dad (ON HIS PRIVATE YACHT) just happens to find them. The girl then finds out after watching the news that her CRUSH and his politician DAD also somehow survived. The boyfriend/father don't say anything about the bad guys taking out an ENTIRE CRUISE SHIP of people but rather say the ship was tipped over by a rogue wave and that they are the only survivors.  The father of her bestie convinces her to just take the place of the bestie so she can exact REVENGE on the boyfriend and his family for lying.  This is obviously better than going to foster care, right?

Now, four years later, her new "father" has died and left his considerable wealth to her. She has returned from Swiss boarding school as an 18 year old with a MISSION ... to bring down her old crush and his family and make them PAY.
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The only thing more crazy about this book is that I actually finished it.

Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson / YA / *** / Kindle
This was a light "Go Ask Alice" in that is paints a very real picture of drug addiction. It walked that fine line of being real and scary without being "too much" for the teen audience for which it is intended.  I liked how it showed that the addicts on the street are someone's daughter or son.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne / YA / *** / Hardback
I didn't love this one. I tried.  It may have been the fact that this is a script of a play, and thus is printed as such.  I really tried to read slow and "see" the scenes in my mind, and felt pretty successful at this.  It was just the story that I couldn't get into as much. Maybe it is my hidden resentment that Harry and Hermione didn't get married. 
It is probably fabulous as a play - and I think I should go to London to see it. HA.

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts / A / **** / Kindle
This book is also written in a script format, and I was totally okay with this one.  This showed me that it wasn't the fact that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was in script format that threw me off.  
This one was just a bunch of character sketches on drugs.  I could totally see each person and each scene as it unfolded. It wasn't an uplifting or wholesome story by any means, but I enjoyed the journey it took me on.


Miracles Boys by Jacqueline Woodson / YA / *** / Kindle / *** / Kindle
This is my third book by Woodson this summer.    It was a beautiful character driven story of three brothers just trying to figure things out after the sudden loss of their mother. Each boy is so different but each comes to the realization that they need each other.  It was a sweet story.

5th Wave by Rick Yancey / YA / **** / Paperback
I purchased the third and final book of this series, "The Last Star" for Nathan, as he received the first two for Christmas. I started to read the book but could not keep up with what was going on. I went back to reread the second book as a reminder, and couldn't remember THAT one either (besides remembering I didn't like it as much), so I went back to the beginning and read 5th Wave (which I remember I DID like).  And I liked it just as much this time around.  Now, on to book two.  


The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey / YA / *** / Paperback
I liked this one better the second time around, but still was just SO CONFUSED.  I just don't GET IT...which is maybe what the author is going for? I couldn't even figure what in the heck was going on.   It was a lot of characters giving each other knowing looks and speaking in cryptic sentences and I hate hate hate it because I feel like I'm supposed to "get it" and I just DON'T.  I ended up reading question boards on goodreads just to find a lot of other people don't "get" it either. Which makes me feel a little better.... but arghhh.  I have a lot of expectations for book three.

Goodreads goal

2016 READING GOAL

Click HERE to read about my reading goal for the year.

Here is where I'm at as of the end of JULY2016 (16 more to go...):

# 16 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - February 2016

# 18 Memoirs of a Geisha - March 2016

# 32 The Picture of Dorian Gray - January 2016

# 33 Crime and Punishment - July 2016

# 41 Dracula - January 2016

# 49 The Lovely Bones - February 2016

# 59 Anna Karenina - January 2016

# 61 Lolita

# 62 Slaughterhouse-Five - June 2016

# 64 Catch-22

# 66 Dune

# 68 Watership Down

# 70 The Stand

# 72 Frankenstein - June 2016

# 73 Great Expectations

# 75 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

# 76 Angela's Ashes

# 77 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - July 2016

# 80 The Bell Jar

# 83 The Color Purple

# 86 The Brothers Karamazov

# 91 Siddhartha

# 92 Don Quixote

# 94 A Prayer for Owen Meany - May 2016

# 95 Vampire Academy

#96 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - January 2016

# 104 Interview with the Vampire

# 105 Middlesex

JULY books

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey / A / **** / Kindle
Favorite quotes: "He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy."

"The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon"

HA HA this book CRACKED ME UP. I read this book for my Goodreads challenge, but the only thing I knew about it is that it had been made into a movie. I'm glad I didn't look up any information about the movie until after I had read the book, as I know I would have pictured Jack Nicholson the entire time as the main character.
This book was funny on so many levels but so deep and well written on so many others. It had a lot of messages to me... how we create our own prisons. How we make ourselves sick. How we give our power to others as sometimes it just is so much easier.
I'm glad I read this one.

Silo Series 1 (Wool 1-5), Silo Series 2 (Shift 1-3), Silo Series 3 (Dust) / Hugh Howey / **** / A / Kindle

Favorite quotes:
From WOOL:
"We get no credit for being sane, do we? I get no credit. Even from me. From myself. I hold it together and hold it together and I make i another day, another year, and there's no reward. Nothing great about me being normal. About not being crazy." He frowned. "Then you have on bad day, and you worry for yourself, you know? It only takes one".

From SILO:
"And so I ask you now, dear friend: was this world worth saving to being with? Were we worth saving?"

From DUST:
"Sleep was a vehicle for passing the time, for avoiding the present. It was a trolley for the depressed, the impatient, and the dying."

What do you do when you are driving to SLC for work and none of your books on your kindle will operate with Text to Speech and you are soooo bored?  You pull up an oldie but goodie. And you fall in love with it again.

The story starts with people who live underground in a 130 story silo. As the books unfold, you find out why they are there (the world has been destroyed), how long they have been there (over 200 years), who put them there (Americans haha), and (most importantly) how they can get out. 

The appeal of these books for me is multi-faceted.  I get total geek thrills trying to get my brain around the planning effort it would take to figure out what a population of people would require for 300 years. How much food will they need? How much can be grown? What supplies and equipment would be needed to produce and store such food? How do you teach people to do these things without hinting too much of the world outside so they don't get silo crazy and want OUT OUT OUT? What has to be re-used? What kind of water, air, and sanitation systems would you need? What do you do with the garbage? How do you control the population?

The other reason I love this book is just that it takes an entire society and makes an island of it. No one can get on the island... no one can get off. You can't ever get away.....  I love the whole psychological aspect of it.  It is a great study on crowd mentality, the use of fear for control, and how many times in life we put on blinders.

These books start strong and kind of fade out towards the end. I think this is because the first books were published as short stories, and are finely crafted. The last part is a longer book and drags a bit.

Brown Girl Dreaming / Jaqueline Woodson / YA / ***** / Book

Favorite quotes:
There were just TOO MANY. This book was written so beautifully.

This is the autobiographical story of the childhood of the author, Jaqueline.  She lived two lives... one with her Grandmother in the South and one with her single and independent mother in New York.   I remember learning in history class about the migration of young black men and women from the South to the Northern cities... seeking economic opportunity as well as a decrease in racial inequality.  I love how books like this bring history to life and make it feel more personal and meaningful.  I also love how the author writes about her love for words and her desire to write books even at a young age.  

This book is written in a style reminiscent of "Out of the Dust" and "Crossover" in that is written in prose.  I liked this one.  

The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima / YA / *** / Book

This was a re-read with Elissa. It is one of the first books by Cinda Williams Chima that I ever read... and I remember really liking it.  I didn't enjoy the writing as much this time, but still love this author.  It is the story of teenage Jack, who lives a normal life in a normal town doing normal stuff. His life changes when it is discovered that he is really the last heir of a magical and mystical group and has been hidden since he was a baby to avoid being conscripted into the magical tournaments that determine power in the wizarding world.  Sounds crazy I know. But the story is fun.

The Beginning of Everything by Robin Schneider / YA / *** / Book

Summary: Too much teenage angst.

Ezra has it all... he is the student body President. The athlete headed to college on a scholarship. The guy with the perfect girlfriend.  All of this is supposedly taken away when he is injured in a hit and run, shattering his leg.  The rest of the book tells how he tries to find his new "place" in the world, which happens to be with the Speech and Debate team.

The weird thing about this book is that Ezra makes it pretty clear he wasn't really that happy with his perfect life pre-accident.  The story gets really kind of muddled as it sounds like his old friends and old team still want him as a friend (I mean I'm sorry, how does hurting your leg make you unpopular now? The author doesn't explain this) and leader but he doesn't feel worthy of them or something?  The details kind of get in the way of each other. Anyway, Ezra meets a girl. The girl is awesome. The girl has a secret and we are drug along for the ride. I give this book props for not following the formulaic "happy ever after" story line, but the ending doesn't make a lot of sense as far as the 180 degree turn the girl makes. The books spends all this time exploring how awesome and mature this new girl is, just to make her a total dope at the end. I don't get it.

Under the Never Sky Veronica Rossi / YA / *** / Kindle
This was was just meh for me. I thought I would love it, especially as it is based in a society living in protected domes due to the destruction of the world outside. The story begins when the main character, Aria, is unjustly "cast out".  She decides she will try and find her mother, who was doing research in another dome with which communication had just ceased. She unites with a "dweller" who is looking for someone, too. They work together to survive... even though really she isn't helping much with the whole survival thing as she is basically useless... except she can sing.... and she's pretty... and she does get more tough at the end.  Anywhoo.... I didn't love it but I will read the sequels.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo / YA / ****1/2 / Kindle

Favorite quote:
"The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true."

Oh man I love this author.  I read this book on Kindle and had not realized this was the same author as the Grisha series that I love love love.   This book sat on my kindle for weeks until I received an email from pioneer.utah.gov indicating it would expire in 14 hours.  So I figured I better at least try and read the dang thing .... and then I received this delightful SURPRISE.  It was seriously like the universe was smiling at me.  You should have seen me do several mental double takes as my mind wrapped around the fact I was reading a new book by LEIGH BARDUGO!!!

This story takes place in the same world as the Grisha series, but with a totally new cast of characters. I don't know what the literary term is for the skill of creating real, unique, awesome characters but whatever it is called Leigh Bardugo is the QUEEN of it.  Her dialogue is as good as Cassandra Clare with enough one-liners to keep me giggling.  

I'm also realizing the Leigh is the queen of the "Squad".  Taylor Swift has one.  The Grisha books have one. It makes sense that the Six of Crows series would have literally the baddest (literally and figuratively) squad of all.  I am buying this book for my personal library and can't wait for the sequel.

Euphoria by Lily King / A / **** / Kindle

This is the story of three scientists living among the aboriginal tribes of New Guinea in the 1930's.  While the setting and their observations are fascinating in and of themselves, it's the relationships and dynamics between the three that make this book so intriguing.  Nell is married to Fen. She's written a successful book based on her previous research. Fen is the charismatic but jealous husband whose flaws provide just the right amount of tension to the story. They join up with Bankson - a brilliant but depressed scientist who falls for Nell.  This book was really multifaceted... it painted a beautifully complex picture of self discovery and self destruction as well as the need to be an individual without being alone.

Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson / YA / **** / Kindle
Oh man I love this author. Her book, "Speak" is one of the best I've ever read.  Anderson writes about serious issues such as eating disorders, date rape, and PTSD.  In this book Anderson takes a comedic break. The book feels like a sitcom complete with a blue collar working class family, a smart but unmotivated high school senior (Ashley) barely eeking her way to graduation while juggling detention and her job as a costumed rat at Chuck E Cheese , her sweet by semi-loser boyfriend, her very pregnant mother with her very Irish family, and a best friend obsessed with the upcoming Senior Prom.  Anderson indicated in the acknowledgements at the end that some fans at a book signing said they wanted a book about "normal kids like us".  This was their story.  It was a lot of fun.

Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones / JF / *** / Kindle

This is the exact kind of book I would have loved to read as a kid.  It was full of magic and castles and crazy adventures and beautiful English humor. This book had some very Harry Potterish slants (refusing to call a powerful wizard by his name, the idea of having multiple lives and the need to protect those lives by storing them away), which was interesting as it was written in 1977... well before "The Boy That Lived".  I read up on this author and found that JKRowling lists Diana Wynne Jones as a childhood influence.  I am not saying JK Rowling plagiarized Diana Wynne Jones. But the author says it best:  

"I think Ms Rowling did get quite a few of her ideas from my books – though I have never met her, so I have never been able to ask her. My books were written many years before the Harry Potter books (Charmed Life was first published in 1977), so any similarities probably come from what she herself read as a child. Once a book is published, out in the world, it is sort of common property, for people to take ideas from and use, and I think this is what happened to my books."


Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky / A / *** / Kindle

Favorite quote:

"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's".


This is from the Goodreads list of classics I am working my way through. It was an engaging, although laborious read. This is one of those books that I feel I would have to take a college class to truly understand all the nuances of this book. What I did glean from it was a fascinating look at human nature and the idea that some crimes may be against societal law but are not against the laws of nature or the laws of human need. For example, if a terrible drug dealer is killed by someone, is that really a crime when society is better off for what happened? I have actually thought a lot about this because we had a homeless guy get in trouble recently for selling his $194 food stamp allotment. Come to find out he sold it to buy his estranged kid a playstation for Christmas. BREAK.MY.HEART. It is true that the law is the law but man sometimes it can get hard to want to punish people.

What I enjoyed the most was having another look at Russian society and how just messed up it was during that time period. The riches of the time did allow for a lot of intellectual thought to be cultivated, but at the same time there was so much just abject poverty for the rest of the people.

Two more down, 18 more to go

2016 READING GOAL

Click HERE to read about my reading goal for the year.

Here is where I'm at as of the end of JUNE 2016 (18 more to go...):

# 16 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - February 2016

# 18 Memoirs of a Geisha - March 2016

# 32 The Picture of Dorian Gray - January 2016

# 33 Crime and Punishment

# 41 Dracula - January 2016

# 49 The Lovely Bones - February 2016

# 59 Anna Karenina - January 2016

# 61 Lolita

# 62 Slaughterhouse-Five - June 2016

# 64 Catch-22

# 66 Dune

# 68 Watership Down

# 70 The Stand

# 72 Frankenstein - June 2016

# 73 Great Expectations

# 75 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

# 76 Angela's Ashes

# 77 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

# 80 The Bell Jar

# 83 The Color Purple

# 86 The Brothers Karamazov

# 91 Siddhartha

# 92 Don Quixote

# 94 A Prayer for Owen Meany - May 2016

# 95 Vampire Academy

#96 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - January 2016

# 104 Interview with the Vampire

# 105 Middlesex

JUNE 2016 book list

Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill / ***** / A / Kindle

 The story itself was very mundane... man and woman get married, have a child, grow apart.  What made this book memorable was the writing style.  It was written as a series of thoughts, observations, and declarations what seemed totally random but unified the story as a whole. It was really fascinating reading, although it did take me a while to get used to how it was written. It is short enough I plan to actually read it again.  It reminded me of how our brains (at least mine) are always jumping around from thought to thought. I loved it.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benajamin Alire Saenz / * / YA / ePub
Dante: I need friends as I'm gay and an outcast
Artistotle: I need friends as I'm moody and an introvert
Dante: Let's be friends.
Aristotle: Okay but don't try to make me gay.
Dante: I love you.
Aristotle: I love girls.
Dante: I love you so much. SOOOOO sooo much.
Aristotle's parents: Aristotle...Maybe you are moody because you are really gay and suppressing it (like why would you listen to anyone that named you Aristotle?)
Aristotle: Okay I guess I am gay, too.

The character voices in this book are so tremendously flat. The writing felt stilted and choppy.  It drove me nuts to read it. I'm all for a journey of self discovery but I honestly felt the only reason it won awards is because it is about the hot topic of the day - homosexuality. The emotions were forced. 

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia / ***** / YA / Kindle
Delphine (11) and her two younger sisters are sent across the country one summer to visit the mother that abandoned them more than 5 years previously.  The mother is a talented poet, and resents the bother and burden of her three young children.  To get them out of her way every day, the mother sends the children to a free community day camp ... which happens to be run by the Oakland Black Panthers.  While this book deals with serious subject matter including the meaning of freedom, racial inequality,  1960 politics, and the ties that bind us; it does so in a way that doesn't feel inappropriately heavy.  By the end of the summer there is growth and understanding and beautiful love. This book was really well written, and received several awards. I really enjoyed it - one of the best I've read this year.


Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Mass/ ***** / YA but should be A / Hardback

This is the second book in the Court of Thorns of Roses series, and surprisingly I loved it even more than the first book. There was beautiful world building and fantastic character development.  The overall story arc surged forward in a breathtaking fashion, establishing the track of the final story while containing enough inner story to stand on it's own. 
The main character, Feyre, has earned immortality through her bravery against an evil fairy queen. She is set to live happily every after, but is realizing that happily ever after may not be all it's cracked up to be, especially as she doesn't feel she deserves it for the horrible things she had to do to survive. She is eager to redeem herself, to learn and grow and fight for those she loves, especially as the threat of war among the different fairy courts is approaching. But to do this, she may have to hurt more people and make some tough choices.
I love love love this series, and I especially love the characters. But this book is too sexually mature for the high schoolers in my life.  I'm not a prude but this went over the line for the demographic this book is targeted for. 


The Choice by Nicholas Sparks / ** / A / Kindle
Bleh. Not one of Nicholas Sparks' best.  The writing felt choppy and stilted, and I felt no emotion for the characters.  I'm hugely turned off by the "I've only dated you for a weekend but I love you forever and ever" story line.  The only thing enjoyable about this book was that it was set around Atlantic Beach, which is the beach we visited while visiting Ashlee and Bradley for their wedding. 

Time and Materials by Robert Hass / ** / A / Kindle
When I read poetry, I have two desires: to understand (however vaguely) what I'm reading and 2) to feel something.  Neither of these things happened for me.  I do not know enough about poetry to judge the collection offered in this book by Robert Hass, but all I know is that it wasn't for me.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin / **** / YA / Kindle
This book tells the story of a young Chinese girl who sets off to find the Man in the Moon in hopes he can help her poverty stricken family. Along the way, she meets many friends, has many adventures, and hears many other stories/fables. The book had a really nice "Just-So Stories" feel to it. It won the Newbery Honor award


Bone Gap by Laura Ruby / **** / YA / Book

This was the Printz winner for 2016.  
Bone Gap is a story about a girl named Roza that got kidnapped and a boy named Finn that saw it happen but couldn't do anything about it.  Sounds simple, right? Add some small town quirkiness, a delightful level of suspense, beautifully written and likable characters, the love of family, and a great setting and what isn't there to love about the book? Well actually there are a few things not to love.  The story all of a sudden threw in a weird medical diagnosis for the boy Finn that explains why he can't describe the kidnapper, and a sudden twist that makes me think this could be the retelling of the story of Persephone.  Despite those glitches, it was really a mesmerizing tale that to me was made less by the additional of the magical realism thing going on.  That being said, as great of a writer as Laura Ruby appears to be, I have a  feeling it's all going to come together in the end.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore / ***** / YA / Book

It makes me so happy to be standing in the stacks of the Richfield Library and have Elissa ask me to pick her something to read.  Graceling is such a favorite of mine that of course I had to read it with her.  This is probably my 4th time reading the book, and I loved it just as much this time. 
It tells the story of a land where some are born with extreme skills, called "Graces". Katsa is the niece and ward of the King, and has what she thinks is the skill of killing.  She is struggling to justify the brutality of her grace and the demands of her Uncle to use her grace to expand his power with who she is as a person and the freedom she craves in her life.  The real story is about friendship and love and doing hard things. It is a character driven story with a fast pace and a strong heroine. Love it.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley / *** / YA / Kindle

I read this book as part of the Good Reads Best Books challenge. I haven't seen the movie, but I was expecting a dark stormy castle, a decrepit lab, and a dramatic life-giving lightning strike to enliven the monster on the table.  I was waaaayyy off base.  It wasn't scary. It was dramatic in that lovely English way.  And surprisingly, it was pretty interesting.   The main character (the scientist Frankenstein) was a total pansy. He drove me nuts.  Let's just say by the end I was rooting for the monster.  

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven / **** / YA / Book

I will never understand how this book has not won multiple awards.  It is one of the best books I've read this year - I literally could not put it down. I didn't do laundry. I didn't cook. I didn't go to the store. After the book was done I felt guilty and cooked a new complex recipe EVERY SINGLE NIGHT last week in penance. My children are someday going to realize that when they eat good it means momma's been naughty.  Anyway, back to the book.   The characters were fun and quirky and very very real.   I like quirky. There as a lot of quirky. Quirky for the sake of quirkiness sometimes can bother me, but not this time.  The story touched on the timely and relevant subjects of mental illness and suicide, and handled it very gracefully.  It wasn't macabre. It wasn't sappy.  It wasn't condescending. This book made me cry and made me hurt and made me laugh. I LOVED (spoiler) that it pointed out that a person with depression can be the most loved and cherished person on the planet and SOMETIMES IT JUST IS NOT ENOUGH.  I'm going to get on my soap box here and say that a lot of the problems we have in our country are due to the stigma of mental illness and the lack of funding for treatment.  
Anyway, this book was the best I've read this month.

Slaughterhouse Five / **** / A / Kindle
This book was part of the Good Reads list I'm working through this year.
I'm not sure even how to describe this book.  The story sounds absurd.... it is about a man named Billy Pilgrim, who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.  Billy is constantly jumping around to different phases of his life, so we experience all parts simultaneously. The book focuses on Billy's time as a prisoner of war who experienced the fire bombing of Dresden.  
The book is an easy read, and while I will likely never read it again I did think it was genius.  You didn't know if it was a tongue-in-cheek farce, a series of PTSD experiences from a war-ravaged mind, a science fiction romp, or a gleeful foray into the absurd.  It was totally fascinating.

The Lifeboat Clique / ** / YA / Book
This one was just meh. It is a story of a teen girl that gets ousted from the cool clique by her previous best friend turned drama witch.  The twist is the two girls plus a few of the witches' cronies are now trapped on an abandoned boat that they found after (wait for it) a tsunami hit LA and swept them to sea on a roof. It is a survival story flashing back to the story of their rocky friendship, but it never felt heavy or serious or emotional. There was too much cute fluff that dragged on way too long.  I did finish it, but I was not really engaged in the book by the end.  I did think it was interesting that the girl tried to make a fish hook out of the underwire of her bra.  That was pretty ingenious. I would probably not survive a natural disaster. I'm old. I'm fat.  I can't run, I cry easily, and I don't think I could eat bugs. If the Hunger Games were a real thing, I'd just lay down and tell them to shoot me. 

Close your Eyes, Hold Hands: A novel by Chris Bohjalian. This is the third book I've read by Bojhalian, and is my favorite so far.  When Emily's parents are thought to be responsible for the meltdown of the nuclear power plant in their community, Emily opts to run away and make it on her own instead of seeking help.  The novel explores that this is not the only poor choice Emily has made in her life. Now, almost a year later, the world is getting back to normal, but this girl is simply STUCK in a spiral of bad decisions, homelessness, grief, self-mutilation, and drugs.  It tells the gritty reality of what people due to survive poverty.  The sweet and painful part of the story are not the loss of her home, school, parents, and life but the relationship between Emily and a 9 year old boy who is a foster care runaway.   I read this story in one sitting, so it was definitely engaging for me.  Despite that, the emotions felt a little flat... I couldn't really truly feel her pain I guess. I was waiting for this breathtaking growth to happen in the character and it just didn't.