tiny pink books

Sorry folks (if there are any folks who read this blog!), I’ve been off having the busiest summer of my life. It’s been a few months of moving, getting married, traveling, and moving some more.  Despite the fact that I’ve been living out of a backpack for the past few months, I have been reading.  Here is my summer, in books:

This World We Live In

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The end of the world continues in the final (?) book of the Last Survivors trilogy.  The two companion books, Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone, told the harrowing sagas of two, unrelated teens and their experiences of survival through catastrophic environmental changes after the moon is knocked off balance by an asteroid.  While I found the suburban story of 15-year-old Miranda in Life As We Knew It to be riveting, I was less than thrilled with the darker, more macho-fueled story of Alex leading his sisters through starvation in New York City in The Dead and the Gone.

As life becomes more and more complicated, both in terms of survival and emotions, our two leading characters finally meet in This World We Live In.  Love, chaos, and more disaster (as if these guys haven’t seen enough!) ensue.  The result is an entertaining, albeit slightly melodramatic, story that was worth reading, though maybe not worth putting at the top of the pile…

It’s Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han

Jenny Han returns with a sequel that’s as breezy, romantic and summery as The Summer I Turned Pretty.  Like its predecessor, this is a beach book with plenty of depth that promises to keep the tears flowing.  The characters, places, and emotions are as realistic and lovely as ever.  Highly recommended!

Chosen, Untamed & Tempted

House of Night #3 Chosen, House of Night #4 Untamed & House of Night #5 Tempted by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

Perhaps it’s reflective of the chaotic past few months of my life, but I feel like the House of Night books are starting to blend together for me.  While they are just as addictive and readable as ever, I admit that the story is nothing we haven’t seen before.  It doesn’t matter though.  This is junk food for readers and I like it!

The Beach

The Beach by Alex Garland

I picked this up, appropriately, in a cheaply bond photocopy format from a vendor on the street in Vietnam.  A sort of Lord of the Flies for international backpackers, The Beach is the suspenseful tale of Richard, a British traveler who stumbles upon a map to a secret community of travelers hidden on a perfect beach in Thailand.  Of course, paradise comes at a price and this is an incredibly suspenseful psychological thriller–a heart stopping, stay up all night read!  Highly recommended for travelers and non-travlers alike!

Sidenote:
I have to stop and admit here that the 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio was my first introduction to The Beach.  I saw the movie while I was in college, before I’d ever traveled anywhere outside of the US and I was captivated, even though the movie was quite poorly done.  Still, I think that movie might have helped spark the travel bug inside of me and certainly the scenery was somewhat responsible for my undying need to see Thailand for myself, a few years later. Stumbling into reading the book, years after seeing the movie, was wonderful!  The characters and the story are just so much richer and the suspense is downright harrowing in written form.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo & The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

I’m not much into mystery/crime novels, however, with the entire world frantically reading this series, it’s hard to avoid.  I finally turned through these while on vacation and, while I enjoyed them well enough, I’m not sure that I’ll pick up the final book.  I do see the appeal.  You’ve got your quirky, yet familiar, characters, your tightly written mystery

The Girl Who Played with Fire

drama, and, of course, your exotic Swedish local.  The result is an entertaining series with a memorable cast of characters and enough suspense to keep you turning pages to find out whodunit in the end.

I can’t say why, exactly, I’m not dying to read the final book…but I am perhaps the only person in the world who has the problem of falling asleep, almost instantaneously, upon opening these books.  Let’s just say that it takes me a long, long time to get through these.  Perhaps I’ve been feeding my brain too much chicklit teen junkfood to keep up with books for grownups anymore?

Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Finally, finally, finally the much anticipated final book to the Hunger Games Trilogy is here!  Mockingjay may not be as action packed as the first two books of the series, but it packs an emotional punch that cannot be denied.  Katniss Everdeen continues in her strugle for survival in the dreary, now war torn, near future.  With open war between the rebels and the Capitol, the love triangle between Katniss, Gale and Peeta grows more complicated and Katniss must once again face danger and drama to save herself, her family and her friends from certain doom.
I loved this book!  It’s slower, darker, and more bleak than the rest of the series and I wouldn’t have wanted to see things end any other way.  I don’t want to babble too much and give away the ending, but I am so amazed at the way Collins ended her series…I feel like Mockingjay wrapped up in such a pitch perfect ending, the pieces and emotional fallout that has been building through the series just fell so perfectly into place.  Loved it!

Tithe:  A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black

Tithe

Kaye is just your average goth teenage girl with a bad, rocker mother.  She skips school to work and support herself and her mother, she wears steel toed boots and, of yeah, she discovers that she has connections to the faerie world.  As she discovers her real place in the world, Kaye becomes involved in a struggle for power after an unbalace in the faerie courts.  There’s lots of complicated faerie world building, a hot faerie knight, and, of course, a human sidekick.  Not the best book that I ever read, but I certainly felt compelled to finish it.  My main annoyance with Tithe:  A Modern Faerie Tale is that it’s faerie world and characters just got too complicated for my tastes.  Dedicated urban fantasy readers might enjoy this one though.

The Indigo Notebook by Lauren Resau
Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2009.

From Thailand to Guatemala to Morocco, Zeeta has grown up traveling the world with her jet-setting mother.  When Zeeta moves to Ecuador, she is determined to find a man for her mother and make her settle down into a normal, stable life.  But new friends, a new boy, and a dangerously intriguing mystery send Zeeta on a journey that changes everything.

Although the mystery becomes a little too neatly wrapped up in the end, the likable characters, especially the smart and sassy Zeeta, and the exotic Central American locales will captivate readers, even reluctant ones.  It is clear, that Resau has traveled a fair bit, and the travel elements of the book are delightful and wanderlust inspiring.

So in short:  Good book.  Exciting and fun travel elements…  Strong female character with good wits and a winning personality.  Girls will love it.  This one did!

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
Random House, 2001

Everyone likes to learn about Australia!  Okay, maybe not everyone, but as I am planning a visit there soon, I was truly excited to get my hands on this book (I “read” the audio version, a highly coveted, long hold queue item at my public library).  I have read some Bryson before and enjoy the way that he makes travel narratives fun and educational, including just the right amounts of humorous anecdote with thought-provoking fact.  One thing that is clear from In a Sunburned Country is that Bryson has a passion for Australia.  The personal attachment he has for the country interjects itself into every chapter, making the book feel personal in a way that many travel narratives cannot.  In addition to being amusing, In a Sunburned Country is also very educational if you don’t know much about Australia.  A perfect light read for someone craving some non-fiction.  Even more perfect for someone planning (or just dreaming) a visit to Australia someday…

The audiobook is a rare “read by the author” piece that actually isn’t painful! Bryson’s reading tone is simple and proper, delivering this narrative with even more personal flair.