Summer Reading

I love books. In fact, I am  addicted to reading. I will read anything. If I don't have a good book to read, I'll read a bad one. If I don't even have a bad one, I'll read labels and the junk printed on the back of my Albertsons' receipt. Here is a list of what I have read so far this summer. Some of it is worth recommending, and some of it isn't. Much of it is Young Adult stuff that I read so I can recommend it to my students (or they recommended it to me).

In no particular order:

Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys (Fun and slightly silly, but I love his off beat analogies)

Lee Child's 61 Hours (Adventure story, with some plot holes)


Aidan Chambers' Postcards from No Man's Land (WWII YA story alternating between modern Amsterdam, and the end of the war)

Kevin Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead (a re-read)

Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking Trilogy (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men) (This is a great series, with an unusual premise: On this planet, men and animals have Noise, which means everyone can hear their thoughts. But it's more about what we'll do in war.)

Simone Elkeles' Perfect Chemistry (This is a fluffy, YA romance novel. Not really my preference.)

Lisa McMann's Cryer's Cross (Creepy book about a possessed schoolroom desk in a small town.)

Liz Williams' Nine Layers of Sky (Not really sure where the title comes from, but it's about an alternate reality in post Soviet Eastern Europe.)

Alex Sanchez's The God Box (Important read for young adults struggling with their religion and sexual orientation.)

Maeve Binchy's London Transport (Binchy is Irish and maybe you could call her a romance novelist, but if so, she's the only one I'll read.)

Walter Dean Myers' Sunrise over Fallujah (Iraq war story much like his Viet Nam novel Fallen Angels.)

Scott Westerfeld's Leviathon (The first in a series of alternate WWI history. Way cool!)

Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker (Post-apocalyptic story set in Orleans)

J. Carson Black's The Shop (Crime/suspense novel)

Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick (Looks at how some ideas stick, and others don't)

Stephen Leather's Hard Landing: The First Spider novel (He-Man adventure story)

Gregory Karp's Living Rich by Spending Smart (Tips on ways to save money. Nothing new to me.)

Alfie Kohn's Feel Bad Education (Progressive essays about education and the mistakes of "Reform")

Amanda Hocking's Switched (The first of a trilogy about trolls)

Jim Krakaur's Three Cups of Deceit (Explains how Mortenson lied in Three Cups of Tea)

Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational (Explains how we don't always make rational decisions.)