Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible by David Plotz
Coming at the bible from the perspective of someone who kinda knows the stories, but never really read it (kinda like me), Plotz goes through all the books of the bible - including ones I've never heard of before. It's a fascinating, often disturbing, look at the un-whitewashed book behind the stories I thought I knew.
The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie by Alan Bradley
The heroine of this mystery set in post-war Britain is Flavia de Luce, an eleven year old girl with a penchant for poison and a love of chemistry. When a dead body appears in the garden Flavia is intrigued, and sets out to uncover an old mystery and solve the murder. Flavia is a great character - clever and slightly sociopathic. I look forward to reading more books about her.
Addition by Toni Jordan
At first I thought this book would be a standard chick-lit romance, but it is really quite a bit more. The basic premise is that Grace, who has obsessive-compulsive disorder, meet a man who throws her out of her carefully ordered routine. The book looks at whether Grace's mental illness is part of her unique identity that should be embraced or if she should try to fix herself.
The boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba
William is a young boy living with his family in Malawi. When drought strikes the country and the crops fail, he can no longer afford to go to school. After finding a book about windmills in the library, he decides to build one for his home so they can have electricity. This is actually a fascinating book not just determination, creativity, luck, and building windmills, but of what life is like in rural Malawi. I really enjoyed it, and I also enjoyed reading William's blog and seeing what he's been doing since the events of the book.
Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby, who I know better as the author of About a Boy and Slam, wrote a column for the Believer called Stuff I've Been Reading. It's pretty simple - he lists what he bought in a given month, and what he read that month. So each column is like a really interesting conversation with a friend about what they liked reading (and what they didn't), with occasional digressions into football. I ended up making a list of books that I want to read based on what Hornby said about them. There are two other collections of Stuff I've Been Reading essays by Hornby - Shakespeare wrote for money and The Polysyllabic Spree
Santa Olivia by Jaqueline Carey
Jacqueline Carey is better known for her Kushiel series (which I love). When I picked up this book I thought it was her first foray into urban fantasy. It's not. In fact, there's no fantasy in it at all. It's a book set in the near future where the US has sealed it's borders to to some sort of epidemic. Santa Olivia is a town between the border of the US and Mexico under military control. Pretty much the only way out is to win a boxing match with the governor's champion, but no one has ever accomplished that. I didn't think I'd enjoy a book about boxing, but I found myself sucked in.
The Actor And The Housewife by Shannon Hale
Famous actor meets small-town Mormon housewife, friendship ensues. It's basic romance novel premise (except they're both married to other people) but this book is an interesting take on the question of whether a man and a woman can be platonic friends (not to mention if one is hot and rich and famous and the other is not).
A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
This is pretty much a love letter from Molly to her father, revolving around food. I adored this and it made me want to give my dad a hug. Also, there's a romance in the second half between Molly and a guy who writes her a fan letter that's really sweet. I'm planning to actually buy this book, I liked it so much.
The Housekeeper And The Professor by Yoko Ogawa
A woman is hired to be the housekeeper for a professor who suffered an accident years ago that has left him with the ability to only remember a few hours into the past. Is it possible to come to care for a person when you can never remember them? In turns heart-wrenching and beautiful.
And some series that I'm quite enjoying:
T.A. Pratt's Marla Mason books
Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega books
Joanna Bourne's Spymaster series
Kelly McCullough's WebMage series
Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series
Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra series
Tanya Huff's Valor series. Actually, anything by Tanya Huff.
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