Weekend Reading

I'm so excited! In the last two weekends I finished two books! I haven't been able to read like that in forever.

The best was Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics that We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick. I can't say that I had read every one of the books mentioned, but I will admit to a good portion.

Some of the books included were no-brainers. If you're going to write about young adult literature of the '70s- to late 80's time period, you're going to include Judy Blume, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Madeline L'Engle. However, there were some books mentioned that I was sure I was the only one that had ever read them. Caroline, The Great Brain, The Ghost Belonged to Me, and All of a Kind Family just to name a few.

There were other books that I felt could have been mentioned too. Anything by Gordon Korman, anything by Betty Miles, and Sport by Louise Fitzhugh (my favorite of all the Harriet the Spy books).

While not all of the essays were all that substantial, they did whet my appetite for more. Now that I've read this book, I'm going back to my youth. I've already got Caroline on interlibrary loan, and I'll be checking out The Cat Ate My Gymsuit shortly- along with every other Paula Danziger.

This is definitely the book to read- especially if you want to add about ten more titles to you list. Not only do I have to revisit old favorites, now I have to check out all the ones I missed the first time around!

The other book I read was Kindred in Death by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Yet another in the long line of In Death books. It was definitely entertaining, and I did enjoy it. This book seemed to focus on Eve and Rourke- to some extent Peabody as well. I didn't notice as much interaction with the established secondary characters this time around. Not that that's a bad thing- in real life you don't see your best friend every day after all. I will admit to expecting more character development, and soon. I'm expecting that the next book will take us more into Eve's past- at some point we're going to have to learn more about her mother. I think the set up for that was in this book.