Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss

I enjoyed this short little book, which is written from the perspective of a teen who's been diagnosed with leukemia. Honest, brutal and funny.

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers

Someone came up to the circ desk while I was working there today and she was checking out "The Nine Tailors" by Dorothy Sayers. I love Dorothy Sayers, so we got into a conversation about her, and I told her my favorite Sayers novels were the three where Lord Peter gets involved with Harriet Vane (my ultimate favorite is Gaudy Night, in case you are interested.)

 

Luckily for me, the person who was checking out the book didn't mind talking books with me. (Some people tend to look at me as if I'm a crazy person and back away slowly.) She then told me "Oh! I have a book you would love to read! It's by Jasper Fforde. It's called The Eyre Something."

 

So I said "Oh! I love Jasper Fforde! Is it "The Eyre Affair?" It was so, SO nice to talk to someone else who loved that book. It's a hard book to get people to check out because it seems so strange. And it is strange, but it's a great book. In my opinion it's the best book in that series -- the later books didn't quite measure up.

I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to love my low libido, by Joan Sewell

Rock on, Ms. Sewell! This funny, honest and interesting book is a great antidote to all those articles and books on how to increase your sex drive. (There's a great dream sequence in the book where Sewell imagines a man going on Oprah and explaining sadly that his high sex drive is ruining his marriage, and what can he do to fix the problem? It put a different spin on things.)  

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

A very satisfying read! I enjoyed it as much as The Other Boleyn Girl (also good).

 

One of these days I will have to go back and re-read Margaret George's "The Autobiography of Henry VIII," which is the first novel about this period that I read. I remember it was really good too.

Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Laugh-out-loud funny. I'm actually listening to this one on CD - it's great entertainment on the way to and from work. I am a Bill Bryson fan and this book does not disappoint.

The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the first in a new fantasy series by Bujold. It was well-written, but I didn't enjoy the balance of romance and fantasy. It seemed too gooily (is that a word?)  romantic for my taste. AND, it's not a Miles Vorkosigan novel (that's the military SF series that Bujold also writes). But still a good read.

Good Girls by Laura Ruby

I enjoyed this young adult novel. It also made me glad I'm not growing up in today's technology-filled world. The protagonist makes one stupid mistake, someone captures it on a cell phone and sends it around to everyone in school, and next thing you know she's persecuted and treated like a slut and everyone hates her. (Thank God when I made stupid mistakes in high school, no one was standing there with a camera documenting it. That would have made the experience indescribably worse than it already was.)