Very Cool

The third installment of The Perfect Score series, The Perfect Star was really, really good.  Again, Buyea took on important issues without it feeling forced or preachy.  Made it really real and again, the characters are really real.  Great, great series. 

Novels in Verse

Already have a leg up for me.  And I really liked House Arrest.  I need to listen to the second one, that came out last year.  Great story.  Really heart-felt and honest.  A good one for reluctant readers, too, I think. 

It gets a little old when,

like Joyce Carol Oats, Barbara Ehrenreich loves to remind us that she doesn't believe in God.  If you read my blog with regularity (um that would be no one!) you will know that I am not anti-atheist.  If that is someone's path, that is someone's path!  I am believe that God is totally cool with that and loves the atheist, too, just like He loves the Pope, saints, me, you, everyone.  What bugs me is that Barbara Ehrenreich just beats and beats and beats the reader over the head with her atheism.  Now I understand that is probably unfair of me.  Certainly there are authors who beat and beat and beat and beat the reader over the head with their Judaism, their Christianity, etc. 
And here's the thing, years ago I read Nickel and Dimed and it was fantastic and important.  And I agree with Ms. Ehrenreich's politics.  I mean, I would like to have dinner with this brilliant woman.  It's just that Natural Causes:  An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer was SO good in some places.  It was!  So it kinda made me sad that even though Ms. Ehrenreich is a woman of age (according her, I'm saying this- the admits that she is "old enough to die" in the book, which I think is such a cool concept) she STILL has to rant like a 24 year-old about her absolute certainty that God does not exist.  How can someone live so long and be so brilliant, as she clearly is, that she doesn't even entertain the possibility that God might exist?  Ah well.  Still I can recommend this book.  There's a lot to think about here.  It's just that wow, give it a break, lady.  You are brighter than this!

Book Group?

I do this nonfiction book group deal and I am always looking for books that we can read.  I think that The Shift:  One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives might be a good choice.   I know that two of the women are retired nurses.  I think another women is still a practicing nurse, so it will be good to hear what they think of the book from a personal, experienced POV.  But I don't know if they will want to read it.  I suggest books, but they ultimately have the final say.  This month's book is Dream Home:  The Property Brothers' Ultimate Guide to Finding and Fixing Your Perfect House.  Since we just sold our house and moved to an apartment because I have no money or talent or desire to have a house, this was not my first pick!  But these ladies have their own homes or had their own homes and well, the Property Brothers are pretty cool, so it will be good!
Another cool thing about The Shift is that it is set in Pittsburgh.  Pittsburgh is pretty famous for its hospitals.  I have a strong anti-UPMC bias, and I am pretty sure that is where Theresa Brown, RN is employed, but that is neither here nor there.
Now the only thing that kinda bugged me about the book is that Brown has PhD in English and she is a contributor to the New York Times but there was a lot of pronoun trouble.  You know the whole, "She had the same coloring as me."  I mean, it there were none that obvious, but there were a few that were obvious to me and well, I mean, I am NOT very well versed in grammar!  So it was obvious to me, and I have a million grammatical mistakes in this post alone...well, I just wonder about it.  Is that an old rule?  Is the choice of pronoun now just a choice?  I am not trying to be a smart butt here.  I just found out that we don't have to put two spaces after a period anymore!  I am not really up on changing rules!
Other than that, I really enjoyed the book!

"Build a bridge out of her!"

Patrick Jones is one of my "heroes in the field."  He is an amazingly talented man, with a heart for teens and libraries. Bridge.  I wrote about him here, when I read The Tear Collector, which was a terrific book.  I was blown away when he posted on my blog, because well, he is Patrick Jones!  And he's brilliant and he also seems super kind!  And he is just so cool!
When I saw Bridge on netgalley, I just had to request it.  Turns out that Bridge is part of a series called The Alternative.  I can't wait to read the other.  I am going to purchase all of these for the Library!  Hooray!