Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Summer Vacation/Reading Has Just Begun!

    We're not even officially one week into summer vacation and I already miss the routine of school!  I had such an incredible group of kids this past year! 
    Summer vacation means lots of extra time to read!  My husband looked at the huge stack of books on our dining room table yesterday and asked if they were all new books for school.  He had to laugh when I explained that they were the books that I wanted to read this summer. 
    The Adoration of Jenna Fox was my first summer read.  "She wasn't supposed to survive the accident.  But she did."  This quote from the book intrigued me.  I enjoyed the book.  It's very similar to the books like Unwind and The Pretties series.  Obviously, Jenna was in a car accident and thanks to her parents' money and medical intelligence, she survived.  They had to move across the country though and basically live in hinding because all the country's medical rules weren't followed during the medical reconstruction.  Uou know that something is different when Jenna calls her grandma a definitely inappropriate word and doesn't even realize that she shouldn't have said that word.  The book does take a slight twist at the end, but it is fairly predictable. 
    Rubber Houses was one of those books that that I started reading on the ride over to the river on Saturday and finished on the ride home.  Quick, easy read written in prose.  Very quickly into the book, the main character, Kit's brother dies from childhood cancer.  The rest of the book addresses how she and her family deal with this loss.  The very best part of the book is the last poem/chapter when you finally figure out why the book is titled Rubber Houses
  I just finished reading Playing With the Boys last night.  Lucy is the main character.  She moves with her father from the east coast after her mother dies from cancer.  (Interesting that moving from the east coast to the west was in the first book that I read and cancer was in my second book.  They came together in this third book which is completely unconneted.)  Lucy struggles with all the normal things that a sophomore moving into a new high school would.  Even though she's the best kicker, she doesn't make the soccer team.  The soccer coach encourages her though to try out to be the kicker/punter on the football team.  Interesting twists occur throughout this book and Lucy tries to discover where she fits in this new school that definitely has its own set of rules. 
    So, which book would I say was the best?  The Adoration of Jenna Fox.  I'm still loving the science fiction/futuristic genre.  It kept my interest and had enough unpredicatability that I was always making predictions.