recent reads

Because I spend a lot of time nursing and am lucky enough to own a smartphone, I've done a lot of reading over the past few weeks. The key is finding things interesting enough to help keep me awake through 3 am nursing sessions while also being not interesting enough to keep me up reading after Oliver falls asleep. Mostly this means I've been reading a lot of Young Adult fiction, since I find it fulfils those requirements.

The Fault in our Stars - this isn't light, exactly, since it deals with cancer and all that, but I enjoyed it. John Green sort of writes the same characters over and over, so a few months ago, when I read a couple of his other books in quick succession, I got a bit sick of him and his flighty but unknowable girls and dorky boys in love with wild girls they don't really know. This is better than that (or maybe it was the break?) and I liked Hazel and Augustus, despite their precociousness.

Maybe One Day - another kid with cancer book, this time from the point of view of a girl whose best friend gets leukemia. It was more than that, though, and I really liked the friendship between the two girls because it felt so realistic.

The Golem and the Jinni - not YA, for once, but a kind of magical realism/historical fiction. This is a world where golems and jinnis exist, and two end up in NYC. It is sad and weird and lovely and I got wrapped up in it, which is always a good recommendation. The golem and jinni both see human society from an outsider's perspective, and their friendship is compelling.

Matched - I enjoyed this more than I expected. Yes, it is a little reminiscent of the Giver, and yes, it wasn't always very subtle, but it was still a fun read. It isn't really a love triangle, because only one of the love interests is at all fleshed out, and some things are entirely too spelled out by the narrator, but that's okay. I have the second one reserved through the Overdrive app (which is how I read all these books).

The Boyfriend List - this has a longer title, but I'm writing on my phone and so I'm too lazy to type it all out. It might sound silly, but this book is so good. It's about friendship and dating and gossip and labels (like slut) and differences between boys and girls and all that with a compelling narrator named Ruby who reads mystery novels and loves movies. She makes mistakes and has crazy parents and is still really likeable as she learns to express her feelings and be honest with herself. It's part of a series and I've already read the second one and I'm waiting for the third from my library.

I go through a lot of books so I'm always looking for recommendations. These were all pretty good. I love checking out ebooks from my library (like I said, I use an app called Overdrive which is so useful and easy to use) because it is instantaneous, so when I finish a book in the middle of the night, there's always another one to start.