Saint Iggy

Saint Iggy by K.L. Going
Iggy Corso's life is hard, but he never seems to complain. His dad is drunk or high all the time, he lives on the 15th floor of the housing projects and the elevator is often broken, he just got suspended and will probably be expelled from his school. The two things that bother him most these days (the week before Christmas) are that his mom has gone "visiting" and she might never come home, and that he doesn't want to get kicked out of school. Iggy decides he needs to prove he is a good person right away. Iggy's only friend is a druggie law school dropout who he met through a mentoring program. Iggy thinks that the dealer who supplies his mom may have something to do with her disappearance. When his friend buys drugs on credit from the same dealer, the two young men scramble to come up with a couple grand in cash to keep his friend safe and pay off the dealer. Christmas is coming, and Iggy wishes that his life was different.
I listened to it 5.5 hours.

M or F?

M or F? by Lisa Papademetriou and Chris Tebbetts
Frannie and her best friend Marcus are both crushing on the same hottie at school. When they start chatting with him online, he asks M or F? and they wonder - Marcus or Frannie? Frannie begins chatting (with Marcus' help) and Jeffrey seems really interested in her. But sometime later Marcus continues the conversation and he begins to think that actually Jeffrey may be interested in HIM. When Frannie finally has a date with Jeffrey, he throws up when she tries to kiss him -- further proving that he would probably prefer to be kissing Marcus instead. Hilarity ensues in this fun high school romantic comedy.
296 pgs.

Lean Mean 13? new Janet Evanovich

I jokingly told my spouse that I thought that the next Stephanie Plum novel after this one should be called "Fourteen Schmorteen." Okay, I get it already. Bad boy Morelli wants to settle down. Ranger is elusive liquid sex. Hello? It's been THIRTEEN books plus two little extra books, and I am losing all respect for Stephanie, who is increasingly not indecisive and incompetent but just tacky and manipulative and more than a little slutty. That said, I keep reading them, and my spouse says that if it was as bad as I made it out to be, I wouldn't keep reading them. But once you get hooked on a series, it's hard to stop reading them, even when you want too....
I checked out the 14 day express copy at my library! 310 pages.

I finished a great book last night!

I read "Breakfast with the ones you love" It was awesome!
Jewish science fiction. Hello? And people who can cause pain and kill things with the power of thought. Plus a delightful teenage girl who tries to suppress her awesome power but who just wants more moments as good as breakfast with the ones you love.

275 pgs.

so many book, so little blogging

NEVER get behind on your reading blog, because then when you go to catch up, all you want to do is re-read the awesome things you have read recently!

I listened to:
The Boyfriend List by e. lockhart
and somewhere on a scrap of paper I started writing a review, so if I never find it, I will edit this post. In the meantime, let me say that is was definitely for upper teens as it had more sex stuff than more YA fiction, but it was good and quirky. 6 hours.

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan
Awesome story performed by Robert Sean Leonard, who sounds as hot as he looks, about a boy who has been kicked out of every school until he gets stuck in a home school run by the Applewhite family, who are just as crazy and zany as he pretends to be. And if Jake can survive the Applewhites and their many interests, hobbies and pursuits (think ballet, workcarving, studying bugs, painting, writing, etc?) he may just learn something. 5 hours.

While driving to and painting in Wisconsin last week, my spouse and I listened to the first Spencer novel by Robert Parker - The Godwulf Manuscript. The patrons who have told me over the years that I HAD to read Spencer were certainly correct when they claimed he was "quite a character." But he is an endearing if tough and unconvential PI, and I am looking forward to listening to his adventures again in the future. Even though he totally had sex with a mother and a daughter in the same day which is tres' bizarro IMHO. 6 hours.

AIRBORN by Kenneth Oppel was amazing. It's a children's book that my friend Daulton recommended to me -- it's about a young teenage boy who works on an airship and hopes to be an airship pilot, but so far he is still a cabin boy. The airships transport passengers and cargo across both land and water (presumably airplanes were never invented in this world) adn are kept aloft using a gas called hydrium that is even lighter than Helium or Hydrogen. When pirates attack the airship that Matt Cruse lives aboard and loves, he is devastaed, especially when a freak storm causes the airship to make an emergency landing on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. Along with a spunky passenger named Kate who is determined to prove that her grandfather's mysterious journals are true, Matt sets out into the forest to explore, even though the Captain has strictly forbidden it.
This book was AWESOME and I highly recommend it for older children, teens and adults. The full narration from FULL CAST AUDIO is like listening to a radio play, or listening to the movie version from another room, and it really brings an adventurous story like this one to life in your imagaintion. 10.5 hours