House Rules, by Jodi Picoult

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When your son can’t look you in the eye . . . does that mean he’s guilty? 
 
Jacob Hunt is a teen with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, though he is brilliant in many ways. But he has a special focus on one subject—forensic analysis. A police scanner in his room clues him in to crime scenes, and he’s always showing up and telling the cops what to do. And he’s usually right. 

But when Jacob’s small hometown is rocked by a terrible murder, law enforcement comes to him. Jacob’s behaviors are hallmark Asperger’s, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. Suddenly the Hunt family, who only want to fit in, are directly in the spotlight. For Jacob’s mother, Emma, it’s a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it’s another indication why nothing is normal because of Jacob.

And over this small family, the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?

This is a great book. I figured out the ending a quarter of the way through, but Picoult had me doubting myself until the very end. I had no idea how it was going to play out, and she did a great job weaving everything together.  

Spoilers after the jump.

Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult

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Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.

This was my first Jodi Picoult book and I'm kicking myself for not having read this sooner!  I was completely captivated from the moment the book opened until the final words.

Going Bovine, by Libba Bray

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Can Cameron find what he’s looking for?

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. 

Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. 

With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.


I'm really glad that Going Bovine wasn't my first introduction to Libba Bray. I absolutely LOVED Beauty Queens, so I naturally assumed that I would love GB just as much.

The premise was brilliant, but the execution just...wasn't. It was way too long and I kept wanting Cameron to...

(Spoilers after the jump)

Blindness, by José Saramago

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A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. 

I don't know if it would be freakier to listen to this book (which I did) or to read the novel.

I am so disturbed by this story because of how real it seems; knowing that something like this could happen. Maybe not the "white sickness," but how the government reacts; how people treat each other; and how civilized society morphs into a world full of horror.

Now, I love dystopian fiction. 1984. Brave New World. The Hunger Games. The Handmaid's Tale. But this book freaked me out more than any of the others:

• The story opens with a normal day: driving; walking; going home; seeing the doctor. Within a matter of a week, life has changed across the board. 
• There are no names, ages, or physical descriptions to define people. It could be you or me or anyone.
• The actions in Left Side, Ward Three? Horrifying.
• A sickness so contagious that all you have to do is look at an infected person.

There is some hope, however:

• The Doctor's Wife, who never loses her sight. Though she does have her own horrors to live through, there is no doubt in my mind that she is the reason that what remains of her group is still functioning at the end. 
• For every person who takes advantage of the situation to harm people, there are a dozen who do know right from wrong and still try to make their own areas of this new world civilized.
• People can adapt to new struggles. It's not easy, but it can be done.

This book is going to stay with me for a long time. I'm really glad that I already have a physical copy of this on my bookshelves.

But man, I need something light and fluffy to read now.

Perla, by Carolina De Robertis

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A coming-of-age story, based on a recent shocking chapter of Argentine history, about a young woman who makes a devastating discovery about her origins with the help of an enigmatic houseguest.

Perla Correa grew up a privileged only child in Buenos Aires, with a cold, polished mother and a straitlaced naval officer father, whose profession she learned early on not to disclose in a country still reeling from the abuses perpetrated by the deposed military dictatorship. Perla understands that her parents were on the wrong side of the conflict, but her love for her papá is unconditional. But when Perla is startled by an uninvited visitor, she begins a journey that will force her to confront the unease she has suppressed all her life, and to make a wrenching decision about who she is, and who she will become.

**I won this book from Goodreads as a First Reads giveaway**

3.5 stars.

Previous knowledge of Argentine history: There was once a woman named Eva Peron who did something or other. Madonna played her in a movie.

This book is great. Based on a culmination of true stories, it tells the story of a young woman whose parents were involved in the Dirty War of 1976-1983. Now, as an adult, she learns that her whole life was based on a lie.

I love the writing, though it seemed too flowery in some areas. I'm usually annoyed by writing styles that don't include "proper" punctuation, but it works in this novel. Perla, the narrator and protagonist, is confused and jumbled, so it makes sense that her thoughts are written as such.

New knowledge of Argentine history: El Proceso, the Dirty War, 30,000 forced disappearances of "subversive" leftist individuals. And Eva Peron was the first wife of President Peron, who was much loved by the Argentine people for her humanity and work with the under-privileged.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

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Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.

Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix-tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

But Charlie can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor. 


Well, I certainly didn't see THAT plot point coming at the end; totally bumped it up from 3.5 stars to 4 stars.

I was annoyed by the incorrect use of adverbs (as in, the complete lack of them...grrr) and kept correcting the narrator in my head. 

Other than that, it's a great coming-of-age novel with a great message: Live in the moment. YOUR moment.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks

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The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”


I love this book. I'm so glad that I listened to the audiobook rather than reading it. It helped to hear all of the different voices and hear their stories.

Talk about your parable for current events, though. It may be fiction, but it reads like a non-fiction novel. And there were times I had to remind myself that this is a Zombie novel, not a recent or current war.

Totally freaky, but in a good way. I need to update my Zombie Apocalypse Plan!