june: 15, 16, 17, 18

break in regularly scheduled travel posting to tell you about what i read in june!  june was a pretty prolific reading month - summer vacation has given me a lot of time to read, and i love it.


the golden compass, by philip pullman (this is no hunger games, but this is still some pretty good young adult fiction.  and there was oxford in it, too!  i was definitely entertained by the storyline and will be reading the next book in the series when i get back from england.  after reading the book i decided to get the film version from netflix...and that was a mistake.  it was cheesy in that way that movies for kids are.  the book was sophisticated as far as YA fiction goes.  skip the movie.)

the immortal life of henrietta lacks, by rebecca skloot (did you spend ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY WEEKEND in charleston with me?  if so, i subjected you to fun facts from this book every 10 minutes or so.  I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS BOOK.  an incredible true story of a woman and some cells.  i really can't recommend it highly enough - it is science and oral history and family and race and medical ethics all smushed together, and i read it at a breakneck speed.  WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING IT FROM YOUR LIBRARY RIGHT NOW?!)

how soccer explains the world, by franklin foer (this book was interesting and all, but not that interesting.  or maybe i'd just finished the best nonfiction book i'd read in a LONG time and this paled in comparison.  it didn't really explain the world at all - it just told me some quasi-interesting stories about soccer in different cultures.  huge soccer fan?  read this.  anybody else?  skip it.  if it hadn't been summer - when i can read during the day - i think i would have been reading this book for an eternity, 10 slow pages at a time.)

year of wonders, by geraldine brooks (fictional portrayal of a real life event - in 1665 in rural england, the plague came to a small town and the local pastor convinced everyone in the town to quarantine themselves by staying in the town - thus not spreading the plague, but killing more than half of the town's inhabitants.  the story is told from the viewpoint of the pastor's maid.  some of the fictional plot lines within this larger story were a little improbable, i thought, but overall i really enjoyed it!)