Here are my latest reads, all highly recommended:

Stick by Andrew Smith

If you've read The Marbury Lens you know just how intense Andrew Smith can be. He never lets you off the hook, though he's crafted a surprisingly sweet ending for a gritty story of two brothers who've grown up amidst secrets and abuse.



Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson

Spot on funny. Nelson's book is built around a teenaged boy's rants against consumerism (written for his AP English class) and recollections of an on-and-off-again romance with one of his classmates, including his first sexual experience. Delightful.



Sport by Mick Cochrane

Adult novel/memoir about a boy growing up in the 1960s with an alcoholic father and a mother struggling with Multiple Sclerosis. Lots of baseball references and beautiful, clear writing.



Moon Pie By Simon Mason

A middle-grade novel that deals with a father's struggle with alcoholism. Sounds like a downer, doesn't it? But this book is written with equal parts wit and pathos.

Arizona!

Just got back from my first-ever trip to the southwest for my son's hockey tournament in Phoenix. While I didn't hug a cactus, I did fall in love with the Sonoran desert.

My new camera has a digital fisheye effect that I thought I'd never use, but then we had this amazing sunset....



Does this remind you of something?









Like this maybe...



Or this...?

Frost on the path this morning, but summer left behind a few bright reminders.

Before you read this:



You need to read this:



And please, Mr. Earley, I hope you're writing more about Jim....

He does acupuncture!

Jo Ann Beard does more than evoke my teenage years in her new novel IN ZANESVILLE, she seems to have lived them right alongside me. No, inside me. Every observation, fleeting thought, insecurity, earnestness. An amazing book, especially if you were a teenager in the 1970s, or a teenager...ever.

I kid you not. It's a dream come true: a combination ice rink/library.
Kudos to Trail, B.C.

I probably didn't even get your attention with that headline because...well...everyone knows Libba is a genius—evil and comic.



This book is subversive, hysterical, didactic (in a good way), and should be required reading for all teenage girls who may or may not be aware of the way our culture defines and constrains their intelligence, their abilities, their sexuality.

Best enjoyed as an audiobook so you can hear the evil genius read it herself. Libba Bray's Ladybird Hope (cough*Sarah Palin*cough) is every bit as good as Tina Fey's.

(The LA Times liked it, too: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/29/entertainment/la-ca-libba-bray-20110529)