Between the Bookends at GeekMom

Here’s what we’ve been reading this month. The books include some Stephanie Plum, a little something on zombie wars, a book about the love of books in the digital age, a popular Young Adult series by Kristin Cashmore, some classic Muriel Spark, a journey to a strange post-apocalyptic world, a superhero novel funded via kickstarter and some romance novels.

What have you read lately?

If Kelly Knox has one guilty pleasure when it comes to books, it's definitely the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Although the books follow the same formula, with little to no overall plot advancement between each installment, Kelly can't resist picking up the newest one when it is released. This month Kelly finally had a chance to read Notorious Nineteen, which follows bounty hunter Stephanie Plum as she looks for more shady characters who skipped out on their bonds, including a patient who mysteriously disappears from his hospital room without a trace. Like every Plum novel, there is no shortage of laughs and romance, mixed with just a touch of danger. The novels border on the comical and ridiculous, but sometimes that just what you need to add some sunshine to a rainy day.

This month Patricia took a break from her Air War College reading and read her first library eBook on the iPad: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. This book has been out for a while, but with the trailers of the upcoming movie out now, she wanted to get the read in before this summer. All she could say is "Wow!". This is not a gory book, there is minimal "BRAINS!"-type imagery. Instead, this book gets readers thinking about the impacts of a zombie apocalypse on a national psyche, infrastructure, economy and military.

Laura just finished Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. What a clever book. On the surface it's about the way the love of books intersects with the might of today's computing power. But it's also about magic, mystery, the awesomeness of Google, and the singular meaning of real relationships.It's a quick read, but so worth it. Laura also read what she's calling a horribly titled book, Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being by Thom Hartmann. The author explains the history and necessity of bilateral movement like walking. Apparently it's linked to creativity, positive outlook, and processing of traumatic events likely to happen in anyone's life. Hartmann prescribes a specific way of walking, which inspired Laura to describe in a recent blog post. Walking and swinging your arms never seemed so essential.

Rebecca Angel just finished two books this month: Graceling by Kristin Cashore, and The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton. Graceling was a really good book with a wonderfully strong female lead, but the memory is soured by the next book Fire, which Rebecca did not like much, and she barely got through the first chapter of the third book, Bitterblue. However, The Lock Artist is fantastic and she highly recommends it! Now she is starting Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, referred by her library friend. It's a YA book about a young girl trying to keep her family's dairy farm afloat, dealing with a crush on a snob, and fulfilling her own athletic dreams.

Melissa Wiley has been on a Muriel Spark kick, devouring The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, and A Far Cry from Kensington. From her blog: "How did I, a reader, a book junkie, a student of literature, make it this long without Spark? How did I know how to look at streets and sentences without her? This is how she makes me feel. Her sentences are like the blades of ice skates, sharp, swift, carrying you along at some risk to your personal comfort. Sometimes my daughter and I say to each other, can you imagine life without knowing Monty Python? Can you imagine living in the world without Holy Grail in the back of your mind? That’s how I feel about Muriel Spark."

Inspired by Melissa Wiley's GeekMom interview with author Julianna Baggott, Kris Bordessa picked up Pure, an apocalyptic novel with an interesting premise: many of the characters who survived the "incident" are permanently melded with bits and bobs from the inanimate world. Whatever they were near, or holding, at the time of the detonation is permanently a part of them. Except, of course, for the Pures. While Kris normally veers away from books with such fantastical details, she devoured this one and is now waiting quite impatiently for the author to finish the second book in the planned trilogy.

Corrina Lawson zipped through The Girl Who Would Be King by Kelly Thompson, a book that was fully funded via Kickstarter. It's the tale of two young women born with superpowers who are destined to be light/dark bookends to each other. Proving that evil is sometimes more interesting that good, Corrina enjoyed the very skewed perspective of the villain, though both main characters were fascinating. While there was a definite ending, a sequel appears in the works and she's looking forward to that. Corrina's also been reading and judging books in the Romance Writers of America Rita Contest, an annual award given to the best books in the romance genre. The titles can't be mentioned, as the judging is supposed to be anonymous but, so far, two of the books were excellent and the third had promise but was a bit of a bad meshing of genres. She's looking forward to reading the rest.