Not worth reading

I listened to maybe half of Nicholas Sparks's At First Sight trying to get interested in it, then finally quit. Usually when I get that far I just finish, but it wasn't worth it. The whole plot was about arguments leading up to the main characters' wedding and I just wasn't impressed.

River of Hidden Dreams

Mom mentioned enjoying this book (by Connie May Fowler) earlier in the year. I just read it and liked it also. It was interesting enough that I could pick it up after not reading for a few days and still get back into it. It's written from several different perspectives, and I had a hard time going back and forth between them all because I was often reading just a short passage, then waiting several days. I think listening to books really helps with that because the narrators make the voices really stand out.

Freakonomics

I started reading this book, by Steven D Levitt, while on Kodiak, then had to leave it behind. I just listened to the whole thing. It's definitely worth reading. It's full of fascinating facts and figures and ideas about how society works. Since I've been listening to it, I keep wanting to spout out bits of info I learned. I'll have to look into the next book, Super Freakonomics, also.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It's always fun to listen to a book set in England because you get to hear the proper British accents. This book, by Helen Simonson, was full of proper British ideals that were being turned upside-down by the characters. Major Pettigrew is a man of high moral standards and all things properly white and British, and he finds himself falling in love with a lady from Pakistan.

I was impressed with the richness of detail in this book, and the characters were very interesting with their various quirks. It also was an interesting look into the 'country club society' clashing with the 'lower class.'

The Chosen One

This is a young adult book by Carol Lynch Williams, and I highly recommend it. The Chosen One is about teenage girl in a polygamous community. She has been chosen as a bride for her uncle who is 5o years older than she. The story tells of some of the awful things going on in her community, and then how she runs away and is caught. Parts of this story made my stomach turn because it describes some pretty graphic scenes, and it's just plain disturbing to think of a 13-year-old being forced into marriage. It's a fascinating look into the religious bondage that the fundamentalist LDS have gotten into and one girls' struggle to get away. This was fiction, but it's made me interested in reading some non-fiction, first-hand accounts about these people.