Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen

We listened to this on a road trip to LA a few weeks ago. 3 1/2 hours (which is short for an audiobook), gripping wilderness survival story. Like many books in this category it made me want to up my wilderness survival game, and keep matches and water purification tablets in my purse at all times. Read by Peter Coyote. Great for 9 year old boys and 50 year old women alike. Recommend!

The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy

I read this review/profile of The Rules Do Not Apply in The New York Times and reserved it at the library right away. Memoirs are a guilty pleasure for me, and especially gossipy ones about someone my own age, living in places I've lived, struggling with problems I've struggled with myself. The self-focused preference most kids have for reading about kids their own age and gender has, I guess, never left me. So I read it, fast. I don't want to give away the details of the story but it was a juicy diary. But it felt somehow unfinished. Too much like reading someone's diary, not enough narrative motion, not enough about the characters, and maybe not enough gossip. I've loved other memoirs much more.

That said, I do love the cover and the Jennifer Reese signature pink & red color combo. And can we all agree that she looks quite a bit like Annie Parr from Roco Dance?

The 57 Bus, by Dashka Slater

I read this for the mother/daughter book club I belong to with my 13 year old Stella. It is the true story of a crime committed against a non-binary youth by a black male youth in the Berkeley/Oakland area of the San Francisco Bay Area. Good, but not great. It provided a useful education about terms (asexual, pan romantic, etc). It alternated between points of view, and I kept thinking at any moment it would veer off the rails and become very political, either about the hate crime, or the unjust juvenile justice system for black youths, but it pulled those punches and I liked it better for it.

The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez

I loved this book. It was ponderous, restrained and delicate, but I entered its world fully for the few days it took to read it and will never look at dogs, especially huge ones, quite the same way again.