Some reviewses

Someone Like You
by Sarah Dessen
Young Adult Fiction
Available now in paperback

Sarah Dessen's books are always great. She's the best YA author out there in terms of everyday teenage life. Usually, her characters are fairly self-sufficient and don't have a great relationship with their parents--they are female, they have jobs, they go to school and don't get in trouble. The same is true in this book. The difference is that the self-sufficient "good girl" is not the protagonist in this book--she's the best friend.

Halley is the narrator, and she has an exemplary relationship with her parents until the summer before her junior year. After the death of her best friend's boyfriend, Halley starts dating Macon Faulkner, the town bad boy. She finds herself drifting further from her parents, omitting information and even lying to them on occasion. It doesn't help that her best friend, Scarlett, has a secret that Halley has to keep.

Reading this book makes me want to see the movie How to Be Bad, which was based on this book and another by Sarah Dessen.


Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Adult nonfiction (history)
Available now in paperback

I enjoy Sarah Vowell because she's a comedian, a historian, and a crazy person all in one. Her books are technically history--this one is about the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley--but they're just as much a commentary on the way that modern politics parallel historical events, for better or for worse. Vowell looks at a few different aspects of the three presidential assassinations: the political climate, the presidents' temperaments and viewpoints, the assassins' personal histories, and interesting trends that contributed to the events surrounding the assassinations. At the same time, she adds in some hilarious modern-day scenes that had me cracking up. She is one of those people who attracts interesting characters. I found myself wishing that I knew her friends, because they all seem so awesome. I think that history books could use more personal anecdotes--they are what kept me reading, even though I picked up the book for the history and not the funny stories.