books 50, 51, 52, 53?

ahem. i am behind. i actually can't even really remember for sure if these are all the books i've read since my last post.

milk and honey, faye kellerman


my sister warned me that these just got worse, and she was right. i actually don't even remember anything about this. i think there were beekeepers in it.

uglies, scott westerfeld


i'm almost positive that i read something else between the kellerman and this one, but i can't remember it. oh well! anyway, this book was very good. it's the first in westerfeld's super-popular young adult trilogy of the same name. basically, it's set in a future where you have plastic surgery on your sixteenth birthday and you become flawlessly beautiful. tally, the protagonist, is pretty seriously pumped about turning "pretty," but her friend shay is a rebel, and wants to hide out in a seemingly mythical place called "the smoke" to avoid getting the surgery. fast and really engrossing.

miss american pie: a diary of love, secrets, and growing up in the 1970s, margaret sartor


this memoir rocked that one little robot's head off. i mean it. margaret sartor, who teaches at duke, put this together from diaries, notes, and letters she wrote between the ages of 12 and 17. her diary entries had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion. lots of one line entries -- e.g. "i'm so depressed" and "the haircut is not working out" and "i'm really in love this time." the younger margaret is really hopelessly naive, and i like that the older margaret isn't afraid to show that. a few times i got a little bogged down in her frequent religious crises, but all in all, this is a great read.

pale blue eye, louis bayard


whoa! three four 'bots in a row books! unheard of! anyhow, i read about this book in salon's summer reading thing that they did a little while back, and i finally got my hands on it. this is a great mystery that takes place at west point in 1830, where a soldier who appears to have committed suicide has his corpse stolen and someone totally cuts out his heart. CREE-PY! so this retired detecive guy is hired to quietly solve the crime, and he hooks up with a rebellious cadet named edgar allan poe. serious twist at the end that i didn't see coming AT ALL. very nice. now i want to read bayard's last novel, mr. timothy, another historical thriller starring timothy cratchit, better known to most of us as charles dickens' tiny tim.