More Summer Books

And here's some other good books I checked out this summer:

• The Kitchen House, Kathleen Grissom: told on a southern plantation from slaves perspectives, a love story, mixed race complications, what it means to be truly free. I keep thinking about what's happened after the book to these characters.
• Wonder, RJ Palacio: a very popular YA book going around right now about a very deformed boy who has been home schooled, but is now joining mainstream school. Very clean, funny, honest.
• Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris: second book in trilogy, this one covers TR's presidency. Not as fantastical as the first one, but inspirational and detailed. Want to finish the third this winter sometime. Still say we need a TR in the White House today.
• Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese: hard to describe this one. Absolutely gifted writing about twin brothers born in Ethiopia to a nun mother who dies giving birth and a surgeon father who rejects them five minutes later. They are raised by the people of the hospital commune they live in and go their separate ways because of a girl. Follows a lifetime of experience, hurt and saving each other. A book of immense pain and healing. I really cared about these people.
• The Judgement of Paris, Ross King: follows the Impressionists rise via Messionier and Manet. Glad I read it on my kindle so I could toggle between the book and the internet to view all of the paintings referred to.
• The Things That Matter Most, Lowell Bennion: a short, inspirational book written in the 1970's by an impacting Institute teacher at the UofU.
• Forever, Erma, Erma Bombeck: she says enough, so I'll just remind you how great she is in this greatest hits book put out around the time of her death. Laughed till I cried.
• The Notorious Benedict Arnold, Steve Sheinkin: award winning YA novel about the Revolutionary War's most famous traitor, and the successes he had before he turned on us, and why. Very interesting and seems to be well researched.