Looong time ago...

Must say how much I'm enjoying Kim Harrison's young adult series that began with Once Dead, Twice Shy. Madison Avery is such a natural teenager for one in an undead predicament. She's better adjusted than Isabella Swan and she actually has goals to be more than immeasurably beautiful and live forever with her sweetheart. Let's face it, if you buy designer clothes, wear them once (even if you do donate them to Goodwill), have scads of money, an unlimited free time, shouldn't you be giving back to your community in some fashion?!

Off to natural history land - Waiting for Aphrodite by Sue Hubbell. Once I would rave passionately about Annie Dillard. Now I find most of her writing overblown, overwritten. Hubbell's book is is taking you out by the hand to visit her favorite tidepool and you gaze into it together and think "I have to learn more about this fascinating animal" and she shares her research sources at the end of each chapter so you, too, can read all the great secrets of the natural world. I also find the reader of the audiobook to make the book a springboard for your next nature hike, in real time or in dreams.