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Friday Reads

I've been reading a lot of teen fiction lately, so the fact that I'm actually reading some adult fiction this week is kind of weird. I was a little intimidated to start Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. It's so big and with it's simple text cover, it looks so boring compared to all the fun stuff I've been reading lately. But so far I've really enjoyed it & I think there could be a lot of crossover to teen audiences, at least with what I've read so far. The main character is a college baseball player who's obsessed with a book called The Art of Fielding. But the book is more about Henry Skrimshander's life than baseball. It just happens that baseball is a big part of his life. What I'm trying to say is this isn't just a book for baseball fans, but for meaty general fiction fans. I'm not very far, but I can already tell there's a good story here.

The other book I've been devoting some time to is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. This book was not at all what I expected and I don't think I'll really know what I think of it until it's done. Basically every time I think I have it figured out, something weird happens and it turns out to be a different kind of book than I most recently thought it was. That's also why I can't give a plot summary. I'm not sure what's important, what's a secret, etc. yet.

My pile of library books to read is incredibly high. At the top is Orson Scott Card's most recent Enderverse novel Shadows in Flight. I love that world, but the last few books have really felt like he was just cashing in, and so far I haven't heard anything about this one to think otherwise. Still it's more about Bean and I really liked all the other Shadow books, so I'm trying to keep my hopes up.

Then there are the February titles for my YA Lit for Adults discussion group, but hopefully, I'll get around to talking about those next week.

Finally I grabbed a couple other books I've been dying to read, but I'm really going to have to get busy reading if I want to finish all these books before they're due back at their respective libraries.

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