Summer Reading (Happened So Fast)

In case you've been wondering what's keeping my brain occupied lately, I thought I'd share a few of the books I've been plowing through lately with an accompanying blurb or two:

Everyone in the family enjoys a good book. Everyone enjoys piling on top of the Man to read a good book.

• Cress (The Lunar Chronicles) by Marissa Meyer :: Sci-fi and retold fantasy done right. How rarely do those words come out of my mouth? And somehow,  I found myself completely unprepared for the cliffhanger at the end, which means book four needs to come soon. If I was the type of person who pre-ordered books (or allowed my husband to pre-order books for me...cough, cough), I'd consider preordering book four.
• Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman :: Otherwise known as "things not to do as a woman traveling solo". I enjoyed coming along on her journey--but I wouldn't have wanted to do so with her in person. It was nice to visit Indonesia and brush up on my bahasa though.
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver :: Possibly one of my favorite reads this year. Informational and challenging without being guilt-inducing.  Unfortunately, now I really want Littles to have his own backyard vegetable garden to which I'll have to avoid so that I don't accidentally kill it. Incidentally, this book gave me the final push into my farmers market addiction.
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg :: Poignant and entertaining. I love a good food memoir. Too much cheese though. Literal cheese, not metaphorical. "Cheese, me no likey." This is why I can never survive long term in France, because at some point I'd have to stop surviving off crepes and join the rest of the population in their cheese fetish.
• Rules by Cynthia Lord :: YA fiction that actually helped me see life through someone else's eyes. This was a quick read (three hours, tops), and well worth my time. I'm placing it up with Wonder by R. J. Palacio on my suggested reads for pre-teens list (if I had such a list).
• Revival and Resistance (The Variant Series) by Jena Leigh :: Pure fluff, but fun fluff. If you're an X-men fan or dabble in super-heroes, these are entertaining and even occasionally funny. Warning: there's a massive cliff hanger at the end of Resistance and no news as to when book three is coming along.

Everything about this screams "summer "to me... even the upside down book.

So, yeah, now I'm several chapters into Muriel Babery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog which has been on my reading list for quite some time. I think I went a little crazy the first week of Littles' "summer break"...reliving the glory days of my summer vacations when all I did was eat, sleep, and read until school started again. For some odd reason, that's not really a long term, sustainable option nowadays.