"Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

This is one of the most popular book series for teens right now. I had to give in and read it. It's about a vampire named Edward Cullen and a human girl, Bella Swan. Bella is in high school and has moved to live with her dad in a small town in Oregon. She meets the Cullen family who all eat by themselves at lunch and are kind of standoffish from the rest of the school. Then Bella meets Edward in her biology class and he's very different from all the other boys. Well you can guess she figures out that he's a vampire and so is the rest of his family. She ends up falling for him and well... guess you'll have to read it if you want to know more.

I liked Meyer's style--very conversational and contemporary. I can see why these books are such a hit with teens and adults right now.

The movie comes out in November (it's taking Harry Potter #6's spot since it's release was postponed to next July). I'm looking forward to the second installment called "New Moon". First I'll be reading or rather continuing with "Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Piccoult (book club pick for September).

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich

I have to say, I wasn't really that impressed with this installment of the Stephanie Plum series. Sure there were some funny parts, but overall the plot was pretty thin and wrapped up quite nicely. Evanovich has had better plot lines in the previous books. It makes me wonder if she's on some pretty strict deadlines with these books afterall I think she cranks out about one every year. It's hard to stay original when you've had 13 previous installments. It was a quick read though.

On to "Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Piccoult, our next book club pick.

Summer of Audiobooks

I finished listening to "Peony in Love" which was really good. I enjoyed Snowflower more, but Peony was worth reading or in my case listening to. Women in China had it pretty bad, but they learned to enjoy life through painting, writing, playing musical instruments and embroidery. They found activities to make life fun. They were so suppressed though--that part was sad to me. And what pressure to have sons!

After Peony, I listened to "Beach Road" by James Patterson. It was a short, predictable story. It was a story that takes place in the Hamptons and a young black athelete is accused of murdering his three friends. The lawyer who takes the case teams up with his ex--another attorney. They end up winning the case and the athelete gets off, but of course there's a twist at the end which you can see coming. Towards the end it seemed like Patterson just wanted to hurry up and wrap up the story which was a little dissapointing, but overall it was entertaining.

I'm now listening to Eric Clapton's autobiography, "Clapton". He grew up not knowing that his mother was actually his grandmother and his aunt turned out to be his mother. He talks about the affects this had on his childhood and how he really started to get interested in music in his pre-teenage years. So far it's good.

I finished reading "Echo Park" by Michael Connelly. This is the book club book for August at Jaci's house. This is actually a book in his Harry Bosch series. Harry Bosch is a detective on the LAPD and this book follows him through a case that originated in 1993. There's an inmate on death row who confesses to murdering the victim of the case in 1993 and well it goes on from there. I won't spoil it for anybody from book club, but I couldn't put the book down once I got to the confession part. I liked this mystery and would read more of Connelly's books in the future.