With only a week until my second Summer intensive class starts, I should be laser-focused on getting the remaining work done for my first. Instead, I have been voraciously reading books from the Great Book List of 2007. I've run out of book budget (possibly forever), so we've been using the library and it's been great. The little Waldo Community Library is super-cute and they have almost ten of the books remaining on my list so they can help me out for awhile. I have six books I've finished since last I wrote about this adventure, so on we go.

The Blind Assassin Recommended by Cagey
I liked this book, but it took me forEVAH to get into it. I thought it might be my first book list failure. Once I got firmly into it, it was good. There was a "twist" at the end, but I'm not totally sure if it was meant to be a twist. Those of you who read it, thoughts? I'm not a particulary good judge of this type of thing, since I'm one of those assholes who always knows where the twist is going, but the way this book was written, I think it was meant to be a bit of really understated dramatic irony. We know where it's going but the character doesn't, even though she's the narrator. I don't know. But I liked it. (Recommended)

Maybe a Miracle Recommended by Chatty Cricket
This was a really quick read. I finished it in about a day of down time and it was good. It's got a lot of religious content and that was kind of weird, since the book didn't seem to come to a conclusion about the religious aspects of the story. I feel like the only thing I really can say about it was that it was weird. But I liked it okay. (Not particularly recommended, but okay.)

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas Recommended by JP
Another quick read, I finished this in about a day as well. I've never read Patterson, which is weird I guess, but this book, as far as I can tell, is not very characteristic of his normal style. I liked it, though. It was sad, but not so long that you're dredging through the sad feelings forever. The book jacket says that it's somewhat drawn from Patterson's life experiences of finding love again after losing it. Maybe that explains the change in style. (Recommended for a quick read.)

The Golden Compass Recommended by Bridget
I so wanted to like this book. After all, Bridget recommended it, who's always been so nice when we met at Stitch N Bitch. And women are featured prominently in the book, which is right up my alley. But here's the thing: in spite of the fact that I love Harry Potter, fantasy is not my genre. Having to figure out a whole universe worth of...I don't know, stuff, makes my head hurt. However, I trudged through this book and have finished it. The disappointment? Unlike Harry Potter, each of the books in the His Dark Materials series do not appear to have an ending. So I worked my way through this book only to find out that I have to read the others if I want to know what happens. Suck. Bridget also said that this is the strongest book of the series, so I guess I will have to just die without knowing. (Not recommended, except to Josué, to whom I am sending this book because it actually is his kind of book.)

America's Women
Cagey loaned me this book a million years ago and I've only recently finished it. It's non-fiction and a bit dry, so it's not really a book you sit down and read in one evening. I was warned about that particular aspect. I might be making this up (because I am too lazy to go archive-digging), but I think Cagey wrote on her blog about this book when she finished it, although this may just be a memory of an actual conversation (!) we had about it. She mentioned that the downside is that the book is dominated by European-American perspective. The author is certainly aware of this, as she apologizes for this on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, that's the archive we have. Although I borrowed the book, I will likely buy a copy of this to keep for myself. It's nice to have a resource for women's American history. (Recommended.)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I was a latecomer to Harry Potter, mostly because I hated the first two books. It took me at least four attempts to get through them to continue reading. I'm sad that the series is over and I kind of felt a bit of deus ex machina on the ending of this book, but I still loved it. In the month or so leading up to the book release, we read all the books again so that Andrés was ready. That pretty much sealed it for me that OotP was my favorite of all the books (which is not a very popular opinion, I don't think), but I think DH was excellent as well. Was it just me that felt like every single page had, like, twenty important things happening? I wondered how all the loose ends would be tied up and it appears that the answer was wall-to-wall information. (Recommended)

Dude! This post is really rambly and not at all edited. But since I've now spent 45 minutes of naptime writing, I really need to get to some homework. Hopefully it's clear enough to be readable.