Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Outpost (Razorland #2) by Ann Aguirre

This book picks up where Enclave left off: Deuce, Stalker, Tegan, and Fade living in Salvation and trying to find a life there. There is a love triangle afoot, as well. Fade thinks that Deuce likes Stalker, while Deuce likes Fade (and Fade likes Deuce), while Stalker also likes Deuce, but she does not reciprocate that. The Freaks/Muties are also becoming smarter to the point of understanding the fields that the Salvationites plant are imperative to their survival and thus destroy them. This leads to an outpost (hence the title) being set up to protect the fields. Deuce, Stalker, and Fade go on a recon mission at night to find out where the Freaks/Muties are and they discover that they have their own little semi-civilization like Salvation. They return to the outpost and tell Longshot (the leader of the outpost who also rescued them and brought them to Salvation) what they saw, and even though he believes them, he does not decide to do anything about it. Later, both Fade and another outpost soldier are captured in the night, leading Deuce, Stalker, and two other soldiers on a mission to rescue them. I thought this book picked up really well from where Enclave left off and I could figure out/piece together what had happened in the end of the first book. I am looking forward to the third installment, Horde, to come out later this year.

Monday, July 29, 2013

The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family by Liza Mundy

I loved this book! I seem to be having a streak of really great feminist nonfiction books and I am not complaining! Mundy discusses the increase of women in college, which is leading females to be taking higher-paying jobs than their male counterparts. This has impacted the family dynamic and has led to an increase in non-traditional home lives, such as stay at home fathers/husbands, since the wife makes more money. I thought the book was really interesting. It does discuss the difficulties of women who don't want to "marry down" (marry someone less educated than them), since more and more women are getting graduate degrees, which leads to less (graduate-educated) men to match them with. Mundy also talks about how work/school/home life will be in the future if the trends continue the way they are going.

One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper

This book revolves around the character of Silver (his last name), a has-been one hit wonder, who was diagnosed with a fatal heart condition, has a pregnant teenage daughter, and an ex-wife who is getting remarried soon. He decides to forgo the surgery to save his life, as he determines that the life he had been living since his divorce is not one he wants to continue to live (and not because the ex-wife's fiance would be performing the surgery, which he would do if Silver wanted it). I thought this book was really good. It showed a lot of growth of the characters both as individuals (grappling with difficult life decisions) and with each other (Silver setting out to be a better father and improve his relationship with his daughter). I thought the ending was a little confusing, but I would love it if someone could clear it up for me!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

Gorgeous is about a girl named Becky Randle who just graduated high school. Her mother dies and while she is going through her things, she finds a jewelry ring box that has a phone number in the bottom of it. She calls the number and Tom Kelly, a famous fashion designer, answers it. Becky flies out to New York to meet him and he presents her with an offer: to make her the most beautiful woman in the world. She agrees to it and he makes it happen via three dresses: a red one, a white one, and a black one. She isn't sure how this can be accomplished since she is rather plain looking, but when she wears the red dress, she transforms into Rebecca: a taller, thinner, and more beautiful version of herself that even models are jealous of her. At the end of their first night out, he tells her that she can stay looking like this for the rest of her life if she falls in love and gets married within a year. I honestly really did not like this book. I thought it was too supernatural (something I was not expecting from it), at least for my tastes, and also pretty predictable.