Lord of the Flies by William Golding

So I never read this book in high school. I think we were supposed to when I was a sophmore or freshman, but we never got to it. The story begins with a group of 6-14 year old boys finding themselves stranded on an island without any adults surviving the plane crash. A leader emerges, Ralph, who declares that a fire must be kept burning while they are on the island so they can be rescued. Piggy, a bespectacled heavy lad, thinks it is important to take down everyone's name and to build shelter, but is extremely supportive of Ralph having a leadership role. But Jack thinks finding meat is more important than anything. Eventually, the boys split into two groups: a group with Ralph and a group with Jack. As time goes on, more and more boys defect to Jack's group because they are able to catch wild pig, and with fewer boys able to keep a fire going, eventually it goes out. This leads to a tete-a-tete between Ralph and Jack.  

Horde (Razorland #3) by Ann Aguirre

This book picks up where Outpost left us. Since I read it recently, I cannot accurately judge if Aguirre left me enough "breadcrumbs" to remember where the last book left off. Anyway, the Freaks have destroyed Salvation and seem to be getting smarter with each new generation. Deuce and Company go to a nearby town (Soldier's Pond) to get help to defeat the horde (group of Freaks), but when they return, it is more of a rescue mission than anything. While in Soldier's Pond, Deuce is not allowed to join their military to fight the Freaks, so she decides to make a military of her own by convincing volunteers to fight with her. She travels around the countryside, visiting other small settlements, but is often laughed out of town. Deciding that it is best to prove the worth of her small army, they stake out a forest close to Soldier's Pond and defend it from any Freaks that come into it. Word travels about how well she and her army are doing and eventually towns that originally ignored them need her help. But there are so many Freaks and not enough humans to defeat them. Will Deuce get enough volunteers and outwit the Freaks?

Into the Wild by John Krakauer

Krakauer retraces the steps of Chris McCandless, a young man who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never walked out again. The author speaks to people who took McCandless in and drove him to Alaska and around the west. He also discusses other adventurers who never returned to society and goes over the possible reasons why McCandless perished. To be frank, the book creeped me out, so I would not recommend reading it before bed unless you want to think of dead bodies in sleeping bags.

This was a book for my Couples Book Club-PDX Meetup group.

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving: A Novel by Jonathan Evison

I felt like this book was like last year's (personal) sleeper hit The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this since I had never read anything by Evison before, but it was well done, although I think the ending could have been more complete, but that is just me. The story goes that Trevor, a 19 year old with muscular dystrophy, needs a caregiver and in comes Ben, a man with a sad past who is trying to make a go of the future. Trevor has his routines of going to see a movie every Thursday, eating waffles at every breakfast, and watching The Weather Channel every morning. Ben starts an exercise with Trev where they mark all of the unique road stops on a map, just for something new for him to do. Trev's semi-deadbeat dad (who seems like an okay guy) flies in from Salt Lake City to see him, but Trev wants nothing to do with him. Trev's mom goes out of town for a conference and it is at that point that the two men take a roadtrip and meet an unforgettable cast of characters, all while being followed by someone in a Skylark. The book flashes back to what happened to Ben and how that affected him, which was a nice touch.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Pi is about a sixteen year old boy named Pi. He grows up in India and his family owns a zoo during the 70s. They end up selling the zoo and most of the animals in it and take a boat to Canada. On the way there, the boat sinks (for unknown reasons) and Pi escapes into a lifeboat with a tiger, hyena, zebra with a broken leg, and a gorilla. The hyena ends up killing the zebra since it was already injured, then it goes after the gorilla. Eventually the tiger takes it out and Pi realizes that he needs to keep the tiger alive. He does this by catching it fish and turtles and other marine life. Are they ever found?

I thought this story was really boring the first 100 pages, slow-ish the next 100, and the last 100 were at a decent speed and for sure the most interesting. The end blew my mind and I don't know what to think about it.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

I read this book in pretty much 26 hours, from when I began to when I ended since it is very much similar to Walls' Glass Castles book. Unlike Glass Castles, which is Walls' memoir, Half Broke Horses is about Walls' grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, and her life living in west Texas and Arizona. Smith's life begins in west Texas, where her family is stuck taking what the weather will give them, in terms of flash flooding and drought, until their house is destroyed by a tornado. Then they move to Arizona onto a ranch they had been renting. There, Smith learns to break horses and has all sorts of adventures, such as going to boarding school and teaching 500 miles away from home when she was 15 years old. How did she get to her job? By riding solo on horseback for almost a month. She eventually moves to Chicago to experience life in the big city, where she meets her first husband, who, after six years of marriage, she discovers is a bigamist who had a wife with three children before marrying her. She leaves him and moves back to Arizona, trying to carve out a life for herself teaching. She has many adventures, such as learning to drive a car and fly a plane and even gets her bachelor's degree and teaching certificate when she was 40 years old. I definitely recommend this book if you want to get a real glimpse of living on a ranch in the early- to mid-1900s.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine #1) by Ransom Riggs

I really enjoyed this story. I actually finished it a couple of weeks ago, but have been tardy in posting my review... Anyway, it is about a boy named Jacob that seems most ordinary, but has a slightly obsessed grandfather who has a stockpile of weapons and believes that some sort of creatures are after him. Jacob knows of his grandfather's tall tales about when he lived in Wales and the people he knew and the adventures he went on. But then one day, his grandfather is drug to the forest behind his home and killed. Jacob witnesses the murder and sees that it is the same sort of creature that his grandfather always talked about, and is struck with horror. Jacob slips into a depression and his parents send him to a psychiatrist who suggests that he go to Wales to see if the rest of his grandfather's stories were true, especially the one about a house on a hill run by a Miss Peregrine. He and his father go to Wales on what is assumed to be a witch hunt, but Jacob soon learns the truth of his grandfather, Miss Peregrine, and the creatures that killed him. Unfortunately, Miss Peregrine and her wards are being saught by the creatures and Jacob is the only one that can help him. Will he choose to stay with Miss Peregrine and her wards or return to America with his father? Lately, I have been itching to go on a trip or adventure, and this book helped to satisfy those desires.