Perks of Unemployment

I warn you that my nerd is coming out in a big way today.  One of my favorite perks of unemployment at the moment is being able to read ALL . THE . TIME .  In the past week I have read 3 fabulous books that I will not hesitate to say should make it to your summer reading list.  I will recap in the order I read them.

The Maze Runner

This is one of my little brother’s favorite books and after he told me I had to read it and I found out it is going to be a movie in the fall, I added it to my list.  It is another teenage, dystopian novel where the first few chapters you are thinking, “what the heck, this is so strange.”  But then you let all that go and just have to keep reading to figure out where in the world this could be going.  Basically, a teenage boy finds himself in the middle of this maze, without any of his life memories and all these strange boys surrounding him.  He and the boys are on a mission to find the way out and things just get weirder from there.  And of course, the end leaves you on a major cliff hanger so I already have the next one on hold at the library!

The Sandcastle Girls

This one is the book we chose for our book club this month/two months.  The author says repetitively and it is so true, the book is about the genocide you know next to nothing about.  It is about the Armenian genocide in 1915 and is fascinating and devastating all at once.  It kind of makes me sick to think too much about it.  Did you know 1.5 million people died in this genocide, yet it is nearly never talked about.  I have to admit the story didn’t grab me from the beginning (though I was very preoccupied with my current life situation and was getting distracted while I was reading) but about half way through I started to see where it was going.  A young girl from Boston is basically viewed as wild and unruly so her father takes her on an aid mission to help the victims of the genocide and bring aid.  The story is about her meeting all sides of the tragedy from the soldiers, the natives and victims themselves.  It was a wonderful, and tragic story.  Definitely worth the read!

Necessary Lies

I have to start with the fact that Diane Chamberlain is one of my favorite authors of all time.  I literally read this book in a day and a half.  I couldn’t stop reading it!  I don’t think I have ever read a book by her that I wasn’t thrilled with!! This book takes place in the South (North Carolina) in the 1960’s.  It follows the story of a recently married woman who is new to social work and one of the families she is servicing.  The main topic of the story: Sterilization of mentally handicapped, epileptic and basically poor people on welfare that they could essentially “neuter.”  The terrible part, this really happened…UNTIL 1975!!  How unbelievable is that.  Of the three I would recommend reading this first, but I just finished it so I am especially fired up about it at the moment.

All these books were fantastic and I would highly recommend any one of them (all very different from one another though).

Have you read anything awesome that I can add to my “unemployment reading list?”