ancora imparo

This is the first I’ve participated in this meme but it’s one I probably should participate in more regularly being a book pusher and all!

Here’s what I’ve read in the last month:

Cecil R. Cross II’s Next Semester due out in January. I got a review copy of this book from Netgalley and it’s the first of that series I’ve read but I requested the review copy because the Kimani Tru books are very popular with the high school students who borrow books from my school’s library. I was surprised that the book was written solely from a guy’s perspective because it’s published by Harlequin. JD is a freshman in college in Atlanta. He grew up in the ‘hood in Oakland, CA, and his mom is glad to have him out of town and away from the gangbangers and other bad influences of his high school years.

During his first semester at college, he was learning the ropes and earned a respectable 2.67 GPA. The toughest test he took though was a blood test to see if he’d caught HIV from a girl who’d contracted it from another student. When he returns for spring semester, JD hopes to live down the rep he’d gotten (wrongly) as the cause of the other two students’ HIV status. He signs up for a class that’s rumored to be an “easy A” only to find out that the professor will only be giving As to students who successfully promote and get elected their candidate for the school’s student government.

On top of helping Kat run for President against a 3-year incumbent, JD tries to juggle his school work, learn about the fraternity system on campus, dodge accusations about his HIV status, and get the attention of a new girl who’s caught his eye. He’s got a full plate and needs to find a better way to manage his time. Find out how JD and his friends fare, Next Semester.

I also have been reading Steve Berry’s The Templar Legacy. I got this book as a freebie for the Kindle sometime near when Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol came out in September. It’s been a good read and wasn’t as predictable as Brown’s; I’m not sure if it’s just that I’m not familiar with Berry’s style or if it really is that much better, but I’ve been enjoying the suspensefulness of it.

Early in the month, I posted about a few books I’d read that weekend; Say the Word, No Choirboy, and Sag Harbor, which I gave up reading but may try to pick up again. I feel like I’ve read another book or two, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what they might have been. I’ll have to check my library records to see if I can figure it out.

In the coming month, I hope to read:

Sugar by Bernice McFadden
Final Target by Steven Gore
I have to re-read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer for my student book club, and I’d like to pick back up and finish The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Naked by David Sedaris and read another of the Sookie Stackhouse series (I’ve only read the first, Dead Until Dark so far.

I’ll also try to pick up a few of the new books that have come in and give a few new authors a try so I can recommend them to the kids. Librarians who read everything before they put them out for the kids either are power readers, have huge backlogs of new books, or don’t have any children or anything else to do with their lives! I’m a fast reader, but I am not able to keep up with the number of books that are coming this year!