Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I completely ignored this book for years, letting it languish on my shelf, looking at it and wincing, figuring it was one of those books: self-help; self-discovery; travelogue; my-life-is-great-now-yours-can-be-too!; you know, the books that I loathe.

It is, in many ways, all those things, but more incidentally than specifically. Gilbert's voice on this travel is compelling, funny, sincere and most of all real. Honestly, I loved every page of this book.

In the Woods by Tana French

Chasing the Devil's Tail: A Mystery of Storyville, New Orleans by David Fulmer

Artemis Fowl: Atlantic Complex by Eoin Colfer

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy by Gregory Maguire

The Mammy by Brendan O'Carroll

Only a few chapters in, this had me laughing out loud, delightedly engaged with the characters and looking forward to more reading time ever so soon. The malapropisms are worth the read in their own right.

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

Wonderful, thrilling account of privateering in the New World. I soaked it up. Good as a beach book, an introduction to the mid-seventeenth century Caribbean, and an downright awesome adventure.

Andromeda Strain

Absolutely amazing. It's hard to believe that out of all the Crichton that I've read I somehow managed to miss this, his most famous early work. Published the same year I was born, it holds its own four decades later as a must read science thriller.

Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman