Some YA I've Loved, and Dallas Buyers Club

I read We Were Liars not once, but twice, last weekend. It's every bit as fabulous as you've heard.

Maybe it's this interminable winter, but I am all into the New England thing all over right now. Being Henry David was a lovely amnesiac mystery cloaked all in Thoreau. I, for one, was rooting for reincarnation...

I read Boy Nobody over the holidays, and was thrilled to find the adrenaline-packed antics in the sequel, The Lost Mission, continued just moments after the first book closes. It takes place in a right-wing youth training compound in the New Hampshire mountains, and is non-stop fun.

Winger by Andrew Smith. Everyone else is onto Grasshopper Jungle, but I'm just behind. Bawdy like the only the youngest boy in the class can be, but this one blew me away. Such tender characterization, I even sold one of my Susanne Colasanti-loving regulars on it.

It's not YA, but it sort of is: I'm finished listening to The Goldfinch this morning, with that final meditation playing on the bridge over the Tennessee River as the sun was rising. The audio was 32 hours long, but every minute of it was terrific.  So much so, I'm a little sad to think about life with Theo and Hobie and Boris...

But I finally saw Dallas Buyers Club last weekend, and I was thrilled with one scene in particular. When Woodruff, the Matthew McConaughey character, gets such a grim prognosis, where does he go? TO THE LIBRARY. And armed with that information, including the toxicity of the current clinical doses of AZT, he starts taking control of his own healthcare. I hope it wins all the awards just because of that. Libraries save people, and they help them save themselves.