11:100 Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker

Avery was always a meticulous child who did everything that his parents and society could expect.

Zib was the opposite, the messy child who reveled in adventures and was anything but predictable. 

They lived on the same street but yet had never met, until the day the detours along their paths to different schools had them both end up staring at a wall that hadn't been there before with no obvious path back home. So Zib argued that they should climb up and over the wall to see where it would lead them.

It lead them to another world with no visible way back to their own. So now these two strangers must rely upon each other to try and figure out the rules of this world and find their way home. Along the way they meet a girl made up of crows, various monarchs (none of whom seem to mean them anything good),  many owls that come in many different colors, and others who help them find the Improbable Road with the hopes that their getting back home is so improbable that the road will have to help them back there.

A. Deborah Baker is a pen name of Seanan McGuire, and apparently a character in another McGuire book, Middlegame (still need to read that one). I liked the characters and found the story interesting but a bit disjointed (on purpose but still) and the ending, while I get that it's leading into the next book, just felt rushed and jarring. I love her work though so will likely pick up the second book and give that a try to see if my opinion of this series improves.

Page count: 204p/2,682p ytd/350,072p lifetime

10:100 Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

 From my reading in 2018:

In April 1992, Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness as the culmination of several years of soul searching.  His body was found in September of that same year.  This book focuses on Chris's life leading up to his decision to make that trek and the author's trying to piece together his final months.  By all accounts, Chris was intelligent and charismatic who was able to induce a parental protectiveness in several of the people he met as he was hitchhiking and wandering the country. His relationship with his parents is said to have been rocky but they were not abusive or ill-meaning.  There is nothing to suggest that when he embarked on this journey that his aim was death, in fact most of the evidence points in the opposite direction and that this was more about pulling a Thoreau than anything else.

This was part of the Hero's Journey literature unit we are doing for high school this year.  I think by the measure they are using, this does qualify. Chris was definitely trying to be true to himself and was ready to face daunting challenges in this quest. My biggest issue with this book was not in the story of Chris himself but the fact that the last 1/3 of the book the author inserted himself into the story in what I felt was an extreme amount.  We were regaled with stories of his climbing mountains and his father issues.  I get that he was trying to build more sympathy or understanding for Chris but for me, it failed and took away from Chris's story by making it more about the author.  The fact that the last chapter and the entire afterword were all about the author's trying to discover what exactly killed Chris and the lengths he went to again just seemed to be about inserting himself further into this story. I get that there is mystery and he was trying to solve it and maybe it's just the way he was telling it but it did not strike a good note with me.  I do think Chris's story was interesting and I enjoyed it, I just wish the author had done a better job of playing biographer.

Page count: 215p/2,478p ytd/349,868p lifetime

9:100 Blood Heir by Ilona Andrews

Kate's adopted daughter, Julie, left Atlanta eight years ago to find out more about her powers and herself. She ended up with Kate's aunt Erra, whom Julie refers to as Grandma. During her time away, Julie has been told of a prophecy regarding an ancient power, Molach, who is gunning for Kate. Julie has continued to work to thwart his plans without involving Kate since all prophecies state that if she learns about him, she and her family will die. Now the prophecy has Julie in Atlanta trying to stop it without calling on her old friends (and Kate's allies). She has a new face and a new name, Aurelia Ryder, and a tough road ahead to save her mother without letting Kate know she's even in danger.

So glad to have new stories in this world as it's one of my favorites. So glad that it was set in Atlanta so we could get updates on many of the characters there that I've grown attached to. It will be interesting to see if the Atlanta setting continues or if this was just to help ease the introduction into this series and give the fans the update or if Atlanta will continue to be a focal point for future books.

Page count: 354p/2,263p ytd/349,653p lifetime

8:100 In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

My Review from 2014:

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants."  

There you go, the secret of this book and he lays it out right in the first chapter.  So why read on?  Because what Mr. Pollan goes to do is lay out the problem with the Western Diet and how it's killing us.  We have become a slave to Nutritionism and not food.  Science keeps telling us to eat more of this miracle nutrient and less of this one over here and we will be healthy and all will be good.  But it doesn't work and then next week or year or decade, they realize that what they first told us was absolutely wrong and they reverse it.  The Low-Fat Diet is a beautiful example of this.  We were told to eat less fat because consuming fat was making us fat and leading to heart disease.  So industry came to the rescue and took the fat out of everything replacing it with sugar and sodium and things we can't pronounce.  And that made us fatter than ever. Heart disease didn't go down and now we are told that carbs are the problem.  Eat more fish! Omega 3s! Paleo! Atkins!  The list goes on and all it does is leave those who need to eat more confused then ever.  There are now organic toaster pastries with Omega 3s.  Are those healthy?  The obvious answer is no but since Fritos can now put on their packages that they are a "heart healthy" food, who knows any more, right?!  

This is the point of Mr. Pollan's book, helping to decipher what we have been being told for the past 40+ years (longer than my lifetime). He breaks down the studies and tries to help the typical person understand what is being studied and how and what the results most likely mean.  How studies are flawed and how that tweaks the results.  He has his own rules for eating that he lays out in the last section but really, what it boils down to is the words at the top.  I had already started doing this after some less than stellar lab work at the doctor's and while it will be a few months before I know conclusively if it is helping in that department, my body is already showing positive changes to the new way of eating.  I highly recommend this book and I'm so glad that my son's high school health course uses it.

Page count: 244p/1,918p ytd/349,299p lifetime

7:100 Kitty's Mix-Tape by Carrie Vaughn

 Ms. Vaughn is diving back into Kitty Norville's world in order to give us a collection of short stories about not just Kitty, but many of the other side characters that inhabited the world that people wanted to learn more about. There are songs and story notes for each piece, and many were written for specific anthologies but it's nice to have them all collected in one place and a few new pieces as well.  I hadn't read all the anthologies so many were new for me during this read.

I found it a fun collection but definitely suffered from not having read any of these books those characters appeared in since the last Kitty novel came out, so some of the smaller side characters who got their own stories I had no context for and had to do a quick look up to remember who they were. Those stories were enjoyable but lost what would have undoubtedly made them more special had I remembered what they meant to Kitty and the series. 

Page count: 272p/1,674p ytd/349,055p lifetime