books!

41. A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce
A really good re-telling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, with some excellent, strong female characters thrown in. This dragged a little bit in the middle, but by the end I couldn't put it down.

42. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
I was a little disappointed in Ferris's first book, as I'd heard it was hilarious and I did not LOL. I liked this book more. This is the story of a man with a strange medical condition/compulsion/what have you. The book follows him and his family as he deals with this. This description makes the book sound kind of Hallmark-channely, but it is a good character study with a unique premise.

43. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
Someone highly recommended this book to me, and I always hate it when I don't like a book someone recommends, but I did not like this book. It is about a strange man who has no odor of his own, but has an amazing sense of smell. It goes inside his mind as he commits some murders, and in that way it is interesting, but I really really did not like the main character and did not want to be inside his mind. That was probably the point, but it did not make for an enjoyable read. I did like the descriptions of the smells throughout the book, though.

44. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Loved this book. It is in the form of a diary of a teenage girl who lives through an asteroid hitting the moon and knocking it off course. Of course, various terrible things befall the earth. I love post-apocalyptic novels and teen angst, so this was an excellent book for me. I recommend it.