Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan – This is book two of the Percy Jackson series. Percy ventures out to find the Golden Fleece to heal the magical tree on the borders of Camp Half-Blood. I love these books. I can’t wait to read the whole series.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson – Major Pettigrew (retired) lives by himself in a small English village. He forms a friendship with Mrs. Ali, a Pakastani shop owner, based on their love of books and the loss of their spouses. As their relationship deepens they face the disapproval of the town and of their families.

This book is quietly funny. Major Pettigrew is very prim and proper but is very aware of the absurdity of all of the people around him. He isn’t afraid to comment on it. Mrs. Ali’s family wants her to be a proper Pakastani widow content to raise other people’s children and sit in the house even though she was born and raised in England and has been running a business for most of her life.

I got this book from the library and then set it aside for several weeks. It seemed too boring when I would be looking for a new book to read. But once I started it I was drawn in immediately.

Acting Out by Benilde Little – This starts with the typical story of a man deciding to leave his wife and children for his mistress. The story is told from Ina, the wife’s, view. She is an upper middle class black woman who never had a career except for working for her husband before the kids were born. Now she has to decide how to move on. I identified with the story some because the husband is very ambitious and never satisfied with the material things that the family has. Nothing is good enough for him and he feels that Ina is holding him back because she doesn’t feel that way. It is a good depiction of the breakup of a marriage. It did annoy me when it got to talking about how divorces are so much easier for white women because another man like a father or brother will swoop in and rescue them. Not really my experience or what I would have wanted my experience to be. But other than that, this was a good light read.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks – This is a fiction book written as non-fiction. It is a collection of interviews with survivors of the Zombie War. The book assumes that you know the facts of the War since you lived through it. There has only been peace for 10 years after all. The interviews start with the Chinese doctor who treated the first known case. They extend to military leaders around the world, politicians, dog handlers, refugees, etc.

This book is scary because it is so realistic. If you exchange the idea of a world wide pandemic or environmental catastrophe for the word zombie you have an account of how the world would respond. Some is good and some is not. I highly recommend this one.