I guess this means I'm out of the book club

Book review time. I love vacation.

The Wee-Free Men by Terry Prachett.

It's a young adult Terry Prachett book, so totally fantasy and set somewhere else. It tells the story of a young girl Tiffany, who keeps a cool head as she is becoming a witch and saves the world. It is clever and funny, so I loved it. Plus the wee free men say "Crivens!"

The Lightning Thief (1 in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series) by Rick Riordan.

Another young adult and they have just made a movie about it. The book follows Percy Jackson as he realizes why strange things happen to him, reports to summer camp for demi-gods, and then saves the world. It's quite clever in it's use of ancient Greek mythology and combining the modern world with the ancient ideas. My favorite part was that Olympus (the home of the gods) is in New York City and Hades is in LA.

The Lost Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini.

This starts with a group of women discovering a set of letters in an antique desk, then it flashes back to the story of Joanna, a slave in Virginia who runs away, is caught after several months and sold south to South Carolina. I found the frame story about the group of women to be kind of confusing, which made the end of the book very dissatisfying. But I really enjoyed the story of Joanna. It was more interesting, because after her escape, she made a quilt to record the way north. I was in the middle of reading this when Heather and I went to Savannah, and while we were there we saw a cool exhibit of quilts. It was cool to see some of the same patterns that are actually talked about in the book.

Tears of the Giraffe (the second book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) by Alexander McCall Smith

I actually haven't read the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but that totally didn't matter. I enjoyed this book because of how the reader gets close to the different characters. Each of the main characters is given different chapters so you get to see their perspective and point of view. McCall has a very clear and almost abrupt style, so things are not hidden, and there is a fun little mystery to solve.