3 Great Book Recommends & Good Reads website

This is me on overload or perhaps this is me cleverly thinking up yet another password for yet another account. 

I am on password overload. The passwords -- for my social media & shopping providers alone -- would fill a phone book.

For Manhattan.

Some people use the same password for everything. I resisted this impulse, believing that if hackers got one password they would then have free and easy access to everything in my life.

And they can have my Target account, but my Wine Country Gift Baskets, J. Crew and Safe Splash Swimming? Not gonna happen.

These accounts are all encrypted with different passwords, passwords so secret not even their owner can remember – or use – them.

I am so irritated by this whole password issue that for months I refused to join one more thing.

And then, not one, but three different people told me about “Good Reads”. It is a website that, of course, requires a password. This site lets you connect with your reader friends. You list and rate the books you’ve currently read. You get to see what your friends have read and recommend. Click this link to check it out. goodreads.com

I like this idea a lot. Because in addition to never being able to remember my passwords I’m also never able to remember the books I’ve recently read. So when someone asks me for a recommendation I’m usually struck dumb.

This leads the person to believe “Us Weekly” is the only thing I read on a regular basis. While it is true this is my favorite reading material, it is not my only reading material. I also read a lot of literary fiction, self help and 5^th grade book reports.

Here are some recent reads I recommend. (Kindly note none of them are about the solar system.)

1.      Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

This Young Adult book is about 2 plucky heroines in World War II. One is a pilot, the other, a spy. The book is about friendship, loyalty and courage under fire. It’s also about torture and the unthinkable choices war forces on even the most irrepressible of teenagers.

2.    The Golem & The Jinni by Helene Wecker

Picture New York City circa 1910 and the masses of new immigrants arriving daily. Now imagine some of them aren’t human. One is a genie, recently emancipated from his bottle. The other is a young lady, constructed magically from earth and wishes.

These two have got new immigrant problems and then some.So do all their neighbors and friends. It’s a multi-layered story that stays grounded in very human questions of love and belonging, despite its otherworldly plot.

3.    Still Points North by Leigh Newman–

This is a memoir about the author’s fractured Alaskan childhood. It lures us in with a National Geographic outdoor adventure angle. The author shares plenty of suspenseful Girl versus Tundra adventures.

But it’s the story about the author’s search for identity and belonging that really grips us.

Happy reading, guru girls & guys. And check out Good Reads. May the site be good enough to make the password ordeal worth it!