What I've been reading

For the last month I have been reading like a mad woman! I tend to go in cycles where I read a lot for a few months and then I won't so much as glance at a book for several months. I guess I am in my manic phase of reading at the moment.

#1 Just Kids-Patti Smith
Just Kids is Patti Smith's memoir of her and Robert Mapplethorpe's time on the edge, two kids who found each other on streets of New York and were determined to become artists.

 #2 It's Kind of a Funny Story-Ned Vizzini
Like many smart, ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner seeks entry into Manhattan’s most prestigious school, Executive Pre-Professional High School. With single-minded determination, he works night and day to ace the entrance exam and gets in. That’s when everything starts to unravel.

 #3 The Other Wes Moore-Wes Moore
Two kids with the same name lived in the same decaying city. One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.

 #4 The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake-Aimee Bender
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake.

#5 The Help
The Help is about a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the black ladies' maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of working in white families' homes, all just before the Civil Rights revolution. That is the story in a nutshell - but it is so much more than just stories.

 #6 Unbroken-Laura Hillenbrand
The story is that of Louie Zamperini - a track and field star of the 1930's, who participated in the Berlin olympics, was part of the US air force in WWII, was shot down over the ocean, was adrift in the Pacific for over a month, was held as a POW by the Japanese forces and finally made it back to his life and has had the courage to live it to its fullest.