#51: Garth Nix, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

[kareila]

Vaguely entertaining urban fantasy about an 18 year old Englishwoman named Susan who comes to London for art school and stumbles into the business of a cadre of bookshop owners who guard the boundaries between reality and myth. Susan soon discovers that her unknown father may be one such myth, putting her life in danger as a result. I might have enjoyed this book more if the characters had been a bit more believable and if it weren't so blindingly obvious who the mysterious villains were.

#52: Sara Seager, The Smallest Lights in the Universe

[kareila]

Sara Seager is an MIT professor whose husband died of cancer, leaving her with the task of engineering a new support system that would allow her to continue to juggle pursuing a demanding career and raising two young boys. A searing memoir of both grief and hope, with bonus educational overview of the recent history of exoplanet discoveries.