And in what I’ve been reading, I finished Allegedly, by Tiffany Jackson, a new YA title that is getting a lot of hype this season, about a teenage girl in the juvenile system I thought it was very well written, it raised a lot of thoughtful issues about the incarceration of children and youth … but ultimately it didn’t quite come together for me. I think this will definitely be popular with teens, though. It’s not a bad book, just not a great book.
And after seeing someone mention it in one of these threads, I read The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch, which was a quick go and engaging – it’s a very readable review of current brain research that overall is fairly optimistic about the mental abilities of people my age.
Right now, my commuting book (I like being here, with my peers, who get that sometimes you need a different commuting book 
)* To the Bright Edge of the World*, a novel about an expedition to Alaska. So far, it’s a well-crafted book, and I am enjoying it more than I expected. I was a little hesitant because it seemed like another “white people go explore something, are mystified by native people and nature” book, and to be honest, it’s a lot of that, but it’s pretty crisp.
At home I’m reading Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe. A while back I read that book about Stephens and Collingsworth exploring the Mayan cities, and I was very gung ho about that so I picked this up. It’s okay, although I’m hoping it gets more into the Mayan writing itself. Right now it’s been more focused on the various scholars who worked on the translation.