33. The Phantom Tollbooth

By Norton Juster (272 pp ebook)

This was on sale so I grabbed to see how it holds up. A bored kid named Milo finds a tollbooth in his room and sets out on a portal adventure. It holds up magnificently. I loved this book as a young reader. I read the book over and over and looked at those Jules Feiffer drawings. I loved it now. All the puns and word play.

32. Special Topics in Calamity Physics

By Marisha Pessl (540 pp)

I don't know what to tell you about this book. It's about a young woman in high school who lives with her dad who is complicated and possibly up to something. She becomes part of a group of friends that are under the spell of a secretive instructor and they get into all kinds of situations. At times, I enjoyed the writer's writing style. But for huge passages, it was too much. Here's a random paragraph:

He was looking at me intently with his I’m-Thumbing-a-Lift-Here look, which soon slipped into his Please-Pull-a-Ripcord face, and then, If-You-Would-Be-So-Kind-as-to-Administer-a-Rabbit-Punch. Normally, he reserved those faces for instances when a June Bug with some sort of physical deformity was actively pursuing him, like a faulty sense of direction (extreme nearsightedness) or an erratic wing (facial tic).

There were times when this would go on for pages and I would just slide my eyes over the words. There were other parts that were hard to put down. I liked the main character but her story was unsatisfying for me.

31. Now is Not the Time to Panic

By Kevin Wilson (256 pp ebook)

This is about a couple of teenagers who get into trouble making art and the fallout twenty years later. I loved it. I thought the author perfectly captured that mindset of a 16 year old girl and I loved the idea of young people being creative and making stuff.

30. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

By Taylor Jenkins Reid (385 pp)

This is a fictional history of an old Hollywood movie star who has lots of dramatic secrets told to an unknown journalist who gets her lucky break writing Evelyn's story. It was fun to read but got a little melodramatic for me and I thought the characterization was a bit thin. The 1.5 million 5 star reviews on Goodreads disagree with me.