7. Our Souls At Night

by Kent Haruf (179pp, ebook)

Bob and I first read Kent Haruf when he wrote the book Plainsong. I vividly remember going to Powell's on Hawthorne to see him speak. It was small crowd and he was soft-spoken but immediately likeable.

This books was written as he was dealing with cancer and his last published novel. It's a very sweet story about two elderly people finding love and companionship late in life. I saw it's a movie with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford and put it on my list.

6. Fan Service

By Rosie Danan (412 pp)

We picked this for romance book club. I love the set up: Devin is a guy who played a werewolf in a hit TV series years ago, finds himself turned into an actual werewolf when he's in his 40s and his acting career is in its last gasps. Not knowing what else to do, he tracks down Alex, the expert fan who managed the show's online forum. She is not much of a fan any longer because the actor was rude to her at a signing. It's super cute, funny, and clever.

5. The Goodbye Man (Tracker #2)

By Jeffrey Deaver (420 pp, ebook)

This was the Tracker book I read as part of my mission to finish my Reacher/Tracker fan fic that I still haven't finished because, as my friend Maggie said recently, life is life-ing.

In this story, Tracker is looking for a couple of young men accused of a hate crime and he ends up infiltrating this cult. Another fun, easy to read on the bus book.

4. Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe

By C.B. Lee (390 pp/ebook)

Sadly, I did not like this book as much as I wanted to. I don't read a lot of YA and am not the best audience for it.

The opening is fantastic: the main character is a high achieving student who is applying for an important scholarship on a deadline and then loses her Internet there is one obstacle after the other until she ends up in this coffee shop -- that is in an alternate universe. The lead characters were cute but the story lost momentum for long stretches and I found the world-building uneven and hard to follow at times.