So last year

we read Shanghai Girls for book group and Hubband and I both really enjoyed it. Well,as I recall, I am pretty sure most everybody in the group liked it. I was really happy when the story was continued with the publishing of Dreams of Joy, and quite excited to be on a fairly short waiting list for in in eBook form. It was an excellent read, full of history and wonderful research. (Again, much easier to let you read the links rather than me repeating what has already been said.) I would strongly recommend both of these if you enjoy well researched historical fiction.

I recently read

a very popular book (Powell's link). I checked it out in eBook form from the library, since it is/was so popular I would have had a very long wait to get it in paper (currently it has 30 holds for four copies). I am guessing that some of you will have heard of it by now, as it has had a fair amount of press, including the selling of movie rights before it was actually published (pretty good for a first novel). Rather than me going on and on about it, you can read at least the first few chapters yourself, via the publishers website.
You can also see a trailer for the book at the author's website, as well as some other cool/interesting stuff.
(With any luck, in the very near future I will tell you about another excellent book that I finished recently.)

Apparently not all

the cool kids are turning fifty this year. At least one of them got to do it last year.