An overcast Saturday - humid and buggy. Even though I can hear thunder it looks like sun to the West though so we might be able to see a sunset. I took an afternoon nap after we ran errands in town and woke up to no Steve and no broken air conditioner. I hope that means he and the landlord are off to Home Depot to buy a new one! It is so sticky in here from the rainy weather. Makes me want to go back to sleep. Stopped in the new Jack's location in town. Sure is a strange set up. A bar and a few tall tables, but mainly gaming machines all along the walls. Had a buffalo burger, which I normally love but it is clearly a different cook at the new location. I like the atmosphere at the Jack's in Tutu much better - besides you get to sit outside and watch the iguanas running around and then browse the craft shops after you eat.

I changed a few of the titles in my YA Lit class for next semester and added Nancy Werlin's Double Helix now that it is in paperback. One of the best SF YA novels I have read. Nancy clearly did her research on genetics for this novel - very realistic. I thought of Werlin's novel when I read Margaret Peterson Haddix's Escape from Memory, even though the setting for the two novels is quite different. Double Helix is in a "normal" contemporary setting with the medical experimentation taking place in an underground lab beneath a "legitimate business". On the other hand Escape from Memory is set for most of the story in a Eastern European recreated village populated by people who had been relocated after Chernobyl. I had a difficult time suspending my disbelief of the village's possible existence in this day and age. Also, the female villain was a bit much. Nevertheless, it was an interesting read about a girl who discovers she is the daughter of scientists who had discovered how to makes copies of a person's memories and transfer this data via computer input and output. Although not as cleanly written as Werlin's novel, I do think teens will enjoy Escape from Memory, especially those teens who have already read other Haddix books. My favorite of hers is Turnabout, where the old women are becoming young again. Before I read that book I had never thought about what would happen if you un-aged to your birth!

Steve is doing yard work outside so I shall do some work inside putting books away. I need to find my "inner librarian" and do some shelving and weeding!