I didn't proof-read this.

A disclaimer just in case. :)
Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett. This is the book where it really starts to be the Discworld the rest of the books take place in, and the storytelling and writing style I've come to love from this author. Granny Weatherwax is in fine form, and I was interested and excited to see alot of ideas that look like they were the basis for the Tiffany Aching character and story.

Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul: Stories Celebrating Forever Families, by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and LeAnn Thieman. I quit after 80 pgs. Not all adoptive parents have visions of their future children, and we can't all afford to go gallivanting off to live for a few months in a foreign country during the adoption proceedings. I was hoping for touching stories of working through attachment issues and becoming acquainted. Boo.

The New Prophecy: Warriors: Midnight, by Erin Hunter. Despite anything I can understand, these are still very popular with my tween and young teen readers. I have a problem with talking animals-- I can suspend belief to enjoy sci-fi or fantasy stories with dragons and magic and tons of other things, but not this, I don't know why-- so I knew this book would be a difficult sell for me, but this series takes up so much shelf space and does so well with my patrons that I had to at least give it a try. 10 pages! I just couldn't do it. There were too many characters, and their names are all too similar, for me to keep straight. I wasn't drawn by the writing style at all, and nothing interesting happened right away to pull me in. Some of my kids were excited when I told them I've ordered some of the new manga from this series, but I'll never get it.

The Bedside Book of Beasts: A Wildlife Miscellany, by Graeme Gibson. Once again, here's a book that suffers from poor formatting and a poorly drafted idea. This book is a collection of essays (and letters, notes, etc.) on animals, and is accompanied by some very nice artwork. However, the essays are not introduced in any way. At the end of each, it identifies the speaker or writer, that person's birth/death dates, and their country of origin. That information should go at the beginning of each essay, to help give the words context. What is really necessary is an introduction to each selection, saying where it came from (a book? a speech? an article? an interview?) and other facts to give the selection more context. It's hard for me to ponder the significance of words hanging freely in space. Thoughts don't exist in a vacuum.
I read exactly 100 pages of 342.

Also, I read My Fair Godmother, by Janette Rallison, months ago, but I can't find my post for it, so I may have overlooked it. (gasp! I know!) I remember that I enjoyed the idea of the plot, but found some of the characters mildly annoying. The writing doesn't stand out in my memory, so it was neither phenomenally great nor sucktacular.

Returnable Girl, by Pamela Lowell. I promoted this book to my Facebook group "Foster Parents of La Porte County." (We are a very small group, and I'm the only one who ever posts anything. :p) The book wasn't perfect, and I was worried for a while in the beginning, but it came out all right in the end. At first, and for quite a while in the beginning of the book, the story seemed disorganized. The main character had alot of the common problems of foster care, plus all the regular concerns of a young teen, but it didn't seem like they were really being addressed by the character, any of the adult characters, or the writer. Things really come together, though, and, while the resolution is mostly an in-a-more-perfect-world resolution with few setbacks, the character still has to face feeling disloyal to her birth family and some of the other charged topics of foster and adoptive care.

The main character seemed older than she states she is (13), and I would put the reading level slightly higher as well.

Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height, by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove. It's apparently Honesty Week, or possibly Coming-To-My-Senses Week here, as this is a book I didn't finish either (144 of353). Maybe I should keep track of all my partial reads and, when they collectively amount to a book length, count those too. Nah.
I found the topic very interesting, and it was pretty engaging, well-written, but there were too many people for me to keep track of without writing them down. And if I have to take notes on a book I'm reading for fun, that does a fair job of ejecting said fun. Certainly a great pick for readable-medical/science-nonfiction fans with more brain power than me.