Applewhites!

The Applewhites at Wit's End by Stephanie S. Tolan. 
The world has ended.  At least, that is how Randall Applewhite announces the family's recent  disaster.  When their financial planner absconds with their money, the artistic Applewhite family and their lone non-family student, Jake Semple, are faced with losing Wit's End, the motel-turned-artist's-colony that they so love.

But Randall is not the Head of the Family for nothing.  His plan to turn Wit's End into a camp for creative children will save them all.  He's sure of it. 

When Randall refuses to admit the daughter of a local arts patron to the camp, letters threatening to close the camp appear surreptitiously.  Compound this with a small group of headstrong kid campers and the Applewhite family's own oddities and this just might be the longest summer in the lives of Edie Applewhite, the non-artistic organized one, and Jake Semple, whose former life as a juvenile delinquent stands him in good stead. You know that these two get stuck with most of the problems.  And maybe they can admit they like each other - a little?

Via the Applewhites!  May they return with more crazy, artful, outside-the-box adventures.  And may they put on a show at the end of every book! 

Shhh, I'm reading The Violinist's Thumb

That's what I've been doing.  Reading.  Because It Is my Blood by Gabrielle Zevin, the second book in her Birthright series (due out next month I think);  A Fistful of Collars by Spencer Quinn - I'm still working on this one.  When the narrator is a dog, it takes a little longer to solve a crime (due out on Sept. 11).  Also, The Applewhites at Wit's End by Stephanie Tolan. I loved Surviving the Applewhites.  This book is almost as much fun as the first.

 And Sam Kean's The Violinist's Thumb.  That last one might take me a whole month to finish.  It is an AWESOME but very detailed history of the exploration into DNA and genetics.  Kean bounces all over the timeline relating gene studies to grammar and math and spelling and 16th century explorations and just about everything you can think of.  And he pulls in the stories of scientists whose studies into fallible hypotheses laid the groundwork for later solid research.  I got the e-galley and I hope it's one that stays on my reader because I'm sure I will need to re-read this book. 

So, that is what I have been doing.  Expect reviews of the other titles soon.  Zevin is a fabulous author.  Chet the Dog can sure, um, tell a story. (I wonder, could Spencer Quinn be a pseudonym for a dog who has learned to type? And how would that work, dogs typing?) And the Applewhites once again rise victorious from chaos.