Changes - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 12)

 My first knee-jerk reaction to this was, "Oh no, this is going downhill."  It was that internal groan of "why do children have to be a plot twist?"  As a general rule, any time surprise children show up, it's bs.  

Oh, how convenient!  You have offspring that, despite never having met, you feel suicidally protective over for no reason and completely without bonding.  But you never had to be bogged down with the actual work and sacrifice that leads to caring about a child's well-being.  (Let's be honest.  There are people who do raise their own children and still don't care about them.)

The whole plot is basically the child has to exist for the MC to give a crap and do something about it.  Then "for her own good" the child is shoved off in some unknown corner of the world where the MC still doesn't have to do any of the actual work to raise it and you know she will come back in 5-8 years as a teenager full of angst/rage/confusion about where her real parents are, bla bla bla.  

I hate children as plot devices so much.

1776 - David McCullough

 Every American needs to read this book.  It is an amazing trip through the American revolution in only the year 1776.  The war for freedom went on a long time, but several of the battles in this year were important in getting the message to Britain that the Americans were serious.  Up until the end of this year, the king and parliament thought it was just a small uprising, even after Bunker hill.  

But the reason I so highly recommend this book is the details.  You have heard of these battles in your boring high school history class, but the details are what bring the story to life and a HS class just doesn't have time for that.  Knox dragging 60 cannons from the Canadian border to Boston, Greene running out of a snowstorm on Christmas taking the Hessians by surprise, Washington pushing his men so deftly that the British estimated he must have 14,000-20,000 men in the American army when they really had only 8,000.  All of those fantastic and amazing stories get lost in the speed with which the material is covered in an American history class, so revisit that time.  You will come away with a much great appreciation of everyone involved in that whole time period.