Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke

I had fun with this book. It was odd, but the styling was great.  It is a recently written book written in the style of early 1800 British fiction novels, think Pride and Prejudice or Jane Ayer.  However, this book has a more modern topic than actual novels written during that time.   Magic certainly wouldn't have been an acceptable topic during those times. But it is now, so I'm very glad the author came up with this idea.  It had all the positive characteristics of the old novels, but with a more interesting topic than marriage, money, and socializing.  The only component I didn't like was the magic was odd. I assume it was based on old English accounts of magic, which today seem fanciful (at best), but once I got used to the limits and what one could do with the magic, I liked it.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes both fantasy and the Bronte sisters.

The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey - Dawn Anahid MacKeen

A very intense book, fascinating and frustrating for all the same reasons as the stories of the Holocaust, you want the people to fight back, to do something, ANYTHING, but no one realizes how bad it will get until it's too late and everyone is too exhausted to do anything about it.

The fact that the Turkish government and many of the people still deny that this even took place is unforgivable.  

This is a powerful and disturbing story and everyone should learn about a genocide that Hitler based his own genocide on.  

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

I saw this was being made into a movie, which looked like a cool movie, so I wanted to read it first.  This is a cool book. If you're looking for something entertaining, this is it.  It was fun, sassy, creative, weird. The idea of the OASIS is phenomenal, and I'm disappointed the versions of "online life" we currently have aren't as cool.  But I don't even have an internet connection at home anyway, so it's all irrelevant to me!
I do see two potential issues with the movie, however.  In the trailers, there's been a cute chick, and I'm sad because I suspect they cast some generically cute girl as Art3mis, instead of a real person as she is described in the book.  Secondly, that genericlly cute girl says, "Welcome to the rebellion." to Wade's real-life face and then some SWAT team guys bust in, also NOT in the book and, while I expect it has been added to up the adrenaline more, it is totally unnecessary. It's already a good book. Ernest Cline likely spent a year, or more, to get it here. No hollywood moron is going to improve it in a few weeks worth of half-assed effort.
Conclusion: a fun book and would highly recommend

The Case Against Sugar - Gary Traubes

Hooo-boy! If this isn't enough to get you to cut back on sugar in your diet, nothing is! 

That being said, there are some major flaws in the logic of this book. It has a few excellent points, but the author extrapolates well beyond what rational thinking allows. An example of one of his arguments from the beginning of the book is:  Alzheimer's is nearly unheard of in human populations with traditional (read: ancient) diets, so therefore it must be something we are eating because there are environmental contaminants everywhere. Places with high Alzheimer's disease also eat a lot of sugar, therefore sugar must somehow cause Alzheimer's. Superficially, that seems like a logical train of thought, but he's left out the the point about how the traditional population doesn't live as long, also has a diet low in sodium, isn't cooking on teflon, and has to hunt down and process their own food. This book is riddled with this kind of step-by-step misguidance, but I think only the minds of people who are trained to look for this will notice, scientists and nutritionists. 

There was one study cited in this book that seemed important.  Japanese women have a very low rate of breast cancer, but after moving to the US their rate of breast cancer matches any other group of people in 2 generations (length of time to fully acclimate to the local culture). Japan is also a highly industrialized country that's not big into exercise where people habitually overwork themselves. So there are lots of similarities between it and the US. The major difference between the 2 countries is diet, very obviously that can be blamed. But Japanese food culture is so healthy from pretty much every angle that it would be impossible to immediately peg down.  So this study is important, but doesn't necessarily support the author's argument. This was the other problem with this book.

Even knowing this, there was a strong urge planted in me to reduce my sugar intake, just in case. haha!

A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray

I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up, but the synopsis piqued my interest.  This is a fun book. A little heavy, a little not, good balance. I thought the author did a particularly good job of creating characters that were realistic, but likable.  The four main characters are 16-year-old girls, which are particularly disagreeable to most people, however, Bray, while keeping them 16-year-old girls, did a great job of exposing the cattiness but still gave plausible actions to keep the girls together.  She made the characters both sweet and vindictive in honest amounts. 
I would recommend this book to people who like occult, Victorian-era stuff, but not much beyond that. The story wasn't especially enchanting.

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle

I first read this book when I was in 5th grade. I remember at the time being thoroughly unimpressed and slightly confused. As with other books that I've gone back and re-read, I find my much-younger-self was pretty spot-on in her assessment.  Today, I would still describe this book in the same way.  As a child, I never liked children's stories.  This book is so weird and random, I can only attribute its success to children who are just along for the ride and aren't worried about the how or why (obviously, this was never me). 
The book has an annoying main character, they run around without reason, the descriptions are poor, the reasoning isn't well plotted, and the end is completely unsatisfactory.  I didn't like this book then, I don't now, and I don't imagine I'll watch it get ruined into a movie.

White Night - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 9)

Another Dresden novel. Good, but not my favorite so far. I liked reading it.