I read some more books.Notes from the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick

This is the follow up to Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie. It's pretty much the same territory, kind of sanitized middle school safe YA. In fact, characters from the earlier book make an appearance midway through. The main character is doing community service hours at a nursing home after driving drunk and decapitating a lawn gnome. He's a good kid, really, just upset because his parents are getting divorced. So eventually he learns lessons at the nursing home from his difficult patient. Pretty well done, but a little after school special.


Rash by Pete Hautman

PH says on his site that he should have named this book 2084. It's set in a future United Safer States of America where corporate prisons are the source of most labor. Of course the protagonist ends up in one of these prisons, where he gets to play football, which is otherwise illegal in the USSA. Nicely done.