I have not updated my "Now I'm Reading" list because I have had terrible karma whenever I attempt to edit the template of my other blog. I have lost half the template three different times in the past few days. This has happened after I have successfully made small changes and have republished and everything looks great. So, I'm not messing with templates for a while. Text is not aligning to the left properly either. Go figure.

So, what am I reading now? I'm mesmermized by How I Live Now , a new YA novel by Meg Rosoff. It has received an enormous amount of attention from book critics recently. Yes, the adult world has taken notice! The voice of the protagonist, a fifteen-year-old American girl, is so arresting that nothing has made me stop turning the pages.

While the world is in total chaos and war is imminent, she is sent by her father and stepmother to live with her cousins in England. No, this is not an historical novel. Terrorists set off bomb after bomb in London, rumors besiege the countryside (Has smallpox killed millions or is it just hearsay?), and the cousins find themselves at home on their own in a bid for survival. I'm halfway through, and I'm not at all sure what the author is trying to say, but the voice carries me along as if I were coasting on a raft in a river with a commanding current.

Rosoff lives in the Boston area and is now struggling through treatment for breast cancer. The Boston Globe recently printed this article about her, though I'm not at all sure it is still available.