Gary Paulsen, WINTERDANCE: THE FINE MADNESS OF RUNNING THE IDITAROD

Recommended by my cousin Mike, this was one of those books that I'd never heard of but I should have. At dinner one night with family, someone asked what I was reading lately, and I mentioned this book. Half the table exclaimed, "Oh, I read that!"
Anyway, Mike said he laughed out loud through parts of it (and, yes, there are some funny parts, like when Paulsen hitches up his Schwinn to a few dogs--but along comes the rabbit, and the dogs take off, and he flies off the bike and must watch as the bike is dragged off into the wilderness, while he must trudge miles and miles home). But I found myself cringing through much of it and jumping ahead in the book to find out how he got out of the latest disaster--fifty degrees below zero, harrowing escapes, thin ice, and the sled is always tipped over or on the verge of tipping over. My favorite parts include some lovely small portraits of the people he meets along the way.

Ruta Sepetys, BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY

No, this isn't the sexy thriller Fifty Shades of Gray. It's Sepetys's first YA novel, about a 15-year-old girl who is sent to a Siberian camp in 1941. It's well-written and engaging, definitely worth a read; but though the subject matter is harrowing, it didn't tug at me like Out of the Easy (her second).