I know intellectually that there is probably something better to do on a stormy Monday night than play boat in the living room with my buddy, maybe a plate of cinnamon toast, and a satisfying haul of books from the 'brary, and my computer, but right now I can't think of what that might be.
John Banville, The Book of Evidence; Neil Gaiman, Coraline and Sandman (vol. 1); Avi, Crispin: the Cross of Lead, and Joseph Krumgold, ...And Now, Miguel. Also Words to Outlive Us, a book of first-person accounts of the Warsaw ghetto, and The Age of Napoleon, because France is a blank slate for me between 1429 and 1914, except maybe Louis XIV-XVII (the high Louis) and 1871.
Charming and genuine, with real dialect. I think Krumgold reproduced well the rhythms of people fluent in both English and Spanish; it meshed well in my head with what little I know. A simple, if dated, bildungsroman with a really fine chapter as Miguel and his older brother makes sense of their theology. Plus sheep-shearing, for Farm Boy, and living in the Sangre de Cristo which is probably nothing like the territory around Animal Dreams but is enough for my eastern-living, urban-residing mind to make the connection.