Wow - I Guess I've Read a Book or Two Lately...

I read a lot over break...A. LOT.  So I have bunches & bunches of books to recommend to you here.  So, get comfortable, because reading this post might be a little like reading a book too!

First up, The Wednesday Wars, by Gary D. Schmidt.  I made no secret last year about how much I loved Schmidt's Okay for Now.  In fact, I just told someone today that I liked it so much, I'd really like to re-read it again.  So it's shocking to me that it took me this long to read the companion novel to Okay for Now - The Wednesday Wars.  The main character, Holling Hoodhood is friends with Doug Sweiteck, who is the main character of OFN and the story takes place during their 7th grade year.  All of Holling's classmates spend every Wednesday afternoon either Catholic or Jewish religious classes, and Holling, being a Presbyterian, has to stay at school with his teacher, Mrs. Baker.  He's convinced from the beginning that Mrs. Baker absolutely hates his guts, and here's why - she decides they should read Shakespeare together.  Shakespeare!  Who wants to do that?  This book takes  you month by month and Shakespeare work by Shakespeare work as Holling gets through his 7th grade year.  This book is both funny and heartwarming, just like it's companion.  I highly recommend it!

I make no secret of the fact that I love a good romance and This is What Happy Looks Like, by Jennifer E.
Smith, fit the bill perfectly.  The story begins with a string of e-mails between 2 teens...Graham and Ellie.  Graham accidentally sends Ellie an e-mail by mistake, but when she responds, they strike up a friendship through e-mails.  What Ellie doesn't know is that Graham isn't just any ordinary boy - he's Graham Larkin, movie star.  When the location for Graham's current film falls through, he arranges for the film to be shot in Ellie's hometown, small town Henley, Maine, because he wants to meet Ellie.  There are all kinds of reasons that they shouldn't be together, starting with the fact that he's a movie star and she's just an ordinary girl.  You'll have to read it to find out if they can find a way to make it work!

Since we've recently read To Kill a Mockingbird, you'll totally get all the references to the story if you read Sure Signs of Crazy, by Karen Harrington.  This book has an incredibly quirky main character who has dealt with a LOT in her life.  Sarah Nelson has spent her whole life looking for signs that she is going crazy like her mom.  When she was two, her mom tried to drown her and succeeded in drowning her twin brother, Simon.  Since then, her mom has been in a mental institution and her dad has turned to alcohol.  Because her mother's crime was a national news story, they've moved around several times trying to avoid people knowing who they are and because of that, Sarah has never found a place where she really fits in.  In fact, her best friend is a plant.  (It's a good plant, but still)  When her 7th grade teacher assigns the class to write letters over the summer to anyone they'd like, Sarah decides that she would like to write Atticus Finch, because she wishes her dad was like Atticus.  Through the letters and the events of her summer, Sarah starts to come to terms with the fact that sometimes life is crazy, regardless of whether you are or not.  If you read Mockingbird in book club last year & liked it, I think you'd really like Sure Signs of Crazy.  It had a similar style and feel to it, though this story is not quite as heart wrenching as Caitlin's in Mockingbird.

I loved, loved, loved this next book - Going Vintage, by Lindsey Leavitt.  In this book, Mallory finds out
that her boyfriend, Jeremy, is cheating on her - virtually, in an online game, but still!  She breaks up with him and swears off all things technology - no computer, no cell phone.  Then she finds a list her grandma wrote in 1962 when she was the same age (16) and it was a list of things she wanted to accomplish her junior year in high school:  1) Run for pep club secretary, 2) Host a dinner party/soiree, 3) Sew a dress for homecoming, & 4) Get a steady (that's slang for steady boyfriend if you're not up on it).  Mallory enlists the help of her sister, Jenny, and ends up getting some unexpected help from her ex's cousin, Oliver, too.  This book was so much fun...I loved seeing Mallory really grow up after making her choice to swear off technology until she accomplishes her grandma's list.

Another book I loved, loved, loved is Counting by 7's, by Holly Goldberg Sloan.  In this book, you meet Willow Chance, who is one of the most quirky characters you may ever meet.  Willow is "highly gifted" and has always been homeschooled until she and her parents decide it's time to try public school.  Things aren't really going that well - after scoring a perfect score on the state test, the principal thinks she cheated and sends her to weekly meetings with worthless school counselor, Dell Duke, which leads her to her first real friend, Mai Nguyen who escorts her brother to weekly meetings with Mr. Duke.  When tragedy strikes for Willow, this unusual circle pulls together to try to make things work for her.  This book was equal parts sad, happy, heartwarming, and funny.  So, so good!

If heartwarming isn't your thing and you want to read something a little bit darker in mood, you might like Hostage Three, by Nick Lake.  This is a "pulled out of the headlines" type story about a girl whose family is kidnapped by Somalian pirates as they sail around the world on their yacht.  Many of you have mentioned seeing Captain Phillips recently, and it's the same type of story.  The main character, Amy, has made a lot of bad choices, but many of them stem from her mother's suicide a few years ago.  Since then her dad has remarried, but really stays out of Amy's life for the most part until he decides to buy a yacht and take the family on a trip around the world.  They know there is a danger of pirates on their route, but didn't think there was any chance that it would happen to them.  When their yacht is boarded by Somali pirates, Amy ends up finding a connection to the youngest pirate, Farouz, who also speaks English. She learns some of the history of Somalia and begins to understand a bit why these young Somali men turn to the dangerous life of pirating.  Like I said, this is not a happy, feel good read.  It has some very dark parts, but it is an interesting look into something that has been happening in our world.

Another darker story that I've read recently is called Heartbeat, by Elizabeth Scott.  In this story Emma's life is turned upside down when her mom has a brain aneurism.  Technically, she should be dead - and she is - brain-dead, but Emma's step-father has chosen to keep her mom on life support, because she is pregnant.  He wants to keep her alive long enough, so that Emma's brother can be born.  However, it is pure anguish for Emma to see her mother kept alive, but know that she will never BE alive again.  She resents her father and she resents the baby and is just completely torn apart by her grief.  She eventually befriends, Caleb, who has been labeled a bad-boy for his drug-addicted, car thief former ways.  Caleb has turned his life around, but Emma learns that the grief he carries for things in his life also runs deep and they find a connection in that.  This was a deep and heavy read, but I really liked watching Emma fight her way through a situation that none of us would want to find ourselves in.

Okay - one last book.  But it's not out yet.  And it's the third & final book in the series.  But...it was SO, SO good that I have to give it a plug.  I'm plugging it because the first 2 books in the series are also SO, SO good.  The 3rd book in The Ascendance Trilogy - The Shadow Throne, by Jennifer A. Nielsen.  This story tells us how Jaron, Imogen, Tobias, Roden, Amarinda, & Mott finally end up, and did I mention it was SO, SO good?  It comes out February 25.  If you haven't read the first 2 books, The False Prince and The Runaway King, get on it.  You're missing an incredible series filled with adventure, action, suspense, humor, love, friendship, and all the good things that you want to find in a book!

Book Trailers from 1-24-14

Here's a link to the book trailers/talks we had in class last Friday.  Check out the trailers, then you can check out more about each book by clicking the links below!

Shipbreaker

Inhuman, The Eye of Minds, & Pivot Point

New Year, New Books!

Believe it or not, I've done a lot of reading over this nice, long winter break and because of that, I have 5 different titles to recommend to you today.  They are all very different types of stories, so hopefully, you can pick out one you'd like to try in the near future.

First up, Inhuman, by Kat Falls.  If you remember, Kat Falls also wrote the Dark Life series I recommended this past summer.  Inhuman is the first in her new Fetch series.  Lane lives in a future United States where a deadly disease has caused the need for a 700 foot tall wall that stretches along the Mississippi River from the Canadian to the Mexican border splits the states.  Twenty years ago, a corporation mistakenly released a deadly virus that mixed human and animal DNA turning people feral and savage before eventually dying.  When the plague hit and the wall was built, people from the east emigrated to the west to try to get beyond the wall and safety, but in doing this, left all their valuables behind.  Lane discovers that people are paid well to "fetch" - sneak past the wall to retrieve those valuable items from a dangerous and savage world.  A military authority informs Lane that her father is a fetch and that unless Lane finds him and gets him to retrieve an item for her, she'll arrest him and he'll be severely punished.  Lane has to find a way across the wall to find her father and save him from certain punishment.  This story is unique, but doesn't lack for excitement.  I was skeptical of the storyline at first, but once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down.  I'm already anxiously awaiting the second book in the series due out in September of this year.

Next, I read Sisters Red, by Jackson Pearce.  Fairytale retellings are really popular right now & this one is a

unique twist on Little Red Riding Hood.  In this retelling, Scarlett and Rosie are sisters who lost their grandmother to a wolf when they were very young.  It wasn't just any wolf - it was a werewolf.  And Scarlett didn't just lose her grandmother - she also lost her one of her eyes fighting off the werewolf until their neighbor woodsman came and saved them.  Scarlett vowed to become the best werewolf hunter around and learned how to do so.  Rosie also hunts, but isn't as consumed by it as Scarlett is.  When there seem to be an unusually large number of werewolves showing up, Scarlett, Rosie, and their friend Silas realize that there is more going on than they realize and that they have their work cut out for them.  And on top of that, Rosie and Silas are falling in love.  Will they succeed in stopping the werewolves?  You'll have to read it to find out.  If you like this story, Jackson Pearce has written 3 other fairytale retellings you can check out as well:  Sweetly, Fathomless, & Coldspell.

I also read the newest title from the author of the Maze Runner series - The Eye of Minds, by James Dashner.  This is the first book in his new The Mortality Doctrine series.  In this story, we follow Michael, who lives for his time on the VirtNet - a virtual gaming world where you don't just play video games, you live them.  When Michael is approached by the people in charge of the VirtNet to ask him to find another player, Kaine, who is killing people, Michael is unsure.  Eventually, he and his friends, Sarah & Bryson decide to take on Kaine, find him and put a stop to the horrible things he's doing in the virtual world.  This story follows their adventure through different games to find the evil mastermind, but Michael makes some terrifying discoveries along the way that will affect his life - if he gets out alive.

One of my favorite books I read over break was called Pivot Point, by Kasie West.  I recommended The

Distance Between Us by this same author a few month ago, which is why I wanted to read another book by this author.  This book was a completely different type of story, but just as good.  In this book, Addie Coleman lives in a world that most people don't know about.  She lives in a community of paranormals - people who have learned to use a far larger percentage of their brains than the rest of the population.  Due to this, they develop mind abilities - like being able to move objects with their minds, being extremely persuasive, memory erasers, or human lie detectors (as Addie refers to her dad).  Addie herself has the ability to see her future when faced with a choice.  When Addie's parents tell her they've decided to divorce and that she can choose who she lives with, she's faced with just such a choice:  stay with her mom in the paranormal compound that she's familiar with or move with her dad into the world of normal people.  The book alternately tells what happens in Addie's "futures" with both parents - and neither are good.  When she's done searching, she has to choose between two terrible options.  This is the first of a two book series. Book 2 - Split Second comes out on February 11 and I already can't wait to get my hands on it!

Finally, I picked up Etiquette & Espionage, by Gail Carriger.  How could you not love the gorgeous cover on this book - so pretty!  This is book #1 in her Finishing School series.  This book was very different from what I expected, but I really liked it.  In this book, we meet Sophronia, who just is not living up to her mother's expectations for a girl in the mid-1800's. Sophronia is always getting herself into trouble and is not even close to being ladylike.  Her mother decides to send Sophronia to Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality in order for Sophronia to learn how to be a lady.  What Sophronia and her mother did not know that this particular finishing school isn't just about learning fashion, manners, and how to behave in polite society - these young ladies are also learning the skills of being spies and even how to assassinate someone if the situation calls for it.  Not only that, the school isn't even on the ground - it's carried around through the sky by dirigibles!  I expected this story to be very serious and spy-like, and though there are those parts, it is more a light-hearted adventure.  Sophronia meets a lot of interesting characters in her time at the school and has a lot of excitement along the way.  There will be 4 books in this series.  Book 2, Curtsies & Conspiracies is already out.  Book 3, Waistcoats & Weaponry will be out later this year.  Book 4, Manners & Mutiny is named, but doesn't have a publication date yet - I'm guessing sometime in 2015.  I look forward to seeing what other exciting predicaments Sophronia will find herself in as she continues through finishing school!