100 Best-Ever Teen Novels

Do you want a big list of books to read?  Check out NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list by clicking here. You can click on the titles you've read & it will total it for you.  I've read 38 of the titles and several are on my to-read list.  Check it out!

Book Trailers from November 7

If you're interested in watching the book trailers we discussed in class on Thursday, you can access my Prezi with the trailers embedded here.

I've already posted summaries of each of the books on this blog, so if you want a refresher, click on the titles below and it will take you to those posts.  Happy reading!

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness AND Cinder, by Marissa Meyer
The Hypnotists, by Gordon Korman AND The Distance Between Us, by Kasie West

For those who have read Allegiant...

You should read Veronica Roth's blog on why she ended the Divergent series in the way she did.  If you have not read Allegiant, but you plan to...DON'T go read the blog.  The spoilers there would ruin it for you.  If you have read it, you might have traipsed around in a funk for a few hours like I did when I finished in on Sunday.  But after processing it for about 24 hours and then reading the blog, it made more sense and I felt a little better about it.  If you're interested in reading the author's personal thoughts on the ending, click here!

Lots to Catch up On

I promised myself today while we were in the library that I would a) update this blog & b) get some book trailers ready for sometime next week.  I haven't been very good about either lately, have I?  I also wanted to post a link to the blog that Mrs. Gehrt shared today while we were in the library.  It's called Sparkles and Lightning and I just spent a little bit of time exploring this incredibly extensive Young Adult book blog.  It's awesome!  I encourage you to check it out.

I've really been catching up on #2's & #3's in series, so I haven't had  a lot to share, but over the last couple of weeks, I've ready some new books that I can recommend.

Let's start with 13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson.  This was a fun story about Ginny, who receives a box from her favorite aunt one year after her aunt's death from brain cancer.  In the box are 13 blue envelopes that take Ginny on a road trip across Europe over the summer.  Each envelope gives Ginny a destination and an assignment, and once she completes each assignment, she can open the next envelope. Ginny hopes to connect with the aunt she lost, but ends up learning a lot about herself along the way.  Maureen Johnson is also the author of the Shades of London series, which includes The Name of the Star, one of our Truman nominees for this year.  This book is very different, but still very good!

Last spring I read a book called The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvater and I recently read the 2nd book in The Raven Cycle series, called The Dream Thieves and realized I hadn't ever blogged about the series.  In The Raven Boys, we meet Blue Sargent, who lives in a house with her psychic mother and aunts and various other relatives.  On St. Mark's Eve, Blue is at a graveyard with her mother waiting for the spirits of the soon-to-be-dead to walk by.  Blue encounters a spirit named Gansey, and her because she herself has no psychic powers is told that she saw this spirit because she is either his true love...or she killed him.  Blue later on
actually meets Gansey and his friends from the exclusive Aglionby School in her town.  She befriends the group and helps them in Gansey's quest to find a mythical king named Glendower.  This is a real paranormal/fantastical type of story and I really enjoyed it.  In the 2nd book, The Dream Thieves, Ronan (one of Gansey's friends) has revealed that he can bring items out of his dreams...and the quest for Glendower continues.  It's a very interesting & different series, but I enjoyed both books.

Over the weekend, I read Shipbreaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi, which I have been meaning to read for forever.  I'm glad I finally got to it, because it was really good.  It was an action-packed adventure that takes place in the future along the coast of what once was Louisiana.  We meet Nailer, who works "light crew" for companies that tear apart old oil tankers and cargo ships.  Part of Nailer's work is to crawl through dark ducts in search of copper wire to retrieve, so it can be recycled.  It's horrible and extremely demanding and on top of that, his dad is a drug addict who is both verbally and physically abusive.  All shipbreakers hope that one day they'll have a "Lucky Strike" and discover a pocket of oil or some good scavenge that will allow them to be on their own.  After a destructive hurricane, Nailer and his crew boss/friend, Pima, discover a wrecked clipper full of riches that they hope to scavenge, until they discover that one passenger, the owner of the clipper and also the heir to a huge company, Nita survived.  When Nailer's dad finds the wreckage, he lays claim to the scavenge and is determined to "sell" Nita back to her family.  Nailer has to decide whether to work with his father or with Nita.  This was a terrifically exciting story and I loved every minute of it!

And finally, a mushy girly novel for you.  Yesterday, I read Belles, by Jen Calonita.  Last year I praised Ms. Calonita's Secrets of My Hollywood Life series & her new Belles series did not disappoint.  In Belles, we meet Isabelle  ("Izzy") - and Mirabelle ("Mira"), who are from 2 totally different worlds, but get thrown together unexpectedly.  Izzy's mom died 5 years ago in a car accident and her grandma is now in bad shape due to Alzheimer's, so it's no surprise when Izzy's social worker tells her that her grandma can no longer be her caretaker.  However, it is a surprise when her social worker reveals that Izzy won't be going into a foster system, but that her grandma located a long-lost uncle, who has agreed to take Izzy into his family.  Izzy's uncle is a former major-league baseball player, who is now a North Carolina state senator and who is looking to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.  And, he is LOADED.  Mira is his daughter, along with his other 2 children, Hayden and Connor.  Mira and Izzy are the same age, but struggle to see eye-to-eye since they come from two very different lives.  I absolutely loved this book, but I'm a sucker for some good chick lit!

So, there you have it.  Now, I'll get to work on some book trailers for next week!

Book Trailers & Summaries, 9-20-13

Here is a link to the book trailers we saw today in class.  Some classes didn't get to the last one (or two in 8th hour's case).  You can view them through the link provided here.  I am linking the summaries I've already posted below, so you can read more about my thoughts on these books (just click on the titles):

The Raft - apparently, I didn't blog about this one.  I will...soon!

Uglies & Wonder

Dark Life

Entwined

I have a copy of The Raft, Uglies, & Entwined - let me know if you'd like to read any of those titles & I'll put you on the waiting lists!  Have a great weekend all!

It's Been Awhile!

Sorry I have been lax on posting to the book blog, but with school starting, I just haven't quite had as much time to read as I did during the summer.  However, I have recently finished these two gems and had to be sure to recommend them to you.

First up, The Hypnotists, by Gordon Korman.  This is his latest book and is the first in a series, though I'm not sure how many books the series will contain.  The main character, Jackson (Jax) Opus has always seemed to get by in life easily, but it wasn't something he's ever noticed much.  His best friend, Tommy, is the only one who seems to be immune, but doesn't miss how other people treat Jax.  At the boys' championship basketball game, Jax starts seeing strange things and the best basketball player in the city, whom he happens to be guarding, is having the worst game of his life.  Eventually, Jax is "discovered" by a renowned institute in the city - the Sentia Institute - and its highly-esteemed head, Dr. Elias Mako.  When he joins the institute, Jax discovers that he comes from a powerful bloodline of hypnotists and with training, he could be the most powerful hypnotist of all time.  But when Jax discovers that Dr. Mako may not be using hypnotism for good purposes, he has to decide whether to go along or to find a way out.  I put this book on hold after I read Korman's Ungifted, and it did not disappoint.  The writing was funny and the storyline was very entertaining.  It leaves you with a cliffhanger wondering what will happen with Jax next.

This one is for the girls - The Distance Between Us, by Kasie West.  This title popped up in a goodreads.com newsletter I got this summer and I tucked it away to read at some point.  I rediscovered the title & lo and behold, it was available through Overdrive (Mid-Continent's e-book source), so I downloaded it onto my Kindle and loved every bit of it.  Caymen is 17 and doing her very best to help her struggling single mom with her business, a doll store.  It's not Caymen's dream, but she feels like her mom has given up everything for her, so she's willing to do the same. One afternoon, a boy comes into the doll shop and everything changes.  He's the grandson of a regular client named Xander and he is interested in Caymen.  The only problem - he's completely and totally rich.  Why is this a problem, you ask?  Because Caymen's dad was a rich guy who left her mom with a baby and never helped her out again, and she's never gotten over it.  Caymen thinks she really likes Xander, but she's not sure how to please her mom and go after something she wants that she knows her mom will hate.  The story is a little predictable, but what really made this story for me was Caymen's "voice" telling the story.  She was so sarcastic and funny throughout that I found myself laughing out loud many times at her sense of humor.  I'm a sucker for a love story too, so it was an all around winner for me!

And finally, here's  a link to the Prezi of book trailers we looked at a couple of weeks ago in class.  There aren't summaries in the Prezi with the trailers, but I have written about most of them on this blog if you want more information.  Click here for Beastly and The Scorpio Races. Click here for Flesh & Blood So Cheap - The Triangle Fire & Its Legacy.  Click here for Ungifted.  And finally, click here for Mind Games. Or - just ask me about them in class...speaking of which...LIBRARY DAY TOMORROW!  Woohoo!  I love taking a trip to the library. :)

Books for all Kinds

I've got 4 book recommendations for you today.  Two are historical fiction, one is a futuristic fairy tale re-make, and one is heart-wrenching fantasy.

Let's start with the heart-wrenching fantasy.  If your remember, last year I raved about Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask & the Answer, & Monsters of Men).  It was a no brainer that I wanted to read A Monster Calls, a stand alone title about a British boy named Conor.  Conor has a terrible nightmare many nights about a horrible monster, and one night a monster comes to his room.  This isn't the same monster from his nightmare, but he says Conor has called him.  The monster will tell Conor three stories, then Conor must tell the monster his story.  In the meantime, Conor's life is in turmoil.  His mom is going through cancer treatments, his dad is in America with a new family, and he is forced to move in with his grandma.  This story was not what I expected - I expected horror, blood, & guts. And though it wasn't what I expected, I was not disappointed.  It turned out to be a story that pulls on your emotions and makes you feel the hurt that Conor is experiencing.  This was a fantastic story & I highly recommend it!

I read 2 historical fiction books from my shelf at school.  If you want to be on the list to borrow either one, let me know!  First, I read Jefferson's Sons, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.  This story was fascinating and inspired me look into the historical facts of the story after I read it.  The story is completely made up, but based on events that are believed to be true.  It is the story of Thomas Jefferson's illegitimate children that he had with his slave, Sally Hemings.  The four children, Beverly, Harriet, Madison, & Eston lived as slaves on Jefferson's estate (this is documented as true) and this story tells what life might have been like for these children growing up.  They were all eventually freed by their father, though not formally acknowledged as his children.  This story takes you through life in the early 1800's through the eyes of the children.

I also finally read Prisoner B-3087, by Alan Gratz.  This is again historical fiction, but based on true events that occurred in the life of Jack Gruener from the years of 1939-1945.  Young Jack, or Yanek, as he was known at the time, was a Jewish boy living in Poland when Hitler invaded his country.  It tells his story of living in the ghetto of his city to the 10 different concentration camps he survived.  The basic events are true, but the story has been fictionalized and embellished by the author.  This was a hard book to put down.  I find reading about the Holocaust to always be fascinating.  This year, we'll read Night, by Elie Wiesel, which is a Holocaust memoir.  I think reading anything you can about the Holocaust will give you some great background before we study it in more detail this year.

I just finished reading Cinder, by Marissa Meyer this morning.  This is another one I pulled off my shelf from school.  This is the first book of the Lunar Chronicles series and I'm already itching to read the second book, Scarlet.  Cinder is a futuristic retelling of Cinderella.  The main character, whose name is Cinder, is a cyborg (she's human, but after a horrible accident was rebuilt with mechanical parts) mechanic living in New Beijing somewhere in the future.  She was adopted by a man, who died shortly after adopting her, leaving her with his wife and 2 daughters.  With the exception of the youngest sister, the family wants nothing to do with Cinder and use her job as a mechanic to support their family.  Right before the annual ball, a couple of important things happen, Prince Kai seeks her help as a mechanic to repair an android from the palace, and Cinder's younger step-sister Peony contracts Letumosis, a plague that has no cure.  In trying to help find a cure for Peony, Cinder discovers that she is immune to the plague and there is a lot about herself that she did not know.  There is also the threat of a war with the people of Luna, who live on the moon and whose queen wants to take over the earth.  There's a lot going on in this story and it keeps you interested from start to finish.  If you like futuristic, science-fiction type stories and don't mind the fairy tale twist, you'll definitely want to borrow Cinder from me.

So, are you counting down the days until school starts?  I hope to see many of you on Thursday at registration!  This may be my last post before you start school...we'll see how much I get to read between now and then.  See you all soon!