Red Shirts by John Scalzi

Red Shirts

Fans of the Star Trek series will be familiar with the Redshirts phenomenon where there is always the 'expendable crew member' who must die. The movie, Galaxy Quest, had a character known only as Guy since he didn't last long enough in the episode where he appeared, to get a full name. Well on the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, it is noticed by the newest crew members that this ship has the highest mortality rate on away teams of any ship in the fleet and these new crew members want to avoid becoming more statistics.

This was a quick read and totally delighted me. I love the twisted reality of the Thursday Next books and my teen years were formed with Captain Kirk and his crew. This book falls in with these alternate reality stories.

My rating for this book:

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Skulduggery Pleasant

Irish author Derek Landy gives young readers a rollicking adventure full of fights with fist and feet, swords, scythes, scepters, and magic. Lots of magic.

At the reading of Gordon's will, Stephanie Edgley is surprised to learn that her uncle has left her his mansion, fortune, and royalty to all the horror books he has written. A stranger she had noticed at the funeral, called Skulduggery Pleasant, is given a mysterious message. Her jealous aunt and uncle get a brooch and her parents a villa in southern France. 

She and her mother visit the house one day and due to circumstances, she ends up spending the night alone in the house. Nothing strange there! What is unexpected is a call to her dead uncle's phone, followed by someone banging on the door demanding entrance. He eventually breaks in and demands a key from Stephanie. Luckily Skulduggery is there to save the day and start her on an amazing adventure.

Hard to see in the picture of the cover is a line at the bottom reading "AND HE'S THE GOOD GUY. Skulduggery is the character on the cover, a dapperly dressed skeleton with a fist full of fire. I have had this book on my shelf for three years and I can't for the life of me remember buying it. I'm sure I didn't realize it was written for middle school aged children and up. But I did have fun after slogging through the first part of the book full of character introductions. Once the reader has met everyone, it's a non-stop roller coaster ride.

I would recommend this for seventh grade readers and older.

My rating for this book:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief

Few books are worth the time to reread. Even rarer are those books that are worth rereading and reblogging. This is one such book.


I originally bought this copy at a library book sale for my daughter who had never read it. When she handed it back to me I knew I had to read it again. It is such a gift! It is not just another Holocaust book; it is a book about people surviving, growing, existing, and loving in the worst possible circumstances.

It is one of those books that everyone should give a couple of hours of their lives to read.

My rating for this book: 

The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester

The Man Who Loved China

Joseph Needham was a modern Renaissance man who made his life work to chronicle the history of Chinese scientific inventions and posed what was known as the "Needham question" which was the reason why these advances came to a halt around AD 1500. Winchester must have waded through thousands of pages of chronicles, letters, books, etc. to whittle Needham's life and travels down to this book.

Being interested in things scientific and things Asian, this book was a natural for me. I loved reading about his travels and inquiries along his way as he trekked around China in his search for information for what would become the premier source of information on his topics. 

This book was well worth the time to read it. Fun for adventurers, sinophiles, and those with scientific curiosity.

My rating for this book:

Tiger Lily by Jody Lynn Anderson

I have to start by saying that I am not a fan of the Peter Pan stories. I attribute that to a general distaste for stories that have been Disneyfied. The story is told by Tinkerbell, a fairie who, unlike Julia Roberts, cannot speak and is generally ignored when she tries to warn her human friends by biting them and performing other mischief. Luckily for us she can read the minds of humans and shares their thoughts with the reader. Tink is intrigued by Tiger Lily who is taciturn, stronger, and more interesting than the other young women of her tribe.

That Tiger Lily does not communicate much makes the first half of this book drag. Wendy comes on the scene, Hook tries to take out the lost boys, Tiger Lily has to marry an odious tribe member, and the mermaids are up to their shenanigans. It seems that it is not possible to be a young woman in Neverland and not be in love with Peter. He has no less that two girls, one mermaid, and one fairie in love with him. This is what leads to the climax of the story which is as interesting as watching the tide rise, surely and inexorably.

More fun for Pan fans than anyone.

My rating for this book:

I'm back after a rather long hiatus and will try to catch up on a few books from the library that I have read. To start with however, I would like to mention a reading challenge sponsored by YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) to encourage reading the excellent books on their lists of Best Books and award winners. The link to information about this challenge can be found by going to their blog site, The Hub, at http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/ and scroll down to the entry describing the challenge.

I, for one, can't resist a chance to win a bag full of new books and many of the books on these lists are ones I intend to read anyway, so why not! There are fiction and nonfiction titles, graphic novels, audio books, as well as movies. I'd love to hear if you are participating and what titles you have read/seen/listened to for the challenge.

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

This is the third book in a series about the tragic consequences of methamphetamine use based on the experiences of the author's own daughter. The first two, Crank and Glass chronicle Katrina's drug use, rehab attempts, and failed relationships. Fallout tells the story from three (of five) of her children as they each try to find their way without a mother. One boy and two girls (one didn't even know she had a sister) make their way to their grandmother's house for Christmas and along the way we learn about their attempts at relationships, living in foster homes, flirting with alchol, and generally wondering how much of their problems can be attributed to their mother's drug use or are simply dealing with life like everyone else.

Reading at least one of the first two books will help the reader understand Katrina a little and see that her children were nothing more than a byproduct. They have to live knowing that their mother had no interest in them and there is the true tragedy of this devastating drug. It does not just affect the health of the user but everyone who comes in contact with her.

My rating for this novel in verse: ****

NaNoWriMo 2011

After one failed attempt at novel writing, I am trying it again alongside some of our best and brightest students. I finally came up with an idea for a YA novel that involves dolphins. I've checked out some books from the library and am furiously studying the latest information about dolphin/human interactions and dolphin behavior.

As they say, you should write what you know and so I am basing my story on a very brief encounter I had with a dolphin when I was about 10 years old. Four of us kids were splashing and making all kinds of racket in the water when two fins came up out of the water and went back down. Our first  thought was sharks so we hightailed it back to shore screaming. Someone calmed us down and asked us if each creature had one or two fins which came out of the water. When we realized that they each had one (the dolphin's tail is flat) we learned that we had missed an opportunity to visit with dolphins. It turned out that a scientist that was studying communication with dolphins had his lab around the corner from our bay and our visitors may have been attracted from there by our noise.

Visit the NaNoWriMo website at http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/ if you are a student interested in writing a novel in November or http://nanowrimo.org/ if you are an adult. Join the fun!

I Have a Kindle

Despite all my protestations that I didn't like or want any type of ebook, my dear husband bought me a Kindle. I love knowing how well he listens to me. He wishes now that he had known about the Kindle Fire but that's OK. He bought me the model with 3G which means that anywhere I am I can click onto Amazon and with a single click, own and start reading a book. Crazy dangerous is what I call it. Fortunately I have stacks of books all over my room which I am determined to read some day.

The first book I purchased was A Trick of the Light because I couldn't wait for a copy to be available at the library and I really couldn't afford the price of a new book. It's taking me a while to "bond" with my new toy. One of the things I'm not at all crazy about is not having a beautiful color cover to enjoy. Another nerdy problem is not having page numbers. Instead I have a progress bar at the bottom which shows a percentage of completed pages.  Somehow 75% is not as satisfying as 750 pages. It might seem silly but I miss having two pages to read. Somehow moving my eyes up and down and my head left and right feels better than just up and down.

Along with the Kindle I got a cover with a cute little built in light, necessary since the Kindle isn't backlit. I used it once for fun and it works nicely.

I'm on my second book now and I seem to be more oblivious to the new format. I still have all those piles of books to read, however, and I don't plan on completely giving up on paper books any time soon.

Oops!

Oops! After I updated everything I never came back. Here's what's been happening.

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

This continues to be a very violent series. Each chapter brings us to a different character so we see what is happening in different locations pretty much at the same time. My sympathies lie mainly with the Stark family. Arya is trying to get back to her mother, Jon is trying to stay alive north of the Wall, Sansa is trying to hook up with a nice person who will take care of her, Rob is trying to fill his father's shoes and get his kingdom back, Bran is trying to get back home, too, on the back of a one word giant, and Catelyn is trying to find what's left of her family and get them back together. I decided I needed a long break after reading the 1,000+ pages of this book to allow my soul to relax and repair. Oof!  My rating for this book: ***1/2

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
Three Pines #7

This is the latest installation of the excellent mystery series that takes place in a tiny town in the Quebec province. What makes this series so amazing is the character development. Over the series the reader has come to feel like they really know the inhabitants and we feel horror and fear when it seems like one of them could be the murderer. The investigator, Chief Inspector Gamache, is the best listener, allowing information to join clues and impressions to help him form an accurate picture of what happened. And if, along the way, the reader learns a little about the art world, all's the better.

My rating for this book: ****

Under the Mesquite
by Guadalupe Garcia Mccall

I requested this ARC hoping that it would be a good addition for the school library since it featured an immigrant Mexican family, like so many here. Lupita is the oldest child of a family that spends its working and attending school in Texas and visiting family in Mexico. Things go along just fine until her mother develops cancer. Even after treatment it returns and for a while Lupita was the head of the family while her father was with her mother at the treatment center. At times the family was without food of any kind and the children would go to their friends' houses and hope for the best. One of the problems I had with this book was how everything conveniently and predictably got solved. For instance, an ice cream truck broke down in front of their house which helped feed them that day. Yeah, right! This book was presented as a novel in verse but it felt to me that was a convenient way to stretch the book out from a novella to a respectful number of pages. My rating for this book: **

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Oh, my goodness, was this a fantastic book!!!! I was totally captivated by the story which started in two parts, 50 years apart, one illustrated and one in text. Both characters were deaf and left their homes searching for something in New York. The illustrated pages zoom in and out and give you the feeling you are watching a movie. One of the settings is the fantastic Natural History Museum in New York City. Please treat yourself to this book. My rating for this book: *****

Rise the Euphrates
by Carol Edgarian

I bought this book at the San Francisco Library book sale. It gave me an introduction into the history and culture of the Armenian society. They are the original Christians living in the shadow of Mt. Ararat in Turkey, and who have been persecuted throughout history by Islamic Turks. Casard was a young girl when the Turks massacred her family in a genocide known as the Indignities. She suffered guilt all her life because she let go of her mother's hand when the women and children of her town were forced to jump into the Euphrates

River. She managed to survive, grew up in an orphanage, made her way to America where she married a Russian Armenian and had one daughter named Araxie. Araxie disgraced her family by marrying an orad, an outsider, and had three children. One of these, was a girl named Seta who is the narrator of the story. Casard's grief and guilt was felt down through the generations and had different effects on everyone. The story dragged for a while when Casard died, she was such a dynamic personality, but I persevered and finished the story. It was like The Joy Luck Club but with and Armenian family instead of a Chinese family. My rating for this book: ***1/2