Library Musings

I’m working to come up with a variety of book lists to help my students decide what they’d like to read next. The lists here are in progress, and I’m hoping you will know of other books that should be on the lists and will post a comment to let me know what those are. There are some list titles that don’t have any books under them yet. Like I said, it is a work in progress. Also, if you think of better list names, please let me know that in your comment as well. You’re welcome to copy, adapt and use these lists–no making money off of them, of course.

Books With Surprising, Shocking and Twisted Endings

The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Buried
My Sister’s Keeper

Best Series

Tomorrow When the War Began Series by John Marsden
The Maximum Ride Series by James Patterson
The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

Books About Vampires

The Top Seven:

1. The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
2. The Secret Circle Series by L.J. Smith
The Awakening and the Struggle
The Fury and Dark Reunion
The Initiation and The Captive, Part I
The Captive, Part II and The Power
3. The Vampire Academy Series by Richelle Mead
Frostbite
Shadow Kiss
Vampire Academy
4. The House of Night Series by P.C. Cast
Betrayed
Chosen
Marked
Untamed
5. The Blue Bloods Series by Melissa De la Cruz
Blue Bloods
Masquerade
6. Southern Vampire Novels by Charlaine Harris (The Sookie Stackhouse Series)
Club Dead
Living Dead in Dallas
Dead As A Doornail
All Together Dead
7. The Cirque du Freak Series by Darren Shan
Vampire Mountain
A Living Nightmare…
Trials of Death
The Vampire Prince
The Vampire’s Assistant

Also Excellent:

The Vampire Knight Series by Matsuri Hino (Manga)
Volumes 1, 2 & 3
Vampires: Opposing Viewpoints 398.45 SCA
The Annotated Dracula 398.21 STO
Vampires 133.4 VAM
30 Days of Night by Steve Niles (Manga)
Any Way You Want It by Kathy Love
Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez
Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley
Dracula by Bram Stoker 823 STO
Evernight by Claudia Gray
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Night Road by A.M. Jenkins
Peeps by Scott Westerfield
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Vampires 133.4 HAM
Vampires 398.45 KAL
Vampires: In Their Own Words SC VAM`

Books About Demons

The Devouring by Simon Holt

Zombies

You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay
Zombie Blondes by Brian James
The Boy Who Wouldn’t Die by William Sleator
Generation Dead by Dan Waters
Zombies 398.45 HAM

Stories About Survival in a Grim Future

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
So This is How It Ends by Tui Sutherland
The Clowns of God by Morris West
Armegeddon by Jane Yolen

Books About Suicide

Thirteen Reasons Why

Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud

Fantasy Books
Science Fiction Books

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Tear Jerkers

Books That Nearly Scared Me to Death

Love Stories

Adventures

Mysteries

Best Teen Authors

Laurie Halse Anderson
Jodi Picoult
Scott Westerfield

Books That Ask the Question: “What Would Someone Do for Love?”

The Adoration of Jenna Fox
My Sister’s Keeper

Books About Girl Groups

The Clique Novels by Lisi Harrison
Invasion of the Boy Snatchers
Best Friends for Never
It’s Not Easy Being Mean
The Private Series by Kate Brian
Invitation Only
Legacy
Confessions

Best Books About Superpowers and Special Abilities

The Maximum Ride Series by James Patterson
The Angel Experiment
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
School’s Out Forever
Final Warning
Superpowers by David J. Schwartz

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Several colleagues told me as we left for Christmas Break that I should be sure to do “something fun” while school was out. I think they meant for me to travel or go skiing or some such thing. But I’m having a happy holiday my way: with books.

I’ve had packages coming in from Amazon every couple of days, not to mention the books I’ve bought locally, so I have a lot of unread books on hand.

So far today, I started reading Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. I’ve never read it before, and had no idea how it would affect me. I’m sitting in a well-lit house, Christmas tree lights on, cats happily wandering around, sunny day outside, Christmas carols playing—and I’m scared to death. I had to put it down and switch to other books just to calm myself down. I’ll get back to it for sure. Maybe knowing I’m going to be scared will help next time. I’ve not seen the movie either. Do any of you think the movie is worth renting if I’ve read the book?

Anyway, I switched to Scott McCloud’s Making Comics. I enjoy his books and also learn something from them, but I can’t read one in a sitting, mostly because they are in comic book format, and I read more textually than visually. His books are going to be a great addition to my library though. I think the students who love manga will be very excited to see these.

So, I put Scott’s book down and switched to Damp Squid by Jeremy Butterfeld. It’s all about how language changes, how dictionaries are compiled, how new words are born, etc. I’m enjoying it.

Other books that came in today’s mail: Furry Fantastic; The Culture of Calamity; Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences; and Indexed.

Books on order: The God Machine; Earthshaking Science; Alphabet Juice; Three by Finney; Why the Long Face? and Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery

I hope some of these books will appeal to you like they have to me. Most of all, I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

I ran across an excellent post on Sue Waters’ edublog today. Between the five tips she offers and the info available in the comments to the post, the post is really a good place to “enhance your bloggin’ skills”.

What Sue had to say makes me realize that it’s time for me to get back to reading other blogs as well as posting to my own here. I do get a lot of blogging ideas from the books I read and from the daily challenges and triumphs in my own library, but I need a little enrichment.

Anyway, getting back to what I was originally going to post about today. I just finished reading Replay by Ken Grimwood. If you’ve ever entertained the classic fantasy of going back in time to do your life over again knowing what you do now, this will be an excellent choice to read. I loved the overall arc of the storyline, and certain characters became very near and dear to me.

I had a few criticisms but they’re very minor: The epilogue is written as if the author had no idea of what the book he just wrote was really about. And there were some scenes of sex and drugs that bothered me, although I can see where they were necessary to the storyline.

Overall though, this is a wonderful book. One of the very best I’ve read in a while. It’s available at Amazon, of course. Amazon lists some other books by Grimwood, but evidently they do not measure up to Replay.

So…can you tell me:

1. Have you read Replay, and what did you like and/or dislike about it?

2. Did you visit Sue Waters’ blog? Any comments you want to post here about that? Did you comment there?

3. What are your three favorite library blogs? I’d like to know that the ones I start reading are some of the best!

Thanks for reading–this is day 5 of my post-something-everyday challenge.

Absolutely True Diary is a book about challenges, changes, and choices. The central character is Arnold “Junior” Spirit, a Spokane Indian who chooses to change schools from the Indian school on the reservation to the white school in the nearby town. This one change sets in motion a cascade of events that challenge Arnold to move from a comfortable (if awkward) conventional way of thinking to a level of postconventional thinking that is almost painful to read about. This book will best be recommended to a more mature YA who has developed the ability to think in the abstract. The plot of the novel is realistic in one sense, but absurd in another–Arnold’s inner nature seems to develop in a natural way, but the brief time-frame of the plot is not a realistic time span for the changes and growth that occur. Because of this conflict, some of Arnold’s achievements seem unreal, or at the very least, miraculous. The physical changes that adolescent boys must cope with are addressed but in an awkward fashion (which may well seem very appropriate to a teenage boy). The strongest feature of the book is its realistic portrayal of emotions–how they are expressed both appropriately and inappropriately when tragedy occurs and at other times of high emotion. There are some plot points that are dropped into Absolutely True Diary and then forgotten, particularly in the second third of the book. These are distracting enough that they could keep a reader from finishing the book. This is unfortunate since the book concludes on a note that is both realistic and hopeful, and that reflects how Arnold’s perception of the people nearest to him has changed–and how much those same people actually have (or have not) changed. Ellen Forney’s rendering of Arnold’s cartoons in this book is magnificent and adds greatly to the quality of the book. In summary, I think that boys will find this book most appealing, and that the ideal target reader would be a boy who reads on an advanced level but feels like an outsider at school.

I’m having a great time reading and reviewing books for my YALSA class with Teri Lesesne. I’m focusing on books for guys since I’ve found they’re my toughest customers.

The most recent book I’ve read is Firestorm by David Klass. (It’s the first book in The Caretake Trilogy.)

I loved this book. Stayed up all evening to read it from front to back, in fact. The action never stops, and that is why I think this one will be especially appealing to guys. Although the book has a message about ecological concerns, that message never gets in the way of the full-speed throttle of the storyline. Main character, Jack, moves quickly from a typical high school life with football success and a girlfriend into a new and baffling world where he never knows who he can trust or who will betray him. A mangy mutt with telepathic powers and an overblown sense of self-esteem leads him to a locked barn where he is beaten severely and repeatedly by a masked Ninja warrior. But, through his severe trials, Jack becomes the man he needs to be to accomplish his first mission: find Firestorm and set events in motion that will save the world from the destructive path set by ignorant and uncaring humans.

Guys will love the idea of being tested and hammered out into a stronger, faster, better warrior. The small doses of literary quotes and vocabulary building words won’t hurt them a bit either–the action fits the words so that they are melded seamless into the narrative of the book.

My only “complaint” about this book is that the ending is not quite the “firestorm” that I expected, although it is certainly spectacular. I’ll be very interested to see how the storyline continues in the remaining volumes of the trilogy.

I’d give this one five stars for your guys. You can sell it as a fantasy novel or as a novel that takes “boot camp” to the extreme.