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

I’m reading Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount, Jr. This is one of those delightful books that leads you to read it out of sequence by linking one entry to another, compelling you to jump from one area to another from sheer interest.

Blount looks at everything from etymologies to computer text-slang, to how the sounds of letters develop a meaning of their own–all in a dry and humorous style that keeps you reading while possibly teaching you something of value about language.

Some notes from the book on the word ain’t: “Too bad this tangy, useful verb, which was standard in the eighteenth century, has been so stigmatized since the nineteenth. Just as y’all, as a plural of you, fills a gap in English, so does ain’t as a conjunction of am not. Anyone attempting to pronounce amn’t may a attract a cowd of well-wishers admiring his or her pluck, but whatever other words the speaker surrounds it with will be lost.”

Later in the same entry, speaking of other reasons to use ain’t he gives these examples: “…where would American song lyrics be without ain’t? … ‘There is no cure for the summertime blues.’ ‘Isn’t she sweet?’ ‘Two Out of Three Isn’t Bad.’”

I was going to include his sample song lyric, “Amn’t Misbehaving’”, but how would I have indicated the apostrophe shortening the word “misbehaving” in the sentence I was quoting since I was already reducing his quotation marks to apostrophes in order to fit them into my quotation marks? I suppose that’s why we sometime indent a longer quotation? Clearly I ain’t no grammaratition.

A bit from another entry, this one on arts, the: “‘Maybe it’s true that artists adopt a flamboyant appearance,” said Quentin Crisp, … but it’s also true that people who look funny get stuck with the arts.’  (See common and funny looks.)” Which, of course, makes you itch to move on to one of those entries instead of going directly from the arts to the next entry, A’s, which is about the baseball team in Oakland.

Did books have this delightful tendency to provide links in their books before the World Wide Web came along? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I have no answer. Or I ain’t go no answer.

I find myself amusing (no conceit here) in that I write roughly in Blount’s style here to help convey the essence of his book.

BTW, this entry is a great to write on a new curvy keyboard where you need to learn the exact distance to stretch your pinky to type a parentheses, an apostrophe, and a quote mark. Not to mention finding that elusive “Q”.

In addition to authoritative print dictionaries he has consulted, Blount also mentions web sites (websites?) he visited in compiling the book, and so links to the Internet as well as to his own entries.

See etymologies.com, except that I just went there and found that it’s one of those unregistered web site names that gives you a this-name-is-not-registered-you-could-buy it/search page. So, I must have the name wrong, and now I don’t know what the correct URL was for the website. Etymonline looks possible although I don’t think it’s the one he mentioned. Another reason to keep a notepad at hand while you read, or at least use paperclips or post-it notes.

And I don’t think I’ve using “parsing” quite correctly in the title of this entry, but I liked the sound of it.

I’m getting exhausted from trying to put quotation marks, apostrophes, italics and bold print in the right places here in addition to constantly worrying about my use of punctuation. For that problem, I could refer to another book on my shelf: Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences, but not right now, so I’ll close instead by recommending Blount’s book to the highest degree. And not so much Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences.