A bluebear, we're told, has 27 lives. The great Captain has decided to only reveal half of his to us in his memoir, because, well, a bear needs his privacy. The ridiculousness of the story will keep you well entertained for all of its 700 pages. (At least, I found it entertaining.) Illustrations of the bear in question, maps of his homeland, Zamonia, and excerpts from an encyclopedia bacterially imprinted on his brain frequently pop up during Captain Bluebear's detailed account of his lives. Whether the subject is Bluebear's time spent falling through dimensional hiatuses with his best friend, Qwerty Uiop, the Gelatine Prince from the 2364th dimension, or his life on the back of a Roving Reptilian Rescuer, a pterodactyl with failing eyesight, this book is just plain fun.
How I Live Now is a wartime story told through the eyes of a young girl who, quite understandably, cares nothing about the war. Daisy, a teenage New Yorker, who is our eyes into the world of the fictitious World War III and provides the sarcasm enriched narration, has been sent to live in the English countryside with the aunt and cousins she has never known. Daisy is thrown into the strange world of homeschooling and farmlands, fourteen year olds that smoke and drive but maintain a polite innocence not seen in the city. Her cousins are mysterious but loving and seem to possess almost mystical yet unaddressed gifts. Daisy is quickly accepted as part of the family. When the only adult influence in their lives is removed, their beautiful country estate becomes a suspended safe haven- where it seems the outside world, and the war, cannot touch them, and where instances that would be unthinkable in the real world are softened, and edges between right and wrong are blurred. Issues like eating disorders and injustice and, quite frankly, incest, are minimized and told both passively and beautifully. As the war begins to affect their lives more and more, the story and the characters change before your eyes. Rosoff captured the voice of this character so perfectly and told the story so realistically, reading it is like sitting beside Daisy as she tells you her tale and whispers her secrets into your ear. I love this book.
Speaker for the Dead is the second in the Ender's Game series. It follows Ender Wiggin, three thousand years after he defeated the Buggers, an alien race that was thought to be humankind's enemy, but was simply unable to communicate with them. Ender is on a quest to revive the species that he once destroyed.
It's really hard to briefly explain the story because of its relation to the other books in the series, but just take my word for it: it's amazing. Orson Scott Card is amazing. And if you have not yet read Ender's Game, I suggest you shut down your computer, go find the book, read it, and come back to me.
So...did you love it, or what? Only about a dozen more to go, counting the prequels, companion series, and short stories. Enjoy!
I love the entire Ender's Game series, but out of the main four books, Speaker for the Dead is my favorite. The series was my first introduction into science fiction, and the ideas and philosophy of the later books opened my mind and made me think about things I'd never thought of before. Like I said: amazing.
Does this even need an explanation?
Yes.
Oh. Okay. Well, basically, Harry Potter is made of awesome. J.K. Rowling is made of awesome. Just everything in the general area of Harry Potter is made of awesome. Okay?
Thanks- it was much obliged. Clears it right up.
This is a beautiful take on a classic fairy tale: filled with magic and love, it's set in a mystical world of cultural separation, worship, and war. Book of a Thousand Days is told through diary entries of a "mucker" maid Dashti in the thousand days or so that she spends locked in a high tower with Lady Saren, a girl of gentry status who refuses to marry the man her father orders her to- and he locks her away for it. Dashti and Saren are visited by the evil Lord Khasar, whom Saren is supposed to marry but knows a horrible secret about, and Khan Tegus, the man who Saren said was her betrothed but has not spoken to since childhood. After two and a half years the girls find they need to escape from the tower, as food supplies would soon run out. Saren has become practically catatonic and is afraid to leave, or to return to her family, so when Dashti finds a way out, she agrees to run with Lady Saren. They seek refuge in Khan Tegus's realm, and hide as kitchen workers. Troubles unfold as Dashti realizes her feelings for Khan Tegus, and that Lady Saren knows much more than she lets on. Dashti is forced to impersonate her mistress, and there could be dire consequences. This is an adventurous, heart wrenching story.
The first time I heard about this book, someone said it was like X-Men meets Home on the Prairie. Well, how could you resist that? Piper McCloud is the somewhat ditzy but good natured heroine of this story, and she has a strange gift: she can fly. When she causes uproar in her small town, she is swept away to a government run facility for children like her. The characters of this story are lovable and complex; I won't give away anything anyway about the plot, because the best part is that your guesses as to what are happening are often wrong. Forester writes the twists so well that you aren't sure what's what, and for such a short read, the way you can so quickly switch from being completely charmed to completely terrified is amazing. If one thing can be said about this book, it's that Piper is one of the sweetest girls I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
I've always had a love/hate relationship with the characters of this series, especially as you get into the later two books. My friend and I both loved the books when we read them for book club, but we also both felt like smacking Miranda and Alex upside the head. Another friend said this story was like a car wreck: it's so horrible that you just couldn't look away.
Miranda and her family witness the beginning of the end of the world: a meteor crashes into the moon, and pushes it closer to the Earth (I didn't say the science was believable; just go with it,) resulting in a snowballing catastrophe- volcanoes all over the world erupt due to the gravitational pull, tsunamis flood all coastline cities. Since the moon has blocked out the sun, crops no longer grow. Disease, starvation, and death spread across the Earth like wildfire. Told through Miranda's diary entires- accounts of the horrors she and her family have to see and experience- Life As We Knew It follows Miranda trying to grow up in a new world with no room for selfish teenagers, where plans for her future only go as far as surviving the next week. The family's conditions change constantly and drastically- and you are caught in the whirlwind with them. Enjoy this story that is about family as much as it is about survival, and give Miranda a slap from me.
Jenna Fox has just woken up from a year long coma. She has just been told her name. She has just been reintroduced to the parents that raised her, the grandmother that has always stood up for her, and can't remember a thing about them. As Jenna is hidden away from everyone outside her immediate family, and kept out of the loop of what exactly happened to her, and how she was saved, we experience her flashbacks and bizarre new life through a poetically told futuristic story. You cheer for Jenna when she triumphs and cry for her when she can't understand what she has to triumph over. A beautiful, nightmarish story.
HA!
If you've ever read anything by Christopher Moore, you know that there's not much else that needs to be said. I was giggling so much as I read this that my mother came over and asked what the book was about. I tried to summarize A Dirty Job and another book of Moore's, Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings. When I finished, she looked at me and said, "That guy's on some serious drugs."
Read this when you're in need of some laughs, and some victory for the little man.
For Beta Males (and females) everywhere!
I stumbled across this book in my school library, and fell in love with it. Rainey, who has lived with one leg since birth, signs up to go on an eight-week road trip across Canada with five other teenagers. Rainey must deal with the challenges of her disability, and the challenges of any teenager: mainly, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And right before Rainey leaves on her trip, she finds out that the mother who abandoned her when she was a baby wants to meet her, since the group will be passing her home. On top of all of this, Rainey might just have let her guard down long enough to fall in love.
This book is refreshing; as is a teenage girl in a modern YA book that has some gumption- is it just me, or is anyone else tired of the awkward, clumsy, mumbling heroines of today's fiction? At one point in Tripping, Rainey walks into a cafe with some other campers, artificial leg in plain view. A prissy blonde at a table gasps, points it out to her friend, and stage whispers, "Look at her leg." Rainey turns around and yells, "Well at least my TITS are real!"
This book's characters are believably three dimensional, and every one of them becomes your favorite. If you search for that "bad guy" that is around there somewhere in most stories, the nemesis to our hero, the one that gets what's coming to them, you won't find one. Tripping reminds you that in real life, there are no "bad guys." Only people.
The End!
