Thursday, December 8, 2011

Holiday Reading

A friend and I were stirring our stubbornly not boiling solutions of hydrochloric acid and iron in chemistry laboratory the other day when we got started talking about books.  She told me she wanted to read a lot over the upcoming holiday break, but didn't know where to start.  She told me she liked emotional books with bittersweet endings, and I told her I'd make her a list.  So here it is: Amanda's Holiday Reading Guide.  Well, for one person, at least.  I'll put up a post of my favourite holiday books later in the month.  Happy reading!


Wintergirls
Laurie Halse Anderson
Lia and Cassie have been best friends since grade school, sharing everything, including one promise: “I promise to be the skinniest girl in school.  Thinner even than you.”  But when Cassie dies and Lia is haunted by her memory, will Lia wake up, or will she become a Wintergirl, too?

Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson
If something terrible happened, what would you do?  What if you decided not to speak at all rather than give voice to what happened to you?  What if you started high school as an outcast?

Want To Go Private?
Sarah Darer Littman
Abby and Luke chat online, but they haven’t met in real life.  Yet.  Abby feels alone when she starts high school, until her best friend introduces her to Chez Teen.  In Chez Teen, Abby has a completely new life with different friends and, yes, Luke.  But when she goes to meet Luke in real life, he isn’t who he said he was, and Abby’s in for a lot more than she bargained for.

How I Live Now
Meg Rosoff
Daisy is 15 when she leaves Manhattan to stay in England with her aunt and four cousins.  Soon after, her aunt leaves to give a talk about The War and whether or not it will happen.  The next day, the bombs begin.  For a while, Daisy and her cousins are fine living on their own.  But as the war continues and things get worse, it is all Daisy can do to keep them from falling apart.

Before I Fall
Lauren Oliver
What if you knew today was your last day?  What if you only had one day to live?  What would you do?  Who would you kiss?  Would you save yourself?  Samantha Kingston dies in a car crash on Friday, February 12th.  And then wakes up the next morning.  Only it’s the same morning.  Samantha returns for seven days, for a full week of her last day on earth, repeating the day over and over until she gets it right.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Future Tense


After Tuesday's video, I realized that there are quite a few futuristic/dystopian novels that I wanted to talk about that weren't covered.  Here they are.

Jenna Fox doesn't remember the accident that put her in a coma a year ago.  She doesn't even remember that Jenna is her name.  Upon waking up a year after a horrific car accident, Jenna has to re-learn to do even the simplest of tasks.  There's something not-so-simple about the way her parents act around her, though.  This fascinating book explores the right to make decisions about our own bodies and what it means to be human.

When an asteroid hits the moon, knocking it slightly closer to the earth, everything changes.  The power stops working consistently before stopping altogether.  Food riots begin.  Gas lines grow longer and longer before they, too, stop.  The weather goes crazy.  In the midst of it all, Miranda is just trying to be a normal teenager.  
I started reading this book late last summer.  About two days after I started, my town had its first earthquake in a long time.  I put the book away until I was about to leave for school.  We then had our first hurricane in years.  I was pretty freaked out!

In a world where entertainment is literally injected, Spaz is one of the few who sees the world as it really is.  When he meets Ryter, the old man who remembers things as they once were, Spaz begins to learn the history everyone else has forgotten.  He and Ryter embark on a quest to save his sister and, if they're lucky, the world.