Archive for September 2010
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[Teen Fiction]
High school senior Sutter Keely has a great life. He’s popular, he has a beautiful girlfriend, and he’s a party animal. His main problem? He has a slight alcohol problem.
…to say the least. His knack for “fortifying” himself at most times of the day affects him mentally, as well as those around him.
After he passes out drunk in a yard in the middle of the night, he meets Aimee, a shy girl who has done little with her life besides throw her mother’s paper route and get good grades. As a result, both their lives begin to change. Will Sutter’s life turn for the better with Aimee’s influence? You’ll have to check it out to find out!
Tharp does a very good job at keeping the reader interested, and this book is written realistically and honestly.
This book was also a National Book Award finalist.
If you liked The Spectacular Now, try:
Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Black Box by Julie Schumacher
Fat Kid Rules the World by K. L. Going
For something a LITTLE different, try:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
For something REALLY different, try:
Feed by M. T. Anderson
Review by Carlen
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[Adult DVD - Fiction] (Directed by Shawn Levy)
Join New Jersey’s painful-to-watch, routined-to-death couple Phil and Claire Foster as they embark on one of the wackiest date nights ever.
The movie opens depicting the couple’s weekly restaurant routine, the same boring food at the same boring place. While the Fosters’ marriage is stable, it certainly lacks the “spice of life” aspect that stressful jobs and exhausting children took from them.
On a whim, Claire dresses up for their following date night and Phil follows suit. While attempting to get seats at an extremely popular restaruant in Manhanttan, Phil steals another couple’s reservation and thus begins the chain of events that follow.
Uttering the phrase, “We’re the Tripplehorns!” will be the biggest mistake of Phil’s night!
With an all-star cast including Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Ray Liotta, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mila Kunis, and Mark Ruffalo, Date Night should prove a light, hilarious adventure.
If you liked Date Night, try:
Leap Year (Directed by Anand Tucker)
Did You Hear About the Morgans? (Directed by Marc Lawrence)
30 Rock (NBC Universal Television)
For something a LITTLE different, try:
Dear John (Directed by Lasse Hallstrom)
For something REALLY different, try:
The Blind Side (Directed by John Lee Hancock)
Review by Carlen
[Juvenile Fiction]
A terrifying and tragic year unfolds for fourteen-year-old Melinda as she begins high school. A former popular girl, Melinda is ostracised by her classmates and peers for calling the police at a party for a reason learned later in the novel. Unable to tell neither the authorities nor her parents, Melinda spends her freshman year of high school in constant turmoil and despair.
Anderson writes beautifully, and the audience will feel Melinda’s pain while reading…
“I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. “
Anderson artfully includes dialog in her book, where often Melinda’s responses are:
Me:
While this book is intended for Young Adult readers, adults can appreciate the sincerity of Anderson’s first novel, which is terrifyingly beautiful.
It also won serious acclaim being a National Book Award finalist, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, School Library Journal’s Best Book of the Year, and for receiving the 1999 Golden Kite Award.
Speak is also on the American Library Association’s top 100 Challenged Books from 2000-2009.
If you liked Speak try:
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Inexcusable by Chris Lynch
Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
For something a LITTLE different, try:
Shift by Jennifer Bradbury
For something REALLY different, try:
Night by Elie Wiesel
Review by Carlen
Summary: Slough House, which is neither a house nor in Slough, is where the British intelligence service hides its embarrassments. For those who have left top-secret files on a train, botched a surveillance, been the scapegoat for organizational failings or just become unreliably drunk, Slough House is the destination, where grinding and repetitive tasks await. Dubbed ‘Slow Horses’ by the rest of the service, agents such as the bitter River Cartwright are a laughing stock. When a young Pakistani man is kidnapped, and his jailers threaten to behead him live on the Internet, River sees his chance at redemption. But everything is not what it seems to be, and soon everyone at Slough House must choose whether or not to take up arms in the fight for which they were first trained.
Review: The ‘organizational outcasts make good’ plot has, of course, been done before. Herron, however, writes well enough to breathe new life into a worn genre trope. The story is plausibly twisty, with sympathetically drawn characters complex enough to follow their own prerogatives rather than simply queue up to meet the narratives needs. The cultural milieu is, however, extremely British; American readers may feel the urge to look up words and phrases from time to time. In a thriller, this can be significantly disruptive to the story. But this is a small quibble with a book that, overall, delivers what it promises. If Herron makes a series out of his ‘Slow Horses,’ he may perhaps keep in mind the poor confused blokes over hear on the wrong side of the pond.
Read-a-likes: For fans of British espionage novels, the gold standard is still John le Carre. In recent years, Stella Rimington (a former director of MI5) has become a significant new voice as well. For a zanier, but still classic, espionage story, Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories are worth a look. Other authors worth taking a look at include Jeremy Duns and Laura Wilson.
Availability: Lake Bluff Public Library owns Slow Horses as a book, click here to check on the availability.
Aztalan : Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town (Robert Birmingham and Lynne Goldstein : Nonfiction) c. 2005
Posted on: September 21, 2010
Summary: Following the Winnebago War of 1827 and the Black Hawk War of 1832, settlers poured into the newly organized Wisconsin Territory. Fifty miles west of the newly founded village of Milwaukee, along the Crawfish River, these new arrivals made a startling discovery: a series of large man-made mounds, all that remained of an abandoned city. Believing the site to be the remains of the mythological northern homeland of the Aztec the site was dubbed Aztalan, and became the site of extensive archeological research for the next 175 years. Only in recent years have archeologists been able to piece together the story of this site. Occupied between 1050 and 1100 AD, Aztalan was the northern outpost of a complex chiefdom level society centered around Cahokia, a civilization that has been named ‘Mississippian.’ Birmingham and Goldstein tap into research and history both old and new to paint a picture of this unique settlement.
Review: This slight book (138 pages) provides an able overview of the Mississippian settlement of Aztalan, but is primarily for neophytes in Wisconsin archeology. Birmingham is a past state archeologist for the state of Wisconsin, and Goldstein is a current professor of anthropology at Michigan State University. This is a good starting point for anyone interested in learning more about a little known and very important archeological site in the area; those already familiar with the basics of the site can probably take a pass.
Read-a-likes: Those looking to read more about Wisconsin archeological sites might pick up Buried Indians : Digging Up the Past in a Midwestern Town by Laurie Hovell McMillin, or Indian Mounds of Wisconsin by Robert A. Birmingham. Those seeking a comprehensive overview of the prehistory and archeology of southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois should look no further than Twelve Millennia : Archeology of the Upper Mississippi River Valley by Robert Boszhardt and James Theler. The library does not currently own this title, but it can be obtained via Interlibrary Loan. For fiction titles featuring archeology and/or archeologists, check out the works of Elizabeth Peters, Lynn Hamilton and Mary Anna Evans.
Availability: This item is available at the Lake Bluff Public Library as a book. Click here to check on the availability.
Summary: Drawing heavily on Icelandic oral tradition (aka, sagas), Byock charts the course of the Norse settlement of Iceland. Beginning with initial settlement, the author charts the establishment of an egalitarian republican government amidst ongoing struggles with a fragile and occasionally hostile environment. Concluding with conquest by Norway, Byock chronicles the birth of this unique culture.
Review: Byock’s heavy use of the saga’s, which he defends in the books opening chapter, is a somewhat unusual tack for conventional historiography. Most historians tend to look askance (at best) of stories passed down through oral tradition, largely (but not exclusively) because they tend to change along with the society. As a result, oral tradition shorn of a written documentation of their changes over time tend to say a lot about contemporary society but are usually assumed to contain only nuggets of the past. That said, Byock (Professor of Old Norse and Medieval Scandinavian at UCLA) makes an engaging and knowledgeable tour guide. While the sagas form the backbone of each window into medieval Iceland, he ably reinforces each with extensive archeological, historical and anthropological data. The result is that, despite its unorthodox approach, the book’s central points are built on a solid foundation and remain largely free of unfounded speculation. For a more casual reader, the centrality of the personal accounts in the sagas make for an authoritative book that is far more engaging than one would expect.
Read-a-likes: For those fascinated by Iceland but looking for a quicker read, Arnaldur Indridason’s mysteries are easily the most popular recent import. The strong writing and unique setting has pulled the author’s Inspector Erlendur novels towards the head of the pack among the throng of recent Scandinavian thrillers flooding the US market. The more literary works of another Icelandic author, Olaf Olafsson, have not garnered as much attention, but are worth checking out as well. For more on the medieval Norse settlement of Iceland and Greenland, Jared Diamond’s Collapse includes an interesting anthropological examination of the successes/failures of the two colonies. For more on the medieval Norse, The World of the Vikings by Richard Hall and Cultural Atlas of the Viking World by Colleen Batey are worth a look. For a fictional take on Vikings, check out Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Tales or the works of Robert Low. For those interested in learning more about the sagas, check out the eVideo Nordic Sagas available through My Media Mall.
Availability: This title is not currently part of the Lake Bluff Public Library’s collection, but can be obtained via Interlibrary Loan.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
c. 1719
[Adult Fiction]
[Juvenile Fiction]
[Juvenile Audiobook]
[Electronic Resource (MyMediaMall eAudiobook)]
[Electronic Resource (MyMediaMall eBook)]
Beset by a storm at sea, Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked on a deserted island somewhere in the Caribbean. With the rest of his crew dead or missing, Crusoe must find a way to survive in a harsh environment with whatever tools he can find or make for himself and without the pleasure of human society and company. His time on the island causes him to deeply reflect on spirituality and the human condition.
I read this book for a class on the development of the novel and found that my classmates’ opinions of the novel ranged from great appreciation of Crusoe’s internal dialogues to an almost vitriolic dislike of everything associated with the book. I belonged to the latter group, as I had a difficult time reconciling Crusoe’s preachy narrative with his inherent moral hypocrisy. The dryness of the narrative was also rather difficult for me to enjoy. Readers who can appreciate the more philosophical points of the novel and the more straightforward nature of the text will enjoy the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
If you would like to read about more contemporary castaways, I would recommend Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I found these books to be more satisfying and more developed than Robinson Crusoe.
If you’re looking for AV material on the same theme, I would also highly recommend ABC’s Lost. The Lake Bluff Library owns all six seasons.
Pros: A well-loved classic novel and one of the first novels ever written. Robinson Crusoe also keeps a pet goat at one point, which is admittedly pretty cool.
Cons: Robinson Crusoe is not the most developed or likable character ever written.
Review by Martha
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[Juvenile Paperback]
[MyMediaMall eAudiobook]
Selling chocolate has never been so intriguing! Author Robert Cormier takes us along with the main character, aspiring football player Jerry Renault, as he defies both kin and teacher by refusing to sell chocolates at his all-boys high school’s annual fundraiser.
Sound boring? It’s not! With Archie Costello, leader of the boys’ gang the Vigils, breathing down necks of fellow classmates and teachers alike, the book has few dull moments. Archie appoints “assignments” to classmates, and no one refuses Archie! Read the book to find out how Jerry crosses Archie, and the repercussions that follow.
More intrigue about the book – it is number 3 on the American Library Association’s website for most banned books from 2000 – 2009.
If you liked The Chocolate War, try:
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
For something a LITTLE different, try:
Looking for Alaska by John Green
For something REALLY different, try:
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Review by Carlen
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[Juvenile Paperback]
Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly is one of the first coming-of-age young adult novels published. It encompasses a three month period in which main character Angie Morrow dates local hunk, Jack Duluth. Don’t get excited, however! While it is a relatively realistic depiction of teenage dating in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin in the 1940s, it seriously lacks in character development. While Angie has some redeeming qualities, her personality is flat and transparent. She often has no personality unless she is in direct presence of her “summer love.”
However, anyone interested in this time period would probably find the differences in both language and daily life informative. For those wanting a “spicier” teen romance novel, I would suggest falling back on Judy Blume’s classic, Forever.
Daly writes well, and keeps up a good flow during the novel, but the content of the story is lacking. Unless you are interested in either the time period or the rise of young adult literature, take a pass!
If you liked Seventeenth Summer, try:
Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler
Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn
For something a LITTLE different, try:
The Oracle of Dating by Allison Van Diepen
Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley
For something REALLY different, try:
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Review by Carlen
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
c. 2003
[Juvenile Fiction (Paperback and Hardcover)]
[Juvenile Audiobook]
[Electronic Resource (MyMediaMall eBook)]
[Electronic Resource (My MediaMall eAudiobook)]
Ani was never cut out to be a crown princess. She lacks confidence and is far more at home chattering to swans and horses than holding court. When Ani’s mother decides that Ani is unfit to rule Kildenree, she is sent to far off Bayern to marry the prince as a peace-keeping ploy. On the months-long journey to Bayern, Ani’s lady-in-waiting, Selia, and a treacherous inner circle of guards stage a mutiny. Barely escaping with her life, Ani is forced to find work as a goose girl while Selia takes Ani’s rightful place in the palace. Will Ani be able to reclaim her title before it’s too late?
A word of warning: you will not want to put this book down until you’ve reached the very end, so clear your schedule. The Goose Girl is captivating in the rare way that makes you leap to your feet and shout “No!” at the most climactic moments. But the real strength of The Goose Girl lies in its protagonist. Despite her royal background, Ani is relatable and fiercely believable. Her search for identity and struggle to accept herself are both well-rendered by Shannon Hale.
If you like The Goose Girl, be sure to check out the sequel, Enna Burning. Fans of Shannon Hale might also enjoy books by Robin McKinley, Donna Jo Napoli, Tamora Pierce, Gail Carson Levine, Edith Pattou, and Diana Wynne Jones.
Pros: Charming, original, and masterfully told, The Goose Girl will delight all lovers of fantasy.
Review by Martha
