The Cassandra Compact; by Robert Ludlum

This book is about Covert-One spy Jon Smith. He is called by his spymaster, Fred Klein, at his Bethesda home. Klein tells him that Smith has to make an extraction in Italy of a Russian agent with some important information. Smith flies to Italy and meets the agent, only to watch him be brutally shot him to death. Smith gives chase to the killers, only to watch them be killed themselves.
He finds a note uncovering a conspiracy that goes to highest levels of NASA to find the Russian store of the Smallpox virus and make it instantly fatal. The head astronaut of the next flight is planning on operating on the virus in zero gravity, where it will grow quicker. He gets to the touchdown point in time to get inside the shuttle and make sure the virus is killed.

I thought this was a very exciting thriller. Just like all the other books written by Robert Ludlum, they leave you on the edge of your seat, wondering what's going to happen next. I recommend this book for anyone who likes suspense like this and isn't looking for a book about unicorns and magic.

There is Room For You: Charlotte Bacon

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This book tells the story of a mother and daughter who have never understood each other. The mother, Rose, had a unique childhood growing up British in Northern India. The local Indian children shunned her because she was white; the British children shunned her because her mannerisms were too Indian. After being sent to school in England and then working and marrying in the US, Rose has never felt that she belongs anywhere, except the place she least expects to find comfort.
Anna, Rose's daughter, grew up with a distant mother who had a mysterious past in a foreign place which was never spoken of. After Anna's trying divorce she decides to go to India for a while and disassociate herself from the life she is leaving behind. She has many adventures from 'adopting' and helping a beggar child, to dealing with a tragedy concerning a friendly English university student, to falling in love with a Israeli military man.
This is a story with as many twists and turns as a train ride up to Darjeeling, tea country. Everyone could relate or find interest in some part of this book.

When I went to India I took this book with me thinking that I would have plenty of time to read. I was wrong, but out of all of the books I have read on India this gave the most true-to-life impression of what it is like to be a tourist in India. Bacon accurately describes the rush of auto-rickshaws zooming down the road, not being able to understand the chatter of local people who sometimes make a point not to speak in English, and the wonderful hospitality of the Indian people.

Feed, M.T. Anderson

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So this book is a futuristic/dystopia kind of thing, really accessible story, a good read overall. What strikes me, though, is that although it is supposed to be a dystopia, I walked around for a couple weeks wishing I had the 'feed' in my head. How annoying to walk to the computer to look something up, like the definition of a word, or what time a movie is playing, after reading this book, I wanted to be able to just look it up in my head by thinking about it. Imagine how much more satisfying life would be, if you are an uber-curious person like me, to have the answers to all your questions coming to you in your thoughts.

I didn't really like that tv shows and movies were all through the feed, nor did I think I would like talking to people through the feed, chat style. I like alone time, and it seemed like talking through the feed all the time would eliminate all privacy - which I guess is much of the dystopian point.

The book is totally right on, though, if we had that technology, it would be immediately hi-jacked by corporate interests trying to make us buy their crap.

Bound, Donna Jo Napoli

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A really interesting Chinese cinderella tale, especially if you are into historic Chinese culture, especially foot binding. Especially if you have a strong stomache and can handle things like toes being eaten off by a raccoon because they are so stank-nasty from being bound. Bleck! But interesting, in that traffic accident can't turn away kind of way.

The highlight for me is when Xing Xing gives the prince an interrogation before going off with him. Granted, it's short, but she's pretty much guaranteed at least a better life than she has. But I like that she's really up front about who she is and what she needs from this person she's going to marry, and that she at least makes sure of those things before the happy ever after. It makes the whole thing way more real and firms up my total respect for her as a character.

Double Helix, Nancy Werlin

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I pretty much liked this book, but had two basic problems with it.

1. Way too much foreshadowing. From page one, you know something is up, but don't know what it is. Every single page re-inforces that foreshadowing, and it goes on through the whole book. You don't find out what the big secret is until there are only twenty pages to go. By that time, I was tired of the whole deal, and had really high expectations about what this big deal secret could be. Of course it couldn't live up to that, so the whole thing was dissapointing.

2. This book touches on all sorts of biotechnology ethics issues, but comes to its conclusions too fast. So Eli and Kayla are chimeras. And immediately they freak out and are mad (Kayla I can understand a little more, with the HD diagnosis and all that). Of course I don't think it's ethical to make experimental people, I don't even think it's ethical to make experimental rabbits! But there are a lot of good questions here, and the answers are much more complicated than the book allows them to be.

For example, there is that one part in the book, where Eli's professor is at the conference, and the man with Downs Syndrome gets up and asks why the scientists want to kill them. Suddenly, everyone is assuming an egg and some sperm is a human being, which is such a huge controversial issue. And with that assumption, all the ethical controversies are too neatly wrapped up. I guess what I'm saying is that I definately don't have the answers, but I like to think about it and weigh the different sides against each other, even if I never come up with an answer for myself. This book seems not really to think about it, but to leap to the ending. It could have left it a bit more open and messy in the end, I think.

Candy and Me: A Love Story, by Hilary Liftin

It's vacation time again, and that means tractoring through at least three books in a week. I started off with a real gem- Candy and Me: A Love Story, by Hilary Liftin. So, with vh1's 40 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever playing in the background, I write my first book review for bibliotalk.

This memoir, with chapters named after Liftin's favorite sweets, will please anyone with an innocent little obsession. Her tastes change as she experiences intellectual, spiritual and sexual growth, but my favorite aspect of this book was her long and faithful relationship with sugar. This book is quirky, with chapters on her religious youth and her purposelesness as a college student mixed in with one-sentence chapters devoted to Trix.

While this book is a easy to breeze through in a day, it is by no means forgettable. Young adults can relate to Hilary's experiences on a somewhat deep level, and the novelty of the book is overshadowed by the well-written stories and aching honesty.

So, what obsession of yours do you wish someone would write a book about?

"Selling Out"

This is not about a particular book- I'll delete it straight away if it is not wanted because of this!

A lot of people have opinions on artists and "selling out", or (roughly) recieving money for mainstream media that is not within the artists' expertise . What is your opinion on authors selling out?

I was recently crushed to discover that Francesca Lia Block, my favorite author alive today, was developing a series for MTV and a cinema version of Weetzie Bat. Perhaps that is because Meg Cabot (author of my former guilty pleasure, The Princess Diaries series) made two movies that beared no resemblance to the books that they were based on, then started churning out books that would appeal to the masses and not the loyal readers that she had before the movie contract.

Or is it because deep down, we all wish that popular books were really our own? Anyone who's read Siddalee's library experience in Little Altars Everywhere understands what I'm talking about! Perhaps I'm just being elitist. I know what kinds of shows are on MTV, and I don't want people tuning in to watch Direct Effect just to half-heartedly enjoy the stories that I've loved so much.

But enough with all of my opinions! I want to know what you guys think.

How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff

Well, this is probably the best lesson I've ever had on not judging a book by its cover, or even by its summary!

I kept reading all these reviews about how great this book was, but all the summaries were saying things like, "Daisy goes off and lives in the countryside of England with her cousins to escape the war." Which I jumped to the conclusion that it was WWII, making this historical fiction, which is generally not my bag. Anyway, I was wrong about that and when the book won the Michael J. Printz award, I decided to check it out.

Turns out that it is about a modern fictional war, and the way it handles the war and the way the war plays out and is part of the book is really particularly interesting, given the way the nature of war has changed but we really haven't been first hand witnesses to that in any long drawn out sense.

Of course, a big thing in this book is Daisy and Edmond being in love. In a lot of cultures, it is actually a desirable thing for cousins to marry because they want to keep the wealth or land of a family together. It is really only in western society that it is such a taboo. Having said that, it definitely skeeved me out, just like it skeeved them out. But then they go through so much. Seeing people's faces blown off, surviving starvation, becoming un-anorexic, being afraid for so long. I think it just puts everything in perspective. Like, is being in love with your cousin really that bad in comparison to everything else you have seen and survived, and everything else that continues to go on in a war-stricken world? I don't know the answer to that, I guess, but I do know that by the end of the book I was no longer upset by it, in fact I was really happy when Daisy and Edmond could get back together.

So it's a real question, are our values and morals only relative? Like, under certain circumstances, is anything ok?

Children of the Mind; by Orson Scott Card

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I read Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card. This is a very good author of science fiction, because he does not blow your mind with concepts of time travel and other things that are impossible to grasp. It is science fiction only in the fact that that it is set in the future. It also has some slight philosophical concepts.

This book is about a man named Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, or the Speaker. Three-thousand years ago he was trained in Battle School to fight a war against an alien adversary called the Formics, or the Buggers. He destroyed their home planet, but was not allowed to return to Earth. A book written by Ender himself convinced the population of Earth that he destruction of the Buggers was a bad thing; they weren't the enemy, they just couldn't communicate with humankind. He in turn was given the title of Xenocide, killer of a species, and no one would speak his name. With his sister he used relative travel to go among the stars and stay young. Three thousand years later, he came to the colony planet of Lusitania.

On this planet, he found a famil wrought with tragedy and despair. Their father was not really their father. He had a tragic disease that ate away at him, piece by piece, rendering him barren. So the mother, Novinha, reproduced with another man. Both men died, and she was widowed with seven children. Ender took this family under his wing.

Now for this book. This is at the end of his saga. He has been cloned by an effect of faster than light travel. He has a computer entity friend, nicknamed Jane, who found a way to take a ship out of space and time, and put them back in wherever they wanted. But anything that you think about strongly is created in this outside area. Ender's brother and sister, as they were when teenagers, are created with Ender's memories. Anything else said will give away the ending.

I liked this book because this is just a really good author. He knows how to weave all kinds of fiction together into one really good book. It's not too romantic, or too science-y, or too philosophical. It is a book anyone can read, and most will enjoy. I highly recommend it.

The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer

I think this book is so great because so many times when you read sci-fi it is too far removed, too different, compared to real life today, and this book is not that way at all. What I mean is, the elements that make this a sci-fi book don't take over the whole book and become more important than the plot itself. And the plot in this book is really great. There are clones, there are zombies, there is an entirely new country carved out between the US and Mexico, but it is all too believable (read: frightening). All the people act how people generally act: some are evil, some are wonderful, many try really hard to be good but are scared or lack the courage to stand up to people. You really grow into these complicated characters.

My only problem with this book is when Matt finally escapes Opium. Even though I could tell something else was going to happen (there were a lot of pages left to read), I was not ready for him to be kidnapped into an orphanage that worked kids and beat them,etc. By that time everything had been so terrible I was really just ready for him to be united with Maria, the end everyone lives happily ever after. Although I can see that by going through that experience, Matt grows up. He really was somewhat selfish and poor me (although you can hardly blame him) before he inspired the other orphans and everyone works together to break out. So it was needed as a story point, but I was tired of being anxious about what was going to happen next by that time.