Life As We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer

This is one of the most compelling books I have read in a long time. And I use the word "compelling" on purpose - I read this book as fast as I could once I started, including completely ignoring my friends and staying up until 4 in the morning when I had to be awake early the next day to finish it.

Miranda is a normal 16 year old, it is the spring of her sophomore year in school. She's obsessed with a now-famous ice skater who was originally from her town. She's got an older and younger brother, and a divorced dad who has a new, pregnant wife.

And then an asteroid hits the moon. Scientists knew it was coming, it wasn't a secret or anything, but everyone thought it would just be something cool to look at. Except that the asteroid was a lot denser than anyone thought and so it pushes the moon out of its orbit and a lot closer to the Earth. This throws everything off.

Fortunately, Miranda's mom recognizes this as being the big deal that it is and immediately goes into disaster mode. She hoards tons of food and supplies.

The story is told like Miranda's diary, as so you have her trying to be normal as things slowly fall apart - tsunamis take out the coasts, electricity becomes infrequent then stops, the ground freezes over in August . . . .

You can't help but start to think of some of the parallels to this situation we have seen in real life - people experienced Hurricane Katrina from a disaster viewpoint, terrorist attacks shut down things like food deliveries and could affect things like electricity, and climate change has had/will have some of the same effects on our natural world. It was hard to stay optimistic and not get sucked into fear-thinking when reading this book.

It really was an amazing book -

more new books . . . .

Waves / Sharon Dogar.
For Hal, now, this summer is different. Sure, he's spending it, as always, with his family at their cottage on the wild west coast of England. But this summer he meets Jackie, beautiful, impetuous Jackie. Lying with her on the beach while she sculpts mermaids from wet sand -- it's paradise. Or would be, if only he didn't keep hearing the desperate pleas of his lost sister Charley in his head . . .

The fighter / Jean-Jacques Greif.
Fighting is a way of life for Moshe Wisniak. As a Jewish boy from a poor neighborhood in Warsaw, he can't run away when Polish kids attack him--his legs are too weak. So he learns to use his fists, his head, and other weapons to defend himself and his brothers. When the family moves to Paris in 1929, everyone finds work and life improves slowly. Moshe, now Maurice, takes up boxing at a Jewish sports club, and he eventually becomes an amateur flyweight. But the war comes to Paris, and in 1942, the French police round up foreign Jews and the Germans deport them. They send Maurice to the death camp at Auschwitz. In the camp, SS officers sense Maurice's strength and command him to box against a dying prisoner. Now Maurice faces an impossible moral dilemma: kill the prisoner or be killed by the SS for refusing to obey them. Is there a way out?

Rurouni Kenshin. Vol. 12, The great Kyoto fire
Kenshin, a one-time assassin turned wandering swordsman, reunites with Sano and Saito to consider what their next step should be in stopping Shishio Makoto from burning Kyoto--the opening move in his plot to conquer Japan.

Twisted / Laurie Halse Anderson.
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.

Naruto. Vol. 12, The great flight!!
Naruto, a ninja-in-training, faces his greatest challenge when he is pitted against Neji in the third phase of the Chunin Selection Exams, a young man considered to be the most talened ninja in the village of Konohagakure.

New Books! 3/26/07

Some of the new books in the library:

Grief girl : my true story / Erin Vincent.
Author Erin Vincent describes her life after her parents were both killed in a car accident, leaving her parentless at the age of fourteen with a seventeen-year-old sister and a three-year-old brother; and gives a description of the stages of grief she experienced.

Thirteen moons : a novel / Charles Frazier.
At the age of twelve, orphan Will Cooper is sent to work a trading post on the edge of the Cherokee Nation's land, where he spends his life learning about and defending the lives of the Native Americans and desiring the love of Claire Featherstone, the wife of a successful Cherokee landowner and patriarch.

A little piece of ground / Elizabeth Laird
Twelve-year-old Karim Aboudi and his family are trapped in their Ramallah home by a strict curfew. In response to a Palestinian suicide bombing, the Israeli miltary subjects the West Bank town to a virtual siege. Meanwhile, Karim, stuck at home with his teenage brother and fearful parents, longs to play soccer with his friends. When the curfew ends, he and his friend discover an unused patch of ground that's the perfect site for a soccer field. Nearby, an old car hidden intact under a bulldozed building makes a brilliant den. But in this city, there's constant danger, even for schoolchildren. And when Israeli soldiers find Karim outside during the next curfew, it seems impossible that he will survive.

The living is easy : a novel / by Dorothy West
Reprint of a 1948 novel which follows the attempts of Cleo Judson, the daughter of southern share-croppers, to break into Boston's elite African-American society

The killer's tears / Anne-Laure Bondoux ; translated from the French by Y. Maudet
A young boy, Paolo, and the man who murdered his parents, Angel, gradually become like father and son as they live and work together on the remote Chilean farm where Paolo was born.

Debt of bones / Terry Goodkind
A young peasant woman struggles to win the aid of the most important man alive in the hopes he can prevent a catastrophic war.

more new audiobooks

Heart of Darkness [sound recording for iPod] / Joseph Conrad.

Dracula [sound recording for iPod] / Bram Stoker.

Red Badge of Courage [sound recording for iPod] / Stephen Crane.

One of the reasons we're able to get so many new audiobooks for our iPods (and by the way, we now have nanos!) is that we get them for free from Librivox. Librivox is an organization of volunteers who read books in the public domain (ie not under copyright therefore legal to do this) and make them available for free. You can download books yourself from their site, and if you are really interested, there are a couple ways to volunteer - you can read chapters (we have digital audio recorders and can get you started) or check chapters that have been read for accuracy.

New audiobooks for iPods

You can check out audiobooks on iPods at the Hawley Library - check the catalog for a full list (search "audiobooks for ipods"). These are our newest additions:

Flush [sound recording for iPod] / Carl Hiaasen.

The invisible man [sound recording] / H.G. Wells.

Brave new world [sound recording for iPod] / by Aldous Huxley.

Eldest [sound recording for iPod] / Christopher Paolini.

Eragon [sound recording for iPod] / Christopher Paolini.

An Abundance of Katherines, John Green

find this book in the Hawley Library: An abundance of Katherines

this is from the same author as Looking for Alaska, so I have been really looking forward to reading it. And it is very good - witty, smart, quirky. The writing style is pretty similar to Looking for Alaska but the whole thing is much lighter - the plot is lighter, and the writing style follows suit.

Colin is the main character, he's got a lot of hang-ups over absolutely nothing. And people try to help him see that, but basically no one succeeds. Not even his best friend - but he goes on a road trip to try to get over his latest break-up and winds up having some quirky adventures and more fun than he knew he was capable of.

Overall, a good read.

Sloppy Firsts

If you are above the age of 14, have ever been attracted to a guy, and love a sarcastic sense of humor, this is the perfect book for you. Even if you're not easily impressed, or claim to "hate" reading, this book will change things for you. It's told in first person from Jessica Darling's point of view. It's her journal, the only thing she can tell everything to now that her best friend, Hope, has moved to Tennessee (from NJ) because her brother ODed on heroin. All the rest of Jessica's "friends" are annoying and completely clueless. Jessica uses sarcasm to hide her sadness and reading about all the ridiculous and realistic characters that go to her high school really hit home. She eventually gets intertwined with Marcus Flutie, possibly the most vivid and best male character ever written. He's nothing if not unique and is the only one that calls Jessica on how fake she's being holding all of her hatred for the people at her school inside. One problem: he used to be best friends with Hope's brother. JEssica doesn't feel she can tell her about him because she thinks Hope will blame him for her brother's overdose. With dynamic characters and a neverending plotline, told from the most relatable, and humorous, point of view, this book is my all time favorite, and I read a lot.

PRINCE OF TIDES

This book was great. I was really into it. The story had a lot of twists and made me feel like, whats next..? It kept me in suspense. The whole time I really loved Tom the main character for his honesty. The story is about his depressed, suicidal sister whom he goes to visit, (meanwhile he has found out his wife is having an affair). He ends up falling for his sisters psychatrist, while he's there to fill in the blanks to why his sister became that way. Tom goes back in his childhood and recalls when a giant comes back to rape his mother and ends up raping him and his sister too with inmates. Tom remembers bits of his life, like when his grandfather walked with the cross, his father abused his family, his brother tries to stop his town from being abolished, and he beat up an abused girls father while he was a coach. This book must be read! I enjoyed this so much and I'd recommend it to anyone. It's my new favorite.

Eye of the Needle

This was one of the best books I think I have ever read. It was suspensful, mysterious, and raw. This book was written by Ken Follett, who is probably one of the greatest writers of all time, and this book is no exception to that greatness. The book is set in World War II, and it is aobut a German spy who is looking for secrets to defeat the French army. the spies name is Henry Faber, and he goes by the code name, "The Needle."

He ends up on an island where he falls in love with a woman, her name is Lucy. Her husband, David is the man that ends up trying to kill him, but he fails. I think that my favorite scene in the book is when Henry and David end up fighting. I like this scene because it shows how much David wanted to fight for his country. He was in th middle of flight school when he lost both of his legs in a car crash.

Eye of the Needle

This was a very exciting book! I liked it. Although it was a bit boring when it spoke of Godliman and his crew. I guess I only liked the story of Faber and Lucy, which was basically the whole book. I LOVED the ending! It was somehting I wouldn't have expected. It took me by suprise at first but now that I think of it, it was bound to happen. I don't think it was a book I could read again though. It was one of those that once you knew the ending the rest of the book becomes a kind of blur. I think it would not be as interesting to reread again. Unlike some other books I have read that you could read over and over and still be interested. I love the way the author made the book soo suspenseful. Starteing something new everytime something good was about to happen. It is a book you definitly do not want to skip.