I enjoyed reading The Enhanced by T.C. Edge. It is the first book of a series. The story takes place in the city of Haven which is a relatively safe place in a world that has been decimated by nuclear war. It is a class-based society. At the top are the Enhanced, people who have...
I'm a big Scott Westerfeld fan and was pretty psyched to start reading Zeroes. It is the story about 6 teenagers who each have a unique, special power. I wouldn't call them "super powers," though they were pretty cool: Flicker is blind but can see through other people's eyes.Crash is able to "feel" electric and...
This is a great Graphic Novel for movie and photography buffs as well as more serious film students. Filmish looks at the history of the film and movie industry, referencing over 300 movies. Instead of looking at individual movies, one at a time, Ross looks at various cinematic concepts and then references films that illustrate...
Giant Days is a British graphic novel that follows three “dorm-mates” through their first year in university. The three, Daisy Wooton, homeschooled and unworldly; Esther De Groot, a bit rash and overly dramatic; and Susan Ptolemy, who thinks she is the only one with common sense; become fast friends despite their unalike personalities and backgrounds....
The March trilogy has been widely written about and has won several awards including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, YALSA’s Outstanding Books for the College Bound, and is also a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. We all learn about the civil rights movement in school. Depending on...
The Star-Touched Queen takes place in the milieu of Hindu mythology: the worlds of gods, goddesses, demons, illusion, and reincarnation. The story is about Maya, a young princess in a kingdom that has long been at war with the many surrounding kingdoms. In a bid to bring peace, her father the king proposes that Maya...
I just finished listening to The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman. The narrator, Fiona Hardingham, an accomplished actress and reader, picked me up, transported me to Regency London and set me down among the aristocracy. It is 1812 and Lady Helen Wrexhall is 18 and ready to go out and live life to its...
I was immediately hooked by The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge. As an anthropologist, I had read a number of works by "armchair anthropologists" that tracked the history of science through the Victorian era, the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, the gradual unearthing of fossils that called into question a worldview based on counting...
Cindy spoke highly of Truthwitch, by Susan Dennard, so I decided to read it also. Her review of Truthwitch really does a good job of summing up the book, so I won't cover the same ground. Rather, I'll report that the book was fun to read and that its fast pace held my interest throughout. The...
Writing teachers tell their students to keep a journal, that by writing you learn about yourself. This book gives a twist to that age-old wisdom. First the title, every twelve years everyone in the community forgets everything. To combat the periodic forgetting, everyone carries around a book where they write about their lives so that after the forgetting...
Sefia, the main character of The Reader, had a happy childhood and was loved by her parents and close to her Aunt. However, they had prepared her a hiding place in case something bad happened. One day assassins come and kill her parents and she goes into her secret room where she finds an unusual...
Smoke by Dan Vyleta is one of Cindy's favorites in our Hugo reading quest. She spoke so highly of it that I thought I should read it also. I started off with the first disk of the audiobook, but when that had to be returned to the library I continued with the hardcover. The audiobook...
This young adult book was a great read and should satisfy teens and young-at-heart adults who yearn for adventure, humor, close calls and an engaging fast-actioned book set in an original and well-constructed world. Safiya is a Truthwitch. She can tell when someone is telling the truth or lying, which makes her valuable to those...
A Court of Thorns and Roses is a young adult fantasy / romance by Sarah Maas. The story opens with the central character, Feyre, out hunting. It is winter, her family is hungry, and she has tracked her game deep into the wilderness, near the border of the land of the fairies. There is no...
I just finished listening to the audiobook Smoke by Dan Vyleta, read by Allan Corduner, and I must say it is one of my favorite “listens” of the year. There is nothing better than the perfect pairing of a great book and a talented narrator who can capture the essence of a story. Smoke takes...