Books I read over the summer

I haven't been very good at keeping up this blog over the summer, but here's the list of books I've read. Feel free to ask me what I thought of any of them. I'll have them out on display for a couple of weeks after school starts.

Fade--Lisa McMann
Gone--Lisa McMann
The Mark--Jen Nadol (Not yet AR but I've sent them an email requesting they add it)
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner--Stephenie Meyer
Hold Still--Nina LaCour
Looking for Alaska--John Green
Rikers High--Paul Volponi
Life as We Knew It--Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Dead and the Gone--Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins is a book that I see in all the stores I go to. Because of this, I figured it was popular, but I didn't think I'd like it. My sister Katie was reading it and asked me to read it so she'd have someone to talk about it with.

I thought it was pretty good. It's about a girl, Katniss, who lives in a very poor district in Panem, which is what used to be the United States. Her father died in a mine, so Katniss has to support her family by illegally hunting. Every year the Capitol puts on "The Hunger Games," a contest in which two people are chosen from each of the 12 districts to compete in a survival test. Only one of the 24 survives.

I won't give the rest away, but the book was pretty good. It reminded me a lot of the short story "The Lottery" because of how the participants are chosen and the movies "The Truman Show" and "The Even Stevens Movie" because of the contrived reality show aspect of the games.

If you like action and suspense, this is a good book for you.

AR 5.3/15 pts

After

by Amy Efaw started out really good. A baby is found in a trash can and luckily it's still alive. The police go door-to-door to try to find who put it there. They find Devon, a top student and athlete who has stayed home "sick" from school. She doesn't remember anything.

The book follows Devon through her arrest, her incarceration, and her trial.

I thought it was a little slow through the middle and some of the characters didn't seem to have a purpose to me, but overall, After was a good book.


AR 4.7/14 pts

Wake

by Lisa McMann was an INCREDIBLE book! It was very easy to read. Not only was it a one-dayer, it was a one-eveninger. (Yes, I make up my own words.)

Janie, a teenage girl, is pulled into someone's dream when she is eight years old and it has happened a lot since then. She doesn't know why or how it happens, but she goes into a trance or seizure when it happens. She has trouble with daily life because if anyone nearby is dreaming, she is pulled into it. This makes her an outcast. She also has an uncaring, alcoholic mother and is very poor.

She does find a friend in Cabel, sort of a loner himself. He helps Janie try to figure out how to deal with her situation and the two of them end up falling in love.

I couldn't put this book down. It was so so good!!

AR 3.4/5 pts

Today I put up a ring of index cards on the side of the bookshelf FIC HIG. Each index card lists an author of a series (or part of a series) that we have here. For each author, there's a list of the books in the series in order. I've underlined the books we have here in the library.

This helps you because you can easily look up the book that follows the one you just finished. For example, if you just read Eagle Strike in the Alex Rider series, you'd see that the next book is Scorpia.

These lists are constantly changing as new books are published. If you know of a series we have that I have not made a card for, please let me know.

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

by Beth Fantaskey was a pretty good book. It's been on my to-read list all year and I kept putting it off. It turned out to be another one-dayer. It's about a girl who finds a mysterious stranger stalking her. She finds out that she is a vampire who hasn't yet matured and she was promised to marry him when they were born. Things, of course, don't go as planned.

AR 4.9/14 pts

NEW BOOKS!!!

We just got a huge shipment of books in--over 200! You need to come in and have a look. The fiction books are already entered into CAT and ready to be checked out. I'm trying to get a list of them put on the front page of CAT, but technology is working against me. I'll list some of them here in the meantime. We got several new Nicholas Sparks and Mike Lupica books!!

This is the list of fiction with the author's last name:
Angels and Demons-Brown
Anything buy Typical-Baskin
As You Wish-Pearce
At Risk-Hoffman
Back Up Quarterback-Robins
Bag of Bones-French
Bend in the Road-Sparks
Blood and Basketball-Green
Bluest Eye-Morrison
Boy from the Basement-Shaw
Broken Soup-Valentine
Bystander-Preller
3 Cam Jansen mysteries
Carnival of Horrors-Preece
Christmas Genie-Gutman
Comeback Season-Smith
Crocodile Tears-Horowitz
Da Vinci Code-Brown
Death Defying Pepper Roux-McCaughrea
Doom Machine-Teague
Double or Nothing-Foon
Dragon Rider-Funke
Dying to Meet You-Klise

Plus a lot more...