Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Recent Reading 1

Since school ended for the 2007-08 year I've been busy unpacking left-over boxes and reorganizing the things we managed to unpack before school started last August. That hasn't left much time for reading (or guitar or knitting or any of the other things that feel essential in my life). But here's what I've finished since around June 1st:

Reaper Man and Mort, (both A/YA) and both by Terry Pratchett. I am constantly re-reading Pratchett's Discworld novels and trying to figure out a way to use one or more of them in class with the seventh graders. For the moment I am striving to be content with having two (The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky) on the summer reading list. Both of these are books about Death, one of my favorite Discworld characters. Death always speaks in capital letters and his granddaughter, Susan Sto Helit is another of my favorites. You can find her in Soul Music and Hogfather, as well as Thief of Time.

World War Z, by Max Brooks (MYA) is an oral history of the zombie plague that nearly wiped out humanity. It's written in the style of The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston (a true and fairly gruesome story of the Ebola virus that I loved, but would recommend for more mature readers only because it does get pretty graphic and did I mention gruesome?). World War Z is a little less graphic, but still fascinating.

Taken, by Edward Bloor (YA) is a book I'm thinking about putting on the dystopia list for the fall, so I won't say much more about it here, except to comment that it is pretty typical Bloor (who also wrote Tangerine). In other words, expect a twist at the end...

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury (YA) is a new book, published in 2008. Chris and his best friend Win decide to cycle cross-country from West Virginia to Seattle. Only Chris comes home, and Win's overbearing and controlling father suspects that Chris knows more than he's telling. This one was extremely hard to put down, but we're trying to hold our kids to no books at the dinner table (we all get to read at lunch during the summer, but not at dinner), so I had to read it in two big gulps rather than just one.

I'm currently about halfway through Genius Squad, by Catherine Jinks. It's a sequel to Evil Genius, which I didn't like quite as much as I had expected it to do. When it comes to writing brilliant, but not always ethical genius teenager, I think both Eoin Colfer and Anthony Horowitz did it better with Artemis Fowl and Alex Rider.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are a genius to keep up so well with all this YA lit. Most of it I find unutterably dull or badly written or both. Maybe I'm the one who's dull and badly written: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings."

I am reading more of the Chalet School books, kindly sent me by a friend in Britain. I'm also reading about the Byzantine Empire in several books, and about the Inca Empire, in aid of a book I'm writing--historical fiction. I find it harder going than the previous two books, for some reason.

I am going to take a leaf from your book, no pun intended, and read some of the books you suggest. Terry Pratchett's Going Postal is traveling to New York with me. Is there no way to italicize book titles here?

KWK

P.S. Very cool book blog!

Anonymous said...

sometimes I get annoyed that you got all the reading genes...I have been trying to get through Lord of the Flies ever since you told me what was on this year's list for school adn I am dreading it. can't remember if it was ever assigned to me, but wouldn't be surprised that I never read it then either. I think part of the problem is the print is too small--you know how the copy really matters. do you think electronic books will ever eliminate the paper texts?

very cool book blog, my dear.
good luck with that no books at the dinner table rule. do you think you could get my husband to turn off the TV?

xox, mmb

KMR said...

The TV thing is easy, you put it in a whole 'nother room -- and then when your in-laws are visiting, you set up a "temporary" table that ends up staying there forever. Sorry, I have no answers for that one.