Everlasting

Angie Frazier Hardcover, $17.99 Scholastic Press June 2010 336 pages I’ve officially embarked upon my Summer of YA Fiction.  Everlasting started out with a lot of promise but then became so, so strange. First–the good part.  1853: Camille sets sail with her father on his ship, her last trip with him before her impending marriage.  [...]

Picture the Dead

Adele Griffin Illustrated by Lisa Brown Hardcover, $17.99 Sourcebooks May 2010 272 pages I’ve been holding on to my copy of this book for a long time, assuming I wouldn’t like it because it’s full of illustrations.  I don’t want to say that I was wrong, cause you know, I’m never wrong, but I loved [...]

Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann Paperback, $15 Random House June 2009 400 pages This National Book Award finalist was my first ever Book Club read!  I’ve resisted joining a club for years because I had had enough of being told what to read in school (and of then being forced to discuss it).  Granted, I was exposed to [...]

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

E. L. Konigsburg Paperback, $9.99 Atheneum 1964 176 pages This is another one of those classic kids’ books that I somehow managed to miss in elementary school.  Everyone speaks very sentimentally about it, so when I chanced upon it at the library I decided to give it a whirl.  The biggest selling point for me [...]

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins Hardcover, $17.99 Scholastic September 2008 384 pages Oh.  My.  God.  Everyone had been telling me to read this book forever, which I hate.  (It kept me off Harry Potter for years, and I think we can now all admit that I was wrong about that one.)  So after Piper told me how great [...]

The Illuminator

Brenda Rickman Vantrease Paperback, $13.95 St. Martin’s Griffin December 2005 492 pages Getting back to my favorite–historical fiction–I enjoyed this book over the Thanksgiving holiday.  For a first novel the writing is pretty good, which is particularly hard to pull off when dealing with historical dialogue.  Though the main plot is not super interesting, the [...]

The Darwin Conspiracy

John Darnton Paperback, $14.00 Anchor September 2006 320 pages Loved it, loved it, loved it.  This book is a prime example of historical mystery.  Told from three perspectives, it is–in alternating chapters–the modern-day story of Hugh Kellem, an antrhopology grad student; the young Charles Darwin; and Charles’s daughter Lizzie.  Hugh and Charles’s stories are third-person, [...]

The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown Hardcover, $29.95 (!!!) Doubleday Septermber 2009 528 pages   Sorry to be so late on this one, kids.  I actually read this two months ago–when everyone else in the country was reading it–so this review may turn into more of a diatribe re: Dan Brown. The Lost Symbol will feel verrrrry familiar to [...]

Sarah’s Key

Tatiana De Rosnay Paperback, $13.95 St. Martin’s Griffin June 2007 320 pages This book was a gift from my mom and something that she really enjoyed.  We usually don’t have the same taste in books (Harry Potter excepted) but as soon as I read the jacket I knew I would like this one. Sarah is [...]

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald April 1925 192 pages So this is an American classic that I read in 11th grade Honors English and hated.  Eight years later, pretty much all I remembered was that it was depressing and something about a green light….Anyway, my buddy Celia loves this book, and I am always knocking it, so [...]