Holiday Presents from the Library!

Great vacation reading, all tied up in a holiday bow! Just look for this sign to try out a special bundle of books.


Here's a list of all the bundles:



Take a Hike! (Girl who Loved Tom Gordon [King]; A Walk in the Woods [Bryson]; Walk My Way [Dixon])

Knit One Read Three (Chicks with Sticks [Lenhard]; Chick With Sticks sequel [Lenhard]; Knitting School)

A Tea Party with Jane Austen (Emma [Austen]; Jane Fairfax [Aiken]; Letters of Jane Austen [Austen]; What Jane Austen Ate and Carles Dickens Knew [Pool] )

Civil War: Real and Imagined (March [Brooks]; Traveler [Adams]; Photos by Brady)

Click: 3 About Photography (Razzle [Wittlinger]; Class Pictures [Bey]; Voices in the Mirror [Parks])

Angels and Demons for Fun (Maximum Ride [Paterson]; Good Omens [Gaiman]; Repossesed [Jenkins])

Getting in to College Blues (Catalyst [Anderson]; Where Do I Go From Here; Good Enough [Yoo]

Fangs (Gil’s All Fright Diner [Martinez]; Silver Kiss [Klause]; Encyclopedia Horrifica [Gee]

Brr...Arctic Adventures (North Pole Was Here [Revkin]; Cage [Schulman]; White Darkness [McCaughrean])

Environmental Crisis 3 Ways ( Earth Matters [DK]; Forty Signs of Rain [Robinson]; State of Fear [Crichton] )

Engineers Can Build Anything (The Big Dig; Aftermath [Florman]; Gecko’s Foot [Forbes] )

Are There Secrets Anymore? (Numerati [Baker]; Feed [Anderson]; Traveler [Adams])

Hoops (Lay-ups and Long Shots; Rebound: the Odyssey of Michael Jordan [Green]; Eagle Blue [d’Orso]

Love...100 Years Ago (The Luxe [Godbersen]; Ragtime [Doctorow]; Northern Light [Donnely] )

Take me Out to the Ballgame! (Satchel Paige [Sturm]; The Negro League [Margolies]; Summerland [Chabon] )

Many Roads to Recovery (Million Little Pieces [Frey]; Big Sur [Kerouac]; Generation RX [Crister] )

Blood, Guts and DNA (Grave Secrets [Reichs]; Bone Lady [Manhein]; Casebook of Forensic Detection [Evans])

Poof!

Sam Temple is sitting in his U.S. History class, bored out of his mind. And then POOF!
His teacher vanishes. As Sam and his classmates come to realize, everyone over the age of 15 has disappeared. Cars crash because their drivers aren't there anymore. Over the next few weeks, Sam and his small circle of friends try to keep the little children safe, the power running, the town fed and the bullies at bay. But new kids in town with startling powers threaten the peace. Animals are mutating and down in the depths of a mine, an unspeakable darkness threatens every human in town. Can Sam save the town before his 15th birthday. Because Sam knows that on his birthday, he, too, will disappear.

A Fresh Twist on Little Women

"March," by Geraldine Brooks is the winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Ms. Brooks has always been a fan of Louisa May Alcott's classic "Little Women." She began to speculate about the father of the March girls, who was away at war for most of the first half of the book. The result of that speculation is this novel about war, race, faith and honor.

My field trip to Concord

I mentioned in my end of the year entry that I was going to visit Concord for a literary field trip. Mrs. Scully (who has left Newton North for a new job at Newton South) and I went to Concord together. We visited Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott.
If you have read Little Women, you would love this tour. My favorite part was seeing all the drawings by May Alcott (aka Amy March)...it seems that the Alcott's encouraged their daughter to draw directly on the walls!

After lunch at the Concord Inn in the center of town, we headed for the Old Manse. This house was built in 1770 by Ralph Waldo Emerson's grandfather, a minister in town. On April 18, 1775 the Battle of Lexington and Concord was fought just yards from Emerson's pasture. From an upstairs bedroom you can look out a window and see the bridge and imagine the British troops running away and the wounded Minutemen collapsing in the field. Those same windows are engraved with some amusing details of daily life by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia. They lived in the Old Manse right after they married. Ralph Waldo Emerson also lived there for a while and wrote the following lines you may recognize:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."

He wrote Concord Hymn while looking out that same window. I was inspired by my trip to plan rereading two books I would recommend to anyone. 1776 by David McCullough is a great look at the beginning of the American Revolution. It's fairly short and filled with wonderful stories and characters. The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall is my other reread. Sophia Peabody was married to Nathanial Hawthorne and her diamond ring was used to engrave on the windows of the Old Manse. The three sisters were amazing ladies and Megan Marshall (a Newton author) did a great job bringing them to life.



Next field trip: a visit to Mt. Auburn Cemetery. I recently finished The Escher Twist by Jane Langton. It's a murder mystery which combines math (Escher, Moebius Strips, etc.) and the history of the cemetery. Can't wait to track down all the landmarks in this amazing place. Want to come??

Summer Round-up of my "Best Books"

Yes, I've been reading all summer. No, not everything was worth writing about. Below you'll find the best of what I read, with a little something to see if you'd like to read it too. All will be available in the library sometime in September.

In Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer told the harrowing story of Miranda, trying to survive a natural disaster in rural Pennsylvania. In her new book, The Dead and the Gone, Pfeffer introduces us to Alex, who is trying to survive the same disaster in New York City. Alex's mother is working in a hospital on the other side of the city when disaster strikes. She never comes home, leaving Alex to try to survive on his own and to take care of his two younger sisters. The only beacon of hope in this violent and deprived New York is his school, where dedicated priests try to keep school open and food in the bellies of the hungry students. You will not soon forget Alex's difficult journey to Yankee Stadium. The stadium has been turned into a morgue and Alex is looking for his mother.

Rumors continues the story of Elizabeth and Diana, two high society sisters in 1890's New York. Elizabeth has headed West to find her true love and Diana, in love with her sister's former fiance, struggle to find love in the society world of decorum, rules and gossip. A solid sequel to The Luxe, this book needs to be read after reading the first. My favorite part of this book is the story of Lena, a former maid, trying to claw her way into high society. She doesn't have looks, she doesn't have breeding,but she is one determined lady and discovers how to lie effortlessly and often.

Cadel is a 7 year old genius who is so engrossed in his projects he never thinks about consequences.When he shuts down all the electricity in the city to see if he can, his adoptive parents take hime to a psychiatrist. Little do they know that Dr. Thaddeus Roth is really a henchman for notorious criminal Dr. Phineas Darkkon. Roth and Darkkon want to use Cadel for their own evil agenda. Will Cadel become a true Evil Genius or will he develop a conscience?

Summertime: What's in My Bag

I started reading this series many years ago. I was excited when PBS Mystery announced they were turning them into one hour mysteries. I was annoyed when the Inspector Lynley series completely messed up the books. Tommy Lynley is an elegant, titled Englishman (he's a Lord!) who has chosen to be a professional police detective specializing in homicide. His partner, Barbara Havers, is the polar opposite: dowdy, unpretty, lower class, abrasive and rude. Together, they make a fabulous team. Other characters deepen the personal story, which unwinds as the pair solve the mysteries. This is her newest book. If you are interested in the series, it starts with A Great Deliverance.

Authors On Tour Live: Elizabeth George

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz won an Alex Award for best adult book for young adults. The description in Amazon convinced me: Meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors -- but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.

And since gas is so darned expensive, I'm planning some local field trips, including one to Concord. To get ready, I'm reading some books about the writers of Concord in the early 1800's. American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever was an amazing collection of essays. I had no idea what scandalous lives Emerson, Hawthorne, etc. lived. Would you believe that Louisa May Alcott had a crush on Henry David Thoreau? That Nathaniel Hawthorne courted one Peabody girl and then suddenly married her sister? Or that Margaret Fuller, a brilliant and brainy "modern" woman, had two married men vying for her attention? (The two men were Emerson and Hawthorne!) Having read this book, I'm dipping into Hawthorne in Concord by Philip McFarland and The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall. I love a good scandal, even if it is 180 years old! After, or during all this reading, I will head down the road to Concord and visit the Emerson House, the Old Manse, and the Alcott's Orchard House. A truly geeky summer trip!

Summertime: Graphic Novels http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifand Comics

The Dark Knight is scheduled to open soon...don't forget to read the graphic novels by Frank Miller. Need more comics? Check out this list from my favorite blogger, Whitney, in Pop Candy. She was a judge for the Eisner awards this year for best graphic novels and really knows the field. Here are just some of her recommendations:




Top 25 (some are adult in content)
Family Friendly





Do you like to draw and write comics? Check out Webcomics by Steven Withrow and John Barber. The authors give practical advise on "tools and techniques for digital cartooning" and interview well known webcomic creators.

Can't draw but have something to say in this medium? Check out this free website. It helps you put together your own comic strips, even if you can't draw a straight line!

Summer Reading Ideas Are Cominghttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Newton North doesn't have mandatory reading lists for students for the summer. That doesn't mean we don't think it's important (and fun) to read on vacation. It does mean that you should read what you love, whether it's Rowling or Dickens, Shakespeare or Stephen King. But sometimes it's nice to have some suggestions, so I will be blogging this week to mention some books not mentioned in this blog already. I'll try to give you choices in every genre, as well as some nonfiction books for those of you who prefer reality to fiction! I have two baskets full of books waiting for my vacation...start building your own summer survival kit!

Click here to access the suggestions!

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella

The popular author Sophie Kinsella (of Shopoholic fame) introduces a new heroine with a big problem. Lexi Smart wakes up in the hospital with a case of amnesia caused by a head injury. The last thing she remembers is being a loser: crooked teeth, frizzy hair, no money and a dead-end job. But apparently the three years she can't remember were big ones: she's now sleek, sophisticated, rich, a successful businesswoman and married. But as she tries to reconstruct her recent history, Lexi begins to dislike the woman she became. If you're a fan of Samantha Who? or are just in the mood for a funny and touching story, this is the book for you.

Check out this book trailer for THE LUXE!

Shelter Stories is a compilation of Patrick McDonnell's comic strip MUTTS, a strip intended to shine a light on the many animals living in shelters and waiting for homes. You'll meet feral cats and abandoned bunnies, dogs who grew too big for their owners, puppies born on the streets and animals displaced in tragedies like Hurricane Katrina. In all their stories, the common thread is that, in a single act of love and generosity, anyone can make a difference by adopting such an animal or, if you can't , by supporting the shelters which do this heroic work. The comic strips are complemented by photographs of adopted animals with brief commentary by their new owners. You will not soon forget the blind bird given a home by an optometrist or the old warrior cat, ears torn and face scarred, who was given a loving home for the last days of his life.

Gossip Girls Meet the 1890's

Manhattan high society 1899.

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Beautiful girls in fabulous dresses, partying until dawn. Charming boys. Lies, secrets, hookups.

The princess of high society, Elizabeth Holland, dies in a carriage accident. What led her to that bridge and that fate? Was it a society marriage being forced on her? Or her backstabbing best friend? Her vengeful and jealous maid? Or her quiet sister's stunning betrayal.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson.

"This is the way the world ends" Part 5

We take so many things for granted. Washing and drying our clothes, calling friends and family around the world on our cell phones, looking something up on the internet, having enough to eat and drink, being warm in the winter and cool in the summer and even going to school seem like things that can't ever go away. In Jericho, a series of bombs cripple the nation and force the characters to work hard for simple survival. In Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, an equally disastrous incident leaves 16 year old Miranda and her family struggling just to stay alive. Written in diary form, Miranda tells of her transition from normal teen to skeletal survivor over a period of a year. Here's a question to make you think about the issues in this book: If you had to survive with no help from anyone (no stores, utility companies, gas stations!) for one year, what would you buy to help you survive? Don't forget the batteries!!

"This is the way the world ends" Part 4

What would the earth look like if every human disappeared tomorrow? That's the gloomy question that Professor Alan Weisman tries to answer in The World Without Us. Within days, the subway pumps would fail in New York City and most buildings (except the skyscrapers) would be under water. Pressures would build up in the oil rigs in Houston and massive explosions would occur. Most materials things would rust or rot away. But plastic would still be around for centuries! Part nonfiction and part guesswork, this book will give science fiction writers of the future plenty to think about.

"This is the way the world ends" Part 3

Deadly chemicals from a government research lab leak into the air and travel by winds across America. Only a handful of survivors are left. Some are called by Mother Abigail to be the army of goodness. Others are recruited by the "traveling man" to finish the job the government started: destroy the world. Can a failed musician, an elderly professor and a simple country boy defeat the forces of the dark side? This battle is The Stand by Stephen King.

"This is the way the world ends" Part 2

In the savage days after a war nearly destroys North America, Gordon Krantz is just trying to survive. He has no hope...nobody does. Roving gangs terrorize the survivors. and Gordon takes to the road, not knowing where he's going. He comes across a car with a dead mail carrier inside. Gordon takes the dead man's jacket because Gordon is cold and the dead don't mind the cold. When he reaches the next group of survivors, they think he is the postman and that things are getting better. They give him letters to deliver to their missing loved ones. And without meaning to do this, the Postman becomes a symbol of hope and, eventually, a legend. The Postman by David Brin.

"This is the way the world ends" Part 1

There has been a chemical or nuclear war and 16 year old Ann Burden has watched her entire family sicken and die. The nearby towns are empty. Ann fears that she may be the last person left on earth. Then, one morning, everything changes. As Ann tells us: "I am afraid. Someone is coming. That is, I think someone is coming and I pray that I am wrong. I went into the church and prayed all morning. I sprinkled water in front of the altar, and put some flowers on it, violets and dogwood. But there is smoke. Not like the time before. That time, last year, it rose in a great cloud a long way away. But this time it is a thin column, not very high.... And it's moving closer each day." Ann is right: someone is coming. Will he be a friend, or an enemy? Is there something worse than being the last person on Earth?
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien

A look at the Future Part 4

Matt lives on the estate of El Patron, a drug lord operating somewhere in what is now northern Mexico. He knows he is different somehow. He's not allowed to play with other children, there is a huge commotion every time he falls down or gets a little cold, his mother is not really his mother and he has no idea where his biological mother and father are. As he begins to grow up, he learns pieces of the truth. He was genetically engineered. His DNA is that of El Patron himself. And Matt is being raised for spare parts so that, as El Patron ages and his body parts fail, Matt can donate a kidney, part of a liver or, if need be, a heart. Can Matt escape the real dangers of El Patron. If he escapes the House of the Scorpion, can he also escape his identity as a clone? The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Garden.

A look at the Future Part 3

These are pictures of the same girl, before and after cosmetic surgery. What a difference! In record numbers, we are changing the way we look. Why? We want to be prettier, whatever that means. In Pretties, by Paul Westerfield, teens of the future receive a very special (and free)16th birthday present. Every teen is given free surgery to make them pretty (or handsome for the boys). Imagine a world where everyone is pretty!

Tally Youngblood used to be ugly. Before she had her operation, she used to hang out with some friends who chose not to have the operation. Those who choose to keep their looks are hiding far away. Tally has forgotten all about her old friends as she goes from party to hairdresser to shopping to another party. But a mysterious message from her 15 year old self plunges Tally into the reality that being a "pretty" has a sinister and dark side.

A look at the Future Part 2

Laptops are getting smaller, cell phones are getting thinner, IPods now play videos. Why? Because we want to carry our information, our communication, our music and videos with us. Smaller is better because it's less to carry around. So what if you could get a procedure, no more painful than ear piercing or a tattoo, which would allow you to carry all this around...in your head. A small chip in your brain allows you to think a song, for instance, and hear it instantly. Would you do it? If you say "no"...would you do it if all your friends and family were doing it? Titus is just an ordinary guy who went along with the crowd. The chip in his head is pretty convenient, although the commercials sometimes can be annoying. But mostly he enjoys it and it helps him fit in. But on a school trip, Titus encounters Violet. She thinks for herself, doesn't follow the fads and doesn't have "The Feed." And for the first time in a long time, Titus starts to think for himself. In the future world of The Feed by M.T. Anderson, thinking for yourself might be dangerous or even deadly.

A look at the Future Part 1

Every time you make a phone call, text a friend, buy something on line or email personal information, you create an electronic file which may be saved somewhere. Recently, the governor of New York was forced to resign because his text messages about illegal activity were accessed, even though he deleted them. AT&T had a record of his messages! John Twelve Hawks, in his future fiction novel The Traveler, tells a story of the future where a single company, the Tabula, attempts to control all information about every citizen and thus control the population. In a world without privacy, a handful of visionaries (the Travelers) try to live "off the grid" and seek the truth hidden by the Tabula's lies, propaganda and mind control.

Do you love "LOST?"

One of the aspects of "Lost" which makes it very intriguing to watch is the number of references to books both popular and obscure. Check out our library display and booklist or check the booklist below. btw this is only a partial list...check Wikipedia for a more complete one. And don't forget to drop by the library on C block and X@ block for an open, drop-in discussion of the most recent episode.
The Odyssey (Homer); Alice in Wonderland /Through the Looking Glass (Carroll); Wizard of Oz (Baum);Tale of Two Cities (Dickens); Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein);Mysterious Island (Verne); Carrie (King); Watership Down (Adams); Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky); Lord of the Flies (Golding); Turn of the Screw (James); Catch 22 (Heller)