Traveling & Black Friday #5

Amazon review of Feed by M.T. Anderson

Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days.

Traveling & Black Friday #4

From Crank by Ellen Hopkins

“you come home, and everyone talks at once and everyone asks questions, but no one waits for the answers.Instead they talk about themselves, what they've been up to, what they're going to do next, as if you're a photo on the wall.And then they talk to one another, forgetting you've jsut flown in, forgetting you're in the backseat, forgetting they've already said it all.”

Traveling & Black Friday #3

Excerpt from Wikipedia about Squirrel Seeks Chimpmonk: "Sedaris said in an October 2010 interview with The Washington Post, "If I wrote, 'Phillip and Amanda had been dating for two weeks when they ran out of things to talk about', I would have to give you a whole description. But, everyone knows what a squirrel and a chipmunk look like. So, I wrote it as, 'The squirrel and the chipmunk had been dating for two weeks when the

y ran out of things to talk about.'""

Traveling & Black Friday #2

Skippy Dies

by Paul Murray

Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublin’s venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop?

Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory?

Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy’s rival in love?

Or could “the Automator”—the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school—have something to hide?

Traveling & Black Friday #1

Over the next few days, I shall post books that you may want to take along to read while traveling to family for Thanksgiving or camping out at Black Friday. Come to the library and check them out.

The first one is The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth Stein. Here is a review.

Book Recommendations from Guest Blogger Cletus Johnson

Ms. Hunter,

Here is my list of books that I read over the summer. Dr. Grier asked for five (5). I finished eleven (11) and am still going strong.

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
Known to Evil, by Walter Mosley
When the Thrill is Gone , by Walter Mosley
My Name is Asher Lev, by Chiam Potok
Chasin’ the Train: The Music and Mystique of John Coltrane, by J. C. Thomas
Thinking Through Aesthetics, by Marilyn Stewart
Luncheon of the Boating Party, by Susan Vreeland
A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie
Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone, by George Myerson
Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus. Paul Roche, translator
Classroom Management that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Every Teacher, by Robert Marzano with Jana S. Marzano and Debra J. Pickering

The Help: Read It Before You See It

Trailer

The movie opens August 10. Several copies of the book are available in our library. Come check them out!

Book Recommendation: Ghetto Cowboy

Ghetto Cowboy, by G. Neri from Rick's Picks Blog

30 July 2011 GHETTO COWBOY by G. Neri, Candlewick, August 2011, 218p., ISBN: 978-0-7636-4922-7
"The stables is nothing more than a few garages and some vacant lots with old buildings that look like they made outta scrap. I peek inside one. It's dark and smells all dank like horse. There's banged-up plywood and hay on the floor, and the ceiling is covered in cobwebs so thick, it looks like nobody ever cleaned up there before. The stalls is small, with no windows, and the wood is old and warped, like it's been there forever. There's maybe ten horses inside, all poking their heads outta their cubbyholes, looking at me like I'm the one who shouldn't be in the city. Why they need horses out here, anyhow? I don't get it."

GHETTO COWBOY, which combines elements of the movie Boyz n the Hood and Elaine Konigsberg's story The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (both old favorites of mine), is about the keeping of some [other] horses in Philadelphia, some that you've probably not seen even if you call Philadelphia home.

... a young teenager named Coltrane will, in the middle of a down-on-its-heels northern Philadelphia neighborhood, find the beauty in an old racehorse. The horse is among those who has been saved from the dog food manufacturers by a pack of black cowboys. Cole doesn't remember this area -- he was a baby when he and his mother left Cole's cowboy father behind and headed to his mother's hometown of Motown. But when Coltrane blows off seventh grade and is heading for real trouble, his frustrated mom packs him in the car and dumps him off with that cowboy father (Harper) who he's never known.

GHETTO COWBOY is the coming of age story of Coltrane and the fiery old racehorse he names Boo. It is a great story of community building and of the therapeutic affect of animals and of the history of black cowboys.


Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com

Book Recommendations from Guest Blogger Linda Clary!

Good Morning Ms. Hunter,


I've had a nice summer and have made time for reading. Below are the books that have entertained me over the summer.


-- "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen

-- "The Shack" by William P. Young

-- "The Vigilantes" by W.E.B. Griffin

-- "Tough Customer" by Sandra Brown

-- "The Confession" by John Grisham

You are dressed too well to be innocent

Book Recommendation, Innocent Spouse: A Memoir

From NPR's Marketplace

The day after Carol Ross Joynt's husband died, she learned that he was being investigated for criminal federal tax fraud. She discusses the tax clause that protected her from the liabilities of her husband's actions.

This one may be more popular to adults, rather than YAs. Read an except and listen to an interview with the author here

Book Recommendation:Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths And Discovering Fulfillment In The Age Of Michelle Obama

"The twenty-first-century successful black woman is brilliant and tenacious and not afraid to flex her intellectual, spiritual, or financial muscles. "- Excerpt from Sophia Nelson's Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths And Discovering Fulfillment In The Age Of Michelle Obama

Book Recommendation: Silver Sparrow

Read Chapter 1 from a

tale of secret sistersby Tayari Jones

Book Recommendations: Humanities Texas

Summer reading recommendations from Humanities Texas

Thank you Barbara Rivas, Librarian at Ortiz MS for sending this to us.

Book Recommendation: Twelve Angry Men

This classic by Reginald Rose forces one to consider one's own integrity, prejudices, and sense of self. After reading this short play, you will see what makes Twelve Angry Men "timeless".

This is also a Name That Book book and has also been adapted into movie versions. We have copies of the play in our library and the movies are on DVD. Check out the movie trailer on Youtube.

Book and Movie Recommendation

Here is another one! Water for Elephants, both, the book and the movie is available. We have several copies of the book in our library and the movie has been released on DVD. Water for Elephants is also a past Name That Book book.

Teen Reads book review
Movie Trailer

Book Recommendation: The Help

The Help by Kathry Stockett


The Help was one of last year's Name That Book reads and is incontrovertibly this summer's must read!

Here are a few quote from Stockett's synopsis:

"Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, ... she would normally find solace in her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared"

"Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way."

"Minny, Aibileen's best friend... finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own."

Our library has several copies. Pick one up and read it before the movie premieres in August.

Book Recommendations: Contemporary Titles

Contemporary Titles from Stacked Books.
Six of these eight are available in our library. Check out our catalog to find them.

Book Recommendation: Blackthorn Winter

Blackthorn Winter by Kathryn Reiss
Hopefully, this one with "winter" in the title will cool you off.An idyllic seaside artists' colony in England is the scene of murder, and fifteen-year-old American-born Juliana Martin-Drake attempts to solve the crime while unraveling the mystery of her own past.

Several copies of this past Name That Book selection are available in our library.

Book Recommendation: Incantation

Incantation, by Alice Hoffman brings to life the Spanish Inquisition. Here is a quote from the book: "A monster is hard to see and even harder to kill. It takes time to grow so huge, time to crawl up into the open air."

Teen Reads review

Check it out this summer. We have several copies, including MP3 audio book.

Water for Elephants

The movie is released today! We have several copies of the book. It was one of our Name That Book titles.

Trailer