Posts tagged ‘books’
2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence –Nonfiction
On June 30 the 2nd Annual ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction will be announced. Below are the books that are being considered for the Nonfiction prize. Check them out and see if you agree with the final choice.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers : Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
James Joyce: A New Biography by Gordon Bowker
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A Caro
Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America by Tanner Colby
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan
Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
Engines of Change : A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars by Paul Ingrassia
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen
Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King
Fire in the Ashes : Twenty-Five Years among the Poorest Children in America by Jonathan Kozol
The Mansion of Happiness : A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore
Barack Obama : The Story by David Maraniss
Thomas Jefferson : The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
Shooting Victoria : Madness, Mayhem and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy by Paul Thomas Murphy
The Patriarch : The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw
Spillover : Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
Oceans of Life : The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts
Joseph Anton : A Memoir by Salman Rushdie
The Oath : The Obama White House and the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson
Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
~Kimberly
2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence – Fiction
On June 30 the 2nd Annual ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction will be announced. Below are the books that are being considered for the Fiction prize. Check them out and see if you agree with the final choice.
These books are under consideration for the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal in Fiction:
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
The Bartender’s Tale by Ivan Doig
Half-Blood Blues by Sei Edugyan
A Hologram for the King by David Eggers
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
The Headmaster’s Wager by Vincent Lam
Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Lower River by Paul Theroux
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper
The Beginner’s Goodbye by Anne Tyler
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
Coming soon: The books under consideration for the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal – Nonfiction
~Kimberly
Romance in the Stacks Book Club
The author for March 2013 is Julia Quinn:
Visit the Romance in the Stacks book discussion group at the North Branch of the Denton Public Library. Every month this fun group discusses a different romance author and what is new and exciting in romance fiction. This month’s meeting will be held on Monday, March 18 at 7:00PM. Newcomers are always welcome and sweet snacks are provided.
This month the discussion will be about Julia Quinn, a popular author of Regency romance fiction. For more information about the book group contact Kimberly Wells at 940-349-8796.
~Kimberly
Romance in the Stacks Book Club – Best of 2012
The Romance in the Stacks book club has selected it’s favorite romance titles of 2012:
Scandal Wears Satin (Dressmakers Series) by Loretta Chase
My Wicked Little Lies by Victoria Alexander
Taming an Impossible Rogue by Suzanne Enoch**
Whispers in the Dark (KGI Series) by Maya Banks**
Boonsboro Inn Series by Nora Roberts
Check them out and see if you agree.
**Books not in the catalog yet will be there shortly, in the meantime try another title from that author!
The Romance in the Stacks Book Group meets at the North Branch Library on the 3rd Monday of every month at 7PM
(The next meeting has been moved to January 14 because of the MLK holiday, the author of the month is Nora Roberts)
~Kimberly
10,000 Book Challenge – Read-A-Thon for Children and Teens
Click on reading-rewards.com to sign up to join the challenge! Remember, the access code is 10KBC.
And don’t forget to track your reading!
If you have any questions feel free to contact the Dallas-Ft. Worth Room to Read Chapter at roomtoreaddfw@gmail.com or visit http://www.roomtoread.org/dallas.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Everyone seems to be in love with Daughter of Smoke and Bone, the new book by Laini Taylor, and I have to say it’s with good reason. It’s been on my list for awhile, namely because of all of the great reviews, but once I actually started to read it, I couldn’t put it down.
The story centers around Karou, a seventeen year old art student who lives in Prague. Karou is a little strange and mysterious. Her hair grows blue, she’s covered with tattoos, and she fills dozens of sketchbooks with creatures that could surely only exist in the imagination. Karou never talks about herself and deflects all questions from friends so that they don’t find out the truth. See, Karou isn’t really from Prague. She’s not from anywhere, actually. She’s from Elsewhere. Karou grew up in a shop with four chimaera and was raised by the Wishmonger, Brimstone. Brimstone, like all of the chimaera, is part animal, part human with the head and horns of a ram, eyes of a crocodile, torso of a human, legs of a lion, and feet of a dragon. Brimstone sells wishes to any who can pay the price, but instead of cash and coins, Brimstone’s currency is teeth, and only the best teeth will do. He gives Karou small wishes and provides her with money and a place to live in the outside world, and even a fake grandmother to enroll her in school. In return, Karou runs errands for Brimstone, errands that are often very dangerous and even life-threatening, but Brimstone is the only family she’s ever known. Karou doesn’t even know who she really is, but a chain of events that starts with handprints scorched into the doors to Elsewhere leads her to find that the chimaera are not the only ones in Elsewhere, and her family is under attack by beautiful, winged creatures.
Laini Taylor creates a world – two worlds, really – that is complex and rich in detail. Karou is the perfect, fierce heroine, good enough to rival Katniss of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Katsa of Graceling by Kristin Cashore.
Here’s an insider tip for all of you: Read the book now before it starts getting a huge hold list! The movie rights have been acquired by Universal Pictures, and the second book is due out September 2012. I predict that this book is only going to get even more popular.
- Heather Botelho, South Branch Library
Could Monsters Be Real?
The central question, the thing that woke me in the dead of night shivering in a cold sweat, the notion which haunted me as I fought to go back to sleep . . . could monsters be real?
This is the question posed in the preface of Curse of the Wendigo, the sequel to The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey. Just what if creatures more terrifying than your most horrific nightmares actually existed? In the first book, Dr. Pellinore Warthrop and his young assistant, Will Henry, encounter a pack of Anthropophagi, a headless monster whose eyes are located on its shoulders and its mouth of sharp teeth where its stomach should be, and oh yeah, it likes the taste of human flesh. Of course, the people-eating monsters don’t end there. In Curse of the Wendigo, Dr. Warthrop is not convinced there is a monster at all. Rather, there is a madness affecting people, including one of his oldest friends, that turns them into cannibals. Bodies keep piling up, and Dr. Warthrop and Will Henry must either save the wendigo or save themselves.
These are not books for the faint of heart. Yancey’s descriptions are detailed and graphic, but they make the horror come alive. Yancey’s books are reminiscent of classic horror, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as they are set in the late 19th century and are written as if they actually originated in that era. Yancey elevates the horror genre, such as it is now in young adult fiction, far above sparkly vampires.
Be on the lookout for the next in the series, The Isle of Blood, coming soon to a branch near you.
-Heather Botelho, South Branch Library
Read Like a Zombie
The living dead will rise tonight at 6 p.m. at the South Branch Library to put on their faces (zombie makeup), practice their pageant walk (walk and dance like zombies), and throw brains around (zombies obviously don’t have very good manners).
If you really want to join the ranks of the reanimated, here are some last-minute reads to help you become the best zombie you can be:
Fiction:
Zombie Queen of Newbury High – Amanda Ashby
Zombies vs. Unicorns - Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier
The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks - Max Brooks
Play Dead - Ryan Brown
The Undertakers: Rise of the Corpses - Ty Drago
Zombies Don’t Cry - Rusty Fischer
The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology - Christopher Golden
The Smoky Corridor - Chris Grabenstein
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Seth Grahame-Smith
Split Screen: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Zombies - Brent Hartinger
Dawn of the Dreadfuls - Steve Hockensmith
You are So Undead to Me - Stacy Jay
Undead Much - Stacy Jay
Zombie, Ohio: A Tale of the Undead - Scott Kenemore
Infinity – Sherrilyn Kenyon
Gil’s All Fright Diner - A. Lee Martinez
Strange Angels - Lili St. Crow
Zombies: The Recent Dead - edited by Paula Guran
Non-Fiction:
Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse - Brad Steiger
How to be a Zombie: The essential guide for anyone who craves brains - Serena Valentino
The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks
Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime - Michael Spradlin
It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Zombies - Michael Spradlin
Beauty Queen… of the Flies
Honestly, when I saw this cover, I was a bit dubious if I would like the book. She is, after all, almost beheaded and in a bikini (implications?), but the cover is saved by the bandolier crossed by her beauty queen sash.
Of course, Beauty Queens is by Libba Bray, author of Going Bovine, which won the Michael L. Printz Award last year, as well as the Gemma Doyle books, so I had high hopes. She definitely did not disappoint. The book is in turns both horrifying and hilarious (hilarifying?). She starts the book with a plane full of Miss Teen Dream contestants on their way to compete for this illustrious title. It’s too bad that everything goes down from there, and I mean down literally. The plane crashes on a deserted (or is it?) island, killing off all of the adults and most of the contestants. Only a handful are left, and it’s true that at first, most of them seem like shallow airheads who are only concerned with continuing their choreography practice while they wait to be rescued (yes, that would be Miss Texas). Eventually, they realize that rescue just isn’t going to happen, and they set about using what they’ve scavenged from the wreck to provide food, fresh water, and shelter (and still practice their choreography). It turns out that most of these girls are not dumb and actually have hidden talents, like the one who is pre-pre-med, or the one who is on her way to becoming an electrical engineer. Miss Texas is a member of Femmes and Firearms, and she goes first militant and then out-in-the-field-too-long crazy when the girls start to find out they aren’t alone on the island.
In the midst of all this character development, Bray introduces pure satire that makes fun of everything from reality TV to product advertisements to politics to religion. This is not a book to be taken too seriously (see Bray’s Q & A with herself on the book’s Amazon page). True, there is no cannibalism to make this really Lord of the Flies-esque, but you can’t read this book without a healthy appreciation of its absurdity.
And speaking of… Bray creates a playlist for each book she writes, so if you’d like a soundtrack for Beauty Queens, here are a few tracks taken from her self-conducted interview: Beauty Queen/Roxy Music, Mystery Girl/The Yeah YeahYeahs, Guyana Punch/The Judys, Paper Planes/M.I.A., Diamonds Are Forever/Shirley Bassey, Porpoise Song (Theme from “Head”)/The Monkees, Teenage Dream/T-Rex, and Ladybird/Nancy Sinatra in honor of Ladybird Hope (you’ll meet her in the book).
- Heather Botelho, South Branch Library
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