Good-bye old friend, you will be missed...

This was a post I meant to written WAY back when I originally heard the news about Borders closing. I was and still am very sad about the whole mess. While Borders and Barnes & Noble share many qualities I had always found Borders to give the better overall experience. The music and movie sections were far superior that of B & N. I enjoyed the way they arranged the different genres. I loved the cafe and the most comfortable areas to "browse" the merchandise. I went to every midnight release party that they gave for Harry Potter through to the Twilight books that I was able to attend. That's right I am THAT GIRL. :-) Now it's over. I can't go and spend a Saturday morning sitting, reading, and deciding which books I can get and which books have to stay at the store for a while longer. Sadness.

I've been lucky being in Manning and not Davenport right now. I'm sure I'd be a lot more upset if I were home. As it is I'v been out in Western Iowa where it's difficult to find a Target let alone a B & N or Borders. :-) It's been kind of nice.

What do you know? Books I've already read!

As I went about choosing the books to read for my research in as scientific a way as possible I ended up with three books on the list which I had already read. Lucky me! The Hunger Games was a book I had found while taking Library Resources for Young Adults. I randomly bought The Adoration of Jenna Fox at a bookstore's closing out sale. And The Carbon Diaries 2015 was a book that Dr. Yolanda Hood, director of the Rod Library Youth Collection, asked me to read and lead a discussion on for a library program. It was nice as I started to re-read these books to remember what I had liked and disliked about them in the past.

The Hunger Games was an amazing book. I remember my only problem with the book when I first read it was that it was a planned trilogy and none of the other books were out yet! I was so excited for this book that as soon as I heard the Rod Library Youth Collection was putting together The Cedar Valley Hunger Games, I signed up to help. I loved this book. Katniss and Peeta have been chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, a barbaric fight to the death that the Capital makes everyone take part in. I'm not gonna spend much time on this book, because really everyone already knows this book! By the way, it is currently being made into a movie! Exciting to see how much they screw it up.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox begins with Jenna waking up from what she is told was a coma. But as she becomes more aware of herself and her surroundings she finds that some things are just not right. The first time I read this book I was completely creeped out! While the story is not actually about cloning, it is a very similar idea. Upon reading this novel for my research I was very interested in the search for identity that Jenna was going through. This helped take some of the focus off the creepiness! I enjoyed this book much more the second time through.

The Carbon Diaries 2015 book discussion came about on accident. When I first started work on my research my advisor had initially suggested Dr. Hood as my second reader because of her work and interest in young adult science fiction. After our initial meeting she asked if I would like to lead the discussion on The Carbon Diaries 2015 that was coming up. Of course I said yes. The discussion was part of a series of movies and books being read and discussed for a library program about climate change and going "green." I read the book in a day it was so interesting! I was a little nervous about the discussion, having so little background information about climate change. In the end there were four, maybe five people at the discussion! Dr. Hood and her associate from the Youth Collection and one or two students that had not read the book but saw the topic and wanted to know more. It was an interesting discussion. One student who attended had a science background so we had a wonderful time talking comparing what happened in the book to the actual science! I really enjoyed this book. Basically, after some apocalyptic type storms have happened around the globe England has decided to rush their carbon rationing program. The story is told through one high school student's diary. It was amazing, and made me want to "go green" in a hurry!

Being by Kevin Brooks

This book was good and horrible all at the same time. I really enjoyed the "voice" of the main character, Robert. I totally bought him as a typical kid. I also kind of loved Eddie, she was all sorts of messed up but still likable. It really was a shame how the book ended...

Basically Robert has found out some surprising and dangerous information about himself. He's on the run from who knows what kind of guys in suits and just can't understand how this is happening to him. The title of the book suggests that this will be a story about something/someone that is other than human. Which is true. But that whole idea never gets resolved! At the end of the book Robert, and the reader, are no closer to figuring out what he is than at the beginning of the story! Which makes for a VERY disappointing ending. But despite the fact that the ending of this book was HORRIBLE I still have to give it four out of five stars. Why, you ask? Because I loved Robert. He was a great character; likable, funny, normal.

House Hunting

I thought it might be nice to let everyone see my teeny, tiny house! I'll be renting this house from one of the teachers in the building. I think it's small but perfect! The tree in the front yard is doing a pretty good job of hiding the house, but it's there. Trust me.

Back at the beginning of June Claire came with me to check out apartments and houses to rent in the Carroll/Manning area. There was a lot to look at! If it wasn't for having to move up a crazy set of stairs and an impractical entryway I may have ended up living above the garage of a funeral home! But it just wasn't meant to be, and in all honesty it was probably more space than I needed. So I've ended up renting a small one bedroom house in Manning.

I'll post better pictures after move in weekend! Move in weekend will be the last weekend in July, so I've managed to make sure my family misses out on a family picnic, the Bix Fest, and the last day of RAGBRAI. I'm such a meanie!

Magic or Science?

If I had to pick one over the other I might have to pick magic, but that's just because I've become more of a fantasy reader! Luckily for me, I won't ever have to make that choice because everything works better when it is balanced. That's what I learned reading Interworld by Neil Gaiman. I LOVED this novel. And really, how surprising is that? Neil Gaiman wrote it, with Michael Reaves.

According to Interworld there needs to be a balance between science and magic in order for the whole Multiverse, and the Altiverse to function. The Altiverse is a part of the Multiverse that contains all the infinite variations of Earth. This book was fast paced with plenty of action and adventure! I thought this was an incredibly smart piece of science fiction for the younger scale of the young adult market.

I really loved the information at the end of the book about how it came to be written and published because the pitch for TV wasn't working. I can't imagine why this story wasn't snatched up for television because I loved it! I think this would have made an interesting and exciting series to watch. At least I got to read the story even if I didn't get to watch it on TV.

"This is a work of fiction. Still, given an infinite number of possible worlds, it must be true on one of them. And if a story set in an infinite number of possible universes is true in one of them, then it must be true in all of them. So maybe it’s not as fictional as we think." ~ Neil Gaiman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Well, I which army Mr. Shusterman would have sided with. Basically this book comes down to one key problem: pro-choice vs pro-life. I really enjoyed the idea of finding a compromise between the two sides of this argument. And I can COMPLETELY see how the ridiculous answer they came up with is satisfying nobody and everybody at the same time. It's so true, that there is no middle ground in this argument and the only way to come up with a middle ground would be to find a third completely crazy option. Because whatever the "answer" is to the pro-life and pro-choice debate I believe it can never be the "right" answer.

About the story...I enjoyed the characters. Connor is being Unwound by his parents after his behavior and grades continue to get worse. Risa is a ward of the state who is being Unwound to make room for more children. Lev is being unwound as a religious tithe from his family. Connor was an excellent train wreck! Risa was perfect as "the thinker." I'm not sure that I ever enjoyed Lev as a character, but it was an important point of view to have. When I started reading this book, I didn't really have high hopes of enjoying it. I was surprised in the end when the action of the story kept me interested and engaged throughout!

The edition of the book I read had the blue human silhouette cover, but I much prefer the cover with the different body parts. I think I would have had a better idea of the story and more positive attitude if this had been the cover I had seen.

Chaos Walking

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness is the first book in the Chaos Walking series. While this was one of my favorite books during my research, it took forever to finish! The first half I finished in no time...then crap started piling up and my reading time got a lot smaller! So I finally finished it a couple weeks ago now and loved it!

This book made me feel young. "The Knife" is classic science fiction at it's best. Todd and Viola are the main characters. Together they are trying to out run an army! I really loved this story. Mr. Ness has a way with words. Within and between the horribly annoying imporper speech that the settlers use are some really powerful passages. "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking." Love it! There were a couple spots while I was reading that were like that...I just knew I had to write them down or mark the spot because it was just amazing.

My only complaint with this book is the TOTAL lack of ending. It was pretty obvious early on that this was going to be a series of books, but I have a problem when authors can't take the time to end something. Right up to the last couple of pages it was looking like a somewhat normal end was coming. But than BAM! It's gone and I was left with the RAGE of A.) not having the next book to read NOW; and B.) not having the time to read that book until after my research was done! It was dreadful. Even with those two infuriating problems I still think this was one of the best books I've read this year.