We Recommend… The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

The Bone Season
Samantha Shannon
Bloomsbury, 2013.

Imagine the year 2059, in London.  It is a city where a Grand Inquisitor reigns, and anyone with any kind of clairvoyance or psychic ability has to hide it away, because the normal people call them “unnaturals”.  They are in constant danger of being taken by the guards and sent to a secret city that is ruled by human-looking extraterrestrials. Paige Mahoney is a special kind of clairvoyant, a dreamwalker, and she works for one of the criminal lords with a close-knit group of clairvoyants.  Then a day comes when she is kidnapped and taken to the secret city, where the Rephaim treat humans as slaves.  Paige fights the evil Rephaim, and also the strange creatures that feed on both humans and Rephaim, while constantly hoping to escape.  The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon is the author’s debut novel and also the first in her series, followed by The Mime Order.

*Bonus: If you are attempting the “2015 READING CHALLENGE”, The Bone Season fulfills the challenge to read “A book written by someone under 20″, or “A popular author’s first books”, among other possible categories.

On the Web:

Official Book Series Website

 

Post by Eileen Jaffe, Pinal County Library District Cataloger

We Recommend… Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Downtown Owl: A Novel
Chuck Klosterman
Scribner, 2008.

The small, fictional town of Owl, North Dakota is the setting for Chuck Klosterman’s novel which questions how much the place where we live truly affects the course of our lives. Does the outcome of our lives depend on where we have settled and carry out our daily routines? Would we really have made different choices if we lived elsewhere? Or would our lives still turn out more or less the same no matter where we lived?

The chapters cycle between 3 narrators. Mitch is a high school student, whose enthusiasm for football outweighs his actual ability to pull his weight on the team. Julia has just moved to Owl to fill a position as the new high school teacher. She connects with Owl residents most fully (and copes with small town life most successfully) when she is drinking at the local bars. Horace, a seventy-year-old widow, drinks coffee with other retirees at the town diner promptly at 3:oo pm every afternoon to exchange town gossip. Through the stories of the three main characters, we also find out the stories of the other citizens in Owl. Klosterman’s clever use of language perfectly conveys the wide range of personalities and characters who populate the town.

Klosterman is most well-known for his essays on pop culture. Although I have not read his essays, I will keep my hopes up for more fiction from Chuck Klosterman.

*Bonus: If you are attempting the “2015 READING CHALLENGE”, Downtown Owl fulfills the challenge to read “A book set in a high school” among other possible categories.

On the Web:

Simon & Schuster Reading Group Guide
Chuck Klosterman Official Web Page

Post by Jodi Griffith, Pinal County Library District Cataloger

We Recommend… The Fever by Megan Abbott

The Fever
Megan Abbott

The Fever by Megan Abbott is a psychological thriller that keeps us wanting answers.  We follow the inner dialogues of Deenie, her brother, Eli, and their father, Tom, along with Deenie’s two best friends.  When her friend Lise suddenly is struck down with a terrible seizure in class, and remains in a coma, and other girls in the school also seem to be struck with a strange illness, the whole town erupts in accusations, first about the toxic lake that glows in the dark, and then about the HPV vaccine that most of the girls were given.  Almost until the very end we cannot be sure what is causing the strange illnesses, but, finally, there is an answer, and it is a complete surprise.  This novel is a fascinating look into where desire can lead, wreaking havoc on the lives it touches.

On the web:

Author Website
Publisher Website
New York Times Book Review

Post by Eileen Jaffe, Pinal County Library District Cataloger

Memorial Day Selections

In honor of Memorial Day, the Pinal County Libraries will be closed on Monday, May 27th. Keep yourself entertained this long weekend with some reading commemorating our American veterans!

Nonfiction

The World War II Memorial: A Grateful Nation Remembers (2004). Edited by Douglas Brinkley. Smithsonian Books. Published in conjunction with the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., veterans—including George H.W. Bush, Sen. Daniel Inouye, former senators Bob Dole and George McGovern, Yogi Berra, and many, many others—contribute their own personal stories while leading historians look at the military campaigns of the war.

Biography      

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009). By Jon Krakauer. Doubleday.
Biographer Krakauer draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research in Afghanistan to render this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death.


Fiction – Adult

The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction (1990). By Tim O’Brien. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Following a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War, this Pulitzer Prize finalist and critically acclaimed collection of short stories has proved itself to be an enduring classic of contemporary literature.


Feature Films

Saving Private Ryan (1998). Directed by Steven Spielberg. Dreamworks. American epic war film set during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. Starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon.


Fiction – Young Adult

Andersonville (1993). By MacKinlay Kantor. Plume. Acclaimed as the greatest novel ever written about the War Between the States, this searing Pulitzer Prize-winning book captures all the glory and shame of America’s most tragic conflict in the vivid, crowded world of Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades.


Fiction – Kids

O, Say Can You See?: American Symbols and Landmarks (2004). By Sheila Keenan. Scholastic, Ages 4 – 8. A celebration of twenty of America’s important places, interesting objects, and national holidays.


Additional resources:

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – Memorial Day resources guide

Federal Government – Memorial Day observance page

The White House – Presidential Proclamation – Memorial Day 2013