Review of Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story by Adam Rex

Well, there are only two things I didn’t love about this book, and unfortunately, one of them was the ending.  What a disappointment!  I wanted to say that up front, because if a bad ending makes a book not worth reading for you, you should give this one a miss.  The premise of the book is hilarious: Doug Lee, a fat, unattractive, geeky 15-year-old is attacked and turned into a vampire.  Since he is now undead, he seems to be stuck being a fat vampire forever.  One of my favorite quotes from the book kind of sums it all up –“I think sometimes you think you’re the hero of the story, and sometimes you think you’re the victim…but you’re not either.”  There are some funny scenes where Doug desperately tries to find something he can feed off of without actually having to bite a human.  He mostly makes do with cows, but his best friend Jay (who Doug has confided everything to) tries to help him out by breaking into the zoo with him to find something a bit more, well, cuddly (but not endangered) to bite.  Eventually Doug is approached by  the local vampire group, and as the book progresses, he discovers that if he drinks the blood of humans, his appearance improves.  In fact, he becomes downright good-looking.  However, he sort of loses his nice guy personality, too.  The other thing I didn’t like about the book is that the passage that describes Doug’s attack that turned him into a vampire is very dark and graphic compared to the rest of the book.  The tone of the book is so light and funny that it was quite jarring to read that part, and, to tell the truth, I pretty much skipped over it.  I think the book is still worth reading –I did a fair amount of laughing out loud.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of The Cardturner by Louis Sachar

The subtitle of this book is: A Novel About a King, a Queen, and a Joker.  As I’m sure you know, Louis Sachar is the author of Holes, its sequel Small Steps, and the old favorite Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  The Cardturner is such a different kind of book, and I kept forgetting who the author of what I was reading was –it felt more like a Chris Crutcher book (Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes).  Even if you don’t think you’ll like reading about the game of bridge (Do most kids even know what that is?  My son and I once tried to learn to play by following an instruction book –it’s complicated!), you should give it a try.  The author alerts you to the passages that include detailed bridge talk by preceding them with a drawing of a whale (you’ll find out the significance of this if you read the book) so that you can skip over them if you want to.  I always felt too guilty to skip them, even though after a certain point I don’t think I absorbed too much of it.  During the summer before Alton’s senior year of high school, he is forced by his parents to drive his wealthy great-uncle Lester to his bridge club 4 times a week and be his cardturner (Uncle Lester, in addition to being wealthy, is blind).  Alton doesn’t really know his uncle or the game of bridge, but his parents have been trying to get him to suck up to his uncle for years, in the hope that he will leave them his fortune.  Despite his intentions of despising this duty, and Uncle Lester’s treating him like an idiot, Alton becomes intrigued with the game of bridge.  It helps (or doesn’t help) that he meets and is attracted to Toni Castaneda, who his only previous contact with was when he was 6 years old and she ran up to him at his uncle’s 65th birthday party, covered her ears and yelled, “Shut up!  Leave me alone!” and then ran away.  I found The Cardturned to be a pageturner (sorry, I couldn’t help it) and very funny.  Review by Stacy Church

Banned Book Week: September 25 – October 2

Read a banned book today!  Come to the library during Banned Book Week and choose a book from our display of banned books.  Banned Book Week is based on the principle of intellectual freedom.

"Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate, and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of work, and the viewpoints of both the author and the receiver of information."

Intellectual Freedom Manual, 7th edition

mea culpa

A thousand apologies for my inadvertent misstatement regarding the number of books read by our top reader, Hilary, during our summer reading program.  A gross understatement.  Hilary in fact read and reviewed 9 books, not the paltry 6 I reported previously.   Here’s another of Hilary’s reviews.

Beka Cooper: Terrier by Tamora Pierce

This book was excellent.  It was everything that a fantasy book should be. There was magic, but not magic that was in your face, but subtle magic that felt like a natural part of life.  Every now and then there would be a scene with action not dealing with typical fantasies.  Also, the main character, Beka, is a person that you don’t get tired of reading about.  She has well-thought-out morals and goals, but you don’t get tired of how good she is. Beka’s ways and background are introduced throughout the book, and when struggles and triumphs appear, you follow how she feels.  The plot was fast-paced and there were turns that I didn’t expect.  It was interesting the whole way through.  I wished that the book never stopped, but the way it did was satisfying.  Review by Hilary

New Anime!

Mobile Suit: Gundam F-91 Special Edition release of the 2004 anime classic, screenplay by Tsunehisa Ito, Yoshiyuki Tomin, written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino. After a generation of peace, the Earth Federation has begun to build new space colonies to house humanity's growing population. A new force, the Crossbone Vanguard, plans to seize the colonies of the newly constructed Frontier Side for itself.

 

 

 

 

 

R. O. D. Read or Die Winner of the 2002 Anime Expo by Manga Entertainment, Koji Masunari and Taraku Uon. A sinister plot is afoot and  only one schoolteacher, a special agent with an affinity for literature, can stop it. She is Ms. Yomiko Readman -- better known to her colleagues in Section A of Library Special Operations as "Agent Paper."

 

And the Award Goes to….

As promised, the two students who read the most books as part of the Summer Reading program earned the most coveted prize: a 1GB Flash Drive.  No, they don’t have to share it; we gave them each one.  Jordan read and reviewed 5 books, and Hilary read and reviewed 6!  Congrats to both of them.  Check previous posts to read some of their reviews, and I’ll be posting more later.  Thanks to everyone who participated.