Hey guys,

I just wanted to have a place to house our suggestions for future books, since we seem to be having a tricky time lately, choosing the next book to read.

Here's what's on my radar this week:


Merlin's Dragon by T. A. Barron - Jane said she read some others of his and didn't like them, but I read the first 2 pages of this and was hooked.


Masterpiece by Elise Broach - I read the first 2 chapters during lunch--hooked again! It's about a boy and a beetle who become embroiled in an art heist, after the beetle uses the boy's birthday present to draw a miniscule masterpiece! I may have to also pick up the new paperback of Shakespeare's Secret because the cover has been redrawn by Brett Helquist, illustrator of the Lemony Snicket books.

Here are a couple more that may be too similar to Poison Study and Graceling, but maybe next year when we've put some distance between them...


Sovay by Celia Rees


The Swan Kingdom by Zoe Marriott

One more I just thought of: The Wednesday Wars

I spotted some really cool stuff last week:


Looks so cool, I bought it on the spot


Kind of -like. Jeff Kinney gave him a good blurb on the back of the cover.

And customers have been raving about this one:


I have Looking for Alaska but I thought it would be too depressing for us...

Oh by the way if you haven't checked our website in a while, I have been posting there. At YABC you'll find a link to the Cybils awards, and the nominees for those awards are chosen by the general public from all the children's titles published in 2008. They're a great shopping/need a book suggestion resource.

Probably not an official read, as this is really an adult novel, I think:

Read a review here: http://www.caribousmom.com/

I saw this a week ago and briefly resisted the urge not to buy it. If I find it tomorrow, though, I probably will.



The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli

I got friended on jacketflap by Jeannine Garsee.

This one was an Original Voices selection last year.

is new and I think it's going to be pretty good.

Also, here's the link to The 2008 Cybils Awards if you need more titles to browse.

Thanks, Alethea! Before/After just came out in paperback and Say the Word will be out in March.

I totally need some new YA books to read so I'll be watching this thread. I'm currently in withdrawal. :)

Yay! Hi, Jeannine :-) I'm the opposite on YA books, I think I'm about to O.D.! I'm trying to read a grown-up book, just one, before I dive in to Hunger Games.

You're more than welcome to join us, not just for reading suggestions--if you read or have read any of our older picks, you are welcome to discuss them here if you wish.

That goes for anyone who is lurking around here too, you don't have to be in L.A. to be in our group (c.f.c.c., I'm lookin' at you :)

omg. is that me?? whoa. *looks around nervously*

Hunger Games was just HIGHLY recommended to me. :)

Thank you for the welcome, Alethea.

well if i were to suggest a book, it would have to be The Shadow of the Wind. its the only book that i would recommend 100% to anybody i know -- and do not know -- for now. :)

oh. i wanna read Hunger Games and Graceling but i cant find them anywhere. :(

yey, im participating. ahaha. (i'm lookin' at you, al. ahaha. :P )

^_^ Good job! I keep wanting to call you Jill, that's what your name reminds me of--Jack & Jill corn curls.

Just keep bugging the bookstore people, I don't know how stuff gets published in the P.I. but they might be interested in anything that sells half as well as Twilight. ;-)

Do you know if Poison Study is available there? I keep asking my cousins to check Fully Booked but they haven't gotten back to me. I would think they could get it there, Harlequin/Mira has a huge audience in the Philippines!

ahaha. yeah. thats where i got my name from. i was eating cheesecurls by jack&jill and its description was cheese flavored corn curls.i couldnt come up with a user name that wasn't already taken so...i guess you know what happened already. ahaha.

poison study? i dont think that any of the book stores have it here yet. i've checked fullybooked, bibliarch, powerbooks, a different bookstore,and even national bookstore. but i cant find it. well, that was last week, maybe they'll have it now. :D

I've heard of this before, but also it just won the YA equivalent of the National Book Award (Young People's Literary Award):



Has anyone read this? I definitely think it should be one of our picks next year.

See jacket flap and excerpt up to p. 66

Ooooooh, let me know if anyone finds the P.S. edition specifically--I like that cover a lot! I've never seen that one at the store before...

I'm going to check for the isbn at work.... it might be available from Powells.com, it looks like. Let me know if anyone's interested in ordering from them.

Boo! I already bought a copy, and it's not the one that I listed. I like that cover too.

What is a P.S. edition?

And have we decided on a book to read together? There are so many that look so good - but my husband is going to kill me if I order twenty new books! :) I've been ordering - or going to the used book seller for - books like mad since Thanksgiving. ;) Yep - haven't been assigning too much that I actually have to read with the kids.

Jen

P.S. stands for Perennial Series, an edition of Harper Perennial publishers. We pretty much all work or have worked in bookstores and tend to pick and choose when it comes to our personal copies of books.

I believe Roxy gets to pick the January book--we cycle in order (more or less) through the original members of the group throughout the year.

The read for Jan 7 is Wildwood Dancing which is now available in paperback. And of course, you can always borrow from the library!

Don't worry, if she picks Coraline, that's like a $6 book even when it's new! The children's edition is almost always cheapest.

Oops!

I just thought you were really tired from Finals. It's ok. I am too.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

The Graveyard Book

The Ruby in the Smoke

Can I vote for a book I hate?

Clix wrote: "Can I vote for a book I hate?"

Sort of! The original members get to choose the monthly official and the unofficial picks, but everyone can *suggest* books to read or not to read.

I always suggest to people *not* to read The Book of Dead Days. There are better ways to spend 4 hours of your life.

*grin* Well, I've read The Ruby in the Smoke - the whole series, actually - and I hated it. I kept hoping it would get better and it got worse! But I'd love to discuss it with people who DID like it, you know, to see what they liked about it.

Yeah, I'll have to get to it soon. You know, comparing books, you hated a bunch of the books I loved! So I'm pretty sure I'll like Ruby etc.! ^_^

hahaha! I think a lot of it is that I'm pretty stingy with my reviews. I try to go by what it says when you hover over the stars, so "one" means "I didn't like it" and "two" already means "it was okay."

Whereas for me, 5 stars means I freakin' loved it (at the time of rating)

The Dust of 100 Dogs

Savvy by Ingrid Law

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

oho! i thought id just suggest this. i havent read it yet but ive read one of her books, Goodbye Tsugumi, and it was great. :D

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

I tried reading Asleep.

But I kept falling asleep.

Maybe that was the whole idea of the book, Alethea!

Alethea wrote: "I tried reading Asleep.

But I kept falling asleep."

ahaha. i can kinda sorta imagine you doing that. :P

So - this Unwind looks really good - scary - sort of reminds me of the Last Book in the Universe - also good and scary, too. I wish I could get my urban Af-Amer. kids more interested in sci. fi. - they're all about the real-life fiction starring black kids (no big surprise there, really). :) Well - maybe next year I can push for one as a part of the curriculum.

The House of the Scorpion

Jen wrote: "So - this Unwind looks really good - scary - sort of reminds me of the Last Book in the Universe - also good and scary, too. I wish I could get my urban Af-Amer. kids more interested in sci. fi. -..."

I hope you try Unwind. I think it's really good.

Hmmm.... I'm trying to think of a sci-fi that stars black kids, but I can't seem to think of one. I don't really read a lot of sci fi myself; I prefer fantasy. What do you mean by "real-life" fiction? Like high school kids contemporary fiction-- Freedom Writers? Or historical fiction -- Toni Morrison?

Wintergirls
OR
Chains

I'm going through all of my previous posts and erasing ones that we have either chosen or are no longer considering as a future choice.

Short ones (less than 200 pages)

Living Dead Girl

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler

Ender's Game

The Penderwicks A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

By the way, apparently Gaiman is doing a sort of chapter by chapter tour reading of The Graveyard Book, and he's up to 8 chapters. In case you're interested: http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.asp...

im suggesting The Angel's Game because i just bought a copy. ahaha. and people say its good. :P

Shiver I just finished reading Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater and loved it. I would also recommend The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

cheeseflavoredcorncurls wrote: "im suggesting The Angel's Game because i just bought a copy. ahaha. and people say its good. :P"

You're so funny... Angel's Game is really good. We just went to the book signing a few weeks ago and the author's great!

Alyson wrote: "Shiver I just finished reading Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater and loved it. I would also recommend The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson"

I'm reading Shiver right now!

Lament The Faerie Queen's DeceptionI loved Shiver so much I decided to try Stiefvater's Lament.