Betsy's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 12 Jul 2019 09:24:41 -0700 60 Betsy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Hero and the Crown (Damar, #1)]]> 1124884
Aerin is an outcast in her own father’s court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her.

She makes friends with her father’s lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father’s library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat’s weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .

But modern dragons, while formidable opponents fully capable of killing a human being, are small and accounted vermin. There is no honor in killing dragons. The great dragons are a tale out of ancient history.

That is, until the day that the king is riding out at the head of an army. A weary man on an exhausted horse staggers into the courtyard where the king’s troop is assembled: “The Black Dragon has come . . . Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened.”]]> 246 Robin McKinley 0141309814 Betsy 5 4.14 1984 The Hero and the Crown (Damar, #1)
author: Robin McKinley
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/05
date added: 2019/07/12
shelves:
review:

]]> The Class 6076327 264 François Bégaudeau 1583228853 Betsy 1 2.88 2006 The Class
author: François Bégaudeau
name: Betsy
average rating: 2.88
book published: 2006
rating: 1
read at: 2009/04/03
date added: 2017/01/22
shelves:
review:
I found the narrator/teacher's voice really annoying. He never seemed to give his students the benefit of the doubt and would come down hard on them even before they gave him cause.
]]> Refresh, Refresh 6362843
There's nothing Josh, Cody, and Gordon want more than their fathers home safely from the war in Iraq -- unless it's to get out of their dead-end town. Refresh, Refresh is the story of three teenagers on the cusp of high school graduation and their struggle to make hard decisions with no role models to follow; to discover the possibilities for the future when all the doors are slamming in their faces; and to believe their fathers will come home alive so they can be boys again.]]> 144 Danica Novgorodoff 1596435224 Betsy 5 3.18 2009 Refresh, Refresh
author: Danica Novgorodoff
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/07/14
date added: 2015/06/27
shelves:
review:
This is a powerful read about young men growing up in a community with few choices. Each of them have fathers in the armed forces in Iraq. One of their coping strategies is boxing and bloodying one another. When not boxing or getting drunk at the local bar that doesn't care that they are underage, they sit by their computers, refreshing, refreshing them in hopes of hearing from their fathers, to know that they are safe.
]]> Echo: Desert Run (Echo, #3) 7004022 128 Terry Moore 1892597438 Betsy 0 to-read 4.07 2010 Echo: Desert Run (Echo, #3)
author: Terry Moore
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Art of Racing in the Rain 2686103
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life ... as only a dog could tell it.]]> 321 Garth Stein 0061537934 Betsy 4 4.19 2008 The Art of Racing in the Rain
author: Garth Stein
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2008/02/05
date added: 2012/12/09
shelves:
review:
This quirky book, told from the perspective of a dog named Enzo who sees life through the metaphor of car racing, was by turns sweet and sad. OK, you have to suspend belief at times when Enzo talks about his desire to be a man in his next life and how he tries to subdue his doggyness to be more like a man. It is when Enzo succumbs to those instinct that the book really soars. Some of my favorite scenes have him acting like a dog... I don't want to say a lot about the book for those of you who haven't yet read it but I will say that it's about Enzo's relationship with his human/owner, Denny and his gradual acceptance of and love for the wife and daughter who come into Denny's life. Denny is a semi-professional race car driver whose day job is working as a mechanic in Seattle but his passion is racing cars. He has a special aptitude for racing in the rain (hence the title) which is not entirely unexpected since he lives in Seattle where it rains 9 months of the year. When adversity comes to Denny, he must decide how to act/react and how he does this is also reflected in the way he races, i.e. racing is a metaphor for life.
]]> <![CDATA[Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)]]> 2102600
I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old.

Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did � how I did what I had to do � not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes.

It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.]]> 335 John Scalzi 0765316986 Betsy 3 3.73 2008 Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)
author: John Scalzi
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/10/07
date added: 2011/11/25
shelves:
review:
I appreciated Zoe's teen voice and found the narrative engaging for the first 2/3 of the book but it lagged for me at the end and it became much harder to believe all of what this teen girl was able to accomplish in her negotiations with various alien races.
]]> Ash 6472451 Cinderella retold
In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.]]> 264 Malinda Lo 0316040096 Betsy 5 3.65 2009 Ash
author: Malinda Lo
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/02/12
date added: 2011/11/10
shelves:
review:
I loved Lo's take on the Cinderella story. It was interesting to see how she would spin the story adding the lesbian element and the King's huntress along with the fairy curse. I was immediately drawn into the story by all the fairy tales that Ash read and dreamed that were within the story. I also want to mention the beautiful layout of the beginning of each chapter with the lushly illustrated first letter of each chapter.
]]> <![CDATA[Tales from the Town of Widows: And Chronicles from the Land of Men]]> 2713623 352 James Cañón 0007241097 Betsy 4 3.90 2007 Tales from the Town of Widows: And Chronicles from the Land of Men
author: James Cañón
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2011/07/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Fallout (Crank, #3) 7171876 Hunter. Autumn. Summer.
Different homes. Different guardians. Different last names.
Different lives.
But there is one person who binds them together.
Kristina.

Nineteen years after Kristina Snow met the monster---crank---her children are reeling from the consequences of her decisions. Instead of one big, happy family, they are a desperate tangle of scattered lives united by anger, doubt, and fear.

A predisposition to addiction and a sense of emptiness where a mother's love should be leads all three down the road of their mother's notorious legacy. Sex, drugs, alcohol, abuse---there is more of Kristina in her children than they would ever like to believe. But when the thread that ties them together brings them face-to-face, they'll discover something powerful in each other and in themselves---the trust, the hope, the courage to begin to break the cycle.

Fallout is bestselling author Ellen Hopkin's riveting conclusion to her trilogy begun by Crank and Glass. It is a revelation and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person's problem.]]> 665 Ellen Hopkins 1416950095 Betsy 5 4.26 2010 Fallout (Crank, #3)
author: Ellen Hopkins
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/10/19
date added: 2010/10/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Marvel Visionaries: Stan Lee 699300 336 Stan Lee 0785116931 Betsy 3 4.22 2005 Marvel Visionaries: Stan Lee
author: Stan Lee
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2010/10/19
date added: 2010/10/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Mystery of Grace 863521
Altagracia � her friends call her Grace � has a tattoo of Nuestra Señora de Altagracia on her shoulder, she's got a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg, and she has grease worked so deep into her hands that it'll never wash out. Grace works at Sanchez Motorworks, customizing hot rods. Finding the line in a classic car is her calling.

Now Grace has to find the line in her own life. A few blocks around the Alverson Arms is all her world -- from the little grocery store where she buys beans, tamales, and cigarettes (“cigarettes can kill you,� they tell her, but she smokes them anyway) to the record shop, to the library where Henry, a black man confined to a wheelchair, researches the mystery of life in death � but she’s got unfinished business keeping her close to home.

Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business � he’s haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother. He's never stopped feeling responsible. Like Grace in her way, John is an artist, and before their relationship can find its resolution, the two of them will have to teach each other about life and love, about hot rods and Elvis Presley, and about why it's necessary to let some things go.]]> 269 Charles de Lint 0765317567 Betsy 3 enabled both to work through issues and find a solution to their current
predicament of being stuck between life and the great unknown.]]> 3.97 2009 The Mystery of Grace
author: Charles de Lint
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/07/06
date added: 2010/09/29
shelves:
review:
This ghost/romance story was a quick read but not a totally "wow" read for me. While I liked it well enough when I was reading it, looking back to four days ago when I finished it, I really had to think about it for a few minutes, to remember how the book ended. I liked the concept of the dead being able to walk among the living twice a year and that two people who, when they were both alive, would probably not have ended up together, somehow find commonality & a bond that is both spiritual as well as physical, after Grace's death. I liked John's character quite a lot and was sorry that he was out of the picture relatively quickly so that he & Grace didn't get a chance to be together more than they were. The last section with the bruja and trying to find a way to outsmart her seemed almost like a different story - in fact they could have been two separate tales, both of which pay homage to fairy/folktale tradition. I liked the friendship that developed between Grace & Conchita and the way their bond
enabled both to work through issues and find a solution to their current
predicament of being stuck between life and the great unknown.
]]> Rose Daughter 8089
Twenty years ago, Robin McKinley dazzled readers with the power of her novel Beauty. Now this extraordinarily gifted novelist returns to the story of Beauty and the Beast with a fresh perspective, ingenuity, and mature insight. With Rose Daughter, she presents her finest and most deeply felt work--a compelling, richly imagined, and haunting exploration of the transformative power of love.]]> 304 Robin McKinley 0441005837 Betsy 4 3.78 1997 Rose Daughter
author: Robin McKinley
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/01
date added: 2010/09/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast]]> 41424
Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in looks, she can perhaps make up for in courage.

When her father comes home with the tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must go to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father protests that he will not let her go, but she answers, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?"

Robin McKinley's beloved telling illuminates the unusual love story of a most unlikely couple, Beauty and the Beast.]]> 256 Robin McKinley 0064404773 Betsy 5 4.05 1978 Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
author: Robin McKinley
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/24
date added: 2010/07/28
shelves:
review:
This is a lushly descriptive retold fairy tale. Even though there are no surprises in the story (if you know the tale of Beauty and the Beast), I found that I didn't want to put it down. I wanted to know how McKinley would craft her version of the story and she didn't disappoint me. It's hard to believe this was her first book! Now I'm eager to read Rose Daughter to see what she came up with twenty years later that compelled her to do a completely new retelling of the same tale.
]]> <![CDATA[Tales of the Madman Underground]]> 4906766 532 John Barnes 067006081X Betsy 5 3.93 2009 Tales of the Madman Underground
author: John Barnes
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/15
date added: 2010/07/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Matched (Matched, #1) 7735333
Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one…until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic.]]> 369 Ally Condie 0525423648 Betsy 0 to-read 3.62 2010 Matched (Matched, #1)
author: Ally Condie
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Marbury Lens (The Marbury Lens, #1)]]> 7995207
There is war in Marbury. It is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys. Conner is there, too. But he’s trying to kill them.

Meanwhile, Jack is falling in love with an English girl, and afraid he’s losing his mind.

Conner tells Jack it’s going to be okay.

But it’s not.

Andrew Smith has written his most beautiful and personal novel yet, as he explores the nightmarish outer limits of what trauma can do to our bodies and our minds.]]> 358 Andrew Smith 0312613423 Betsy 0 to-read 3.63 2010 The Marbury Lens (The Marbury Lens, #1)
author: Andrew Smith
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Blue Sword (Damar, #1) 407813
And this is the story of Harry Crewe, the Homelander orphan girl who became Harimad-sol, King's Rider, and heir to the Blue Sword, Gonturan, that no woman had wielded since the Lady Aerin herself bore it into battle.

And this is the song of the kelar of the Hillfolk, the magic of the blood, the weaver of destinies...]]> 248 Robin McKinley 0441068804 Betsy 4 4.21 1982 The Blue Sword (Damar, #1)
author: Robin McKinley
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/29
date added: 2010/07/02
shelves:
review:
Harry Crewe is a kicka$$ heroine in this tale of finding one's place in the world choices of loyalty vs. doing what you know is right. This book, originally published in 1982 is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it came out. Robin McKinley's world-building is superb and I enjoyed this thoroughly (although there were places where it dragged a bit for me, which might have just been where I was at when I was reading it.)
]]> The Silver Kiss 266716


Simon is one of the undead, a vampire, seeking revenge for the gruesome death of his mother three hundred years before.ĚýĚýDoes Simon dare ask Zoe to help free him from this lifeless chase and its insufferable loneliness?]]> 224 Annette Curtis Klause 0385734220 Betsy 5 3.44 1990 The Silver Kiss
author: Annette Curtis Klause
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2010/06/14
date added: 2010/06/22
shelves:
review:
The Silver Kiss is refreshing in its take on the friendship between human and vampire. Her work is carefully nuanced and there are no easy answers but she also doesn't manipulate the reader's emotions. Although you may feel sympathy for Simon, he's also clearly a monster who has to do distasteful and even disgusting things to survive as Zoe witnesses when she comes upon him sucking the blood from a bird. Both Zoe and Simon are dealing with powerful emotions: grief, loneliness, anger - Zoe's mother is dying of cancer; Simon's mother was killed by a vampire. The resolution is satisfying and doesn't feel tacked on. I admire the author's restraint in not trying to make this into a multi-volume saga.
]]> <![CDATA[Genghis: Birth of an Empire (Conqueror, #1)]]> 1279686
Through a series of courageous raids against the Tartars, Temujin's legend grew. And so did the challenges he faced--from the machinations of a Chinese ambassador to the brutal abduction of his young wife, Borte. Blessed with ferocious courage, it was the young warrior's ability to learn, to imagine, and to judge the hearts of others that propelled him to greater and greater power. Until Temujin was chasing a vision: to unite many tribes into one, to make the earth tremble under the hoofbeats of a thousand warhorses, to subject unknown nations and even empires to his will.]]> 528 Conn Iggulden 0440243904 Betsy 4 4.39 2007 Genghis: Birth of an Empire (Conqueror, #1)
author: Conn Iggulden
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2010/06/17
shelves:
review:
Solid adventure. Good historical fiction
]]> <![CDATA[Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice]]> 8117193 144 Phillip Hoose 1429948213 Betsy 5 3.29 2009 Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
author: Phillip Hoose
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/05/17
date added: 2010/06/16
shelves:
review:
Well done, fascinating look at a teen who was in the forefront of the civil rights movement/Montgomery bus desegregation movement but who got swept under the rug because she was only a teen and she was ahead of her time in righteous rage over Jim Crow.
]]> <![CDATA[Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously]]> 7247651
For Adrienne Martini, and countless others, knitting is the linchpin of sanity. As a working mother of two, Martini wanted a challenge that would make her feel in charge. So she decided to make the Holy Grail of sweaters—her own Mary Tudor, whose mind-numbingly gorgeous pattern is so complicated to knit that its mere mention can hush a roomful of experienced knitters. Created by reclusive designer Alice Starmore, the Mary Tudor can be found only in a rare, out-of-print book of Fair Isle–style patterns, Tudor Roses, and requires a discontinued, irreplaceable yarn. The sweater, Martini explains, "is a knitter’s Mount Everest, our curse, and our compulsion. I want one more than I can begin to tell you."

And so she took on the challenge: one year, two needles, and countless knits and purls to conquer Mary Tudor while also taking care of her two kids, two cats, two jobs, and (thankfully) one husband—without unraveling in the process. Along the way, Adrienne investigates the tangled origins of the coveted pattern, inquires into the nature of artistic creation, and details her quest to buy supplies on the knitting black market. As she tries not to pull out her hair along with rows gone wrong, Martini gets guidance from some knitterati, who offer invaluable inspiration as she conquers her fear of Fair Isle. A wooly Julie and Julia, this epic yarn celebrates the profound joys of creating—and aspiring to—remarkable achievements.]]> 240 Adrienne Martini 1416597646 Betsy 3 3.44 2010 Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously
author: Adrienne Martini
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2010/06/12
date added: 2010/06/12
shelves:
review:
Readable - really would only be interesting to a knitter who knows about all the knitting luminaries. Those "in the know" knitters would already know some of the things Martini explains for novices, who, I don't think would be reading this book. I found the pacing slow in places, some stitches dropped, while others were knit together at the right gauge.
]]> <![CDATA[Rules of the Road (Rules of the Road, #1)]]> 522493 224 Joan Bauer 0552550361 Betsy 4 3.91 1998 Rules of the Road (Rules of the Road, #1)
author: Joan Bauer
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/03
date added: 2010/06/03
shelves:
review:
Cute story that shares some similarities with the theme and characters of Hope Was Here. Both have main characters who've been dealt a rough deal in terms of one or both of their parents. In the case of Jenna Boller, it's her alcoholic father, in Hope's case it's a bio-mom who had no time to be a mom and dumped Hope on her sister and no dad. Both find love and self-esteem through characters they meet along the way. For Jenna, it's Harry Bender, top shoe salesman for Gladstone's shoes and 23 years sober. Both characters face adversity and come out on the other side stronger and more sure of themselves.
]]> <![CDATA[Blameless (Parasol Protectorate, #3)]]> 7719355 Quitting her husband's house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season in the third book of the NYT bestselling Parasol Protectorate series.

Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London's vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.

While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires -- and they're armed with pesto.
BLAMELESS is the third book of the Parasol Protectorate series: a comedy of manners set in Victorian London, full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.


The Parasol Protectorate
Soulless
Changeless
Blameless
Heartless
Timeless


For more from Gail Carriger, check out:

The Custard Protocol
Prudence
Imprudence
Competence
Reticence

Finishing School (YA)
Etiquette & Espionage
Curtsies & Conspiracies
Waistcoats & Weaponry
Manners & Mutiny]]> 355 Gail Carriger 0316074152 Betsy 0 to-read 3.99 2010 Blameless (Parasol Protectorate, #3)
author: Gail Carriger
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blood and Chocolate 30324
Then Vivian falls in love with a human, a meat-boy. Aiden is kind and gentle, a welcome relief from the squabbling pack. He’s fascinated by magic, and Vivian longs to reveal herself to him. Surely he would understand her and delight in the wonder of her dual nature, not fear her as an ordinary human would.

Vivian’s divided loyalties are strained further when a brutal murder threatens to expose the pack. Moving between two worlds, she does not seem to belong in either. What is she really—human or beast? Which tastes sweeter—blood or chocolate?]]> 288 Annette Curtis Klause 0440226686 Betsy 0 to-read 3.81 1990 Blood and Chocolate
author: Annette Curtis Klause
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Draw the Dark 7811598 328 Ilsa J. Bick 076135686X Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.73 2010 Draw the Dark
author: Ilsa J. Bick
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/06/01
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nightshade (Nightshade, #1; Nightshade World, #4)]]> 7402393
By following her heart, she might lose everything- including her own life. Is forbidden love worth the ultimate sacrifice?

"A finely-wrought compelling tale of romance and treachery..."
-Cynthia Leitich Smith
(New York Times bestselling author of
Eternal and Tantalize)]]> 452 Andrea Cremer 039925482X Betsy 0 on-hiatus 4.02 2010 Nightshade (Nightshade, #1; Nightshade World, #4)
author: Andrea Cremer
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/06/01
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Moon Lake (Echo #1) 3884131 112 Terry Moore 1892597403 Betsy 4 3.92 2008 Moon Lake (Echo #1)
author: Terry Moore
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/24
date added: 2010/05/26
shelves:
review:
A great beginning to a new series by the creator of Strangers in Paradise. Now, I just have to get my hands on the volumes that continue this series...which the library doesn't own!
]]> Echo: Black Hole (Echo, #5) 6265791 104 Terry Moore 1892597462 Betsy 0 to-read 4.11 2010 Echo: Black Hole (Echo, #5)
author: Terry Moore
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Echo: Collider (Echo, #4) 7948955 104 Terry Moore 1892597446 Betsy 0 to-read 4.08 2010 Echo: Collider (Echo, #4)
author: Terry Moore
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Echo: Atomic Dreams (Echo, #2)]]> 6526203 104 Terry Moore 1892597411 Betsy 0 to-read 4.08 2009 Echo: Atomic Dreams (Echo, #2)
author: Terry Moore
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Extraordinary (Impossible, #2)]]> 7456034 For fans of Beautiful Creatures and Wicked Lovely, New York Times Bestselling author Nancy Werlin delivers a captivating novel of friendship and trust, where the past determines the future and a generations-old curse requires the ultimate sacrifice.

Phoebe is drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new girl at school. Soon the two become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory’s magnetic older brother, Ryland, arrives. Ryland has an immediate hold on Phoebe � but it turns into something dangerous, as she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself. Soon Phoebe discovers the shocking, fantastical truth about Ryland and Mallory, and about an age-old debt she’s meant to pay. Will she be strong enough to save herself from the curse?]]> 393 Nancy Werlin 0803733720 Betsy 4



SPOILER*SPOILER**

The middle part of the book dragged a bit for me while Mallory and her brother were trying to bring Phoebe to the brink of despair where she would see herself as "less than", but the ending made up for this for me in the way they found to pay the debt and achieve balance.]]> 3.27 2010 Extraordinary (Impossible, #2)
author: Nancy Werlin
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/26
date added: 2010/05/26
shelves:
review:
Fans of Impossible will enjoy this tale of friendship, betrayal and a debt that must be paid to keep the worlds in balance.




SPOILER*SPOILER**

The middle part of the book dragged a bit for me while Mallory and her brother were trying to bring Phoebe to the brink of despair where she would see herself as "less than", but the ending made up for this for me in the way they found to pay the debt and achieve balance.
]]> Hope Was Here 522471
Filled with heart, charm, and good old-fashioned fun, this is Joan Bauer at her best.]]> 186 Joan Bauer 0142404241 Betsy 4 4.01 2000 Hope Was Here
author: Joan Bauer
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/16
date added: 2010/05/20
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed the characters, setting and plot. This was a wholly satisfying read.
]]> Impossible (Impossible, #1) 3188580
A beautifully wrought modern fairy tale from master storyteller and award-winning author Nancy Werlin. Inspired by the classic folk ballad "Scarborough Fair," this is a wonderfully riveting and haunting novel of suspense, romance, and fantasy.]]> 384 Nancy Werlin 0803730020 Betsy 3 3.66 2008 Impossible (Impossible, #1)
author: Nancy Werlin
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/07/07
date added: 2010/05/20
shelves:
review:
The melding of fantasy with current issues such as date rape and teen pregnancy worked well. The characters are all well drawn and I think teens will enjoy this book very much. It is somewhat of a departure for Werlin to work in the fantasy element but it works. I'm not wildly ecstatically in love with this book and have enjoyed some of her other books more. Perhaps it has to do with the way that Lucy's foster parents and friend/love interest are so willing to suspend disbelief about the ancient curse that has afflicted the women of her family and the way they fairly easily are able to solve the riddles that have stumped many generations of women who came before Lucy. Still, I would definitely recommend this highly to teen readers who like a mix of fantasy, romance and hot topics.
]]> <![CDATA[The Language of Bees (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #9)]]> 5226845 For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve--the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes's beloved hives.
But the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from her husband's past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the promising surrealist painter had been charged with--and exonerated from--murder. Now the talented and troubled young man was enlisting their help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child.
When it comes to communal behavior, Russell has often observed that there are many kinds of madness. And before this case yields its shattering solution, she'll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to a bizarre religious cult, from the demimonde of the Cafe Royal at the heart of Bohemian London to the dark secrets of a young woman's past on the streets of Shanghai, Russell will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she's ever faced--a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.]]> 435 Laurie R. King 0553804545 Betsy 5 4.15 2009 The Language of Bees (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #9)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/05/11
date added: 2010/05/19
shelves:
review:
Another great Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mystery, but this one leaves you hanging a bit. I hope Laurie R. King doesn't make us wait too long for the sequel...
]]> <![CDATA[Changeless (Parasol Protectorate, #2)]]> 6933876
But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest fashions, and an arsenal of biting civility. So even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can. She might even find time to track down her wayward husband, if she feels like it.

CHANGELESS is the second book of the Parasol Protectorate series: a comedy of manners set in Victorian London, full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.]]> 374 Gail Carriger 0316074144 Betsy 5 3.99 2010 Changeless (Parasol Protectorate, #2)
author: Gail Carriger
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/04/25
date added: 2010/05/06
shelves:
review:
(If possible, I really would have given this 4-1/2 stars, not 5.) This is just as much fun as Soulless, especially because I already know most of the characters, and we're left with a bit of a cliffhanger...I just wish I didn't have to wait until September to read Blameless! Although I really enjoyed this book, I did like Soulless better for its never-ending quips and double entendres. Although Changeless had some of this, it was more prevalent in the first book. I thoroughly enjoy Carriger's Parasol Protectorate World and she does a great job of creating distinctive minor characters in addition to the main ones.
]]> Will Grayson, Will Grayson 6567017
It's not that far from Evanston to Naperville, but Chicago suburbanites Will Grayson and Will Grayson might as well live on different planets. When fate delivers them both to the same surprising crossroads, the Will Graysons find their lives overlapping and hurtling in new and unexpected directions. With a push from friends new and old - including the massive, and massively fabulous, Tiny Cooper, offensive lineman and musical theater auteur extraordinaire - Will and Will begin building toward respective romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history's most awesome high school musical.]]> 320 John Green 0525421580 Betsy 5 3.70 2010 Will Grayson, Will Grayson
author: John Green
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/05/04
date added: 2010/05/06
shelves:
review:
Boy meets Boy meets John Green. If Darleen, the cross-dressing quarterback/homecoming queen of Boy Meets Boy had any aspirations of performing in musical theater, she'd be quite comfortable performing in Tiny Cooper's musical Tiny Dancer AKA Hold Me Closer. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting all of the characters in this, in some ways quite realistic, and in some ways fantastical take on modern life for two teens named Will Grayson, one straight, one gay but both working through their fears of really being seen and engaging with the world around them.
]]> <![CDATA[Magic's Pawn (The Last Herald-Mage, #1)]]> 28759
Though Vanyel has been born with near-legendary abilities to work both Herald and Mage magic, he wants no part of such things. Nor does he seek a warrior's path, wishing instead to become a Bard. Yet such talent as his if left untrained may prove a menace not only to Vanyel but to others as well. So he is sent to be fostered with his aunt, Savil, one of the famed Herald-Mages of Valdemar.

But, strong-willed and self-centered, Vanyel is a challenge which even Savil can not master alone. For soon he will become the focus of frightening forces, lending his raw magic to a spell that unleashes terrifying wyr-hunters on the land. And by the time Savil seeks the assistance of a Shin'a'in Adept, Vanyel's wild talent may have already grown beyond anyone's ability to contain, placing Vanyel, Savil, and Valdemar itself in desperate peril...]]> 349 Mercedes Lackey 0886773520 Betsy 4 4.20 1989 Magic's Pawn (The Last Herald-Mage, #1)
author: Mercedes Lackey
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2010/04/15
date added: 2010/05/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Icecore 6949292 307 Matt Whyman 1416989609 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.91 2007 Icecore
author: Matt Whyman
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/04/24
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Push 71332 177 Sapphire 0679766758 Betsy 4 3.89 1996 Push
author: Sapphire
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/25
date added: 2010/04/08
shelves:
review:
This is an extremely powerful read - harrowing and ultimately, hopeful.
]]> Going Bovine 6512140
All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.]]> 480 Libba Bray 0385733976 Betsy 4 3.67 2009 Going Bovine
author: Libba Bray
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/17
date added: 2010/03/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir]]> 6993426 280 Diana Welch 0307462544 Betsy 4 3.82 2000 The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir
author: Diana Welch
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/22
date added: 2010/03/12
shelves:
review:
I found this account, told in four siblings' voices to be completely engrossing. Interesting, but not surprising how each one sees events differently. What each one remembers is what was most important to him/her. I wondered too how the "mom"/Nancy Chamberlain felt about being portrayed so negatively. Perhaps they didn't use her real name? It was totally believable that each of them acted out in varying ways in reaction to having their lives ripped out from underneath them in such a brutal way by the death of both parents within a space of a couple of years. I thought it was interesting that, even though the father had so many siblings, none of them was really considered to be the right fit for these kids, their nieces & nephew. I was never bored by their account and it was a quick read.
]]> Liar 6380296

Micah will freely admit that she’s a compulsive liar, but that may be the one honest thing she’ll ever tell you. Over the years she’s duped her classmates, her teachers, and even her parents, and she’s always managed to stay one step ahead of her lies. That is, until her boyfriend dies under brutal circumstances and her dishonesty begins to catch up with her. But is it possible to tell the truth when lying comes as naturally as breathing? Taking readers deep into the psyche of a young woman who will say just about anything to convince them—and herself—that she’s finally come clean, Liar is a bone-chilling thriller that will have readers see-sawing between truths and lies right up to the end. Honestly.

]]> 376 Justine Larbalestier 1599903059 Betsy 4 3.29 2009 Liar
author: Justine Larbalestier
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/03
date added: 2010/03/06
shelves:
review:
An interesting story - the unreliable narrator keeps the reader constantly off-balance and you never really know the truth of what is happening/has happened.
]]> <![CDATA[Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch]]> 12067
People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. This time though, the armies of Good and Evil really do appear to be massing. The four Bikers of the Apocalypse are hitting the road. But both the angels and demons � well, one fast-living demon and a somewhat fussy angel � would quite like the Rapture not to happen.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist…]]> 491 Terry Pratchett Betsy 0 on-hiatus 4.27 1990 Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/03/06
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Leviathan (Leviathan, #1) 6050678
Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way…taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.]]> 440 Scott Westerfeld 1416971734 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.92 2009 Leviathan (Leviathan, #1)
author: Scott Westerfeld
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2010/02/09
date added: 2010/02/13
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks]]> 1629601
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer and possibly a criminal mastermind. This is the story of how she got that way.

Frankie Landau-Banks. No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer. Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.]]> 345 E. Lockhart 0786838183 Betsy 5 3.81 2008 The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
author: E. Lockhart
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/31
date added: 2010/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> The Storm in the Barn 6493836
In Kansas in the year 1937, eleven-year-old Jack Clark faces his share of ordinary local bullies, his father’s failed expectations, a little sister with an eye for trouble. But he also has to deal with the effects of the Dust Bowl, including rising tensions in his small town and the spread of a shadowy illness. Certainly a case of "dust dementia" would explain who (or what) Jack has glimpsed in the Talbot’s abandoned barn � a sinister figure with a face like rain. In a land where it never rains, it’s hard to trust what you see with your own eyes � and harder still to take heart and be a hero when the time comes. With phenomenal pacing, sensitivity, and a sure command of suspense, Matt Phelan ushers us into a world where desperation is transformed by unexpected courage.]]> 208 Matt Phelan 0763636185 Betsy 5 3.73 2009 The Storm in the Barn
author: Matt Phelan
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/26
date added: 2010/01/27
shelves:
review:
This is an evocative use of drawings with story to show the anguish of the Dust Bowl experience from a young boy's perspective.
]]> When You Reach Me 5310515 199 Rebecca Stead 0385737424 Betsy 5 4.08 2009 When You Reach Me
author: Rebecca Stead
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/25
date added: 2010/01/27
shelves:
review:
I'm so glad that this delightful & thoughtful page-turner was selected as this year's Newbery Medal winner. Stead got details of what it's like to be a middle schooler dealing with the casual cruelty of classmates dead-on. The puzzle was an incredible incentive to keep reading and not put this down until I finished it! This will also be a great book for reading groups to discuss as there is so much to a book that at the outset seems quite simple. It's also a book that will appeal to all ages - the adult who remembers a painful middle school existence, fans of Madeleine L'Engle and readers who just like a good puzzle to solve.
]]> Marcelo in the Real World 3700085
He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it's a picture he finds in a file -- a picture of a girl with half a face -- that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight.

Reminiscent of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" in the intensity and purity of its voice, this extraordinary novel is a love story, a legal drama, and a celebration of the music each of us hears inside.]]> 312 Francisco X. Stork 0545054745 Betsy 4 3.93 2008 Marcelo in the Real World
author: Francisco X. Stork
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/24
date added: 2010/01/27
shelves:
review:
Marcelo's voice seemed genuine and I liked that he had to grapple with gradations of not-so black and white issues of right and wrong. Just as most teens do, Marcelo finds out things about his father that are somewhat ugly, then has to decide what he will do with the information. He matures over this summer of challenges even though he would have preferred to stay in the comfortable sheltered environment of Paterson, working with the ponies. Being in "the real world" is not always comfortable, but it expands his horizons. I'd recommend this to readers who enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
]]> <![CDATA[The Prince of Mist (Niebla, #1)]]> 7128341
It’s wartime, and the Carver family decides to leave the capital where they live and move to a small coastal village where they’ve recently bought a home. But from the minute they cross the threshold, strange things begin to happen. In that mysterious house there still lurks the spirit of Jacob, the previous owners� son, who died by drowning.

With the help of their new friend Roland, Max and Alicia Carver begin to explore the suspicious circumstances of that death and discover the existence of a mysterious being called The Prince of Mist—a diabolical character who has returned from the shadows to collect on a debt from the past. Soon the three friends find themselves caught up in an adventure of sunken ships and an enchanted stone garden, which will change their lives forever.
]]> 218 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn 0316044776 Betsy 3 3.68 1993 The Prince of Mist (Niebla, #1)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/19
date added: 2010/01/22
shelves:
review:
Good suspense and sense of impending doom, timeline a bit confusing (perhaps because I read in ARC).
]]> Peter & Max 6463595 Fables novel from award-winning and wildly acclaimed author, Bill Willingham.
This story stars Peter Piper and his incorrigible brother Max in a tale about jealousy, betrayal and revenge. Set in two distinct time periods, prepare to travel back to medieval times and learn the tragic back-story of the Piper family, a medieval-era family of traveling minstrels. Then, jump into the present to follow a tale of espionage as Peter Piper slowly hunts down his evil brother for a heinous crime, pitting Peter's talents as a master thief against Max's dark magical powers.
Based on the long-running and award-winning comic book series Fables, Peter & Max is its own tale. Readers don't have to be familiar with the comics to fully enjoy and understand this book.]]> 400 Bill Willingham 1401215734 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.93 2009 Peter & Max
author: Bill Willingham
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/22
date added: 2010/01/22
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Total Oblivion, More or Less 6370542
What’s a girl to do when her world is invaded by warriors from the ancient world? That’s the problem faced by sixteen-year-old Macy, who sees her quiet, normal life in suburban Minnesota turned upside down when things that should never be possible begin to transform the landscape all around her. The cable stops working, the phone lines die–and then the horsemen come to town. It’s not the same America that she last went to sleep in.

Ticketed to a refugee camp by the marauding Scythian armies, Macy and her family come to believe that heading down the Mississippi by boat is their one escape from the encroaching madness. But as they make their way downriver, Macy’s world just keeps getting stranger, and the wooden submarines, wasp-borne plagues, and talking dogs are the least of her For in this upside-down world, old identities warp and family bonds are sorely tested.

Acclaimed writer Alan DeNiro has fashioned a completely original, utterly beguiling melding of the surreal and the everyday.]]> 306 Alan DeNiro 0553592548 Betsy 5 3.08 2009 Total Oblivion, More or Less
author: Alan DeNiro
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/12/02
date added: 2010/01/14
shelves:
review:
Macy and her family are forced to flee their comfortable lives in St. Paul when warring bands of horsemen sweep through a society that is hardly recognizable as their own as technology fails and life as they know it evaporates. Heading down the Mississippi River is nothing like Huck Finn's experience and danger is everywhere. This chaotic, adventurous tale is narrated by sixteen year old Macy who states from the outset: "I keep forgetting how little I knew in the beginning. How little everyone knew." DeNiro has created a tale full of treachery and shifting alliances both within Macy's family and the society in general. The reader is as bewildered by this changing geophysical and political landscape as Macy is as both reader and narrator learn to navigate this mutating society.
]]> <![CDATA[The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope]]> 6419887
Enchanted by the workings of electricity as a boy, William had a goal to study science in Malawi's top boarding schools. But in 2002, his country was stricken with a famine that left his family's farm devastated and his parents destitute. Unable to pay the eighty-dollar-a-year tuition for his education, William was forced to drop out and help his family forage for food as thousands across the country starved and died.

Yet William refused to let go of his dreams. With nothing more than a fistful of cornmeal in his stomach, a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks, and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to bring his family a set of luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford and what the West considers a necessity—electricity and running water. Using scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves, William forged a crude yet operable windmill, an unlikely contraption and small miracle that eventually powered four lights, complete with homemade switches and a circuit breaker made from nails and wire. A second machine turned a water pump that could battle the drought and famine that loomed with every season.

Soon, news of William's magetsi a mphepo—his "electric wind"—spread beyond the borders of his home, and the boy who was once called crazy became an inspiration to those around the world.

Here is the remarkable story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.]]> 270 William Kamkwamba 0061730327 Betsy 5 4.05 2009 The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
author: William Kamkwamba
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
I learned so much from this book and I really appreciated William's voice. He never sugarcoats his life. You really have a chance to see how so much of the world lives. When you're reliant for your daily food on what you can grow yourself there is no safety net if malaria strikes or there is a drought that causes your crop to wilt and die. William is so ingenious and even funny, at points when he talks about some of the political and economic realities of living in one of the poorest countries in the world where government officials are often corrupt. He never gives up and is always trying to find new ways to make things work with the materials he has on hand. I love that he was able to make a light switch out of an old pair of flip flops and uses bottle caps for washers. William Kamkwamba is someone that I will be eager to continue to follow as I believe he will accomplish more great things in his life and make life easier for his fellow Malawians.
]]> The Local News 4011804
“Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done.�
Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen continue to haunt her. As a teenager, Lydia lived in her older brother’s shadow. While Danny’s athletic skills and good looks established his place with the popular set at school, Lydia’s smarts relegated her to the sidelines, where she rolled her eyes at her brother and his meathead friends and suffered his casual cruelty with resigned bewilderment. Though a part of her secretly wished for a return of the easy friendship she and Danny shared as children, another part of her wished Danny would just vanish. And then, one night, he did.
In the year following Danny Pasternak’s disappearance, his parents go off the rails, his town buzzes with self-indulgent mourning, and his little sister Lydia finds herself thrust into unwanted celebrity, forced to negotiate her ambivalent—often grudging—grief for a brother she did not particularly like. Suddenly embraced by Danny’s old crowd, forgotten by her parents, and drawn into the missing person investigation by her family’s intriguing private eye, Lydia both blossoms and struggles to find herself during Danny’s absence. But when a trail of clues leads to a shocking outcome in her brother’s case, the teenaged Lydia and the adult she will become are irrevocably changed, even now as she reluctantly prepares to return to her hometown.

Relentlessly gripping, often funny, and profoundly moving, The Local News is a powerful exploration of the fraught relationship between a brother and sister and how our siblings define who we are.]]> 360 Miriam Gershow 0385527616 Betsy 3 3.19 2009 The Local News
author: Miriam Gershow
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/12
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir]]> 6523058 288 Elna Baker 0525951350 Betsy 2 3.60 2009 The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir
author: Elna Baker
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2010/01/03
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)]]> 6101718
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.]]> 402 Lev Grossman 0670020559 Betsy 5 3.53 2009 The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)
author: Lev Grossman
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/08/23
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
I loved all the allusions to the fantasy canon: Narnia, Harry Potter & even Lord of the Rings (the only one of these that I confess, I have not read). Grossman shows us characters who are wounded and have high expectations for the fantastical world. Surely magic will solve all their day-to-day problems? How do you live in the mundane, gray world and have meaning in that life and somehow meld magic into it? The graduates of Brakebills all face this and more. This story has so much going on - the dark side of power/magic, overcoming & accepting childhood wounds, love, addiction and so much more. I keep thinking about it.
]]> <![CDATA[Mortal Coils (Mortal Coils, #1)]]> 5178537 608 Eric S. Nylund 0765317974 Betsy 4 4.08 2009 Mortal Coils (Mortal Coils, #1)
author: Eric S. Nylund
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/28
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed this tale of twins raised in a very restrictive environment by a grandmother with a hundred rules to govern all facets of behavior. They are only exposed to the outside world via their job at a local pizza joint but otherwise, they are home being schooled by grandmother and her endless homework assignments. Everything changes on their 15th birthday when Eliot and Fiona Post learn of their lineage. Their mother's side of the family are gods and their father's are fallen angels, i.e. devils. The standard trial begins - they must complete and live through three heroic trials to prove their worthiness to the family of Immortals meanwhile also being secretly tested by three temptations put in their path by the Infernals. This is standard fantasy fare enlivened by the surly nature and constant jockeying for position between the teens, Eliot and Fiona as well as the footnotes which point to supposedly lost texts that are from the author's imagination. One can easily see this being just the start of a long series now that Eliot and Fiona have proven that their natures are true to the lineage of both their parents hence the excuse for the long neutrality pact between the Immortals and Infernals to be null and void. The book went on a little too long for me but I can imagine a lot of readers who would really eat this up. I enjoyed the parts featuring the twins much more than the parts between the infighting of both the Immortal and Infernal clans.
]]> The Help 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Betsy 5 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/08
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
When I first picked this up I wondered if a "white woman" could do justice to the subject of the intricate relationships between white women and their "domestic help" in 1962, Jackson, Mississippi. Not only does she craft a wonderful story, I also felt that she did justice to the three voices who narrate the story. Two of the women are African American maids working for wealthy white folks and the third voice is that of a white woman from one of those families who has come back to her parent's home after completing college. She feels somewhat lost and doesn't quite fit in as easily as she used to with her Junior League friends. She starts questioning things that have always been "just the way things are". Each of these three characters grows through the story arc and in this way, it is almost a coming-of-age novel, especially for the young white woman, Skeeter. There were scenes that were extremely sad and others that were very funny. I never felt manipulated by the author and I appreciated her afterword where she talks about her relationship with the black woman who raised her.
]]> The Good Soldiers 6633912
Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home forever changed. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Bagdad, and almost every grueling step of the way.

What was the true story of the surge? And was it really a success?ĚýThose are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines. Combining the action of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down with the literary brio of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, David Finkel has also produced an eternal tale—not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.]]> 287 David Finkel 0374165734 Betsy 5 4.21 2009 The Good Soldiers
author: David Finkel
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/06
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
This account of American soldiers in Baghdad during the "surge" is exquisitely written and takes you as close as a civilian reader can get to their day-to-day experiences. Finkel manages to balance the contending views on the war and shows the ups and downs that the soldiers experience daily. The type of war in Baghdad with bombs exploding all over the place is extremely unsettling psychologically to soldiers who aren't adequately prepared for a war with no frontlines, where things can change abruptly and your best buddy can be blown apart right before your eyes.
]]> Everything Matters! 6184241 320 Ron Currie Jr. 0670020923 Betsy 4 4.06 2009 Everything Matters!
author: Ron Currie Jr.
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/09
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
This was a thoughtful, funny, sad intriguing read. The concept that someone would know, from birth, or actually slightly before that, the exact date when a meteor would obliterate Earth is original and fascinating. I like the storytelling style - the change in voice and point of view - sometimes the omniscient voice, sometimes one of the main characters - Junior and Amy primarily. It was fascinating to see the choices that Junior made, many of which were completely self-destructive. Will he decide that nothing matters or that everything matters because of his knowledge of total destruction?
]]> Darling Jim 5280659 A modern gothic novel of suspense that reveals, through their diaries, the story of sisters who fall in love with a beguiling stranger, and of the town that turns a blind eye to his murderous ways

When two sisters and their aunt are found dead in their suburban Dublin home, it seems that the secret behind their untimely demise will never be known. But then Niall, a young mailman, finds a mysterious diary in the post office’s dead-letter bin. From beyond the grave, Fiona Walsh shares the most tragic love story he’s ever heard—and her tale has only just begun.

Niall soon becomes enveloped by the mystery surrounding itinerant storyteller Jim, who traveled through Ireland enrapturing audiences and wooing women with his macabre mythic narratives. Captivated by Jim, townspeople across Ireland thought it must be a sad coincidence that horrific murders trailed him wherever he went—and they failed to connect that the young female victims, who were smitten by the newest bad boy in town, bore an all too frightening similarity to the victims in Jim’s own fictional plots.

The Walsh sisters, fiercely loyal to one another, were not immune to “darling� Jim’s powers of seduction, but found themselves in harm’s way when they began to uncover his treacherous past. Niall must now continue his dangerous hunt for the truth—and for the vanished third sister—while there’s still time. And in the woods, the wolves from Jim’s stories begin to gather.]]> 288 Christian Mørk 0805089470 Betsy 5 3.51 2007 Darling Jim
author: Christian Mørk
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2009/08/31
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
From the first chapter of this book, the reader is sucked into a tale of lust, murder, revenge and jealousy. The gruesome find at #1 Strand is only the beginning of the tale and the reader is left wondering how and why these three women met their untimely end and what became of a fourth woman, who has since disappeared. Combining Irish lore with a contemporary story, Moerk's writing beautifully conveys the feeling of impending doom that haunts this story. I liked the combination of the fantastical elements of the man who becomes a wolf and the very predatory nature of the charming and quite deadly seanchai, Jim on his red 1950 Vincent Comet motorcycle, bewitching women and leaving a trail of broken hearts and necks behind him. As Fiona states in her diary, which Niall finds in the dead letter bin at the post office where he works: "We are already gone. Read this tale only to remember us."
]]> <![CDATA[Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival]]> 5841908
In February 1979, just as he was reaping the rewards of his training, a chartered Cessna carrying Norman, his father, his father’s girlfriend, and the pilot, crashed into the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California and was suspended at eight thousand feet, engulfed in a blizzard. Norman’s father, his coach and hero, was dead, and the 11-year old Ollestad had to descend the mountain alone and grief-stricken, through snow and ice, without any gear.

Stunningly, the boy defied the elements and put his father’s passionate lessons to work. As he told the LA Times after his ordeal, “My dad told me never to give up.� ]]> 272 Norman Ollestad 0061766720 Betsy 5
Apparently the writing has been compared to Hemingway (an author I'm not overly fond of, probably because we had to read him in school) but I think the comparison has to do with the spare prose. Not a word is wasted and the narrative doesn't let up once he comes down off the mountain. Because then he has to deal with his anger & grief over losing his father in the crash and trying to figure out how to go on without this very central, charismatic man who sometimes pushed him beyond endurance.]]> 3.62 2009 Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival
author: Norman Ollestad
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/07/23
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves:
review:
Obviously, if you read a memoir by a plane crash survivor there’s no suspense as to whether or not he survived but what Ollestad does so well is alternate short, concisely written chapters about key moments in his life leading up to this with the scenario he is faced with on the mountain. He really gets inside the mentality that was needed to believe that he could survive and how this was instilled in him, often in ways that he wasn’t so happy about at the time, by his dad who pushed him to excel at ski racing, hockey and surfing. His father first took him surfing in a sling on his back when “Little� Norm was a toddler!

Apparently the writing has been compared to Hemingway (an author I'm not overly fond of, probably because we had to read him in school) but I think the comparison has to do with the spare prose. Not a word is wasted and the narrative doesn't let up once he comes down off the mountain. Because then he has to deal with his anger & grief over losing his father in the crash and trying to figure out how to go on without this very central, charismatic man who sometimes pushed him beyond endurance.
]]> The Bride's Farewell 6526163
In Meg Rosoff's fourth novel, a young woman in 1850s rural England runs away from home on horseback the day she's to marry her childhood sweetheart. Pell is from a poor preacher's family and she's watched her mother suffer for years under the burden of caring for an ever-increasing number of children. Pell yearns to escape the inevitable repetition of such a life.

She understands horses better than people and sets off for Salisbury Fair, where horse trading takes place, in the hope of finding work and buying herself some time. But as she rides farther away from home, Pell's feelings for her parents, her siblings, and her fiancé surprise her with their strength and alter the course of her travels. And her journey leads her to find love where she least expects it.

Rosoff's magical voice and her novel's ethereal setting will thrill her passionate longtime fans and garner her new ones.]]> 224 Meg Rosoff 0670020990 Betsy 4 3.30 2009 The Bride's Farewell
author: Meg Rosoff
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/30
date added: 2010/01/12
shelves:
review:
The writing is engaging in this story that reads like a fable. The pacing is slow and, as I read it, I knew that Pell's fate would be bittersweet at best. The reader gets a very good picture of the setting and time period as Rosoff describes the dirty looks and comments a young woman traveling without a man would get in all of these small hamlets in mid-19th century England. Her writing is spare but the descriptions really made me feel that I was there with her - sleeping rough in the cold weather, going to the workhouse to look for her brother, etc.
]]> <![CDATA[Beat the Reaper (Peter Brown, #1)]]> 3173125
Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwna is a hitman for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close relationship with the Federal Witness Relocation Program. More likely to leave a trail of dead gangsters than a molecule of evidence, he's the last person you want to see in your hospital room.

Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is Dr. Brown's new patient, with three months to live and a very strange idea: that Peter Brown and Pietro Brnwa might-just might-be the same person ...

Now, with the mob, the government, and death itself descending on the hospital, Peter has to buy time and do whatever it takes to keep his patients, himself, and his last shot at redemption alive. To get through the next eight hours-and somehow beat the reaper.

Spattered in adrenaline-fueled action and bone-saw-sharp dialogue, BEAT THE REAPER is a debut thriller so utterly original you won't be able to guess what happens next, and so shockingly entertaining you won't be able to put it down.]]> 320 Josh Bazell 0316032220 Betsy 4 3.80 2009 Beat the Reaper (Peter Brown, #1)
author: Josh Bazell
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/11
date added: 2010/01/12
shelves:
review:
Fast-paced wise guy suspense! This was a quick, sometimes funny, often violent read. Actually, I had expected the violence to bother me more given some of the comments I'd read, but it seemed to fit with the plot and wasn't especially gratuitous. The most gruesome part for me was probably in the shark tank.
]]> <![CDATA[Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms]]> 6559188

In this enthralling blend of travelogue, pop culture analysis, and memoir, forty-year-old formerĚýDungeons & Dragons addict Ethan Gilsdorf embarks on a quest that begins in his own geeky teenage past and ends in our online gaming future. He asks, Who are these gamers and fantasy fans? What explains the irresistible appeal of such "escapist" adventures? And what could one man find if he embarked on a journey through one fantasy world after another?


InĚýFantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,ĚýGilsdorfĚýcrisscrosses America, the world, and other worlds--from Boston to Wisconsin, France to New Zealand, and Planet Earth to Middle-earth to the realm of Aggramar. He asks D&D players, LARPers, medieval re-eanctors, World of Warcraft players, Harry Potter fans and convention goers--old, young, male, female, able-bodied and disabled--what attracts them to fantasy worlds, and for what reasons. What he discovers is funny, poignant, and enlightening.]]> 336 Ethan Gilsdorf 1599214806 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.28 2009 Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms
author: Ethan Gilsdorf
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/11
date added: 2010/01/12
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fight to Survive: A Young Girl, Diabetes, and the Discovery of Insulin]]> 6923733 288 Caroline Cox 1607145510 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.67 2009 The Fight to Survive: A Young Girl, Diabetes, and the Discovery of Insulin
author: Caroline Cox
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/12
date added: 2010/01/12
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy, #2)]]> 6390465
Meanwhile, Allie the Outcast travels home to seek out her parents, along with Mikey, who was once the terrifying monster the McGill. Allie is tempted by the seductive thrill of skinjacking the living, until she discovers the shocking truth about skinjackers.]]> 432 Neal Shusterman 1416958630 Betsy 0 to-read 4.21 2009 Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy, #2)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everlost (The Skinjacker Trilogy, #1)]]> 688191 Nick and Allie don't survive the car accident...

...but their souls don't exactly get where they're supposed to get either. Instead, they're caught halfway between life and death, in a sort of limbo known as Everlost: a shadow of the living world, filled with all the things and places that no longer exist. It's a magical, yet dangerous place where bands of lost children run wild and anyone who stands in the same place too long sinks to the center of the Earth.

When they find Mary, the self-proclaimed queen of lost kids, Nick feels like he he's found a home, but Allie isn't satisfied spending eternity between worlds. Against all warnings, Allie begins learning the "Criminal Art" of haunting, and ventures into dangerous territory, where a monster called the McGill threatens all the souls of Everlost.

In this imaginative novel, Neal Shusterman explores questions of life, death, and what just might lie in between.]]> 320 Neal Shusterman 0689872372 Betsy 0 to-read 3.97 2006 Everlost (The Skinjacker Trilogy, #1)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same]]> 6516466
At first Cesar considers Go-boy half crazy, but over time in this village, with his father absent and his brother in jail for murder, Cesar begins to see the beauty and hope Go-boy represents.

Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same is the surprising story of a young man finding his way and his place in a world that can seem both too large and too small. What Cesar finally discovers is the power of friendship and the potential positive strength that springs from a tight-knit community. He learns the ways in which becoming a part of that community, though at times scary and restrictive, can also be fulfilling and even exhilarating.]]> 322 Mattox Roesch 1932961879 Betsy 4 3.68 2009 Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same
author: Mattox Roesch
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/04
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves:
review:
Overall, the story was extremely sad. I loved Go Boy even though I knew his quirky behavior was totally manic. Cesar seemed to be emotionally paralyzed a lot of the time and unable to act. Even though he saw what had happened to Sean, he struggled with telling anyone. Similarly, he knew that Go Boy wasn’t acting rationally and probably needed help even before he crashed. I would have liked to know Kiana better. I loved so many things about this book � especially Go Boy’s 101 reasons why he loved Valerie posted all over town. I also loved the sense of community that Cesar finds for the first time as compared to the the sense of family he got from belonging to a gang.
]]> Labor Day 6261961
But all that changes on the Thursday before Labor Day, when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank approaches Henry and asks for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life's most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect piecrust, the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting others—especially those we love—above ourselves. And the knowledge that real love is worth waiting for.

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's Atonement and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy—and the man he later becomes—looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single long, hot, life-altering weekend.]]> 244 Joyce Maynard 0061843407 Betsy 3 on-hiatus 3.57 2009 Labor Day
author: Joyce Maynard
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Half Broke Horses 6366437
"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix audiences everywhere.]]> 272 Jeannette Walls 1416586288 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 4.07 2009 Half Broke Horses
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sand Fish: A Novel from Dubai]]> 6575431 The Sand Fish by Maha Gargash offers readers a fascinating glimpse into another corner of the world. Set in the 1950s in what is now the United Arab Emirates, The Sand Fish tells the poignant and powerful story of a rebellious young woman trapped in a repressive society—as richly atmospheric a look at Middle Eastern life and culture as The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building.]]> 361 Maha Gargash 0061744670 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.25 1999 The Sand Fish: A Novel from Dubai
author: Maha Gargash
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2009/12/08
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird]]> 1367587
As a young woman, Sharon Matola lived many lives. She was a mushroom expert, an Air Force survival specialist, and an Iowa housewife. She hopped freight trains for fun and starred as a tiger tamer in a traveling Mexican circus. Finally she found her one true calling: caring for orphaned animals at her own zoo in the Central American country of Belize.

Beloved as “the Zoo Lady� in her adopted land, Matola became one of Central America’s greatest wildlife defenders. And when powerful outside forces conspired with the local government to build a dam that would flood the nesting ground of the last scarlet macaws in Belize, Sharon Matola was drawn into the fight of her life.

In The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, award-winning author Bruce Barcott chronicles Sharon Matola’s inspiring crusade to stop a multinational corporation in its tracks. Ferocious in her passion, she and her confederates–a ragtag army of courageous locals and eccentric expatriates–endure slander and reprisals and take the fight to the courtroom and the boardroom, from local village streets to protests around the world.

As the dramatic story unfolds, Barcott addresses the realities of economic survival in Third World countries, explores the tension between environmental conservation and human development, and puts a human face on the battle over globalization. In this marvelous and spirited book, Barcott shows us how one unwavering woman risked her life to save the most beautiful bird in the world.]]> 313 Bruce Barcott 1400062934 Betsy 4 on-hiatus 4.05 2008 The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird
author: Bruce Barcott
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2008/12/30
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: The Story of an African Childhood]]> 3070650 464 Robyn Scott 1594201595 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.92 2008 Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: The Story of an African Childhood
author: Robyn Scott
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2009/01/29
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Sly Mongoose (Xenowealth, #3) 2350591
Timas' life is turned upside down when a strange man crash lands on the city. The newcomer is fleeing an alien intelligence intent on invading the planet and discovering the secret hidden deep inside the perpetual storma secret that could lead to interplanetary war.

As the invaded cities fall silent one by one, Chilos citizens must race against time to stop the enemy. And Timas will find out what kind of man he has become in the harsh conditions of Chilos surface.]]> 320 Tobias S. Buckell 0765319209 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.82 2008 Sly Mongoose (Xenowealth, #3)
author: Tobias S. Buckell
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2008/12/02
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth]]> 2420281
Twenty-one year old Fenfang Wang has traveled one thousand eight hundred miles to seek her fortune in contemporary urban Beijing, and has no desire to return to the drudgery of the sweet potato fields back home. However, Fenfang is ill-prepared for what greets a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city under rampant destruction and slap-dash development, and a sexist attitude seemingly more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country’s progressive capital. Yet Fenfang is determined to live a modern life. With courage and purpose, she forges ahead, and soon lands a job as a film extra. While playing roles like woman-walking-over-the bridge and waitress-wiping-a-table help her eke out a meager living, Fenfang comes under the spell of two unsuitable young men, keeps her cupboard stocked with UFO noodles, and after mastering the fever and tumult of the city, ultimately finds her true independence in the one place she never expected.

At once wry and moving, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth gives us a clear-eyed glimpse into the precarious and fragile state of China’s new identity and asserts Xiaolu Guo as her generation’s voice of modern China.]]> 172 Xiaolu Guo 0385525923 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.63 2000 Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
author: Xiaolu Guo
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at: 2008/10/15
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Alive in Necropolis 2439336 A fresh, imaginative debut novel about a young police officer in northern California struggling to keep the peace—and maintain a grip on reality—in a town where the dead outnumber the living.

Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime cemetery for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation pioneer Lincoln Beachey. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate a new realm of grownup relationships—including a shaky romance with an older woman; a growing alliance with his cocky, charismatic partner, Nick Toronto; fading college friendships; and an aching sense of responsibility for a local rich kid who Mercer rescues from a dangerous prank in the cemetery.

But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the police unit, Sergeant Featherstone, who seems to have become confused about whether he was policing the living or the dead. And as Mercer delves deeper into Featherstone’s story, it appears that Mercer’s own sanity is beginning to slip—either that, or Colma’s more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be.

With all the playful sensitivity of Haruki Murakami and the haunted atmosphere of Paul Auster, but with a voice all his own, Doug Dorst has crafted an irresistible, compelling debut.]]> 437 Doug Dorst 1594489874 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.26 2008 Alive in Necropolis
author: Doug Dorst
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2008/10/15
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Tigerheart 2678758
Paul Dear is a good and clever boy, doted on by a father who fills his son’s head with tall tales, thrilling legends, and talk of fairy-folk, and by a mother who indulges these fantastic stories and tempers them with common sense. But Paul is special in ways that even his adoring parents could never have imagined. For by day, in London’s Kensington Gardens, he walks and talks with the pixies and sprites and other magical creatures that dwell among the living–but are unseen by most. And at night in his room, a boy much like himself, yet not, beckons to Paul from the mirror to come adventuring. It’s a happy life for Paul, made all the more so by the birth of his baby sister.

But everything changes when tragedy strikes, and Paul concludes that there’s only one course of action he can take to dispel the darkness and make things right again. And like countless heroes before him, he knows that he must risk everything to save the day.

Thus begins a quest that will lead Paul down the city’s bustling streets, to a curio shop where a magical ally awaits him, and launches him into the starry skies, bound for a realm where anything is possible. Far from home, he will run with fierce Indian warriors, cross swords with fearsome pirates, befriend a magnificent white tiger, and soar beside an extraordinary, ageless boy who reigns in a boundless world of imagination.

Brimming with the sly humor and breathless excitement of a traditional Victorian bedtime story, deftly embroidered with its own unique wisdom and wonder, Tigerheart is a hymn to childhood’s happiness and heartbreak, a meditation on the love, courage, sacrifice, and faith that shape us and define our lives, and a splendidly rendered modern fable–for readers of any age–that brilliantly proves itself a worthy brother to the timeless classic that serve as its inspiration.]]> 290 Peter David 0345501594 Betsy 3 on-hiatus 3.68 2008 Tigerheart
author: Peter David
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/12/07
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:
I tired of the constant intrusion by the ever-so-clever narrator who kept interrupting the narrative to let us know that he was still there and to warn us about things that the characters were about to encounter in this adult take on the Peter Pan story.
]]> When We Were Romans 1165305 Matthew Kneale 033043571X Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.39 2007 When We Were Romans
author: Matthew Kneale
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> My Name is Will 2856676 -Christopher Buckley, author of Boomsday and Thank You For Smoking

A Tale of two Shakespeares...

Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of...

Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs.

Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard's life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome... This, at a time when adherents of the "Old Faith" are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors.

Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the 'Shakespeare' each is destined to come... but the very course of history itself.]]> 291 Jess Winfield 0446508853 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.38 2008 My Name is Will
author: Jess Winfield
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2008/12/02
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town]]> 2874621
Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement centre in the 1990s, becoming home to scores of families in flight from the world's war zones—from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston's streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colours playing football in any open space they could find. Among them was Luma Mufleh, a Jordanian woman who founded a youth football team to unify Clarkston's refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees.

Outcasts United follows a pivotal season in the life of the Fugees and their charismatic coach. Warren St. John documents the lives of a diverse group of young people as they miraculously coalesce into a band of brothers, while also drawing a fascinating portrait of a fading American town struggling to accommodate its new arrivals. At the centre of the story is fiery Coach Luma, who relentlessly drives her players to success on the football field while holding together their lives—and the lives of their families—in the face of a series of daunting challenges.

This fast-paced chronicle of a single season is a complex and inspiring tale of a small town becoming a global community—and an account of the ingenious and complicated ways we create a home in a changing world.]]> 320 Warren St. John 0385522037 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.84 2009 Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town
author: Warren St. John
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/11/20
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> A Mercy 3009435 This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter - a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.]]> 167 Toni Morrison 0307264238 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.76 2008 A Mercy
author: Toni Morrison
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2009/01/29
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Land of No Right Angles]]> 3207907
Over the course of the next eight years, Alex returns to first to visit and to photograph, then in an attempt to help the troubled Maya. Moving between Kathmandu, New York, and the grim houses of prostitution along Falkland Road in Bombay, Alex begins to understand the pitfalls of trying to be both adventurer and savior in an unfamiliar world. In the Land of No Right Angles introduces the fiction of Daphne Beal, whose evocations of life in Nepal, and of the universal conflicts inherent to love and friendship, mark the arrival of a stunningly talented, intuitive writer.]]> 278 Daphne Beal 0307388069 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 2.74 2008 In the Land of No Right Angles
author: Daphne Beal
name: Betsy
average rating: 2.74
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2008/12/02
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rich Man of Pietermaritzburg]]> 3256787 200 Sibusiso Nyembezi 0955233992 Betsy 3 on-hiatus 3.95 2008 The Rich Man of Pietermaritzburg
author: Sibusiso Nyembezi
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/12/15
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:
This is an engaging story set in a rural village in S. Africa. It is a comedy of errors with a supposedly rich man from the big city who want a local man to set up a meeting with all the men of the village so that he can share some unspecified philanthropy on them. From the outset, the man's son has determined that the outsider is a scam artist, but because of customs of hospitality the head of the household becomes angry at both his son and his wife when they speak ill of the stranger. Some of the reviews indicated that this would be a tale that teens would enjoy. While I don't think teens would seek this out on their own, I can imagine it being a book assigned by a high school teacher to elucidate a culture very different from our own. If it was an assigned read, I think it might be one that teens would find much to discuss in it.
]]> <![CDATA[Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet]]> 3367956 290 Jamie Ford 0345505336 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 4.03 2009 Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
author: Jamie Ford
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/11/23
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Lowboy 3380813
Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-yearold paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate change; unlike most people, he’s convinced he can do something about it. Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police - unknown even to Violet Heller, his devoted mother - Will alone holds the key to the planet’s salvation. To cool down the world, he has to cool down his own overheating body: to cool down his body, he has to find one willing girl. And he already has someone in mind.

Lowboy, John Wray’s third novel, tells the story of Will’s fantastic and terrifying odyssey through the city’s tunnels, back alleys, and streets in search of Emily Wallace, his one great hope, and of Violet Heller’s desperate attempts to locate her son before psychosis claims him completely. She is joined by Ali Lateef, a missing-persons specialist, who gradually comes to discover that more is at stake than the recovery of a runaway teen: Violet- beautiful, enigmatic, and as profoundly at odds with the world as her son - harbors a secret that Lateef will discover at his own peril.

Suspenseful and comic, devastating and hopeful by turns, Lowboy is a fearless exploration of youth, sex, and violence in contemporary America, seen through one boy’s haunting and extraordinary vision.]]> 258 John Wray 0374194165 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.19 2009 Lowboy
author: John Wray
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/12/05
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Never Talk about My Brother]]> 3465594
In one tale the Angel of Death enjoys newfound celebrity while moonlighting as an anchorman on the network news, while in another the shortsighted ruler of a gentle realm betrays himself in dreaming of a "manageable war." Further storylines include an American librarian who discovers that, much to his surprise and sadness, he is the last living Frenchman, and rivals in a supernatural battle who decide to forgo pistols at dawn, choosing instead to duel with dramatic recitations of terrible poetry.

Featuring several previously unpublished stories alongside a bevy of recently released works, this haunting compilation is appealing to both genre readers and mainstream literature lovers.

Includes "By Moonlight," Locus Award-winner for Best Novelette.]]> 219 Peter S. Beagle 189239183X Betsy 4 on-hiatus 4.01 2009 We Never Talk about My Brother
author: Peter S. Beagle
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/08/02
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reading the Wind (The Silver Ship, #2)]]> 4060826 448 Brenda Cooper 076531598X Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.73 2008 Reading the Wind (The Silver Ship, #2)
author: Brenda Cooper
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2008/11/12
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> If I Grow Up 4418237
In the Frederick Douglass Project where DeShawn lives, daily life is ruled by drugs and gang violence. Many teenagers drop out of school and join gangs, and every kid knows someone who died. Gunshots ring out on a regular basis.

DeShawn is smart enough to know he should stay in school and keep away from the gangs. But while his friends have drug money to buy fancy sneakers and big-screen TVs, DeShawn's family can barely afford food for the month. How can he stick to his principles when his family is hungry?

In this gritty novel about growing up in the inner city, award-winning author Todd Strasser opens a window into the life of a teenager struggling with right and wrong under the ever-present shadow of gangs.]]> 240 Todd Strasser 1416925236 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 4.16 2009 If I Grow Up
author: Todd Strasser
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/05/20
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Wake (WWW, #1) 4418395
]]> 354 Robert J. Sawyer 0441016790 Betsy 3 on-hiatus 3.82 2009 Wake (WWW, #1)
author: Robert J. Sawyer
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/05/24
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:
Interesting premise but I got a bit bogged down by the technical descriptions of how the web works. I liked the interweaving of the stories of the blind teen girl who is able to literally see the Web, Hobo, the primate who signs with another primate over the Internet and also paints portraits of his favorite researcher and the Chinese blogger/dissident paleontologist.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hurricanes: One High School Team's Homecoming After Katrina]]> 4556089 384 Jere Longman 158648673X Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.75 2008 The Hurricanes: One High School Team's Homecoming After Katrina
author: Jere Longman
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult]]> 4589384
When the short, bald man in flowing robes prophesizes Jayanti to be the Chosen One, her life is forever entwined with the charismatic guru Sri Chinmoy, who declares himself a living god. A god who performs sit-ups and push-ups in front of thousands as holy ritual protects himself with a platoon of bodyguards, and bans books, TV, and sex. Jayanti's unusual and increasingly bizarre childhood is spent shuttling between the ashram in Queens, New York, and her family's outpost as Connecticut missionaries. On the path to enlightenment decreed by Guru, Jayanti scrubs animal cages in his illegal basement zoo cheerleads as he weight lifts an elephant in her front yard, and trails him around the world as he pursues celebrities such as Princess Diana and Mother Teresa.

But, when her need for enlightenment is derailed by her need for boys, Jayanti risks losing everything that she has ever known, including the person that she was ordained to be. Jayanti explores the triumphs and trauma of an insider who longs to be an outsider, her hard-won decision to finally break free, and the unique challenges she confronts as she builds a new life.]]> 304 Jayanti Tamm 0307393925 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.35 2009 Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult
author: Jayanti Tamm
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/05/23
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Breathers: A Zombie's Lament 5149517
Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence.

But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products, and Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car-crash victim with an exposed brain and a penchant for Renaissance pornography.

When the group meets a rogue zombie who teaches them the joys of human flesh, things start to get messy, and Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take him from his casket to the SPCA to a media-driven class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere.
Darkly funny, surprisingly touching, and gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning zombie fan, Breathers is a dark comedy and social satire about life, or undeath, through the eyes of an ordinary zombie. It's Fight Club meets Shaun of the Dead , only with the zombies as the good guys.]]> 310 S.G. Browne 0767930614 Betsy 3 on-hiatus 3.84 2009 Breathers: A Zombie's Lament
author: S.G. Browne
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/07/30
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> English 5219920
With the dictionary as his disposal, Love Liu turns to it for answers to his most pressing questions about love and life, and a whole new world opens up for him. His classmates-the bright, troubled Sunrise Huang and the rowdy, impoverished Garbage Li-also find hope in the unfamiliar and tantalizing sounds of English, but in an atmosphere of accusation and recrimination, one in which their teacher is deemed morally suspect and mere innuendo can cost someone his life, their ideals face a test more challenging than any they'll take in the classroom.

A major bestseller in China, where it was voted best novel of the year independently by the critics and the general public, English is a transcendent novel about the power of language to launch a journey of self-discovery.]]> 8 Wang Gang 0143144383 Betsy 3 on-hiatus 3.44 English
author: Wang Gang
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.44
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2009/05/02
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:
I was hoping for a book that would knock me out like Balzac and the Little Chinese seamstress but I didn't get that. What I got was memoir/fiction that doesn't let me remain in the head of the teenage protagonist as the adult version of him in constantly intruding and the way he has the character respond to certain situations feels much more like the response of an adult than that of his younger self when he was actually living through the events he describes. Partly, this is a problem of translation - I'm constantly aware of the somewhat awkward way things are described or the choice of a word in English that doesn't allow the narrative to flow. I can imagine this making a lovely movie but the novel just didn't work for me as well as I would have liked.
]]> <![CDATA[Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story]]> 5266279
Lil is an old woman who spends her days shelving rare books in a tiny Manhattan bookstore and lonely nights at home in her apartment. But Lil has an intriguing secret. Tucked and bound behind her back are white feathery wings--the only key to who she once was: the fairy godmother responsible for getting Cinderella to the ball to unite with her Prince Charming.

But on that fateful night, something went terribly and beautifully wrong. Lil allowed herself the unthinkable: to feel the emotions of human beings and fall in love with the prince herself, going to the ball in place of Cinderella in her exquisitely gorgeous human guise. For her unforgivable mistake, she was banished to live among humans, far from her fairy sisters and their magical underwater world. But then one day she meets Veronica--a young, fair-skinned, flame-haired East Village beauty with a love of all things vintage and a penchant for falling in love with the wrong men--and suddenly it becomes clear to Lil that she’s been given a chance at redemption. If she can find a soul mate for Veronica, she may be able to right her wrong and return to the fairy world she so deeply longs for.]]> 279 Carolyn Turgeon 0307407993 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.30 2009 Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story
author: Carolyn Turgeon
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/05/23
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> All Other Nights 5294347 A gripping epic about the great moral struggles of the Civil War.

How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, it is a question his commanders have already answered for him - on Passover, 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle in New Orleans, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After this harrowing mission, Jacob is recruited to pursue another enemy agent, the daughter of a Virginia family friend. But this time, his assignment isn't to murder the spy but to marry her.

Based on real personalities such as Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy's Jewish secretary of state and spymaster, and on historical facts and events ranging from an African American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a story of men and women driven to the limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half later: between those who value family and tradition first, and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.]]> 363 Dara Horn 0393064921 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.74 2009 All Other Nights
author: Dara Horn
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/03/14
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> The Other Side of Paradise 5600534 288 Staceyann Chin 0743292901 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 4.20 2009 The Other Side of Paradise
author: Staceyann Chin
name: Betsy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/07/07
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pop Apocalypse: A Possible Satire]]> 5620974 292 Lee Konstantinou 0061715379 Betsy 2 on-hiatus 3.39 2009 Pop Apocalypse: A Possible Satire
author: Lee Konstantinou
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2009/04/30
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture]]> 5846386 368 Nathan Rabin 1416556206 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.34 2009 The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture
author: Nathan Rabin
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/08/11
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet]]> 6065179 Discover The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet for iPad.Ěý


A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.

All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.

T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

Now a major motion picture directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Kyle Catlett and Helena Bonham Carter.Ěý]]> 375 Reif Larsen 1594202176 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.90 2009 The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
author: Reif Larsen
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2009/07/20
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> Everything Asian 6036161
You're twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed at lovely Newark Airport. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years, and although he's nice enough, he might be, well - how can you put this delicately? - a loser.

You can't speak English, but that doesn't stop you from working at East Meets West, your father's gift shop in a strip mall, where everything is new.

Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim.]]> 336 Sung J. Woo 0312538855 Betsy 0 on-hiatus 3.38 2009 Everything Asian
author: Sung J. Woo
name: Betsy
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]>