21. Delirium - Lauren Oliver

#1 in a series
Harper, 2011
for:  YA
441 pages
Really good/4

First line/s:  "It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure."
Setting:  Dystopian Portland, Maine - contemporary parallel
OSS:  Just a few months before the mandated treatment that cures everyone at age 18 of any feelings of love, Lena falls in love.

This is a well-done dystopian adventure.  Lena and her best friend, Hana, will both be cured in September, and they're ready.  love is a disease that can kill you.  Once  you're cured, the only thing you have to worry about is government regulators and raids.  Your mate is chosen for you as is your job, your home...and people find safety in that.

When Lena meets Alex, she learns more about the Resistance, and the "invalids" who live outside the city's electrified fence.  She's reluctant at first to senak out after curfew, attend secret parties, and meet on the sly with Alex - but she can't help it.

Horrifying ending - you just can't wait to read the next segment.

20. The Amanda Project: The Invisible I - Melissa Kantor

MOVIE - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

MOVIE - Safe House

Released 2-10-12
R (1:55)
RT Critics 54 Audience 69
My rating:  2.5 (It was decent)
Director:  Daniel Espinosa
Universal Pictures

Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington

Matt Weston (Reynolds) sits day after day in a Safe House in Cape Town, South Africa, in an in-between CIA position, waiting for something to happen before he is fully employed in the manner that he wants.  Tobin Frost (Washington) is an ex-intelligence officer who's been "wanted" for over ten years.  There are mercenaries after Frost, as well as the government, as the two have to become reluctant partners...with Frost always seeming to be devilishly untrustable.

19. Prayers for Sale - Sandra Dallas

audio read by Maggi-Meg Reed
2009 Macmillan Audio
8 unabridged cds
$39.95
Adult Historical Fiction
Lovely story, liked it a lot, 4.5stars

18. Irises - Francisco X. Stork

2012, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic
288 pages
Rating: It was okay/2

1st Sentence/s: (Prologue) "Kate had finally agreed to pose under the willow tree. Mother came and stood behind Mary at her easel. She placed her hand on Mary's shoulder. 'It's beautiful!'"
Setting: Contemporary El Paso, Texas
OSS:  Two sister try to figure out how to survive when their preacher father dies leaving them homeless and fully in charge of caring for their mother, who is in a permanently vegetative state.

Both 18 year old Kate is about to get accepted with as a premed student with a full scholarship to Stanford and 16 year old Mary, who has an incredible artistic gift, have had very religious, protected lives.  And since their mother's accident two years previously, their lives have been pretty joyless.  Their father, who truly loved them, was a preacher of a small protestant congregation in El Paso, had no car, no money, and lived simply.  Hand-me-downs and Walmart...no trips to the mall.  Painting was a frivolous endeavor, and the University of Texas at El Paso was nearby and the only acceptable choice of college.

And then he drops dead of a heart attack, and there's more and more problems dropped on top of the two girls.  Tough choices.  Interesting relationships with boys, best friends. their aunt and only living relative, and the new young preacher that has been hired to take their father's place.

I read this book in one four-hour gulp.  I knew that if I put it down I probably wouldn't come back to it.  Why?  I like the way that Stork developed his characters.  The plot was plausible.  I could relate to both Kate and Mary.  There was just something....missing....for me, I'm not sure what.  I was expecting to be blown away like I was with Stork's previous Marcelo in the Real World, and I wasn't.  I wonder what I would have thought about this if I hadn't read Marcelo. I'll have to read some reviews and see how others feel.

17. Think of a Number - John Verdon

1st in a series:  Dave Gurney, Retired NYC Homicide, Upstate NY
2010, Crown Publishers
BC Library
418 pgs.
Just wonderful writing and storytelling (5)
1st sentence/s:  "Jason Strunk was by all accounts an inconsequential fellow, a bland thirty-something, nearly invisible to his neighbors --- and apparently inaudible as well, since none could recall a single specific thing he'd ever said."
Setting:  Upstate NYC, somewhere in the Catskills near Cooperstown, winter.

This is John Verdon's first book, ever.  It looks like he was a big wig in an advertising firm in NYC, which doesn't even sound like it might be related to homicide investigations.  Well, I don't know what he's best at...intricate, clever storytelling, or writing beautiful prose.  He even used a couple of words that were new to my word bank!  He's created a fascinating protagonist and allows the reader to get completely into his head.  There's an element of psychology in the story that I usually wrinkle my nose at, but this was fascinating.  I couldn't wait to curl up with this story.

Dave Gurney's old college friend, Mark Mellery, discovers that they live fairly near each other in the Catskills of upper New York state and comes to visit him with a perplexing problem.  He's been receiving weird poems in the mail - poems that are threatening and ominous.  Gurney is a retired police wiz from New York City who has an uncanny knack of putting clues together. His relationship with his wife, Madeline, is a bit rocky.  She's ready for him to retire, not be pulled back into his old life, where is becomes obsessed with his cases.  They're only in their late forties, and do seem to love each other.  There's background "stuff" though - a previous marriage with one grown son for him and a son who died in an accident at three years old for the two of them.

The mystery is complex and fascinating! 

The second book in the series, Shut Your Eyes Tight, has already been published and the third, Let the Devil Sleep, will come out in July.  Can't wait to read them.

Wordless Picture Books

I'm making a collection of wordless picture books for my fourth graders to use for writing.  I've found some magnificent ones (Barbara Lehman is one of my new favorite illustrators!) and I'll keep adding them as I get the chance.

I'm also hoping that before the end of the school year I'll be able to add a bit of my students' writing

Goodreads has a LISTOPIA listing of wordless books here.

Cordell, Matthew - Explorers (4)
Donovan, Jane Monroe - Small, Medium & Large (4)
Frazee, Marla - The Farmer and the Clown (4)
Hare, John - Field Trip to the Moon (5)
Hogrogian, Nonny - Cool Cat (3.5)
Lehmann, Barbara  - Red Book, The (4.5)
..........Secret Box, The (4)
..........Trainstop (3)
McDonnell, Patrick - South (4.5)
McPhail, David - No! (4)
Newman, Jeff - The Boys (4)
Nyeu, Tao - Wonder Bear (2.5)
Paul, Alison - Sunday Love (3.5)
Pinkney, Jerry - Lion and the Mouse, The (5)
Staake, Bob - Bluebird (1.5)
Thomson, Bill - Chalk (5)
..........Fossil (4)
Van Ommen, Sylvia - The Surprise (4.5)
Varon, Sara - Chicken and Cat Clean Up (3.5)
Wiesner, David - Flotsam (5)
..........Tuesday (5)
..........Mr. Wuffles (3)

Let's Go See Papa! - Lawrence Schimel

Illustrated by Alba Marina Rivera
Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, 2009
$18.95
40 pages
Rating:  Liked it a lot
Endpapers: Light Blue
Title page:  Beige with illustration of the house where the little girl lives
Illustrations:  Full page on beige, some go over onto the facing page.  I like the illustrations a lot, looking closely I think they're done with colored pencils.
1st line/s:  "On Sundays I wake up early even though I don't have to go to school./Papa's going to call us.  He phones every Sunday because it's cheaper.  Sunday is my favorite day.
Setting:  A Spanish-speaking country, contemporary.
OSS:  A little girl misses her father who has been working for over a year in the United States while she and her mom live with her abuela and wait for him to come home or send for them.

This is a lovely story, of family, of missing a parent, or how life goes on while waiting for change to come when you know it's coming.  The little girl in the story, who lives in an unnamed country, waits for Sunday to talk briefly with her papa on the phone. She keeps a journal for him, telling him what's happening in their life each day while he's gone. He's in America, and this Sunday, after almost two years, he's telling her she and her mom are going to fly there to live with him.  She has, of course, mixed feelings...she'll be leaving her best friend, her grandmother, and her dog, but she misses her father so badly that she's still happy to go.  The book ends as the mother and daughter are flying away on an airplane over the ocean.

I liked thinking about the immigrants that I see here in Tucson and the family they may have left behind, missing them, working hard to make life easier for them, how often do I think about that?  All most parents want for their kids is a good life!

16. The Hard Way - Lee Child

Jack Reacher #10
audio read by Dick Hill
2006, Brilliance Audio
10 unabridged cds (12 hours)
$36.95 (I got from PBS)
384 pages
Rating:  Liked it a lot/ 3.5

List of Jack Reacher books on Lee Child's website.

This installment begins with Jack Reacher enjoying a coffee on the sidewalk in lower Manhattan when he is approached and asked about something he may have seen the previous night.  The way that he is accepted into the lair of a ruthless, wealthy guns-for-hire Edward Lane is the only part of the story that was hard to believe.  Nevertheless, Lee Child has to figure out a good way to get our footloose-and-fancy-free protagonist involved in the exciting plots he finds, so I had to overlook the less than believable start.  Thank goodness I didn't give up, because it got better and better.

Edward Lane's wife, Kate, and her 8-year old daughter have been kidnapped.  Although Lane's "A-Team" of ex-military sharpshooters and gunhandlers can't figure out what to do, Reacher, in his usual blunt, brusk way brilliantly finds minute clues and follows them to one story, then another, and then on to London and the Norwich countryside. 

This was an excellent story with all the twists and turns that I love, very little "cozy," and just a touch of ooh-la-la.  So far I've read three Jack Reacher novels, and I agree that they don't have to be read in order.  So I have lots more in the future!

Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend – Calvin Alexander Ramsey & Bettye Stroud

A Civil Rights Story
Illustrated by John Holyfield
Candlewick Press, 2011
HC $15.99
32 pages
Rating: Wonderful/5
Endpapers: Deep Cranberry
Author’s Note
Illustrations: Acrylics – no white (happy sigh) – most pages have one side full illustration, opposite are text on soft “sponged” colors. Some double pages are ¾ illustration, ¼ text and one is a double page illustration with text across the top
Title page: Blue sky framed with trees and the corner of the general store.
Setting: Contemporary Gees Bend, Alabama
OSS: A young boy, while waiting for his mom to purchase a famous quilt from Gee’s Bend, learns of how the mule he’s watching came to pull the wagon that pulled Dr. King’s body down the streets of Atlanta to his funeral.
1st line/s: “Alex sat on a bench outside the store. He wanted to go and play, but his mother had told him to wait for her. There was nothing to do on the porch but an old mule eating in the garden across the street. There was no breeze. Not a leaf moved in the chinaberry trees. It was so still that Alex could hear the mule munching on a row of bright collard greens."
This must be used for MLK Day in January, with a few days preceding it learning about Gee’s Bend!

MOVIE - This Means War

Casting of the two leading men didn't do anything for me...
Wide release 2-17-12
Viewed 2-18-12 at Orleans, Las Vegas with Fran
PG-13 (1:37)
RT: 25% Critics 71% Audience
cag: It was okay/2
Director: McG
Reese Witherspoon

Well, I should have paid more attention to the reviews. This was a really silly/stupid movie. Sure, it was fun to watch and had some really funny spots, but it wasn’t even worth the $7.00 matinee price. Reese Witherspoon is really pretty. Like she would not have suitors lining up! Really. So she’s met two different guys and is dating them both … and they happen to be best friends and topnotch CIA operatives. THEY know they’re both dating her…SHE doesn’t. So they’re surveilling each other, mad at each other, competing big time. Yes, there were some really funny places. It was entertainment, but certainly not great entertainment. I had an Orleans free popcorn, and the best company in the world, so it was a fine way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon.

15. Unraveling Isobel - Eileen Cook

2012, Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster)
TPPL Teen
290 pgs.
Rating:  2.5/It was okay

Setting:  An island off the coast of Washington state, big enough for its own high school.
OSS:  When Isobel's mother marries a guy with a "hot" son her own age, she has to move to a strange high school during her senior year and deal with weird, ghostly things that happen in the huge old mansion she must now inhabit.
1st sentence/s:  "When the minister asked if anyone knew any reason why these two shouldn't be married, I should have said something.

Isobel's mother is a self-centered woman who has never been a particularly good mother, and this sort of things irritates me (of course).  It's a real happenstance, and I like that it was written that way.  The new stepfather, Dick, has only been widowed for seven months, so that's cause for head scratching and great and immediate questioning about his   The developing relationship between Isobel and her stepbrother Nathaniel is.....interesting.  And then there's the weird happenings in Isobel's bedroom - the room that used to house Nathaniel's drowned sister.
A fast read, perfect for reluctant teen readers. I found it predictable, but I've read many similar books. It went fast and was interesting, but isn't a standout for me. There were also a number of misspellings that hadn't been caught or edited, and this bothered me (although it shouldn't have!)

14. The Cut - George Pelecanos

Spero Lucas #1
audio read by Dion Graham - really nicely!
2011, Hachette Audio
6 unabridged discs, 7 hrs. 32 minutes
TPPL
292 pages
Rating:  4.5 ( I really, really liked the book, and especially the protagonist)

Setting:  Washington, DC (with lots of description and place references)
OSS:  Spero Lucas is hired by a local marijuana kingpin to locate some stolen pot shipments.

Spero Lucas is a very likable, interesting, real character.  At 29 years old he has returned home from his stint in the Marines in the Middle East to his hometown of Washington DC.  He has been raised in the Greek Orthodox tradition and is still  quite spiritual.  He comes from a mixed and blended family, three of the four siblings had been adopted.  He visits his father in the cemetery frequently, and is very close to his school-teacher older brother.

Spero has discovered that he's good at finding things.  He takes photos, draws street plans, makes notes in his black moleskin notebook.  He thinks outside the box.  He makes mistakes --- but learns from them.  He has Marine buddies that hang out with him at the local American legion, and he has them help him out.  He's an avid bicycler and kayaker, we see a lot of DC from this perspective.  He drinks, he loves women, good food, and his city.  He is thoughtful and perspective.  I really like his character, and I like his humanity.

Pelecanos is great with character creation throughout the book.  You get to know the bad guys, the peripheral characters and all their flaws. I'm really looking forward to the second book in this series.

13. The Accident - Linwood Barclay

audio read by Peter Berkrot (and he was excellent)
2011 Brilliance Audio
11 unabridged discs
12 hrs. 30 min.
$29.99 (borrowed from TPPL)
400 pgs.
Liked it a lot (4)

Setting:  Contemporary suburban Connecticut
OSS:  Glen Garber, a self-employed contractor, tries to deal with the death of his wife under mysterious circumstances.

Glen Garber's wife, Sheila, is killed in a horrible auto accident that also claims the lives of a father and his young son.  But when Glen discovers that his responsible, law-abiding wife was supposedly extremely drunk and caused the accident, life begins to tilt.  After his 8-year old daughter, Kelly, goes on a sleepover and overhears a secret telephone conversation, everything and anything begin to happen.  More deaths.  More mystery.  Surprise after surprise, right down to the very end.  This is a roller coaster ride of a story, and that this poor protagonist kept his mind together at all is very surprising.  There are a couple of places that I felt, "what was he thinking?" but would probably have really come about in such strange situations that happened.  This was a really good story, really wonderful to listen to, that I brought in from the car to finish in the house (a bit unusual for me).