Summer Book Club Reading - The Book Thief

Death, it turns out, is not proud.
The narrator of The Book Thief is many things -- sardonic, wry, darkly humorous, compassionate -- but not especially proud. As author Marcus Zusak channels him, Death -- who doesn't carry a scythe but gets a kick out of the idea -- is as afraid of humans as humans are of him.
Knopf is blitz-marketing this 550-page book set in Nazi Germany as a young-adult novel, though it was published in the author's native Australia for grown-ups. (Zusak, 30, has written several books for kids, including the award-winning I Am the Messenger.) The book's length, subject matter and approach might give early teen readers pause, but those who can get beyond the rather confusing first pages will find an absorbing and searing narrative.
Death meets the book thief, a 9-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger, when he comes to take her little brother, and she becomes an enduring force in his life, despite his efforts to resist her. "I traveled the globe . . . handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity," Death writes. "I warned myself that I should keep a good distance from the burial of Liesel Meminger's brother. I did not heed my advice." As Death lingers at the burial, he watches the girl, who can't yet read, steal a gravedigger's instruction manual. Thus Liesel is touched first by Death, then by words, as if she knows she'll need their comfort during the hardships ahead.
And there are plenty to come. Liesel's father has already been carted off for being a communist and soon her mother disappears, too, leaving her in the care of foster parents: the accordion-playing, silver-eyed Hans Hubermann and his wife, Rosa, who has a face like "creased-up cardboard." Liesel's new family lives on the unfortunately named Himmel (Heaven) Street, in a small town on the outskirts of Munich populated by vivid characters: from the blond-haired boy who relates to Jesse Owens to the mayor's wife who hides from despair in her library. They are, for the most part, foul-spoken but good-hearted folks, some of whom have the strength to stand up to the Nazis in small but telling ways.
Stolen books form the spine of the story. Though Liesel's foster father realizes the subject matter isn't ideal, he uses "The Grave Digger's Handbook" to teach her to read. "If I die anytime soon, you make sure they bury me right," he tells her, and she solemnly agrees. Reading opens new worlds to her; soon she is looking for other material for distraction. She rescues a book from a pile being burned by the Nazis, then begins stealing more books from the mayor's wife. After a Jewish fist-fighter hides behind a copy of Mein Kampf as he makes his way to the relative safety of the Hubermanns' basement, he then literally whitewashes the pages to create his own book for Liesel, which sustains her through her darkest times. Other books come in handy as diversions during bombing raids or hedges against grief. And it is the book she is writing herself that, ultimately, will save Liesel's life.
Death recounts all this mostly dispassionately -- you can tell he almost hates to be involved. His language is spare but evocative, and he's fond of emphasizing points with bold type and centered pronouncements, just to make sure you get them (how almost endearing that is, that Death feels a need to emphasize anything). "A NICE THOUGHT," Death will suddenly announce, or "A KEY WORD." He's also full of deft descriptions: "Pimples were gathered in peer groups on his face."
Death, like Liesel, has a way with words. And he recognizes them not only for the good they can do, but for the evil as well. What would Hitler have been, after all, without words? As this book reminds us, what would any of us be?

The Bar Code Tattoo

It's 2025, and the thing to do on your 17th birthday is to get a bar code tattoo, which is used for everything from driver's licenses to shopping. Kayla, almost 17, resists because she hates the idea of being labeled. Then the tattoos begin to drive people to commit suicide, Kayla's father among them, and she soon finds out that the markings contain detailed information about their bearers, including their genetic code. When the government, controlled by a corporation called Global-1, makes the tattoo mandatory, Kayla joins a teen resistance movement and falls for a gorgeous guy, unaware that he's a double agent. She discovers she has some psychic ability and has confusing visions of future events. Forced to run away after being implicated in her mother's accidental death, she eventually joins other resisters hiding in the Adirondack Mountains, finds romance with an old friend, and learns to harness her psychic powers to fight Global-1 and fulfill her visions. Like M. T. Anderson's Feed (Candlewick, 2002), this novel examines issues of individuality versus conformity and individual freedom versus governmental control.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Some books improve with age--the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman's heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own--nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal daemon, the manifestation of their souls in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:
As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them. Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is "clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war." But Lyra's carefree existence changes forever when she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from "gyptians" to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.
In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children's book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn't speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end.

Uglies By Scott Westerfeld

The story starts off as Tally is planning to escape Uglyville for the night to see her old friend Peris in New Pretty Town, who had just turned Pretty. This turns into a fiasco ending with a scary jump in a bungee jacket from the roof of a building and being chased by wardens, or police. That is until she meets Shay. As she is running from New Pretty Town, Tally meets another Ugly named Shay who shares a birthday with Tally. Shay likes to go on adventures and try new tricks, while she teaches Tally how to ride a hoverboard, an advanced device that use magnets and the metal grid under the city to operate. Shay isn't sure she wants to become a Pretty and tries to talk Tally out of the operation.
One evening the two go on an adventure to the Rusty Ruins, the remains of buildings used in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Uglies are taught in school that basically the Rusties lived a different lifestyle and their ways of life differed a lot from how people lived in the city. On they way, Shay mentions something about someone named David who visits the Ruins often and that she wanted to wait to see if he would come. Tally, however, is hesitant and convinces Shay to leave. Later while they are covering their tracks from a prank, Tally and Shay get into a fight about becoming Pretty. A week before their birthday late at night, Shay comes and tells Tally that she is escaping to a place called the Smoke, a place that Uglies who don’t want to turn Pretty escape to. Tally refuses to go but is given a set of secret-coded instructions.
A week passes and it's now Tally's birthday and her turn to become Pretty. At the hospital where the operation takes place, however, she is told that there is a problem and is taken to a place called Special Circumstances. There, she meets the head of Special Circumstances, Dr. Cable, who explains to Tally that she must find The Smoke and Shay or she will stay an "ugly-for-life". Tally is then given a heart pendant that, when activated, tells where she is. She makes the journey through the wild to the Smoke.
Tally’s journey, according to the description, was "a wild adventure". It takes her 9 days to reach the Smoke and she is almost killed numerous times. One day during her journey, she stops to rest and hides her hoverboard. She wakes up to be in flames, and finds that a group of people are burning down the field she was lying in. She is saved by them and finds out that they are trying to contain a weed that is smothering all other plants. They take her to the Smoke. Shay runs towards her and introduces her to David. None of them know that Tally actually came to the the Smoke to betray all of what they had worked for, but later on mentioned in the story, Shay and Croy suspect Tally is a spy.
After spending a few weeks in The Smoke, Tally decides she wants to stay there instead of becoming a Pretty. She enjoys the new atmosphere and different way of life. David, the leader of the Smoke, loves Tally's personality and her love for adventure, and introduces her to his parents. His parents explain that after becoming a Pretty, a person not only has his or her appearance changed, but his or her brain as well. In the operation, the doctors, completely knowingly, change the way the patient thinks by adding lesions to their brain. David's parents, Maddy and Az, were former cosmetic suergons, who had run away from the city and created The Smoke together. They were once doctors who performed the operation of changing Uglies into Pretties, but after learning the secret of what it really means to be Pretty they ran away with their secret, and have spent their life trying to reverse the effects.
That night, Tally kisses David and throws the pendant from Special Circumstances into a fire, mistakenly activating it. The next morning, Special Circumstances had arrived with “Specials.” Specials are creatures that have amazing reflexes and are used as guards and soldiers. The specials captured everyone from the Smoke. They are all taken to New Pretty Town to have the lesions added to their brains and to undergo the operation. But at the last moment Tally and David escape. They find some pathways, and journey through forests and deserts, on a mission to go to New Pretty Town and break into Special Circumstances (to find out if the rest of the "Smokies are locked in Special Circumstances). They find that Shay has already turned Pretty and has the lesions in her brain. Dr. Cable becomes unconscious and Tally and David get everyone out. David soon finds out that his father, Az, was killed for knowing too much information.
They all hide in the Rust Ruins where a great discovery is born. When Dr. Cable was unconscious, Maddy, David’s mother, took her PDA. The PDA contained all of the data that she and her husband had worked on for nearly two decade and that was taken away from them. She creates the cure which is in a pill form. They ask Shay, who tagged along, if she would be willing to be the test-subject. She rejects the offer, and Maddy explains they "can't test a medical experiment on an un-willing subject". David finds out about Tally’s betrayal and runs away. That night Tally, in order to make up for her betrayal, becomes the test subject for the cure, and turns herself in, to become Pretty.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Where to begin? Wonderfully done. Every chapter cherished, every turned page sacred. I forced myself to put down the book for reflection and, much to my wife's chagrin, dinner. I am saddened to say that I consumed the entire book in one day. The following day, I discovered that I was not the only. I was literally bursting to discuss the event with others and could not. Rowlings created, over the course of seven books, a world just beyond ours. I'll discuss more later, I have no wish to spoiler the experience for anyone else.

Maximum Ride : The Angel Experiment

From the mind of Max Ride:

WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE.Do not put this book down. I'm dead serious - your life could depend on it. I'm risking everything by telling you - but you need to know.

STRAP YOURSELF IN for the thrill ride you'll want to take again and again! From Death Valley, California, to the bowels of the New York City subway system, you're about to take off on a heart-stopping adventure that will blow you away...

YOUR FAITHFUL COMPANIONS: Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman, and Angel. Six kids who are pretty normal in most ways - except that they're 98 percent human, 2 percent bird. They grew up in a lab, living like rats in cages, but now they're free. Aside, of course, from the fact that they're prime prey for Erasers - wicked wolflike creatures with a taste for flying humans.

THE MISSIONS: Rescue Angel from malicious mutants. Infiltrate a secret facility to track down the flock's missing parents. Scavenge for sustenance. Get revenge on an evil traitor. And save the world. If there's time.

Strap yourselves in and breathe deep! Take the Maximum Ride!

The Lightning Thief

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) - Rick Riordan

The escapades of the Greek gods and heroes get a fresh spin in the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, about a contemporary 12-year-old New Yorker who learns he's a demigod. Perseus, aka Percy Jackson, thinks he has big problems. His father left before he was born, he's been kicked out of six schools in six years, he's dyslexic, and he has ADHD. What a surprise when he finds out that that's only the tip of the iceberg: he vaporizes his pre-algebra teacher, learns his best friend is a satyr, and is almost killed by a minotaur before his mother manages to get him to the safety of Camp Half-Blood--where he discovers that Poseidon is his father. But that's a problem, too. Poseidon has been accused of stealing Zeus' lightning bolt, and unless Percy can return the bolt, humankind is doomed. Riordan's fast-paced adventure is fresh, dangerous, and funny. Percy is an appealing, but reluctant hero, the modernized gods are hilarious, and the parallels to Harry Potter are frequent and obvious. Because Riordan is faithful to the original myths, librarians should be prepared for a rush of readers wanting the classic stories.