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This post written by Clint The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
by Mark Haddon
[cover name=thecuriousincidentofthedoginthenighttime]
Christopher is 15 years old, and he tells us he has “Behavioral Problems.” He carries a knife with a saw-blade that (he thinks) would be good for cutting off somebody’s fingers. He wouldn’t mind if everyone else in the world just vanished one day. He likes math. However, he’s not a serial killer or anything even remotely like that.
Christopher’s brain works in a different way. He has trouble understanding feelings or interpreting facial expressions. He pays attention to everything, so crowds or some kinds of noises or lots of signs or even looking out the window while he’s on a train overwhelm him. He really hates being touched. That’s part of why he doesn’t like people.
The story is told entirely from Christopher’s point of view. It begins when he discovers that his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, has been murdered. Since Christopher loves Sherlock Holmes, and since he really liked Wellington, he decides to investigate the murder and bring the killer to justice. The murder is solved about half way through the book, but it leaves Christopher in the middle of an even bigger problem, and he spends the rest of the story dealing with it.
People seem to either love or hate this book. I think one reason some people hate it is the writing style, which I can kind of understand. Since Christopher is telling the story, he tells it his way. However, this didn’t bother me. I actually thought it was pretty easy to read. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of people feel cheated because they thought it was a very different kind off book than it really is. Let me try to clear up some of the most common myths I’ve seen about this book.
Myth 1: This is a murder mystery. Well, that’s what Christopher says, but he’s wrong. This is a novel about Christopher, his life, and his family. In fact, Christopher spends every other chapter writing about his daily life, his hopes and dreams, and his hobbies. He is very fond of mathematics and physics, and he talks about math a lot.
Myth 2: This book is for kids. Actually, the author got tired of writing books for kids, so he wrote this one for adults. His agent decided that it would be good for kids, too, so one edition was published for adults and one edition was published for children. Just so you know, there’s a lot of swearing in it, and bodily functions appear more than a few times.*
Myth 3: This is an accurate, scientific portrayal of autism. It isn’t. In fact, the author never says that Christopher is on the autism spectrum. He never claims that Christopher has Asperger syndrome. The author used to work with people who had autism, and he says he basically combined various traits of people he knew to create Christopher. He didn’t go out and do any research. You might want to check out this interesting article about the book written by a man with Asperger syndrome.
If you want to give the book a try, you can read an excerpt of it at the publisher’s website or Google Books.
*: One way to get a book marked as “Literature” is to kill an animal, talk about bodily functions, and make the main characters people you wouldn’t want to hang out with all the time. Having the main character talk about academic topics also helps.
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This post written by Clint Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom
by Julie Kenner
[cover name=carpedemon]
Kate Connors never went to high school or college, but she had a job she loved and was good at. Then she married a co-worker and settled down to raise a family, and she never even thought about going back to work. She used to be a demon hunter, and that’s not really something you can do while also raising kids.
Kate has been a full-time mother and a full-time wife for the past fifteen years. Her husband doesn’t know about her past, and she’d like to keep it that way. She really wants her husband to see her as a wife and not an unstoppable killing machine. Her daughter doesn’t know about her past, although Kate might tell her one of these days. Her son doesn’t know and wouldn’t care if she told him, since he’s only two years old. Kate doesn’t really like keeping secrets, but since she’s not longer fighting demons, nobody really needs to know.
Her husband is running for a political office and has to win important people over, and one day he calls her to ask if she can put together a dinner party for that evening. Then an old demon jumps through her window and tries to kill her. Now she has to clean up the glass, hide the demon corpse, and make the dinner party happen.
This is where Kate’s life gets fun. Some big, bad demons are moving in on her town, and due to budget cuts and recruiting trouble, she’s the only demon hunter around. She does eventually get the help of an alimentatore, an advisor who is the brain while Kate is the brawn. Unfortunately, her alimentatore has a day job, so he makes Kate dig through records. She also gets the help of another retired hunter. Unfortunately, he’s currently in a nursing home. She also finds a sidekick. Unfortunately, when danger threatens, her sidekick plans to scream and run. Then, of course, she’s got to deal with her husband, teenage daughter, and two-year-old son. With help like this, how can she lose? Oh, and she’s a little out of shape, too. Not a lot, but enough to make fighting demons dangerous.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Skeleton Man
by Joseph Bruchac
[cover name=skeletonman]
One day Molly’s parents vanish, but she has trouble accepting this. She lives alone for a while and tries to act like nothing has happened, but people from Social Services eventually catch on. They place her with her uncle, but Mollly has never heard of this uncle before. This uncle makes Molly very nervous, and sort of reminds her of a story her father told her.
Molly’s father grew up on a Mohawk reservation, and he made sure Molly was aware of her Mohawk heritage. One story he told her was the story of Skeleton Man, who was a lazy, greedy, and evil man who got hungry while he was waiting for his family to come home with food. First he ate his finger. Then he ate the rest of his flesh until he was just a skeleton. When his family came home, he went after them, too.
Molly is in trouble. Her creepy uncle locks her in her room every night, and she is terrified of him. Then she starts having disturbing dreams that seem to be warning her about him. Molly has to do something to save herself and find her parents.
You can read some of it online at the publisher’s website.
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This post written by Clint Wake
by Lisa McMann
[cover name=wake]
Janie Hannagan has a special power, or maybe a curse: whenever someone nearby falls asleep and starts to dream, Janie is sucked into the dream. She gets tag along while somebody flies around, shows up to work naked, or falls and falls and falls. Sounds fun, right? Janie is in high school, so she gets pulled in every time somebody falls asleep in class. She works at a nursing home, so she gets pulled in every time a resident dozes off.
She learns a lot about other people this way. She knows who who has a secret crush on her best friend, for example. She knows that somebody who lives on Waverly Road is really messed up. She knows that Cable, the class slacker, has dreams about her. Then she finds herself in one of Cable’s a really messed up nightmares, and she decides to stop watching and try to fix things.
You should know a few things about this novel before you start. First, a lot of it takes place in the dreams of teenagers. You know what that means. Second, there is a lot of swearing. Third, some people are put off by the writing style. You might want to preview it at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Dead is the New Black
by Marlene Perez
[cover name=deadisthenewblack]
The women in Daisy Giordano’s family have special powers. Her mom can see bits of the future. One sister can read minds, and the other is telekinetic. Somehow, though, Daisy missed out. She’s normal, or as near as you can get when your family runs a psychic detective agency. A lot of strange things happen in her hometown of Nightshade, California, but Daisy’s life really gets interesting when the most popular girl in her high school comes back from vacation looking kind of dead. Undead, actually, and she’s popular enough to make pale skin and custom-made coffins stylish.
Then one of Daisy’s fellow high school students is murdered. Death doesn’t seem to stop this student, though, and she shows up to a pep rally. It’s up to Daisy and the police chief’s son Ryan (the guy she’s got a crush on) to figure out what’s going on.
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This post written by Clint The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss
[cover name=thenameofthewind]
Kote is a simple innkeeper. Unfortunately, the roads are not safe these days, so business isn’t doing so well. Part of the problem is that a bunch of giant spider-like creatures are living near his village, so Kote decides to wipe them out. Because simple innkeepers always kill packs of monsters in their spare time.
One man is sure that Kote is more than he seems. He calls himself Chronicler, and he is sure that Kote is the legendary hero or villain (depending on which legend you listen to) Kvothe. After hounding Kote for a while, Chronicler finally gets him to confess to being Kvothe. Chronicler really wants to know the truth behind all of the stories about Kvothe, but Kvothe will only talk if Chronicler promises to write exactly what Kvothe says.
Much of The Name of the Wind is Kvothe telling us about his life. He’s done some pretty impressive things. He was born into a group of traveling performers, so he learned to act, sing, and ply instruments. An wizard/scholar named Abenthy travels with his family for a while, and he teaches Kvothe the basics of magic/science. However, Abenthy never teaches him the really powerful magic, where if you can name something, you can control it. Kvothe decides he wantes to learn the name of the wind, which is something that Abenthy knows. Abenthy encourages him to attend the University, where he can learn that kind of magic, but before that can happen, Kvothe’s family is killed.
Kvohte survives as an orphan for a while, but he eventually gets into the University, where can study naming magic, and maybe even find out more about who killed his family. We learn a lot about Kvothe’s life at the University – how he fell in love, how he was banned from ever setting foot in the library again after an incident involving a candle, and how he manages to become a student of the Master Namer.
This book is big, but it is only part on of three. We get a lot of hints about the things he has done, but we don’t know, for example, why he eventually gets expelled from the University, how he gets the nickname of Kvoth Kingkiller, or why he decides to pretend to be an inkeeper.. However, this book isn’t all about the past. Parts of it are set int he present, where dark forces appear to be at work. Kvothe may have very good reasons for hiding out.
You can read an excerpt from the book online at the author’s website.
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This post written by Clint The God of Animals
by Aryn Kyle
[cover name=thegodofanimals]
Alice Winston is twelve years old, and she has a rough life. Well, most of the bad things actually happen to people around her, but she has to deal with them all and there is nobody around to help her. Her mother is depressed and spends most of her time in bed. Her father is too busy trying to keep his ranch from going bankrupt to really pay any attention to her. Her sister ran away with a cowboy from the rodeo, so nobody even notices when she outgrows her current clothes.
As if family drama isn’t enough, Alice has to take over her older sister’s chores, including teaching some wealthy but untalented woman, Sheila, how to ride a horse. When one of her friends dies, Alice ends up talking with her English teacher. When he leaves, Alice still needs someone to talk to. She ends up telling Sheila things about her family that cause a lot of trouble, and her family sort of falls apart. Although Alice survives, and might even have an okay future, this story doesn’t really have a happy ending.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Black and White
by Paul Volponi
[cover name=blackandwhite]
Marcus and Eddie, also know as Black and White, are two local high school basketball aces who will probably make it to the NBA. However, their families are both kind of poor, and the NBA seems like a long way off. They can’t get part-time jobs, since they need that time to practice, so they decided to commit armed robberies instead. Things go terribly wrong during one robbery, and Eddie accidentally shoots somebody.
The story focuses on how Marcus and Eddie deal with the situation, what happens to their friendship and their families, and how they are treated by the legal system. Despite having been friends for many years and spending a lot of time together, Marcus’s and Eddie’s lives go in two very different directions after the shooting. Black and White takes a serious look at racism in modern American society, and it manages to combine a good story with lots of issues to think about. You might want to have your friends read this, too, so you can have somebody to talk about it with.
You can read some of it online at the author’s website.
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This post written by Clint What Happened to Cass McBride?
by Gail Giles
[cover name=whathappenedtocassmcbride]
What happened to Cass McBride? Well, the short version is that she’s buried in a box with a crude air supply and a walkie-talkie so that Kyle, the guy who put her there, can keep taunting her. Why did Kyle put her in a box? The simple answer is that she may have had something to do with his brother David’s suicide. The real story, of course, is more complicated.
Kyle seems to hold all the cards, since he’s not in a box, but the police are looking for Cass, and as long as she can keep Kyle talking, she has a chance.
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This post written by Clint Naruto
by Masashi Kishimoto
[cover name=naruto]
Naruto is a hyperactive teenager in one of the best ninja academies in the world. He wants to be the greatest ninja ever, but he’s kind of dumb, easily distracted, and obsessed with ramen. Still, he has a great deal of natural ability, if he can pay attention long enough to use it.
You can look it up on Wikipedia. You can also read some of it online at the publisher’s website.
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