I do hope to participate in MotherReader's 48 Hour Reading Challenge next weekend (June 3-5). (I haven't decided if I'll be starting Friday afternoon or Friday evening.) So some of these books I'm "saving" just for that event. Several of the adult books are for blog tours.
Middle Grade/Young Adult
This book begins with a plane crash.
The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.
Wake up. I'm in bed. Sheets and blankets tucked around me, my legs sprawled out like I've fallen.
I lean forward and look at Tess.
I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged. Now, if you please. I don't mean to be difficult, but I can't bear to tell my story. I can't relive those memories--the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp.
My brother Wilbert tells me that I was the first ever girl born in Nasel, that I was A Miracle. He tells me this as we stand at the edge of the water, on the Nasel River, watching it rush by crazily. He is trying to cheer me up.
My brother Wilbert tells me that I'm like the grain of sand in an oyster. Someday I will be a Pearl, but I will nag and irritate the poor oyster and everyone else up until then.
Cat puts up his nose to sniff the breath of wind barely filling the sail, and opens his small pink mouth to speak. "Yow yow," he says, and I know what he's thinking: We're nearly there.
Maybe Mommers and I shouldn't have been surprised; Dwight had told us it was a trailer even before we'd packed our bags.
We'd been driving for about seven thousand years. Or at least that's how it felt.
I hate being followed. I especially hate being followed by a bunch of lunatic adults playing at being occultists.
Even with the windows closed, the sand still managed to creep into the railway car and find its way into the most inconvenient places.
Flashing lights inside his brain was not the way Benjamin wanted to start his day--especially when his day was starting at three in the morning. If only he could travel back in time to midnight and sleep for three more hours.
Why was it, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much? Was was noise so important?
This city used to be something once. I've seen pictures of the way it gleamed--sun so bright off windows it could burn your eyes. At night, lights shouted from steel like catcalls, loud and lewd, while all day long white-gloved men rushed to open doors for women who tottered about on sky-scraper heels.
Adult
"You...you can't marry him," Jake Wythe declared, taking Deborah Vandermark by the arm.
"Come on, boy. Your dad needs you."
"Isn't that beautiful, Julien?"
I met Dobbs on the day my world fell apart.
Ariella shoved through the clogged street, defying the mob of frantic citizens.
Martha watched her father walk slowly up the road as the afternoon shadows appeared, and he was smiling.
Miss Marjoribanks lost her mother when she was only fifteen, and when, to add to the misfortune, she was absent at school, and could not have it in her power to soothe her dear mamma's last moments, as she herself said.
There is an assize-town in one of the eastern counties which was much distinguished by the Tudor sovereigns, and, in consequence of their favour and protection, attained a degree of importance that surprises the modern traveller.
Jim Qwilleran, whose name had confounded typesetters and proofreaders for two decades, arrived fifteen minutes early for his appointment with the managing editor of the Daily Fluxion.
People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.
Richard did not become frightened until darkness began to settle over the woods.
Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
© 2011 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
7 comments:
There are several excellent ideas here...like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, True Grit (which I've heard is really good!), The Cat Who Could Read Backwards,The Summer I Turned Pretty.... It will be an excellent reading month!! Do you have all of these already?
Shirley, a few of these I've bought, a few I've received as review copies or ARCS, a few are library books.
That's a good list, Becky. I just finished Our Only May Amelia, and really liked it. Hoping the sequel is as good. And I Shall Wear Midnight is fantastic. But then, it's Terry Pratchett.
Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you - what a great June you'll have. True Grit and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn are both amazing books.
Oh Becky, I so hope you get to A Monster Calls soon! It's soooooo beautiful!!! Heartbreaking, yes. But oh so beautiful.
I've never participated in the 48 Hour Reading Challenge before, but I'm really, really tempted to this time.
Good night! You plan to read all of these in June?? More power to you! These look like some great reads.
Such fun books!! And you totally inspired me to do the 48 hr reading challenge :D I'm in!
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