Staff Picks: July 2020
July has wrapped up and we have a new set of Staff Picks for your summer reading pleasure.
AVAILABLE AT THE LIBRARY
RACHEL’S PICK: Giant Days, Fall Semester- John Allison
GENRE: Fiction, Young Adult Graphic Novel
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: It’s a fun, upbeat coming-of-age story with interesting characters, and it’s a quick read.
SYNOPSIS: Susan, Esther, and Daisy started at university three weeks ago and became fast friends. Now, away from home for the first time, all three want to reinvent themselves. But in the face of hand-wringing boys, “personal experimentation,” influenza, mystery-mold, nu-chauvinism, and the willful, unwanted intrusion of “academia,” they may be lucky just to make it to spring alive. Going off to university is always a time of change and growth, but for Esther, Susan, and Daisy, things are about to get a little weird.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Giant Days Volume One” by John Allison
EDEN’S PICK: Every Day- David Levithan
GENRE: Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Romance, Fantasy
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: It’s a unique way of showing love is a matter of heart and mind over physical things.
SYNOPSIS: Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.
It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.
ABBEY’S PICK: The Giver (The Giver #1)- Lois Lowry
GENRE: Fiction, Junior Fiction
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: The plot and the society the book takes place in are so interesting. It’s also one of a few books that the movie closely matches it and does an excellent job of visually portraying what the book described.
THE SYNOPSIS: Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear of pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community.
December is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve-year-old receives a life assignment determined by the Elders. Jonas watches his friend Fiona named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant Director of Recreation.
But Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man — the man called only the Giver — he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world.
LISA G’s PICK: Betty- David Robertson
GENRE: Fiction, Young Adult Graphic Novel
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: It happened close to here and it was a different kind of true crime reading for me.
THE SYNOPSIS: Helen Betty Osborne, known as Betty to her closest friends and family, dreamed of becoming a teacher. She left home to attend residential school and later moved to The Pas, Manitoba, to attend high school. On November 13, 1971, Betty was abducted and brutally murdered by four young men. Initially met with silence and indifference, her tragic murder resonates loudly today. Betty represents one of almost 1,200 Indigenous women in Canada who have been murdered or gone missing. This is her story.
LISA S’s PICK: My Dark Vanessa- Kate Elizabeth Russell
GENRE: Fiction, Literary Fiction
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: This book was disturbing. Reading about the way Vanessa’s teacher groomed her, and progressed from touching her to taking her virginity, while drilling into her that she had to keep their relationship a secret, was vile. As much as this book disturbed me, it also enlightened me about how these relationships can define a person, and how it creeps into every corner of their self-worth.
THE SYNOPSIS: 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “My Dark Vanessa” by Kate Elizabeth Russell
AVAILABLE ON THE LIBBY APP
ELIZABETH’S PICK: The Farseer Trilogy- Robin Hobb
GENRE: Fiction, Fantasy
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: The Farseer series is an older one but stands the test of time as it is set in a completely different world. The books I’m recommending are:
-Assassin’s Apprentice (1995)
-Royal Assassin (1996)
-Assassin’s Quest (1997)
Robin Hobb (and why was I so surprised to find out she was a woman??) has written a number of series about the life of FitzChivalry Farseer (Fitz) and his world. They are all well written fantasy stories. My only caution is to look up the author on Fantastic Fiction to ensure you are reading the books in chronological order or you can get very confused.
SYNOPSIS for book one, “Assassin’s Apprentice”: In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.
Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.
So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Assassin’s Apprentice” by Robin Hobb
