The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Nothing gets me quite like a good dystopian book. I love them. The Giver was, I’m sure, the first book that I read that was set in another version of the future, and I was in love with it.
The thing that Lois Lowry did perfectly was give us just enough information [...]
The Book: The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red, edited by Joyce Reardon, Ph. D.
The Story: This is the diary of a young woman living in Seattle around the turn of the century. She is courted by and then marries a rich oil tycoon named John Rimbauer. He is in the process [...]
The Book: Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Story: I probably don’t have to explain this one too much…
A crazy old guy decides to clone dinosaurs and put them on an island as an amusement park. They are all girl-dinos and they are pretty sure that they have control over the whole situation. A couple of [...]
The Books: The Jessica Darling Series, by Megan McCaferty
The Story: Jessica Darling is a snarky, brainy, opinionated high school junior when we meet her in the first book. She is devastated and lonely because her best friend, Hope has just moved away and she’s flying solo. She is a virgin and, while she plans to [...]
The Book: We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver
The Story: In letter after letter to her estranged husband, Franklin, Eva recaps their life together from start to finish. In her first letter, Eva tells the reader how it is going to end: with their son, Kevin, taking part in a school shooting and [...]
The Book: Handle with Care, by Jodi Picoult
The Story: During an ultrasound at 27 weeks, Charlotte and her husband Sean are told that their baby has a disease that makes her bones very, very brittle. She already has seven broken bones and if she doesn’t die at birth will have many more. They are heartbroken, [...]
I remember my third grade teacher giving me a nice, shiny copy of this book and telling me that Matilda always reminded her of me. I was immediately sold because: 1- it seemed like a huge, fat book at the time, which I have always loved, and 2- I loved my third grade teacher, Miss [...]
The Book: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, by Ayelet Waldman
The Story: Emilia lives in an amazing apartment with her amazing lawyer husband who was a married man when they met and fell in love. He chose her and they are pretty much living the dream. With just a couple of exceptions. Emilia doesn’t like her [...]
The Book: The Colorado Kid, by Stephen King
The Story: Like a lot of Stephen King books, this one takes place in Maine. There are these two older guys who work for the local paper and they have a young female intern. They are really kind of impressed with her, you can tell from the get [...]
The Book: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
The Story: This is the story of the 1960’s in the deep south. More specifically what it was like to be a black maid during this time of racial upheaval. There are three points of view represented: an older maid who is alone in the world after white bosses [...]