Friday memes...August 1st

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Participants don't select their favorite, coolest or most intellectual books, they just use the one they are currently reading. I'm reading:

Book: The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy by Kate Hattemer

Book Beginnings: 

"Just call me Ethan. You're reading this first, but I'm writing it last. I'm at a corner table in this low-rent Starbucks a few blocks from my house. I had planned to write this on the living-room couch, but I have triplet sisters, and they are four years old."

The Friday 56:

"I liked calculus. Scratch that. I hated calculus. But I liked calculus class. The only other class Luke and I had together was English, where BradLee and Aura Heldsman, in very different ways, made it hard to goof off."

Comment: I think that Freda at Freda's Voice if off this week which is good since my Friday 56 quote is, gasp, actually from page 57. What has caught my attention, since I haven't started reading the book yet, is that the book is currently written in past tense. We see this from the quote on page 57 but not the quote from page one. Our narrator tells us that we are reading it first but he is writing it last, so it is not in past tense.

Friday---er, Saturday---posts

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Participants don't dig for their favorite book, the coolest, or the most intellectual. They use the one they are currently reading.

Book: Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Book Beginnings:

I know I'm not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an XBox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary, I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know that ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds.

Friday 56:

We sat together at lunch," I said.
I had started kicking a rock between my feet like it was a soccer ball, chasing it back and forth across the sidewalk.
"She seems very nice.""Yeah, she is."
"She's very pretty," Mom said.
"Yeah, I know," I answered. "We're kind of like Beauty and the Beast."
I didn't wait to see Mom's reaction. I just started running down the sidewalk after the rock, which I had kicked as hard as I could in front of me.

A few thoughts:
Wonder is an award winning junior-level book about a boy who has facial deformities and his first year attending school. Further down the first page Augie says about his looks: "I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse." 

So far, so good.

Friday 56 and Book Beginnings, Feb 28, 2014.

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Participants don't dig for their favorite book, the coolest, or the most intellectual. They use the one they are currently reading.

Book: Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Book Beginnings:

I just got back from Celia Forester's funeral. I'm supposed to be writing up an official report for the Tempest she flew into the ground, since she's obviously not going to write it herself and I saw it happen.

Friday 56:

By the time we were over Notre Dame I was singing to myself again. The cabin was so noisy I thought no one would be able to hear me.

My thoughts: By page 56 the reader is just starting to understand how talented Rose, the narrator, is as a pilot and how dedicated she is to helping the Allies win WWII. At this point in the story the action is just starting to warm up and soon it takes a dramatic twist. I don't think that either of these quotes are good examples of how wonderful both this book and the writing are. (I'm almost finished with this book.)

Book Beginnings and Friday 56, Feb 14th

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the one you are currently reading.

Book: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron

Book Beginnings:

I still remember the day my father took me to the cemetery of forgotten books for the first time.

Friday 56:

'We'll meet again, Daniel. I never forget a face and I don't think you will either,' he said calmly.

My thoughts: I've only read one other book by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. It was a YA horror story. This one has the makings of the last. I haven't gotten to page 56 yet in my reading but in skipping ahead for this exercise I've just learned that the speaker has no face, hence the comment about not forgetting a face. Eek!

Several people have told me to read this book and I am quite looking forward to it, if it doesn't scare me too much.

2011 Banned Books Week- Day 7- TGIF and First Lines

TGIF at Greads Question of the week: Banned Books: How do you feel about the censorship of the freedom to read? Do you think the education system needs to be more strict on what children are exposed to in books?

I've blogged every day this week on Banned Books Week. Please go back and read my posts to learn what I think about censorship. When my children were young I helped them select age-appropriate materials to read and view but if they wanted to read something that wasn't, I would read that book with them so that we could talk about it together. Recently my college-age daughter told me that she appreciated the way that open-minded way we raised her, capable of thinking for herself. High praise indeed. As a librarian I have fairly strong feelings about the way that banning books violates 1st Amendment rights and the Students Rights to Read. Click on the links to see my other posts on Banned Books Week.
Day 1- Banned Books Giveaway (closes Oct. 1)
Day 1- Banned Books reinstated...sort of
Day 2- Sunday Salon, BBW edition
Day 3- Mindless Banning
Day 4- In the GKHS Library
Day 5- Review: Athletic Shorts (a banned book)
Day 6- Maya Angelou Poem: Those Who Ban Books

First Line Friday at A Few More Pages: In honor of Banned Books Week I have highlighted the first line of several books that have been banned or challenged in the past. I never realized until I started hunting for books with good first lines, how many bad first lines there are in books.  Ha!  Hope you like my selection of opening lines from banned books. 

1984 by George Orwell: "It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:  "It was a pleasure to burn."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon: "It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was laying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shear's house."

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan: "When I was little, my dad used to tell me, 'Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.' This seemed a reasonably astute observation to me when I was eight, but it turns out to be incorrect on a few levels."

Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan: "It was a wild, windy, southwestern spring when the idea of killing Mr. Griffin occurred to them."

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going: "I'm a sweating fat kid standing on the edge of the subway platform staring at the tracks."

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

Friday Hops- August 12

 Friday Fun!

*First Line Friday at A Few More Pages.
*The Friday 56 at Freda's Voice.

Book: Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

"Jasper Jones has come to my window. I don't know why, but he has. Maybe he's in trouble. Maybe he doesn't have anywhere else to go."  -Opening lines

"See, Batman is different. He's mortal. He's got a real life to risk. Superman just has to avoid Kryptonite. Big deal...Batman has the same vulnerabilities as the rest of us, so he has the same fears as us. That's why he is the most courageous...My point is this: the more you have to lose, the braver you are for standing up."-p. 56   (The main character, Charles, and his friend are fighting over who is braver, Superman or Batman.)

Jasper Jones is the town's juvenile delinquent, yet he needs Charles to help him with a problem.  But as you see from the second quote, Charles is still a young teen interested in super heroes.


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Hosted by GReads

Q. Author Block Party: 

If you could gather a handful of authors to hang out with, 

who would you choose?

 

A. I'd pick my favorite YA authors:

John Green

Libba Bray

Chris Crutcher

David Levithan

Cassandra Clare

Shannon Hale

Markus Zusak

Pete Hautman

Patrick Ness

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Featured blog: Jake at Teen Fiction Centre.  Congratulations, Jake!

Q. How has your reading habits changed since you were a teen? or If you are still a teen what new genres are you in love with currently? 

A. YA Lit didn't exist when I was a teenager, or just barely.  I read a lot as a pre-teen and young teen, then barely read in high school at all. When I did I liked reading romances.  Sigh.  They were so tame in comparison to what teens read today.  Ha-ha.  I remember swooning when the characters kissed hard.

Friday- August 5

*First Line Friday at A Few More Pages.
*The Friday 56 at Freda's Voice.

Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo

The family trip when our nightmare began was supposed to be a celebration. ---Opening line.

"'Colton,' I began, 'do you know why you are in trouble?' "Yeah, because I didn't share,' he said...'That's right. You can't do that, Colton. You've got to treat people better than that.' Colton raised his eyes and looked at me. 'Yeah, I know, Dad, Jesus told me I had to be nice.' His words caught me by surprise. It was the way he said it : Jesus told me..." p. 56

This book is a very touching book about a four-year-old boy who has a life after death experience but comes back to tell others about what happened to him in Heaven.

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Parajunkee

This week's featured blog is Hands and Home.  Congratulations!!!


This week's question:

Q. Talk about the book that most changed or influenced your life (was it a book that turned you from an average to avid reader, did it help you deal with a particularly difficult situation, does it bring you comfort every time you read it?). 

A.  The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis... I read the whole series as a child/adolescent and I loved them but I missed a lot of the symbolism which I caught when I reread the series as an adult.  I have since read the whole series to my (now grown) children when they were young and again when each new movie is released.  I love them. They really speak to my heart.

 

First Line Friday 6/3/11

First Line Friday: How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading. Then, if you would like, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. The link-up will be at A Few More Pages every Friday.



The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson

Prologue
All the newspapers and TV pundits are calling this fall's freshman college class the 'Symnitol Generation,' but if the activity up and down my dorm hallway is any indication, this fall's freshman college class is the 'Stand Around Each Other's Laptops and Play The First Thirty Seconds Of Every Song On the Hard Drive Generation.'

I'm only a few chapters into the book but if this prologue is a peek into the future for what is in store for me in the rest of the book, I am looking forward to it.  I find this opening line quite funny.