Sharon listened to…Rotters by Daniel Kraus April 2, 2012

This one took the Odyssey Award for Audiobooks.   Seriously???  A book about grave-digging won the ALA audio book award for children or young adults???

I know, I know.  Grave robbing has a long and noble (?) history.  Leonardo da Vinci was a grave robber.  Shakespeare wrote about it.  Archaeologists and profit-mongers have been raiding tombs for profit and education for centuries.

It’s one thing to “know” about the art of robbing graves, but Kraus takes you along for the ride–complete with no shortage of the sensory details.  *Shudder*  This is beyond a doubt the most gruesome book I’ve ever “read” (and this is coming from a die-hard Stephen King fan).  Mind you, I stuck with it through all 13 CDs–even backed it up a bit to catch things I missed the first time.  Go figure.

It is, however, NOT for the faint of heart.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you…  Thankfully, they opted out of the scratch-and-sniff book cover option. 🙂

464 pages.

Sharon read… The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler

This book is a bit of a time warp.  The story is set in 1996.  Computers still have dial-up.  🙂

Friends Josh and Emma have hit a bit of a rough patch after an attempted, and unwelcome, kiss drives a wedge between these life-long best friends.  When Josh’s family gets an AOL CD in the mail, they insist that Josh give it to Emma for her new computer.  When Emma and Josh install it, though, they are automatically logged on to… Facebook???

Wait a minute.  FB hasn’t been invented yet.  But Josh and Emma come face-to-face with themselves fifteen years in the future–information about their spouses, careers, homes, status updates… everything.

Everytime they refresh their pages, though, their futures change.  Interesting story of the Butterfly Effect in cyberspace.

356 pages

Rhonda Read…It’s Not Okay With Me by Janine Maxwell March 28, 2012

This book tells the remarkable true story of  how Janine Maxwell and her husband, Ian,  came to co-found a faith-based organization called Heart for Africa which focuses on relieving hunger and poverty in Swaziland, and providing help and education for the many children left as orphans in Africa.  196 pp.

Rhonda read…Someone Knows My Name March 27, 2012

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

This book is a fictionalized account of one woman’s experience as part of  the slave trade.   it  is a must read for anyone interested in the treatment and movement of slaves during the time period of  the Revolutionary War.  Winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.  486 pages.

Paula read :) The Passage by Justin Cronin March 9, 2012

I don’t usually read SciFi, but this is in the catastrophe category, a theme I seem to be gravitating toward  lately.  It brought to mind The World Made By

Hand by James Howard Kunstler, which I enjoyed also.  In this scenario, the US has been obliterated by an intentionally imposed virus gone awry.  Those not affected by the virus are still profoundly affected as they have been reduced to survival and defensive mode.

Jared read…Divergent by Veronica Roth

576 Pages

Divergent is a thrilling and captivating book dealing with the idea of living by a certain personality.  Every person at some point of their younger years gets to choose whether or not they want to stay with their family in their current lifestyle of a specific personality or venture out on their own and live differently.  It is exciting and has a little something that everyone likes.  Try to put it down if you can, I am doubtful that you will succeed.

Sherry read …. Downfall by Terri Blackstock

Published by Zondervan

Pages 295

Christian Fiction

It is a book about a girl who is a recovering drug addict who trying to turn her life around.

As she learns of some murders and tries to tell people about them so she can help, the investigation

turns back to her and she then falls right into the murderers hands.

Linda read….. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

A book of lovely interwoven stories and messages that comprise a life.

Rhonda read…Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz

Brilliant and rich, Ryan Perry seems to have everything until he is diagnosed with incurable cardiomyopathy and put on the waiting list for a heart transplant. One year later he has a new heart and all is going well until he started receiving unmarked gifts and a heart surgery video with this ominous message: “Your heart belongs to me”.    Exciting as all Koontz books seem to be.  (337 pp.)

Chris read…”Speaker for the Dead” by Orson Scott Card

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card is a sequel to the excellent book Ender’s Game.  However, it is different from your usual sequel in that Ender, the main character from the first book does not appear till about halfway through the sequel.   It follows a new cast of characters in a very different plot.  The planet’s inhabitants are Portuguese, so their names are spelled uniquely and they use some Portuguese words, which makes the book a bit hard to follow at first.

The book also starts off slow, but once it picks up after around fifty pages or so, it is very hard to put down, especially once Ender reappears.  Orson Scott Card uses science and theories to give the book a realistic feel, even amid the alien species and alien planet.

Overall, once it gets going, you won’t want to put it down, and it ends up being just as good, if not better than Ender’s game. (Pages: 490)