Sometimes you don’t know whether you are going to like an author’s style or not, and it’s good to try out a shorter extract before you commit yourself to reading a whole book by them. The World Book Day books are ideal as ‘tasters’, and if you enjoy them you can always go ahead and read other books by those authors.
We always buy multiple copies of the World Book Day books – and this week they are all on the Book of the Week display stand.
I was recommended More Than This by a friend, and I took her up on her offer solely due to her disjointed and spontaneous commentary throughout the novel. For her to be babbling like that, it must have been good. And boy, was I right!
More Than This starts when the main character dies. Suffice to say I was shocked when this happened, and didn’t really understand what was going on. This feeling continued when Seth then woke up alone in an abandoned England. Honestly, I’ve never felt so out of the loop whilst reading a book before. It was kind of irritating, but intriguing all the same. It got to the point where teachers were shouting at me for reading in class, and I wasn’t paying attention because I hadn’t stopped reading to listen.
If you’re going to read this book, which I recommend you do, be sure you have a lot of free time on your hands to feel confused, angry, confused, upset, and confused.
PS Don’t read it in class.
Last week’s Activities Fayre was a big success for our Book and Games Club – there was lots of interest at the Fayre, and quite a few new faces at the clubs yesterday! There are still a few spaces available in both clubs – come along on Wednesday lunchtimes to find out more.
“The Silence of the Lambs” written by Thomas Harris is the horrific sequel to “Red dragon” and is well renowned for its multi-award winning film adaptation starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
The plot revolves around Clarice Starling, a young trainee FBI agent who is offered to work on a serial murder case due to the skill she has shown in her training. Agent Starling is advised to contact Dr Hannibal Lector at the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane for some vital information and a possible psychological profile on the murderer, which would aid the police in apprehending the killer. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lector is an extreme psychopath and a brilliant manipulator, being the catalyst for an experiment that will only end in chaos. His brilliance and superiority is shown in more depth as the plot thickens.
“The Silence of the Lambs” is a fantastic horror novel which leaves you scared and wanting more. The tale is gruesome and exciting, with brutal descriptions and a slightly disturbing plotline, it is the perfect book to read for those horror enthusiasts out there. The Hannibal Lector series is a total length of four books, “The Silence of the Lambs” being the second in the quartet so be sure to check out the other books in the series if it has left you wanting more.
The Library Team are often asked for suggestions of which books to read after The Fault in Our Stars, and we have lots of ideas – ask at the desk, or check out one of the books on display by the door.
This week’s Book of the Week was chosen by one of our S5 students.
Cryptic – Pulse-Pounding – Adventure…This book lives up to those three words printed on the back. The story pulled me along through the mystery, I began to understand what was happening only as the characters did.
The blurb says:
When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas can remember is his first name. But he’s not alone. He’s surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade, an encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible maze.
Like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they came to be there, or what’s happened to the world outside. All they know is that every morning when the walls slide back, they will risk everything to find out.
Maze Runner is the first of a trilogy, and will be released as a film shortly.
I can’t believe that I didn’t realise immediately that Boxtrolls is based on Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters, one of the funniest, most disgusting but laugh-out-loud books that I’ve read in years.
Here Be Monsters is the first in the Ratbridge Chronicles series – they can be found in the junior fiction section.
Another book that unashamedly made me cry – whilst this in itself is not a major feat, I cannot stress enough how good this book is. It follows two teenagers named Eleanor and Park, falling in love. It’s that simple.
Rowell gets everything right. There aren’t many authors who can boast that. The characters feel real, they get into real situations and act like people do. The narrative switches between the two main characters and we are left with two fully fleshed out people. It’s one of the first books I have read that, when provided with one character’s point of view I felt that I could provide the other’s. I knew both Eleanor and Park.
This story is romantic. It just is! I always get invested in love stories, but Eleanor and Park involved me at a deeper level. The book is manipulative, it echoes what it is like to be a teenager in love. I hurt when they hurt; I was happy when they were happy.
Love Letters to the Dead is told entirely in the letters that Laurel writes to dead people (it’s a pretty self-explanatory title) and those letters tell Laurel’s story, and help her come to terms with what has happened to her and to her family. This is a moving and emotional coming-of-age story.
The blurb says:
Sometimes the best letters go unanswered.
It begins as an assignment for English class: write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain – he died young, and so did Laurel’s sister May – so maybe he’ll understand what Laurel is going through.
Soon Laurel is writing letters to lots of dead people – Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, River Phoenix, Amelia Earhart, Amy Winehouse… It’s like she can’t stop. She writes about her new high school, her new friends, her first love – and her shattered life.
But the ghosts of Laurel’s past can’t be contained between the lines of a page forever. She must face up to them – before they consume her.
Love Letters to the Dead is on the Library’s “Books to read after you’ve cried over TFIOS” list – ask at the desk if you want the full list.
The pictures are AMAZING and the plots are funny. Norman Wilson goes crazy when he eats sweets. I like all the expressions they use and all the words they use to make it funny and awesome and cool!
We have all the Tom Gates books by Liz Pichon in the library – have a look on the fiction displays (they’re never in long enough to go on the shelves).