The Library Ninja Blog

I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of this week, cause like, I’m totes way more into weekly holidays than you probably are. (Did you know there’s a Watermelon Seed Spitting week? I didn’t think so!) So, yeah, I was celebrating Reading is Fun week before anyone else ever was. So in honor of Reading is Fun week, here’s some light and fun reads.

It's FRIDAY! FRIDAY! COVER LOVER FRIDAY!

Publisher's Summary: Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad's consulting job means she's grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she's learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place--possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.

But in the year since her brother Oren's death, Lo's hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as "Sapphire" – a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can't get the murder out of her mind.

As she attempts to piece together the mysterious "butterfly clues," with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined--a world, she'll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother's tragic death.

Why We Love It: AHH!  I heart this cover and the creepy plot!  You have to love the reference to the Rorschach test, or the ink blot test given by psychologists to examine a person's personality and emotional functioning.  In the cover art, I see this ink blot as an allusion to Lo's strange and obsessive behaviour, which already seems a little creepy (and of course makes me very interested in this book).  But the ink blot is not just plain, black ink...oh no.  It's a bloody, spattered mess, which increases the creepy factor by about a hundred!  So let me see here, we've got a creepy plot, and an awesome cover that references obsessive behavior and murder. Yep, that sounds like the making of a totally-not-scared-but-gonna-leave-the-light-on-anyway bedtime read!

Yup. It's Friday. And you know what that means.

Publisher's Summary: On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory. But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can't shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea–even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-coloured mole she’s been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it's a welcome distraction. But what Sham finds in the derelict—a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible—leads to considerably more than he'd bargained for. Soon he's hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham's life that's about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

From China Miéville comes a novel for readers of all ages, a gripping and brilliantly imagined take on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick that confirms his status as "the most original and talented voice to appear in several years."

Why we love it: It's China Mieville. The End. Just kidding. I do enjoy Mieville's writing, but I will be the first to admit that he is not for everyone. Still, I hope that the fantastic cover and Publisher's Summary earn him some new readers! I like the idea that the railroad tracks that stretch across a country are referred to as a "railsea". How cool is that? Yet...I can't help but see something sinister about the train. I blame this on Stephen King. After reading about Blaine the Mono in The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, sometimes I think of trains as a bit creepy.

Again, my love for book covers with the gray colors wins out. The title of the book look as if someone twisted pieces of metal and suspended them just above the tracks. In the distance we see what I imagine to be a fast-approaching train. In the foreground, just to the right and hidden a bit, is something with wheels that is sparking along the side of the tracks. I have absolutely no idea what it is (if you do, let me know!), but I hope it gets out of the way before the train hits that part of the tracks!

We don't yet have this book at APL, but we do have it on our list to order, so keep your eye on our catalog.

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman is one of the best books I have ever read. This book helps bring fairly tales to life, literally. When I mean fairly tales I don't mean the Grimm brothers, Cinderella or The Evil Step Mom. No, I'm talking about the objects that make the fairy tales what they are.

This book is about Elizabeth a girl who take a after school job as an assistant at New York Circulating Material Repository where they get to check out objects from history. When Elizabeth accepts this job she gets more than she bargains for. As the story goes on Elizabeth becomes friends with Marc Merrit, the school star athlete, Analji, a girl with beauty and the brains, and Aron, Mr. Know-It-All.

As the story goes on the characters have to learn how to trust each other and deal with problems that are ou of this world. When you read this book you will never want to put it down until your done. The world just comes to life and into a movie when you are reading. Trust me - this is A GREAT BOOK.

Other books you might enjoy