It is no surprise that Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy is award winning. Starting with The Golden Compass, followed by The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, the series follows the heroine, a young girl named Lyra, who lives in Oxford. The reader soon realizes that Lyra's Oxford is a bit different than they one they know. For starters, humans have a daemon, which is a part of their soul that manifests itself into animal form, and can changes these forms often. When Lyra realizes that some of the adults are trying to separate children from their daemons, she embarks on an unbelievable adventure. Pullman creates this amazing fantasy world, and listening to the audio books makes it come alive. Pullman narrates the story, but also has a full cast for all of the characters. (In case you were wondering, audio books are often only narrated by one person, who does many different voices themselves). If you have a long trip planned or a long daily commute, pick this series up!
This was another random pick up at the library . . . the premise was just too good to pass up. Heather Wells is a former teen pop star (think Tiffany mixed with Britney with a dash of J. Simpson) who just recently caught her boy band fiancee Jordan Cartwright in an uncompromising position with another pop star, Tania Trace. Her mother has also taken off to Argentina with Heather's life savings, leaving her with nada. She's also gone from a size 8 to a size 12, but doesn't seem to mind that much since it's the "average size of the American woman." Instead of wallowing in her messy life, she's moved in with her fiancee's brother Cooper and taken a job as an assistant director at a dorm for New York College. After six months of employment there, Heather can start taking college classes for free. Sounds like she's got a plan, right?
Links for the area's "Fall for the Book" Festival - going on until Saturday, September 26!
Markus Zusak's The Book Thief was easily one of the best books I read all summer. I originally heard about it during one of my Mason classes, and then when I spotted it on sale at Borders I had to pick it up. I wasn't sure what to expect, I only knew that it took place during the Holocaust.
For those of you in the D.C. area, the Library of Congress' National Book Festival is next Saturday, September 26. It's free on the National Mall, and will have over 70 authors. 
What would it be like to live on Alcatraz Island and not be a criminal? Our narrator, Moose Flannagan has just moved to Alcatraz with his family, after his father obtained a job as the prison's electrician. He's not crazy about living on the island, even if there are other kids whose families live there too. Choldenko has succeeded in writing a great historical fiction novel for the younger set. If you think adolescence is bad, imagine if you were going through it while living there! Moose navigates through his new life with a good sense of humor, despite getting in trouble a couple times and having to miss out on weekly baseball games. He wins instant popularity by feeding fellow students stories of the convicts - most significantly, Al Capone. Moose is given the charge of taking care of Natalie every day after school. His older "little" sister is mentally retarded and his family is trying to get her into a prestigious school that should help her assimilate into the real world. As Moose spends more and more time with Natalie, he realizes what's best for her and has to stand up to his parents and tell him what he really feels. Not easy when his mother is in denial and his father is working all the time. When it seems like nothing is going to go their way, Moose sees one person as the only one who can help him . . . and he takes a big chance in finding out. At a little over two hundred pages, you can fly through this delightful novel and enjoy a different take on history.
Looking to get lost into a fun and delicious beach read even though its no longer beach season? Check out Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. Starting with One for the Money, the series has nineteen books, so you are guaranteed never to get bored! Stephanie Plum is a lingerie buyer living in Trenton, New Jersey, her hometown. When she is laid off, she asks her cousin Vinnie for a job as a bounty hunter for his bail bonds business. It starts out harmless enough, but Stephanie gets herself into one sticky situation after another. Luckily, she has her on and off again cop boyfriend Joe Morelli, and the mysterious, and more professional, bounty hunger who goes by the name of Ranger to help Stephanie out of her jams. Not only does Evanovich keep readers' suspense, she also makes them laugh out loud. Stephanie has a well-meaning, gun toting Grandma, and a loud-mouth ex-hooker and sometimes partner in action, Lula. The twentieth book in the series, Between the Plums, comes out on September 29. If it's entertainment that you're looking for, Evanovich and Stephanie Plum fit the bill perfectly!
We all learned about integration in Little Rock's Central High School at some point in our history classes. The facts that we learned were probably: nine Black teenagers were chosen to integrate Central High in 1957, following the infamous 1954 case of Brown vs. The Board of Education. We also learned that Arkansas' governor, Orval Faubus, did everything in his power to stop the Little Rock Nine. And while we know that these nine students had a tough job to do, we definitely didn't know how tough when we sat in class talking about the minute details we did know. Everyone should read Melba Pattillo Beals' Warriors Don't Cry for the sole reason that it is such an important part of American history. Taken from her own diary, Beals tells the story of how she became chosen to integrate Central High and the aftermath of that decision. All of the harrowing details make it hard to believe we didn't spend more time in class discussing it. Against the backdrop of violence and hatred, Beals shows typical teenage activities: going to dances and parties, listening to music, shopping for new clothes, which makes her story all the more poignant. It also makes you grateful that we live in such a wonderful country . . . that even though a whole community was against integration, there were still a small number, at great personal risk, willing to help the Little Rock Nine succeed in their endeavor.
For some odd reason, when I started reading this book I thought it was about modeling. The tag line on the cover is, "In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is ugly." Hence, modeling. I was pleased to find that Scott Westerfeld's Uglies is a new take on Brave New World, in a teenager's perspective. It asks some deeper questions than most young adult literature and introduces a heroine worth admiring. Tally Youngblood is three months away from turning sixteen, which in her world, means a series of intense operations that make an adolescent "pretty." The newly changed pretties get to live in New Pretty Town, across the river, and go to great parties, wear beautiful clothes, and bask in their new gorgeousness. Tally is still an "ugly" when the novel begins, which is basically what this society calls an adolescent. Before becoming an ugly, one is just a littlie. The society has placed everyone in categories based on looks. They claims that by making everyone pretty, everyone is on a level playing field, therefore solving all of the world's problems in one fell swoop (wars, violence, waste, unemployment, etc). The thought of becoming pretty consumes Tally's every waking moment until she makes a new friend, Shay. Shay is unsure about turning pretty, and has heard about people who run away and just stay "ugly" their whole lives. Right before their sixteenth birthdays, Shay decides to run away to "The Smoke." The authorities force Tally to make an extremely hard decision: tell on Shay or not get the "pretty operations." The path Tally goes down will change her life irrevocably. You'll have to read to find out what she ultimately decides! This is the first of the dystopian series by Scott Westerfeld, so I will definitely pick up Pretties, Specials and Extras soon!
Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette
I'm sure some of you have already seen the movie Coraline, based on Neil Gaiman's book of the same name. If you haven't, you need to! It's a beautifully creepy film with an interesting moral dilemma. 
You all know how excited I was to read Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Being number 88 in the holds queue was no picnic, so I was even more ecstatic when I got the email notifying that it was available to pick up and I had time to read it before classes started up again. When I arrived to pick it up, I was even more delighted that it was a brand new copy. A brand new book is bliss for all bookworms, barefoot or not. How about that alliteration?
Squeaky swings and tall grass
Force of Nature: Mind, Body, Soul, and of course, Surfing by Laird Hamilton
