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.
