30 Dec
2011

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fford

*Mya's Pick!*

A wonderful trip through space and time, complete with time-traveling Dads, Edward Rochester (of Jane Eyre fame) and the world’s third most wanted criminal. The Eyre affair introduces agent Thursday Next, an agent with the secretive Special Operations Network, Literary Detective Division. It’s all business as usual for Thursday until someone starts kidnapping character from works of literature. When Jane Eyre goes missing, it’s up to Thursday to enter the world of books and track down the villain. A friend suggested, more like forced this book on me. Full of literary puns and allusions, this brilliantly outlandish caper kept me laughing from startto finish. I enjoyed it so much that the moment I finished I went right and bought the rest of the series. A book that makes all those grueling hours in AP English worth it!

30 Dec
2011

Watchmen by Alan Moore

*Chris's Pick!*

We've come a long way since the forties and the creation of the superhero, and there is no better example of just how far comics have progressed as an art than Alan Moore's Watchmen. Dave Gibbons brilliant illustrations create a living world, packing in as much detail as possible, forcing a slow examination of every panel, flipping back through pages to find similarly framed panels.
Watchmen delivers on every front: superheroes who aren’t super, a murder-mystery detective story, an alternate reality where Richard Nixon is still president and we never lost in Vietnam, philosophical reflections on the human condition, a detached blue scientist with God-like powers who refuses to wear clothing, a morally grey world where anyone could be the hero or the villain, and pirates.
That sounds like a lot, but it’s never cumbersome, it’s tied together through beautiful prose, like a tapestry made from the tattered old remains of Superman’s cape. Moore asks hard questions, and he asks them earnestly, and without restraint. There’s an answer in there somewhere, hidden in the illustrations, in the multiple narratives, the overlapping time-periods, hidden in the beauty. But above all,there’s a real human story about what happens when average people decide that average isn’t enough anymore.

30 Dec
2011

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

*Blair's Pick!*

“What do you do when you find out your heart is the wrong kind?” says the supervillain of this story, Dr. Impossible. This comic book turned literary fiction answers this question through the alternating perspectives of super villain and superhero. I am so excited about this book I can’t stand it, I am in full nerd mode already searching out the author online hoping he will be my friend. The development of each character is stunning not only in substance but also timing; the unbelievably rich origin stories of each hero/villain unfold themselves suddenly and unexpectedly-and they’re AWESOME! One minute you’re immersed in an epic battle and the next you’re learning about what Dr Impossible was like in highschool, that his name was Jonathan, that you knew a guy like him, and that maybe things would have been different if he got the girl. But now, he’s fighting off a potbelly and living in a motel, planning his next scheme to conquer the world…his 12th attempt. It’s got other dimensions, time travel, aliens, armies of algae and fungus…what else could you possibly ask for?

30 Dec
2011

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

*Marlie's Pick*

Marlie thinks this anonymous review says it best:

It reads like the old fashioned storytelling- the kind which boys and girls sit cross-legged and rapt around an old man who, despite his calm demeanor and soft tones, fiercely commands the room's attention. In this case the story he tells is mysterious and wondrous. It is unlike anything anyone has ever heard. And so the children's parents linger around the outside of the circle, noting the teller's words and sensing that something is percolating deep beneath the characters and the action, something that, with a knowing glint and a rare hint, the storyteller suggests but doesn't let on entirely, some moral or truth, or maybe some insight into the human condition.
And so a story- a truly sensational and dramatic story based on a boy trapped in a small lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for 277 days with a Bengal Tiger, an often- bloody struggle for life and death- arrives in a voice that is even measured, paced, scaled. And this voice opens the doors for everything else that is packed in: the vivid aquatic scenes, the reflections on religion, human need and vice, the range and importance of zoological understanding.
Faced with all this, the boys and girls and mothers and fathers learn and wonder, and perhaps some of them become aware that this man is not just a storyteller, but truly also a teacher, and that everything he describes- every quandary, every explanation, every detail, every revelation- everything serves to teach something more than the story of a boy and a tiger... -Anonymous

30 Dec
2011

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

*Jessi's Pick!*

This book is my favorite book of all time. This was THE book that introduced me to sci-fi. It had alot to do with shaping the person that I am today. Ender’s Game deals with a our future Earth. Aliens had attacked many years ago and almost destroyed Earth. Luckily, they were defeated and Earth thrived. Today, the Earth sends the best and brightest of its children into outer space to Battle School, in order to become military commanders for the alien invasion that everyone fears will one day come. And I’m talking children children, like 5 to 8 years old. The book centers around one such child, Andrew Wiggin, known by his family as Ender. He’s the youngest to ever be recruited and the book focuses on his trials and tribulations.

In my humble opinion, this is the best science fiction book ever. I guarantee that fans of The Hunger Games will enjoy this book. Ender’s Game is similar to Hunger Games (a future Earth, young kids doing things that even adults would shudder at, adults masterminding the whole thing, etc.) only it takes place in outer space.

30 Dec
2011

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

* Henry's Pick*

Hi. My name is Henry, and today in going to talk to you about a book called "let the right one in". I am just batty for vampires, and I have an unquenchable thirst for ANYTHING about them. The genre really got some fangs when vampires moved away from Count "Ascot" Dracula, and toward the desperate animal vampires that actually scare the daylights out of me. "Let the Right One in" takes this to heart (with a stake!). There's nothing frilly about the vampires in this book, and at times they are downright nauseating. However, at the crux of the story is the friendship of two children; one of them a boy struggling with divorce, bullies, and serials killers, and the other a manipulative child vampire who loves puzzles. The nail in the coffin is that even with all the murder, acid-burned faces, creepy sexual tendencies, huffing, and flaming corpses, this book manages to be sweet and tender enough to burn to ash even the most vampire-y of hearts. there you go. best review ever.
http://kardsunlimited.com/page/98/
kardsunlimited.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-34
56287
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:W23WMDW5QCZ7ZUW54PQPL63E6XYWZ2OA
<urn:uuid:04a62889-1970-4532-9ef1-6a1f20da9981>
2017-08-16T15:09:37Z
206.188.192.91
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:VKWJX3USMISU3H4ZMAZDN24LEIENRLJ6
<urn:uuid:4edd9d7c-5dac-457c-8e85-75f3dde93482>
http://kardsunlimited.com/page/98/
length
response
<urn:uuid:1b9d6c88-aa1c-4f7c-a3f6-0d6437e48001>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-167-109-9.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-34
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf