Explanations (Not A Book)

Okay, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've just been a little behind with things. I know, "No excuses."

It's not an excuse, I promise. 

So, here's some news:

There will be short stories posted on here regularly. If you have one, send it to me, I might put it up.

Well, that's pretty much it. 

And so it goes...

Rikers High : )

I fell in love with this book on the first page.  Paul Volponi weaves sentences and creates characters that get you thinking.  Rikers High was so well- written, it had me crying... twice.  The first day I got this book, I had read the first fifty pages, taken a nap, and finished the rest of the book.  Only one other book has made me want to wake up from a nap to finish it.  I really have to hand it to Volponi;  he can really pull you in.

Martin Stokes could hold his own in the tough New York City neighborhood where he grew up, but that's nothing- nothing- compared to Rikers Island.  Martin's been in the Rikers Island jail for five months and counting, locked up for a crime he didn't even mean to commit.

After his court date is delayed yet again, Martin gets caught in a razor fight between two warring inmates.  Now his face will be forever marked with a jailhouse scar.  But one good thing comes from this attack: Martin is transferred to a different part of Rikers, where adolescent inmates a required to go to school.  There he meets a teacher who genuinely wants to help Martin turn his life around.  Will he see the light, or be consumed with getting revenge on his attackers?

And so we go.

Looking for Alaska : ) : ) : )

Looking for Alaska mad me laugh, cry, and almost throw the book at the wall.  For his first book, John did a really great job with detail and storytelling.   I felt like the person telling the story.  I felt all of the feelings that Miles Halter felt.  I have so many phrases to descrice this book, but only one stands out:  I have found the Great Perhaps (read the description, you'll know).

Miles Halter is fascinated by last words- and tired of his safe life at home.  He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps."  Much awaits Miles at Culiver Creek, including Alaska Young.  Clever, funny, screwed- up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull miles into her labyrinth and catipult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another.  A stunning debut, it marks John Green's arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

And so we go...

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment : )

Wow.  I couldn't put this book down.  James Paterson has written another action- thriller that pulls you in after the first sentence.  This first- person novel puts you inside the head of a teenage girl in the fight for her life and five others.  This book will make you laugh over and over and cry five minutes later.  I really don't know how many times I reapeted a line to my friends and family.  Patterson really pulled through on this one.

Max is just your average teenage girl.  Well, maybe not so average.  She, and the rest of her "flock" have wings. When Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel were just little eggs, they were... Umm.. Mutated, I guess you would say.  The flock was born in a lab, with workers and scientists poking them and testing their abilities.  In short, Max and the rest of the flock were lab rats.  The barely got food and water and rarely got to go outside.  Until their "friend", Jeb, busted them out.  He took them to Colorado, where they would stay for years. 

A couple years go by with no incidents from the "School" ( that's what they called the lab).  Then Jeb left.  He just, kind of, dissappeared.  Not a note or a word about it.  Max thought he was dead.  Since Max was the oldest, the smartest (apparently), and the girl, she took charge.  So many years went by with not a word from Jeb or even an encounter with the Erasers, werewolf- like creatures made by the School to track down the flock.  Until one day, when the group went to pick berries from a group af bushes, they were ambushed by Erasers.  Angel, being the smallest, and even with her unnatural strength ( which was much more than a grown man's), was taken by the monsters, back to the School.  Max, fang, and Nudge, being the three oldest (Iggy doesn't count.   He's blind), took chase after the Erasers.  Flying was what they were used to, so they flew after the helicopter that had taken Angel to her certain death.

In a race against time, Max and her friends set out to find Angel.  Meating new people and fighting new issues, they get angel and head away from the school.  But they can't go back.  So where do they go?  Read the book to find out.

And so we go.