This month I have included probably more adult than juvenile...

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

(Henry Holt)

written in the prosperous turn of this century, it tells what it is like to live on minimum wage in the United States.  I couldn’t stop reading it.  This tells how Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota,, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal Mart salesperson. 

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni (author of The Kite Runner).  It took me several months before I felt ready to read this.  The Kite Runner was a great book but not easy to read.  Two abused women didn’t seem to be a subject I was ready for, and having read The Swallows of Kabul this summer which was totally depressing, may me reluctant to hit another Afghani abused women saga.  This novel is one of hope in the end.  I think a good book for discussion.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (author of The Truth About Kevin) quite different from that book.  This is two books in one, two parallel stories where a choice one night can change the string of events.  I guess we often wonder if there are those pivotal moments and how big a difference in our life such moments can make.  I won’t spoil the ending for you but in the end was it really a pivotal moment or not. 

Bull’s Eye by Sarah N. Harvey (Orca Soundings) is an easy to read novel aimed at high school students about a girl who discovers that her mom has lied to her and her dead aunt was actually her mother.  A realistic story set in familiar surroundings. 

Generation Dead by Daniel Walters (Hyperion, 2007).  I can’t say I am much of a Zombie fan, but this novel was actually very thought provoking.  Well written and amusing, it makes some good points about stereotyping.  Teenagers in the states rather than dying are coming back as Zombies.  No one really knows why and it isn’t happening anywhere else in the world.  Now how to deal with these Zombies is the difficulty.  Instead of a a gay-straight alliance, we have a zombie human alliance at the local high school.  This seems to be the only the first of a series so stay tuned. 

Right Behind You by Gail Giles ( Little, Brown, and Company, 2007) is one of the most powerful young adult books I have read for awhile.  This book attempts to explain how a child can murder another child.  And if you are the murderer, can you grow up and lead a normal life?  Rivoting… I think this is a book that teenage boys would read.  Excellent book for discussion.  A bit raw for some.

The Sleeping Buddha by Hamida Ghafour (McArthur and Company, 2007). Having read both adult and juvenile fiction set in Afghanistan it was really interesting to read this account of the history and relatively current situation there told by a journalist who was born in Afghanistan but grew up in Toronto.  How she weaves her own family’s history into the story gives it a sense of the personal to a complicated country’s situation.