Rats Saw God

By Rob Thomas
Steve York used to be a model student, but something changed. Now he’s in his senior year and won’t be able to graduate because he’s missing an English credit. Steve’s counselor makes him a deal; if he can write a hundred pages of “something” by the end of the year, he can graduate. The “something” Steve chooses to write about is his high school life thus far.

The book switches between the “present” time of Steve’s senior year and the “past” of his sophomore and junior years at a different school. During sophomore year, Steve starts hanging out with Doug. Doug has an ongoing bet with his parents to appear in a school club yearbook photo. So to fulfill the bet that year, Doug and Steve form a Dada art club called GOD. One of club members is Wendy or “Dub” as they call her. Steve and Dub hit it off and form an inseparable couple… for a while. Their split seems to be why Steve exiles himself to his mother’s house in California for his senior year. But that’s not all there is to it. There’s always another side to the story. Check it out and fill in the details for yourself, details like, what the heck does the title mean anyway?

Holidays on Ice

by David Sedaris

The winter holidays are upon us and one of my favorite winter reads is Holidays on Ice, a collection of holiday-themed short stories and personal recollections. The first story, “SantaLand Diaries,” is a tale about David’s life as a full-time elf at Macy’s department store. The elves have many different duties, some worse than others. David recounts an experience as a Cash Register Elf, “The worst part is that after I have accumulated three hundred dollars I have to remove two hundred, fill out half a dozen forms, and run the envelope of cash to the drop in the China Department or to the vault on the balcony above the first floor. I am not allowed to change my clothes beforehand. I have to go dressed as an elf. An elf in SantaLand is one thing, an elf in Sportswear is something else altogether.”

Sedaris’ humor is usually pretty dry, but in “Season’s Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!,” the author delves into the absurd as he spins the tale of Dunbar family and their annual family newsletter. One might think that Mrs. Dunbar would forego the tradition this year in light of her upcoming court date resulting from the death of her unexpected grandchild, Satan (Don), at the absentminded hands of her really unexpected new, 22-year-old Vietnamese daughter, Khe Sahn. But, no! The holidays must go on! Mrs. Jocelyn Dunbar won’t let a few “hassles” dampen her spirits.

The holiday humor doesn’t stop there, though. Sedaris also strings together tales of inappropriate, yet fascinating, dinner guests and scathing theatre reviews of elementary school Christmas pageants. In “Christmas Means Giving” the author explores the rivalry between neighboring families, each trying to out-do the other with exuberant giving. “If practiced correctly,” Sedaris writes, “generosity can induce feelings of shame, inadequacy, and even envy, to name just a few.” That certainly captures the spirit of the season!

So if you’re looking for something a bit different to read this holiday season; a little less “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer” and little more “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” then check out Holidays on Ice from the LFHS library! And if you like it, we have more Sedaris books for you to read.

Uglies

by Scott Westerfeld

In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story “Harrison Bergeron,” society attempts to balance out the inherent inequalities of its population by handicapping those born with above average features, skills, or intelligence. If everybody is “equal” then nobody will feel inferior. That’s the theory, anyway.

Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies takes Vonnegut’s story and turns it upside down. Instead of making everybody average through handicaps, he makes everybody pretty through surgery. Tally Youngblood can’t wait to be pretty, but she’s not quite 16. Her best friend, Peris, was already made pretty and now Tally is alone with little to do but wait the few remaining months until it’s her turn. But she can’t wait. She’s afraid Peris will forget about her. After all, the Pretties are allowed to come and go as they please and Peris hasn’t been back to visit once since the surgery. Tally really can’t blame him, though. After all, she is still just an Ugly.

Before her birthday, Tally becomes friends with Shay, another Ugly who, like Tally, enjoys pulling pranks and other tricks. On one of their adventures, Shay takes Tally outside of town on their hoverboards to the ruins of an older civilization, the Rusties. Shay hopes to run into somebody out in the ruins, but nobody lives out there, do they? Why would anybody want to live out there when they could live in New Pretty Town and go to “bubbly” parties every night? But that’s exactly what Shay has in mind and she wants to take Tally with her. Is she crazy? Why would anybody choose to stay Ugly? Check out Uglies from the LFHS library to find out!

Monster

By Walter Dean Myers

Steve Harmon is on trial for allegedly taking part in a drug store robbery that turns bad and results in the shooting death of the store’s owner. The title of the book, Monster, comes from the word that the prosecutor uses to describe Steve and the other suspects of the crime. He wants to figure out what it means to be a monster and why people would see him that way. He’s not sure what to make of himself anymore. He thinks he’s a pretty good guy, but now he’s not so sure. The prosecutor does a convincing job of making some of the other guys involved in the trial seem pretty bad and Steve is worried that the jury, and his family, will see him as a part of that group.

Steve is interested in filmmaking and he spends his time in jail writing a screenplay about the trial. Steve’s screenplay makes up the bulk of the book’s text and the rest is made up of Steve’s handwritten reflections about himself and what he is going through. The style is unique and effective. The visual cues in the script set the scene and the mood. The reader understands when Steve is sad or confused. The reader becomes uncomfortable when Steve tries to rationalize his own actions. He does know those other fellows, the ones who look so bad. What does that say about Steve? How will the jury view him? How does his own lawyer view him? How does his father view him? These are the issues and emotions that Steve deals with throughout the course of the book. It’s a quick and engaging read and definitely worth checking out from the fiction section of the LFHS library.

November Spawned a Monster

The post title is the name of a Morrissey song, but it also provides a segue from the supernatural twist of last month's selections to the first book selection of this month. While I was searching through monster titles in the card catalog, I came across a book called Monster. It wasn't about ghouls, ghosts, or other creatures, though. It's about an entirely different kind of monster...

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman

The Man Jack has a job to do, but he fails on one small point. That small point is an infant boy who manages to escape Jack’s murderous intentions by crawling his way into a local graveyard. The inhabitants of the graveyard, being dead and all, aren’t sure what to do with the little tyke. Mr. and Mrs. Owens, a couple who never had children when they were alive, decide that they want to raise the child as their own. Some graveyard residents think it would be wonderful to have a living boy amongst them. Others do not. After all, how could they acquire the things like food and clothing that a living boy would need? That’s where Silas comes in. Silas straddles the world between the living and the dead and agrees to be the boy’s guardian. Silas can come and go and make sure that the boy has everything he needs. The first thing he needs, though, is a name. The residents debate who among them the child is most like, but then decide that he is like nobody but himself, so they call him Nobody, or Bod for short.

The story follows Bod as he spends his childhood growing up in the graveyard, learning all of the little graveyard tricks and making friends with all of the ghost children who live there. Those children stay the same age, but Bod continues to get older. As he ages he makes friends with some of the teenage ghosts, including the ghost of the witch who lives in the forgotten part of the cemetery. He’s going to need all the friends he can get because The Man Jack is still out there, waiting to finish the job he started years before.

The Graveyard Book is a very charming story that is a little dark, but not too scary. It’s part ghost story, part mystery and Gaiman puts enough twists in the tale to keep you guessing until the end. Come in to the library and check it out!

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story

by Christopher Moore

What do you do when you’re a freshly made vampire with no guidance? You find yourself a roommate/boyfriend who can do things during the day like pick up your last paycheck and get your car out of the impound lot. The living situation isn’t so simple, though, because the roommate/boyfriend is also the night manager at the local grocery store. That kind of defeats the point of the arrangement. He, Tommy, is simultaneously fascinated and terrified by your condition and borrows every vampire book he can find from the library because he wants to test which of the myths are real and which are just made up.

These are some of the day to day (or night to night, rather) trials and tribulations for newly undead Jody. Most of these things are manageable, but she does run into a few problems here and there. First, there’s a creepy homeless guy who keeps following her around and second, the police start noticing a pattern with Jody and Tommy and a few dead bodies that are a little short on blood. The police don’t believe in vampires, though, and Tommy’s going to have some difficulty explaining why he stuffed his lifeless girlfriend in a freezer along with another dead homeless guy.

Not all of their problems revolve around avoiding the cops or creepy dudes who lurk in the shadows. Tommy and Jody also have everyday relationship issues as well. Maybe Tommy would rather date the new checkout girl at the supermarket. She does have the distinct advantage of being alive and having a less restrictive sleep schedule. And maybe Jody would prefer to find somebody who isn’t going to get all old and wrinkly in a few short decades. They’ll get around to sorting that stuff out, I’m sure, but in the mean time there’s work to be done. One of Tommy’s crew at the supermarket just smashed up the meat display case while skiing behind the floor waxer.

Gil's All Fright Diner

A vampire, a werewolf, and a rusty pickup truck make for an unlikely trio of heroes in A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner. On their way to nowhere in particular, Earl, a vampire, and Duke, a werewolf, stop for a sandwich at an off-the-beaten-path diner that may be serving up more than grilled cheese and fries. Their first clue that things might not be as quiet as they appear in dusty Rockwood is the minor zombie nuisance that interrupts their meal. Well, Duke’s meal, that is. Earl had a bite earlier. Loretta, the diner’s proprietor, doesn’t seem to be too upset by the zombies except for the fact that she’s counted 181 of them so far and the local cemetery only has about 100 plots. Duke and Earl decide they had better stick around to see what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Tammy, or Mistress Lilith as Chad (her lone minion in her sadly underpopulated cult) calls her, wants little more than to unleash a few thousand ancient and evil gods upon an unsuspecting world. Can Duke and Earl figure out who is behind all of the strange happenings in Rockwood before Tammy, er… Mistress Lilith, brings about the end of the world? Will Earl fall for the cute ghost who hangs out at the cemetery behind the diner? If the local general store doesn’t carry blue candles for your ritual, will white candles and some blue spray paint do the trick? And just what happened to ol’ Gil anyway? To find out, check it out from the library!

A Little Note About October

To get into the "spirit" of the month, we're going to be taking a look at a few books with supernatural themes. The LFHS library has quite a large collection of books about vampires, ghosts, and other creatures for you to check out and read.

Not all monsters are scary. Werewolves can be caring, vampires can be charming, and ghosts can be like family. But if you want to be scared, we certainly have those kinds of books, too.

So pull the covers up over your head and turn on the flashlight and get yourself ready for some spooky good times. And that noise coming from outside your door is probably just the cat. Probably.

Jennifer Government

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

It’s the not-too-distant future and the ideals of a small government, capitalist society have gone to their most extreme. Corporations run mostly unchecked by a government that has little authority to enforce the laws. John Nike has just executed a marketing campaign to generate demand for a new line of shoes. The campaign centers around the murder of several customers, but “that’s just good business” according to John Nike, whose name, like all other characters, reflects the name of the place he works.

Agent Jennifer Government wants to bring John Nike to justice, but her reasons for doing so might go deeper than a simple respect for the law. She and John have something in common. Before she can chase John around the globe, though, Jennifer Government needs to secure funding. In this society law enforcement lacks public support and Jennifer has to ask the family of one of the murder victims to sell their home for money to put together an investigation. At such times it is difficult to like even the “good” characters in the story as they set aside morality to get ahead, but the reader can’t help but cheer them on because the bad guys are so much worse.

In many respects Jennifer Government fits well within the dystopian novel tradition of 1984 and Brave New World. The future is bleak, but bears enough resemblance to current society to make the story believable. Some readers may find the political overtones a bit heavy-handed, but it is those political views that set up Max Barry’s vision of the future and tie the story to our own present. It is how the characters weave themselves in and around the rules of this future that compels the reader along to the end. Just how far will John Nike go to get ahead in his company? Can Jennifer stop him, or is the law too weak to stand in the way of a large corporation? Check it out from the library to see for yourself.

My Two Cents

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr
Book Description: Jennifer Harris, years after being the tormented outsider on the playground, has reinvented herself into Jenna Vaughn, a popular girl with what seems to be the perfect life, but when a childhood friend re-enters her life, she is forced to confront the most traumatic event of her past and question who she really is.

My two cents: Zarr has a way in telling a rich, complex story in a very small amount of pages. Sweethearts is a story of two people: Jennifer aka Jenna and Cameron. Their relationship is hard to explain-more than sister & brother, lovers, friends. I would say they are kindred spirits. Jennifer and Cameron have been childhood friends. One day, Cameron doesn't go to school. Jennifer hears a rumor at school that Cameron has died in an accident, which her mother later confirms. Eight years later, Cameron reappears on Jennifer's birthday. What happened between those eight years? How will Jennifer and Cameron work it out? Interested? Request it for our library!

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Book Description: In a world where some people are born with extreme and often-feared skills called "graces", Katsa struggles for redemption from her own horrifying Grace of killing and teams up with another young fighter to save their land from a corrupt king.

My two cents: If you are a fan of Meyer's Twilight or Bray's Gemma Doyle Series, then this book is for you. Katsa is a kick butt heroine, who doesn't compromise herself because of what's expected of her in her society. The writing is very strong as well as the character development and themes. The romance was a nice bent to the story. I can't wait to read the next one.
Interested? Request it for our library!

Favorite Books Continued

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Juliet Ashton, an author, writes to her publisher expressing her desire to stop covering the aftermath of WWII, but Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams invites neighbors to write to Juliet with their stories, which puts her off at first but eventually helps her find inspiration for her next book, and her life. Interested?
Request it to our library!



Death Note Series (Vol. 1-12) by Tsugumi Ohba

Light Yagumi comes across a Death Note dropped by a Shinigami death god and vows to use this power to rid the world of evil; but when criminals start dropping dead, the great detective L is sent to track down the killer. Interested? Request it for our library!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. Check it out from our library!