Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen

I borrowed this book from my Mom forever ago and finally got a chance to pick it up.  I've been wanting to read it forever and it totally lived up to my expectations.  I'm really interested to see the movie when it comes out probably next year.

Right now Jacob Jankowski is ninety, or ninety-three...something around there.  He's in a nursing home and trying to make it through each day of sitting around and eating the terrible mushy food.  But in the past Jacob is a young man about to finish veterinary school at Cornell.  Just before he sits for his final examinations - his world changes forever.  He won't be taking over his father's veterinary practice like he thought.  He finds himself alone and on the road.

Jacob hooks up with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth and his life becomes an adventure he'd never imagined.  He finds work, actually gets to tend to the animals after a while, and meets a very beautiful woman.  He learns the ways of the circus, interacts with all of the crazy characters and workers, and he makes it.

But life in the circus isn't always easy.  Money isn't always there.  And it's really hard to work anywhere if you fall in love with your boss' wife....

In the book ninety or ninety-three year old Jacob thinks back about his time with the circus and the reader gets to experience a time and place like none other.  I felt like I was right there.  The descriptions of the circus and the people came to life.  You like Jacob from the beginning and you are on his side throughout as he navigates a life he never dreamed he would be living.

I would definitely recommend this book to everyone.  It's so fun and unique.  I used to watch Carnivale on HBO before they ended it and it brought wonderful memories of that show back to me.  A great read for all.

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

I loved Marcelo and the Real World by Stork, and Death Warriors is a close second.  His male characters are just wonderful dudes.  In this new book, a boy named Pancho is almost a senior in high school.  His father is killed in a freak work accident and then his sister (who is older but mentally slow) mysteriously dies in a hotel room. 

Pancho believes his sister was murdered.  He gets sent to a home for boys - basically an orphanage.  It's not bad, maybe nice actually.  Regardless of what "the system" is going to do with him, he knows what he will do with himself.  He is g oing to find the man who murdered his sister and kill him. 

He can't just sit alone and plan this all out, though, because from the moment he arrives at the home, he is matched up with a boy named D. Q.  D. Q.  is a young many who just found out that he has a really rare cancer disease.  The two boys hang out.  Pancho wouldn't say they're friends, but after time passes, the two become close.  Pancho helps D. Q. and takes him to treatments.

D. Q. is working on his Death Warrior Manifesto - his writings about "sucking the marrow" out of life and living his days to the fullest.  These ideas are completely the opposite of Pancho's - who doesn't even see life any more or care what happens to him if he carries out his plan.

The book follows the relationship of the two.  It's funny and honest.  D. Q. is a character that gets in your heart.  He just knows what people needs.  We all know people who seem to "see" more than others...people who are just tuned in.  D. Q. is one of those people. 

The story wasn't as suspenseful for me as Marcelo, but I liked it a lot.  A good read.  I will continue to look forward to more by Stork.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I can't believe it's been a month since I posted last!!  I'm quite disappointed in myself.  I'll pick back up soon, though.  But in my defense, I've been really tired and busy lately.  School's starting to wind down soon, so I'll get to my reading.  This summer, though, I have a lot of reading to do to get ready to teach AP literature.  So you'll hear about some classics as well as all the YA I'm reading.

So, it took me a month to finish The Magicians.  Honestly, I didn't like it much at all.  There were some good parts,  but in the end, I didn't really like any of the characters (except the one who dies...) and I just didn't buy the story.

I'd picked this up because I heard "Harry Potter for grownups" and because it was on the Alex list of adult books good for teens.  This book certainly isn't Harry Potter.  While there is a magical school and spells and classes and games, what really held me back was the main character, Quentin.  I didn't like him at all.  He was cool when he decided to attend Brakebills but really he sucked after he got there and kept on being a very whiny guy throughout the entire book.

I don't really have much else to say about this book.  If you like weird characters and don't feel like you have to be pulling for a character to like a book, then try it...but honestly - I'm glad it's over and sad it took up a month of my reading life. 

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

Dude!   This book was crazy!  I'd read a few others blogs about it and checked it out.

So Violet Ambrose is a teenager like any other.  She's been best friends with Jay forever.  He's always been there, but it's different this year.  He's "grown up" and basically gotten hotter over this last summer.  While it was usually just the two of them, but now all the girls who never noticed Jay before are following him around like little puppies.  Violet is a bit bothered by this but unsure of why.

Violet is different, though, in that she can find dead bodies.  She feels or senses tastes, smells, sounds that lead her to dead bodies.  It's only really happened with a body once, but she does find animals that have been killed.  As a kid she had a little graveyard where she put the animals to rest.

As the year progresses, she's dealing with normal stuff like school, friends, classes, and her feelings about Jay.  But then a string of murders in the area stirs up and scares everyone.  A serial killer is killing young girls.  Violet discovers one of them and becomes more involved than she knows in the serial killers plans.

This book is mainly about Violet, but every few chapters you get a glimpse into a short chapter from the point of view of the killer.  These chapters are freakin creepy, my friends.

I just had to keep reading this book.  Each chapter I wanted to know if the killer had gotten someone else, if Violet had found a body or discovered the killer, and then of course, were Violet and Jay ever going to hook up and get together??  It was obvious she liked him...so I just had to see how they would end up.  So all in all, this book is crazy suspenseful but also has a really great and sweet love story, too.  I just loved Jay - he was like the sweetest guy ever.  You should definitely check this one out for a strangely sweet and suspenseful read.  Cool book.

Cherub Mission 1: The Recruit by Robert Muchamore

The Cherub series was published in England and is now being released with new covers in the U.S.  We have some of these books (the paperbacks released before these new ones) in our school library.

I picked up the new hardcover of Mission 1:  The Recruit the other day because I had heard lots of kids (especially boys) had really liked the series.

James Choke is living in London with his Mom, half-sister, and step dad.  His step dad is a complete idiot, and while he loves his mom, she's not up to the most good herself.  Enormously fat, she stays in their apartment organizing her "people" who work for her stealing electronic goods and such.  She changes her cell phone every few days so as not to get caught.  She resells the stuff to others.  She drinks too much, and James and Lauren often have to take care of themselves.

One day, though, she doesn't wake up from drinking too much, and James' life changes forever.  He's separated from Lauren and thrown into a group home.  He hangs out with the bad kids and doesn't want to be there forever.   Then mysteriously he wakes up in a clean room one morning and has no idea how he got there.

He finds out he is at the Cherub campus.  Cherub agents for all practical purposes don't even really exist.  They are kids that work with British MI5 agents to help bring down terrorists and criminals.  The kids are used in cases where the adult agents would be obvious.  No one suspects kids of being spies, so that's when the Cherub agents take over and help out.  Before you can become a Cherub agent, however, you must go through a insanely-hard-makes-you-want-to-die-and-cry-for-you-mommy kind of basic training.  So, can James make it through training?  How hard will  these hundred days be?  Will he ever see his sister Lauren again?  Will he get his first Cherub mission?  Read on to find out what the training is like and to follow James on his first Cherub adventure.

I think lots of kids will like this book.  I have never read any of the Alex Rider books, but I assume it's a similar feel.  Although in these, the agents don't rely on crazy gadgets like in Alex Rider...but it's still adventurous all the same.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

I've been waiting for this book for so long, so I was totally thrilled when I picked up my signed copy at Malaprop's Tuesday.  I love the cover; I love John Green; and I love David Levithan.  I'd read great reviews and been terribly jealous of all the book bloggers and tweeple who got to read this one in advance.

I just finished and IT WAS FABULOUS!!  I absolutely loved it!

So it's two narrators...the Will Graysons alternate chapters throughout the entire book.  Will Grayson one is a sort of normal high school kid who had a sort of Group of Friends but doesn't really anymore since he stood up to everyone and wrote a letter to the school paper about how it was ok that his friend Tiny Cooper (who is anything but tiny, by the way) was gay and the best thing that happened to their school's crappy football team.  Oh yeah, and he signed his name to that letter.  So the Group of Friends kind of stopped being the Group of Friends after that.  Will has been friends with Tiny forever, which is hard sometimes because Tiny is a bit loud and dramatic...ok, well, extremely loud and dramatic and fabulous and he falls in love really easily....you get the picture. 

While Tiny is always in love with someone, Will isn't.  He just avoids relationships and really tries not to even say that much at all....that way he'll be good and won't have to deal with any drama.

Tiny's trying to get his original musical Tiny Dancer staged at school.  Tiny is huge and fabulous and on a mission when it comes to this play.

A few towns over, Will Grayson two wants to murder himself and everyone around him...well not really, but that's how he feels.  He's not so happy, this Will Grayson #2, that is unless he's online talking to Isaac, his new friend.  He makes it through school, allowing himself a little happiness toward the end of each day when he looks forward to the final bell. 

These two Will Graysons continue on their ways until one night (at a porn shop of all places) they run into each other...from that point - their worlds are connected.

As you read this book you'll see how the world's intertwine and you'll have just craploads of fun along the way.

Tiny Cooper is, as many other bloggers and reviewers have pointed out, the absolute most fabulous thing about this book.  I have no idea how Green and Levithan did the writing on this book...but Tiny is the beautiful, giant thread that holds it all together...and he's perfect in all the chapters.  As his BFF Will Grayson #1 says:

Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large.  Tiny has been my best friend since fifth grade...

and...

Tiny waltzes in wearing his jersey tucked into his chinos, even though football season is long over.  Every day, Tiny miraculously manages to wedge himself into the chair-desk beside mine in precalc, and every day, I am amazed he can do it...So Tiny squeezes into his chair, I am duly amazed, and then he turns to me and he whispers really loudly because he secretly wants other people to hear, "I'm in love." 

I've loved all of John Green's books (Alaska's my favorite).  I also really liked Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan, and I plan to read Boy Meets Boy soon.  These guys have really done something special here, and you absolutely must check out this book.  One, it's good, and Two, it's all about the love, and who doesn't love that!?!

Rosie and Skate by Beth Ann Bauman

Love, love, loved this book!!  I saw a review of it on Reading Rants which made me want to read it.  It totally lived up to my expectations.

Rosie and Skate are two sisters who live on the Jersey Shore.  They're locals and work at the shore during the summer while it's full of tourists.  Their dad is an alcoholic - a nice drunk - but still a drunk.  He can't stop drinking.  He doesn't hurt the girls or cause many problems, but he gets out of control one night driving and crashes and lands himself three months in jail.  Rosie and Skate are on their own because their mom is dead.

Their cousin, Angie, comes to live with them and help out, but once their father goes to jail, things are harder between the sisters.  Rosie is hopeful and visits her father and still somehow believes he will get better, while Skate refuses  to go at all.  Skate doesn't attend the support group meetings.  Instead, she spends time at work with her boss Nick, and also pining away after her boyfriend Perry who is gone to college at Rutgers.  She wants to see Perry so badly.  The two of them are great together, but the distance is a problem.

The book alternates between the narration of each sister.  It's cool to hear the story from two points of view.  The writing was real and easy to read.  I liked the characters and the story of each sister.  This was a fun read with some serious stuff mixed in.  I totally loved it!

Here's a link to the New York Times review of Rosie and Skate.