Books Donated by Peta

To date, Peta has donated a total of 317 books to the SRR!!!

For those of you who read my blog, it is no surprise to you that Peta has been a huge supporter of the SRR. I like to keep an updated list of books she has donated to us so I'm setting up this post (sorry, but it is very long, which is a good thing actually). Look at the list. Have you read any of the books she has sent us?

1. Catcher in the Rye

2. A Series of Unfortunate Events #2

3. Peter Pan in Scarlet Illustrated Edition

4. Tales of Beedle the Bard

5. Know Your Brain

6. The Rough Guide to Books for Teenagers

7. Introducing Shakespeare

8. Rebel Angels

9. The Truth About Forever

10. Twisted

11. Up Close and Personal Miley Cyrus

12. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

13. If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?

14. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

15. Fire Study

16. Magic Study

17. Poison Study

18. Eyes Like Stars

19. Catching Fire (Hunger Games 2)

20. Coraline

21. Guitar Girl

22. Skellig

23. The Fall of Fergal

24. Terry Deary's Terribly True Horror Stories

25. The Story of Tracy Beaker

26. Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

27. Tales of the Greek Heroes

28. The Lottie Project

29. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

30. Bad Girls

31. Glubbslyme

32. Graceling

33. Much Ado About Nothing

34. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

35. Burning Up On Tour with the Jonas Brothers

36. Twilight Movie Companion

37. Crime Scene: The ultimate guide to forensic science

38. Tithe

39. Valiant

40 The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips

41. House of Secrets

42. Elsewhere

43. The Twilight Companion

44. Ironside

45. Clay

46. Where Rainbows End

47. A Place Called Here

48. If You Could See Me Now

49. 13 Little Blue Envelopes

50. Shadow Web

51. The Hunger Games

52. Parasite Positive

53. Stargirl

54. Vampirates of Demons of the Ocean

55. Before I Die

56. Charlie Eggleton's Talking Skull

57. Wings

58. The Garden
59. Marked
60. Betrayed
61. Untamed
62. Hunted
63. The Thief Lord
64. Wicked Lovely
65. A Company of Swans
66. On Writing
67. Everything Beautiful
68. Does My Head Look Big in This
69. Ink Exchange70. The Forest of Hands and Teeth
71. Chosen
72. Evermore
73. Poison by Chris Wooding
74. Academy 7 by Anne Osterlund
75. So You Think You Know Harry Potter
76. Mirror Mirror by Nancy Butcher
77. The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter by David Colbert
78. Prom Nights from Hell by Various including Stephenie Meyer
79. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen by Dyan Sheldon
80. 1599 A Year in the Life of Shakespeare by James Shapiro
81. The Earth My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
82. Capt. Hook by Hart Helquist
83. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
84. Persopolis by Marjane Satrapi
85. Wendy by Karen Wallace
86. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Austen and Grahame-Smith
87. Secret Heart by David Almond
88. Jack Sparrow the Age of Bronze by Rob Kidd
89. Jack Sparrow the Sword of Cortes by Rob Kidd
90. Jack Sparrow Silver by Rob Kidd
91. Jack Sparrow City of Gold by Rob Kidd
92. Troll Trouble Goat Pie by Alan MacDonald
93. Troll Trouble Trolls United by Alan MacDonald
94. Troll Trouble Trolls Go Home by Alan MacDonald
95. Chelsea and Astra by Mary Hooper
96. A Midsummer Night's Dream by Andrew Matthews
97. Stage Struck by Stevie Silver
98. High School Musical 3
99. The Arctic Fox by Mary Ellis
100. Jeremy Strong The Hundred-Mile An-Hour Dog
101. The Pain and the Great One Soupy Saturdays by Judy Blume
102. The Midnight Library Blood and Sand by Nick Shadow
103. Sammy and the Starman by Anne Cassidy
104. The Magic Puppy Star of the Show by Sue Bentley
105. The Knowledge The Gobsmacking Galaxy by Kjartan Poskitt
106. The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman
107. Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer
108. Juby's Rook by Michael Lawrence
109. Beware Princess Elizabeth by Carolyn Meyer
110. The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket
111. I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
112. Peter Pan in Scarlet Illustrated Edition by Geraldine McCaughrean
113. Oh My Goth
114. Best New Manga
115. Manga Shakespeare Hamlet
116. The Silver Sword
117. What a Week to Break Free
118. What a Week to Make it Big
119. Cub in the Cupboard
120. Guinea Pig in the Garage
121. Hamster in the Hamper
122. Vampire Academy (copy 2)
123. Charlotte's Web
124. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
125. Vampire Academy Shadow Kiss
126. Vampire Academy Frostbite
127. Poison Study (copy 2)
128. Fire Study (copy 2)
129. Fallen
130. Beautiful Creatures
131 - 138 Hannah Montana Set

139 The Tide Knot

140 Gangsta Rap

141 Peeps

142-143 Time Traveller's Wife (two copies)

144 Looking for Alaska

145 13 Reasons Why

146 Tantalize

147 My Sister's Keeper

148 Vegan, Virgin, Valentine

149-159 Roman Mysteries (series of ten)

160 That Summer
161 Blood Promise (Vampire Academy 4)
162 Burned (House of Night 7)
163 Horror High: Toxic Beauty
164 Horror High: Killer Instinct
165 Ghost Hunters and the Mud-Dripping Monster!
166 Dream Master Nightmare
167 Bug Muldoon and the Killer in the Rain
168 James and the Giant Peach
169 Kiss of Death
170 The Courageous Cats Compete
171 Love, Shelley

172 Curse of the Blue Tattoo

173 Endymion Spring

174 Ghost Stories (HC)

175 Speak

176 Usborne Big Book of Puzzle Adventures

177 Ryland's Footsteps

178 Paper Towns

179 The Short Life of Bree Tanner (two copies)

180 Fire

(And 136 other books)

New Bulletin Board Outside SRR

Well this ought to get a few students' attention!

If you read Forest of Arden (like you are doing right now), you already know who Peta is.

Book Preview: Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

What if all your ex-girlfriends were vampires? Yikes!

Another one of the twenty amazing books that Peta sent us this week is Scott Westerfeld's Peeps. A lot of girls have enjoyed the Uglies trilogy so they will probably be interested in this one. Also, if you like vampire types of books, this sounds pretty good.

Westerfeld's book is another one on the Teen's Top Ten list, hitting #5 in 2006 - just after Harry Potter, Twilight, Eldest, and Libba Bray's Rebel Angels - all great and popular books! I've been looking forward to this one for a long time...

Here is the blurb:

Okay, let's clear up some myths about vampires. First of all, you won't see me using the V-word much, in the night watch, we prefer the term Parasite Positives, or Peeps for short.

The main thing to remember is that there's no magic involved. No flying. No transforming into bats or rats either. We're talking about a disease.

After a chance encounter with a mysterious woman one night, Cal Thompson's life is changed forever. He's been infected with an insidious parisite. The good news: he's only a carrier - still sane, without the worst of the symptoms. The bad news: he's infected all his former girlfriends - and now they've turned into what Cal calls peeps. The rest of us call them vampires. And it's Cal's job to hunt them down before they create even more of their kind...

Wow, doesn't that sound incredible? Hehe...you may need to wait for me to read this before it will hit the SRR.

Book Preview: Thirteen Reasons Why

There are thirteen reasons why your friend died. You are one of them.

This is another book sent by Peta this week and it sounds amazing, doesn't it? It's another book with a serious and dramatic edge to it I think, but the premise is very interesting.

Here is what it says on the blurb:

Clay Jensen returns home to find a strange package with his name on it. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker - his classmate and first love - who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

Hannah's voice explains there are thirteen reasons why she killed herself. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why.

All through the night, Clay keeps listening - and what he discovers changes his life .... Forever.

Awesome. I feel a waitlist coming on. Yep, if you want to be the first girl to read this book you'll need to leave a comment in the comment section of this post!

Book Preview: Looking for Alaska

This book is one of the ones Peta sent us this week. Doesn't this sound great? Here is the blurb:

In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweet and sunshine and vanilla, and on that thin-mooned night I could see little more than her silhouette, but even in the dark, I could see her eyes – fierce emeralds. And not just beautiful, but hot too.

When Miles Halter leaves for boarding school, he goes to seek what dying poet Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps”. Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, self-destructive and dead sexy. Alaska pulls Miles into her labyrinth, catapulting him into an unimaginable future…

Vivid, passionate, intensely moving and shocking, this is a stunning debut novel by young American author John Green.

This book was a top ten book on the Teens' Top Ten list of 2005, placing third just behind Dessen's The Truth About Forever.

If you haven't heard of the Teens' Top Ten list, you need to check them out HERE. Every year 8,000 teenagers vote for the best books of the year and we have a lot of them in our collection now. If you read a teens' top ten book, you will probably love it - they are usually really good. You can see which ones we have in the SRR by going HERE.

More great books are on the way!

It has been a great day for the SRR!

Our book angel Peta has informed us that she pre-ordered two copies of Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay (Hunger Games #3) which is due out August 24th. Yay! Thanks so much for your generosity Peta. So many girls are eagerly awaiting the third book and I can see the waitlist developing right away.

As well, Mary (one of our good friends from the USA) sent a package of books that have already established a big fan base at the school. We'll need these titles to help out with all the requests we teachers get on a daily basis! With almost 800 students using the SRR (I think) we need multiple copies of popular titles. Thanks so much Mary. The girls will really enjoy these books!

Here is a list of the awesome books that should arrive in the next two weeks - thanks to the incredible US postal service!

• Ahern's Rosie Dunn
• Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty
• Cast's Betrayed and Marked
• Meyer's New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn
• Picoult's My Sister's Keeper and Salem Falls
• Westerfeld's Uglies and Pretties
  

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Amazon review:
On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.

As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams", where "there were no teachers... We never had to go inside except for art class... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue".

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow".

Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons, Amazon.com

This book is exquisitely disturbing. It isn't for most people and, in fact, it isn't the type of book that I would normally pick up except that one of the teachers in the staffroom highly recommended it.

I've never found mass murderers to be of much interest and the brutality at the beginning of the story was a bit too much for me. However, I liked the fresh point of view in the book. It was interesting to read the words of a dead narrator. You watch the story unfold from the narrator's perspective (often from heaven) and you get to see into the hearts and minds of all the people connected to her. It's also fascinating to see how the other characters relate to one another as well as the amazing description of Suzie's personal heaven. I'll say it again: it's interesting.

I liked Sebold's writing style and most of the time I felt drawn forward into the story, wanting more and wondering how it would all turn out. As I entered the last 100 pages I was eager to finish it and stayed up until 1 am to do so.

I'm not sure how other readers react to this book, but I found the end to be very sad and I had to fight back tears a few times. It is a rough ride for sure. From beginning to end, this book is a difficult read because of the heavy content. This is not young adult literature. I'm not even sure I can recommend it to you unless you've read other dramatic, tear-jerker type stories and enjoyed them. Can you handle the disturbing "horror movie" type of beginning? Can you handle reading a book about murder and death and mourning?

I was both disturbed and delighted by this one. I will recommend it to others like me who wouldn't normally read this type of story but are ready to try something a bit different and who can handle the heavy content.

4/5 Stars

Forest of Arden Contest

Would you like to win $20 in book vouchers for a local bookshop?

The Forest of Arden blog has been very quiet in the last few months so I thought I'd try to revive it.

If you are a booklover and you'd like to make a visit to the bookshop at the Mall during the holiday, perhaps you could use some book vouchers to help you out. It's always nice to be able to borrow books from the SRR, but nothing beats buying your own book from a bookstore and keeping it all to yourself. And there's nothing like opening up a book that has never been read before - or is it just me that really enjoys that?

Anyway, let's have a contest that will get students interested in reading the books we have in the SRR.

The contest rules are very simple:

1. You must be a student at Mr Jason's school.
2. The deadline for entries is June 2nd.
3. The draw will be made in 9A at 7:30 on June 3rd.
4. One prize of $20 in book vouchers will be given.
5. You must reply in the "comments" section of this post and include the following:

• full name
• class
• tell us about a book you've enjoyed recently

Good luck everyone!

Sophie Kinsella fans will love this...

Deborah, a really generous lady who lives in Greece, just sent us a big package full of beautiful hardcover books! Yay!

We all love to read hardcovers, don't we? It feels so nice to hold them in our hands and to turn those crisp pages. It's almost as good as....well, chocolate.

Thanks so much for your generosity Deborah!

Here are the books she sent us:
Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess (hc)
Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic and Sister (hc)
Sophie Kinsella's Remember Me? (hc)
Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic Ties the Knot (sc)
Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees (sc)
McLaughlin's The Nanny Diaries (large, sc)
Toews' The Flying Troutmans (hc)

Let me know if anybody is keen on being the first one to read any of the books. Just leave me a note on the shoutmix on this page.

Netball Champions for Zone 1

Congratulations to our netball teams. Both teams took first place in the Zone 1 championships! Yay!

The senior team defeated the MD team and the junior team won over the Chung Hwa team in the finals.

A special congratulations to my students, Nina from 9A and Aimi 9F.

Well done girls!

Congratulations Girls!

Talk about girl power! :-)

Three former students from our school have been elected to the student council of MD.

Dinnah, Syafiqah, and Sakina have a lot in common. All three of them attended the BGIC last year. All of them were involved in public speaking (Dinnah even competed in the National Speech Competition) while Syafiqah and Sakina were both on the debate team.

And, of course, all three girls LOVE reading.

Congratulations girls! This is only the beginning...

Eclipse opens July 1st

Eclipse will open on June 30th in many theaters around the world and on July 1st it will open in Singapore. Let's hope that theaters here will start showing the movie around the same time.

I have a confession to make. I haven't seen New Moon yet. It was released at a busy time for me and, actually, I figured New Moon would be the most difficult to put on the big screen because the plot was fairly weak. I'll be sure to pick up a copy of New Moon shortly before Eclipse arrives.

However, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn will both be well worth watching.

Now would be a good time to re-read the saga, don't you think? You've got two months to read the first three books and be prepared for the movie release.

Let's see how things go, but wouldn't it be fun to plan a trip to see the movie?

Chocolate Heaven

What a great day! Thanks so much to everyone for making my birthday so special.

9A really surprised me. As I walked into the classroom they had Happy Birthday written on the board and they sang the birthday song. Then, on my desk, I found this cute hand-made tie with all the signatures of the girls on it as well as the cool caricature pictured here - isn't it great that he/I am carrying a big box of books! What a truly unique gift! You girls are so thoughtful. Thanks so much!

I was hit with the birthday song again in Lit class which was fun (and they finished class with it too). I always feel a bit uncomfortable getting that sort of attention, but it was nice. Thanks girls. BTW, wasn't that a great poem by Byron? Funny that it talks about getting old on a day like today. BTW, don't forget to read your poems again tonight!

Then, 9F continued the celebrations with another rendition of the birthday song and then I got buried in an avalanche of chocolate. Thank you so much girls for your generosity. I love chocolate! Did I mention that? ;-) Also, thanks for the sweet card you gave me. It was very heart-warming of you.

As well, the teachers in the English Department had a buffet lunch to celebrate. That was great too! I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm the luckiest teacher on earth! I work at the best school in the country and I have the most wonderful students ever. I really do feel so fortunate to be your teacher. I couldn't ask for a nicer group of students to work with!

I'd like to say a special thanks to Amal from Lit class who dropped off a delicious chocolate dessert from Le Apple (Yummy!) and to Aqilah for the chocolate cakes from Lof. I'm saving those for after I have my supper. Also, thanks to Hamidah in 9F for the incredible assortment of chocolate bars and to all the girls of 9F for the big bag of chocolates and candies.

I'm in CHOCOLATE HEAVEN!

If I Stay

This one is a hidden gem in the SRR. It has been there for quite a while now, but I'm not sure if anybody noticed it. This is another book on the Amazon Top Books of 2009 and another book that Steph Su loved and you can read her review HERE. Steph says, "I was in tears for the last third of this book."

Amazon Description:
'Just listen,' Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel. I open my eyes wide now. I sit up as much as I can. And I listen. 'Stay,' he says.

For seventeen-year old Mia, surrounded by a wonderful family, friends and a gorgeous boyfriend, decisions seem tough, even whey they're all about a future full of music and love, a future that's brimming with hope. But life can change in an instant.

A cold February morning...a snowy road....and suddenly all of Mia's choices are gone. Except one. As alone as she''ll ever be, Mia must make the most difficult choice of all.

Haunting, heart-rending and ultmately life-affirming, If I Stay will make you appreciate all that you have, all that you've lost - and all that might be.

When you visit the SRR, you just don't know what you might find! This book sounds great.

Beautiful Creatures

One of the most popular books to hit the SRR this month is a book called Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. This is another amazing donation by our book angel Peta from the UK. Thanks Peta!

I've been wanting to get this book ever since I read the review by Steph Su which you can read HERE. Steph is one of the best book reviewers on the web and she loved Hunger Games and the Poison Study Series so if you enjoyed those books you'll probably enjoy Beautiful Creatures. Steph loved it and noted that it was one of the top books of 2009 in her November 3rd post.


Amazon Description:
In Ethan Wate’s hometown there lies the darkest of secrets . . . There is a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head. Green eyes, black hair. Lena Duchannes. There is a curse. On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it’s been promised. And no one can stop it. In the end, there is a grave. Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided. Ethan never even saw it coming.

Actually, this book doesn't have a blurb on the back. That makes me a bit crazy. I rely on blurbs to give me an idea of whether or not I will like a book. However, I think the fact the book has been so well received (and highly rated by Steph) means this is likely a good book.

Keep an eye out for it (or beg the girls in 5C/D classes to put you on their internal waitlist as the girls seem to be passing it around right now). I'll post a review once I get a chance to read it. :-)

Academic Awards Presentation

Congratulations to all the Form 5 Girls who were given awards today. I'm so proud of the girls of 5B who did so well on their O Levels last year. 5B was an awesome class!!! Great job girls! Good luck in Form 6. We'll miss you.










Also, congratulations to the PMB All Stars! I was amazed to discover that 8 of the award winners today were in my 9A form class. Aren't I lucky to have such clever students?

Girls, it was so nice to meet your parents. They must be so proud of you! I look forward to working with you over the next two years and I wish you all the success in the world for your O Levels! BTW, to the girls who are spending the holiday in Singapore, have a wonderful trip and see you when you get back!

Lack of Reading Culture

Did anybody read the front page of the Borneo Bulletin on Monday? If so, you may have noticed this:

PARENTS TO BLAME FOR LACK OF READING CULTURE

Wow. That was a very bold statement by the Director of Social Services in the country.

Dr Mataim Bakar was quoted as saying, "The majority of parents these days come from a generation that were raised on having a low priority on the importance of developing a reading culture. Because of this their children are brought up to follow that similar mindset."

Things are changing, though. Aren't they girls? The next generation - you - are going to be different. Our school is filled with booklovers. Sure, some of the girls are only now discovering the enjoyment that a book can bring, but our school's reading culture is growing very rapidly.

Each yeargroup seems to get stronger. Yes, the form six girls who have just left the school were good readers, but the form fives and the year nines are amazing. The upper secondary girls can't wait to get into the SRR. Books are being passed from one girl to another within classes. Some girls are reading a book a day.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - there are more pages being read at our school than at any other school in the country. And we will see it in school results very, very soon. Mark my words, within the next few years our girls will surpass even Maktab Sains in English O Level results.

Keep on reading girls! It is fun to read and it will make a world of difference for your success in the future!

And when you get older and become a mother, please promise me you will read to your children. Perhaps ten years from now the Borneo Bulletin headline will read something like this:

PARENTS APPLAUDED FOR DEVELOPMENT OF READING CULTURE

The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Who is this girl?

Is she smiling?

Where did she get that fancy earring?

Why is she surrounded by black?

Why is her body turned away?

Is she keeping a secret from us?

What is she waiting for?

What is she thinking?


Last week the literature students and I took some time off our usual lit study (Anita Desai's short stories to be exact) and we had a look at this Vermeer painting.

I was amazed with what the girls were able to come up with. They thought of a number of explanations for the questions above and they had a lot of interesting ideas regarding the expression on the girl's face.

From what I can gather, it seems this painting is a bit of a mystery. Nobody really knows who the girl is or what her story is. In fact, I found that when I looked at Vermeer's other paintings that this one is quite unique. It was highly unusual for him to paint only the head and shoulders in a portrait and this is his only painting with a black background (I think).

I asked my students to imagine if they were to write a novel about this girl's life. What would they write? Who would she be? What would be their explanation for the woman's unusual expression, her clothes, and her possession of a very valuable pearl.

Actually, it has already been done. Tracy Chevalier explored the painting with her book The Girl With A Pearl Earring.

Like the painting on its front cover, Chevalier's novel is a beautiful work of art. She captures the personality and language of a poor tradesman's daughter who has no choice but to take work as a maid for the wealthy family of a master painter. Chevalier's girl, Griet, is wonderfully sweet and innocent, but she also sees things with a cleverness and insight that often startles those around her. As a reader, it is great fun to experience the story through her eyes.

My favourite parts of the book involve the descriptions of the paintings and Griet's reactions to them. I liked that Chevalier gave her narrator an artistic sensibility so she could really "see" the paintings. Griet has an innate understanding of composition and is able, in her simple language, to explain the paintings to us. She even guesses at missing pieces before the painter himself can discover them. I also enjoyed the fact that Chevalier incorporated a number of other Vermeer paintings into the story and so a quick search on the Internet will provide you with a visual representation of elements in the story.

Of course the story culminates in the painting of the narrator. It builds and creates for us an explanation of the painting. You and I may have imagined a different story for the painting, but Chevalier's is a good one too.

For students who are interested in reading something a bit mature and are ready to make the leap from teen novels to something with a bit of substance, this would be a good book. The language is that of a "simple" maid so it isn't too difficult to read. At the same time, it is the type of book that would be classified as "literature" and therefore worthy of study and likely to bring you to a greater understanding of the world if you take your time with it and give it a bit of consideration.

I'd like to discuss this book at length, but I think it is probably best to leave it to the reader to enjoy. I should warn you, though. This book has some mature content. Chevalier handles it well, as good writers do, but you should be aware that this is a book that is perhaps more suitable for older readers.

To hear an interview with Chevalier about the book you can find it HERE.

5/5 Stars

You Should Visit Steph Su Reads

The girls are always asking me, "What's next?" They want to know what the hot new books are going to be. It's hard to imagine that Twilight only caught on here late in 2008 - three years after it had been published and debuted on the New York Times Best Seller List. That still shocks me.

Anyway, how do you figure out which books are going to be hot? I usually point students in the direction of the teens' top ten list and you can find it HERE. If a book has been nominated for the list or it has won a place on the list, then it is a good bet that you will enjoy reading it. However, there is a lot of lag time between when a book is published and then nominated and then wins a place on the list.

To really figure out what is hot and new, you need to read the blogs of reviewers who are on the cutting edge. You want reviews from bloggers who are reading books before they even get published (ARC's or Advance Reading Copies).

I'd like to recommend you add Steph Su Reads to your weekly Internet surfing. Steph is a 20-year-old literature major, writer, and teen book reviewer from the United States. She is an award winning blogger who writes some of the best book reviews for teen fiction out there. Her writing is clever and fun to read. I also think she has good taste in books. I also enjoy her "coverlust" entries where she talks about interesting and beautiful book covers.

Last year Steph sent us some great new books for the Reading Room including the beautiful new hardcovers The Knife of Never Letting Go, If I Stay, and Fairest. She has also taken time to comment on my blog under "The Study Series" entry (which she highly recommended reading by the way). Even more reasons to be a fan I'd say!

As well, Steph is celebrating her one year "blogoversary" and in doing so she is offering up a bunch of prizes - including books that haven't even been published yet like the new Meg Cabot book which doesn't come out until April! Cool, right? To enter the contest you just need to go HERE.

Our Most Popular Books

For those of you who are looking for a good book to read, you may want to have a look around to see what the other girls are reading. If they are enjoying one, maybe you will enjoy it too!

Here is a list of some of the most popular books in the SRR. This list is just based on my own observations of those that always seem to be out and the ones that are always being requested. If you see one, grab it. It won't last long.

Just a reminder that you must only borrow books for two weeks. Some of these popular ones have disappeared for months while disinterested readers kept them in their bags and didn't finish them.

1. Poison Study (the Form 5's have passed this around)
2. The Hunger Games (amazing book by Collins)
3. PS I love You (and any other Cecilia Ahern book)
4. The Princess Diaries (and any other Meg Cabot book)
5. Shopaholic (and any other Kinsella book)
6. The Notebook (as well as Sparks' A Walk to Remember)
7. House of Night Series (these books are very popular)
8. Just Listen (and any other Sarah Dessen book)
9. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (this is so funny!)
10. The Lovely Bones (often requested, coming soon)
11. Before I Die (Jenny Downham makes you cry)
12. Elsewhere (Zevin's book is also a tear jerker)
13. Twilight (of course, though most girls have read it by now)
14. Goosebumps (funny, interesting, quick book snack)
15. Chicken Soup (great real life stories - more coming soon)
16. Uglies (this Westerfeld series is making the rounds)
17. Inkheart (and any other Funke book)
18. My Sister's Keeper (another popular one)
19. If I have a Wicked Stepmother, Where is My Prince? (everyone likes it)
20. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (picking up steam)
21. 13 Little Blue Envelopes (always out)

There are a lot of books that take time to catch on. For example, Graceling is the type of book that could become popular quickly. City of Bones and Vampire Acedemy could also become more popular as more and more readers pick them up. As well, last year some books were circulated in certain classes so I didn't see them for months and months - these too could be on our list of popular books.

Is there another book I should add to this list? Have you and your friends enjoyed the same book? Let me know.