Catching Fire Contest

Contest!

This is a treat: an ARC copy of Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, brought to you by Alyssa over at http://theshadyglade.blogspot.com (love the name btw!) This is extra special b/c normally the book doesn’t come out until September 1, and if you read The Hunger Games a while back like I did, that’s gonna be a long wait. :)

It ends today but make sure to check out her site for loads of great content and more contests!

New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/books/review/100Notable-t.html

Oh how I love book lists!  Here’s one from the New York Times that can definitely come in handy for Christmas shopping.  The book titles link to the Times‘ review of that book.  (I’d tell you the books I’m getting my family but they might just see it. ;)

     A few examples: 

THE OTHER. By David Guterson. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this novel from the author of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” a schoolteacher nourishes a friendship with a privileged recluse.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: A New Verse Translation. By Simon Armitage. (Norton, $25.95.) One of the eerie, exuberant joys of Middle English poetry, in an alliterative rendering that captures the original’s drive, dialect and landscape.

THE BIG SORT: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. By Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) A journalist and a statistician see political dangers in the country’s increasing tendency to separate into solipsistic blocs.

THE DRUNKARD’S WALK: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. By Leonard Mlodinow. (Pantheon, $24.95.) This breezy crash course intersperses probabilistic mind-benders with profiles of theorists.

THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD. By Fareed Zakaria. (Norton, $25.95.) This relentlessly intelligent examination of power focuses less on American decline than on the rise of China, trailed by India.

THE WILD PLACES. By Robert Macfarlane. (Penguin, paper, $15.) Macfarlane’s unorthodox British landscapes are furrowed with human histories and haunted by literary prophets.

 

Dec 10 – Just found another list, this time from the Washington Post.  I found it on writemeg.wordpress.com

Release: Brisingr, Sept 20

So, the third book in the Inheritance series came out this weekend.  I don’t know if there was a book event or not, sadly I was busy working. :(  But here’s an excerpt on msn.com for your reading pleasure:

Excerpt: Fantasy novel ‘Brisingr’

Cover of Brisingr

Book release party: Breaking Dawn

It’s here! The fourth book in the series by Stephenie Meyer, completing the story of Bella and Edward.

I went to the Borders Release Party last night, it was very fun. Borders is always a rockin’ place, but packed with 100 Twilight fans? Heck ya! There was a book discussion forum, a style show, and they showed previews of the upcoming Twilight movie. The costumes weren’t nearly as showy as the Harry Potter crowd, but some of the t-shirts were top notch and one group dressed up as the Volturi (nice one).

It started at 9:30. At midnight came the actual book release. Everyone that pre-ordered got a wristband with a number, and people stood in line in groups of 50s. The Borders staff really handled it well and shockingly had the first 200 copies out in about 20 minutes!

So if you’ve never been to a release party before, grab some friends and go! They are a blast.

SAT Book List

SAT Book List

I’m a college-bound almost-senior, so my next and final SAT on October 4th is weighing heavily on my mind. For all you other 2400 hopefuls out there, here is a list of good books to read in preparation. Of course as I read them they will appear on this blog with a review and a yay/nay for enjoyment/helpfulness. In the meantime, enjoy.

Analyses
A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter — Richard P. Feynman
The Mismeasure of Man — Stephen Jay Gould
The Lives of a Cell — Lewis Thomas
The Republic — Plato
Democracy in America — Alexis DeTocqueville
Civilization and Its Discontents — Sigmond Freud
The Language Instinct — Steven Pinker
How the Mind Works — Steven Pinker
(Seen in a review from Amazon.com: “If How the Mind Works were a rock show, tickets would be scalped for $100.”)
A People’s History of the US — Howard Zinn
Freakonomics — Stephen Levitt & Steven Dubner

Narratives
Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Metamorphosis & Other Stories — Franz Kafka
Narratives of the Life of Frederick Douglas
Life of Pi — Yann Martel
The Color Purple — Alice Walker
Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand
Frankenstein — Mary Shelley
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
Baby, It’s Cold Inside — S. J. Perelman
Best American Short Stories of the Century — John Updike
Growing Up — Russell Baker
The Wall — John Hersey
Candide — Voltaire
Macbeth — William Shakespeare
The Painted Bird — Jerzy Kosinski
One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García Márquez

Arguments
The Chomsky Reader — Chomsky
The World is Flat — Friedman
Drift and Mastery — Lippmann
The Best American Essays — Atwan
Walden — Thoreau
Lanterns & Lances — Thurber
> plus other media:
The Op-Ed pages of the New York Times
The Nation
Scientific American
Essays in Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker
Sunday Magazine

More ways to prepare:
Talk to smart adults and friends with good vocabularies
Read college-level books
Watch documentaries
Listen to National Public Radio
~ try out new words on your own
~ get a dictionary with pronunciation and etymology

And lastly, don’t forget to practice writing essays. You only have 25 minutes to ‘present and support a point of view on a specific issue’ as well as you can.

Go to the College Board site for even more info:
http://www.collegeboard.com/

Recommended Summer Book List

Recommended Summer Book List
by Mrs. in den Bosch and Mr. Kip Hepfinger

Here are the books recommended for students enterring AP English/British Literature next year. The starred ones are the ones I want to read.

The Namesake — Jhumpa Lahiri
Angela’s Ashes — Frank McCourt
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee
* Girl with a Pearl Earring — Tracy Chevalier
The Good Earth — Pearl S. Buck
* Atonement — Ian McEwan
* Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — Jonathan Safron Foer
* Namako: Sea Cucumber — Linda Watanabe McFerrin
* Dreaming in Cuban — Cristina Garcia
* Snow Falling on Cedars — David Guterson
* Peace Like a River — Leif Enger
The Jungle — Upton Sinclair
* All the Pretty Horses — Cormac McCarthy
Night — Elie Weisel
Been Trees — Barbara Kingsolver
Animal Dreams — Barbara Kingsolver
* In the Lake of the Woods — Tim O’Brien
* Bel Canto — Ann Patchett
My Sister’s Keeper — Jodi Picoult
The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold
The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini
The Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime — Mark Haddon
Nectar in a Sieve — Kamala Markandaya
* The Tortilla Curtain — T. Coraghessan Boyle