This morning the Reading Rocks met for the last time this school year. Unfortunately, we still have leftover granola bars. So next year’s club will start with stale granola bars, sorry…this is the legacy of the inaugural year.
Probably even more important than the granola bar tragedy is the fact that the Reading Rocks have read and discussed seven novels this year. We debated and disagreed and agreed and brought up and discussed unrelated and tenuously related subjects about:
It was such a great experience! Let’s do it again next year!
Meanwhile, PLEASE use your Rock Island Public Library extensively this summer! Emily Tobin, the YA librarian for our fabulous public library, visited the Rocks again today with information about summer reading programs. “Beneath the Surface” is the theme for the summer, and there are MANY great opportunities to read and cook and watch movies and craft and game and it looks extremely fun. She left some calendars with more information here in the library, and told us she will be back to Rocky before the end of the year. Did you read The Maze Runner? The Teen Book Club is meeting to discuss it tomorrow, May 10th, at 4:00 at the 30/31 Branch Library. You should go!
Thanks for a great year of READING ROCKS!
Veronica Roth’s series opener Divergent dominated an erudite book club discussion this morning in the library. Some of the dauntless few who came today used alarming candor in their evaluation of the book. No one chose to abnegate their opinions or the doughnuts and juice offered, so we were all in a state of contented amity as the discussion came to a close.
Other topics covered at today’s meeting included, of course, why everyone should read Tiger’s Curse, is it advisable to see the newest “Great Gatsby” movie with Leonardo DiCaprio if you are a freshman, the judicious use of the phrase “spoiler alert,” and what’s on the agenda for the next (and last!) book club meeting on May 9th…
We decided not to choose one book for the next meeting, but keep reading and come with your recommendations for the summer! We will also have Emily Tobin back to fill us in on what the Rock Island Public library has planned for your summer reading enjoyment.
This morning the Reading Rocks met in the library to discuss the book I hunt killers by Barry Lyga and welcome a guest, Emily Tobin, Young Adult librarian for the Rock Island Public library. Ironically, we received several copies of the book in question immediately AFTER book club met! Oh, well, it was a great meeting anyway…we talked about LOTS of books (mostly zombie) and some movies and of course the season finale of “The Walking Dead.”
Emily was a great addition to today’s meeting! She came bearing bookmarks, always welcome to those of us still reading the print version. On the bookmark were times for the Public Library’s April Teen Programs, and we have some left in the library if you want to pick one up. Click on the link for upcoming events and more YA news and information from the public library. This Saturday, April 6th, the Teen Book Club will be discussing The Maze Runner by James Dashner and deciding on books to read over the summer. They meet at the 30/31 Branch at 11:00. We will welcome Emily back for our last meeting on May 9th, and may pick her brain a little about planning for next year’s Reading Rocks!
Our next meeting, April 11th, we will get together to talk about WHATEVER BOOKS you want, and the plan is to have copies of Divergent by Veronica Roth available so we can be reading that for our April 25th meeting.
I think everyone who wants to read I hunt killers should do so, and we will be keeping on hand five extra copies for anyone who would like to read it. The Rocks who finished it gave it “thumbs up” in general, although one of us thought there could have been just a little more violence from the main character. We didn’t even touch on the whole hemopheliac as best friend plot point…
See you next Thursday at Reading Rocks!
Based on his propensity to “change things up” and generally move stuff around, as well as his excellent trouble shooting of the library’s new printer, Mr. Traylor has earned the knitted title “Employee of the month” for April! Congratulations, Mr. Traylor and thank you for all your hard work and keeping it real in the library!
So, someone reached for a granola bar today and discovered that there were mouse “tracks” in our granola basket! Fortunately, we also had “fresh” cinnamon rolls, hopefully no one went hungry. I really think snacks may be the key to successful book club discussions, since we never seem to all have read the book, me included.
Speaking of…we had some discusion of our LAST title, Across the Universe, with minor skirmishes based on characters that are just too good to be believable. Some of the reading rocks have actually read the ENTIRE series by Beth Revis, (that would be A Million Suns and Shades of Earth as well as the first book) and assured us that there are character developments throughout the series, and don’t lose hope. But there was some agreement that if you don’t like a central character, it really is hard to keep reading a series. Other topics related to that book turned into a discussion of point of view in fiction. The device used by that author, telling the story through two seperate characters but in first person point of view, was annoying to some of the rocks in attendence, who just by the way also did not like one of the characters telling the story… One of my personal favorites is first person with an unreliable narrator, like for example Inexcusable and Invisible, both short, intense, and highly recommended. Also neither one of these books is part of a trilogy or series, so there is also that.
We were supposed to talk about the Abe Lincoln Award nominated book I hunt killers today, but we didn’t, so decided to ADD A DATE! Let’s do book club again next Thursday, April 4th! Then again on April 11th!
Some other topics covered (not comprensively) today:
B. F. Skinner’s behaviorist theories
Third wave experiments
Easter egg oddnesses like putting one small egg with stuff in it inside a larger egg…”Eggseption”
On the morning of February 21st, the Reading Rocks gathered to discuss books and have some day old doughnuts from Hy-Vee that looked a little gross, but obviously provided the needed sugar rush, so it’s all good. Ostensibly, we were to discuss the last book selection, Across the Universe, but since very few in attendance had actually finished the book, we are going to extend that conversation to our next meeting on March 7th. If you want to be a part of that, please pick up a copy from Mr. Traylor or Mrs. Curtiss at the circulation desk!
No one is sure how we got there, but we did have some fascinating give and take about how personal ethics and/or religious beliefs color the way we read fiction. Correct me if you were there and disagree, but I think we came to the conclusion that buying into an author’s religious, political, or ethical bias is not necessary to enjoy the book.
In conclusion, let me borrow from one of our insightful reading rocks and say continue to grow a straight and tall trunk in your core beliefs like a beautiful tree, but let those branches blow in the wind of other philosophies.
READING ROCK RECOMMENDATIONS!
Forgotten by Cat Patrick
Deadly Little Lessons by Laurie Stolarz
Tell no one by Harlan Coben
The Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell
And we had some really good juice. And gross doughnuts.
February 20th, 2013 by Mrs. Curtiss in Awards · No Comments
The new Abraham Lincoln Young Reader’s Book Award list is out! Rocky Library already owns most of the nominated titles, click on them to see a description and availability…they will be on display in the library!
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Shadow and bone by Leigh Bardugo
Ashes by Ilsa Bick
Hate list by Jennifer Brown
Ready player one by Ernest Cline
Room by Emma Donoghue
The fault in our stars by John Green
Stupid fast by Geoff Herbach
Five flavors of Dumb by John Antony
Everybody sees the Ants by A.S. King
Every day by David Levithan
Legend by Marie Lu
I hunt killers by Barry Lyga
Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
The night circus: a novel by Erin Morgenstern
Across the universe by Beth Revis
The pregnancy project: a memoir by Gaby Rodriquez with Jenna Glatzer
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Marcelo in the real world by Francisco Stork
Daughter of smoke and bone by Laini Taylor
How to save a life by Sara Zarr
If you have read at least four of the nominated titles from the 2013 list, see Mrs. Curtiss or Mr. Traylor for a student ballot to vote on your favorite before February 29th!
This morning a small group of Reading Rocks gathered to discuss the novel Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. It was, as promised, a “lively” discussion. Thanks if you were there to participate, and if you haven’t read it yet, the library owns one copy, but the website that was giving away the ebook for free is no longer doing that…bummer. I think those of us who read it would recommend the book, although opinions differed on details and how far exactly your disbelief can be suspended where zombie love is involved. It has many layers and parallels to classic fiction, but you don’t have to recognize all of those to enjoy the story as told. Surprisingly I did like it almost as much as World War Z, but you couldn’t find two books about zombies that were more different, really. Read them both! What else have you got to do?
Recommendations were made for our next book to read, including
Dark Inside, which sounds awesome and…
Across the Universe, which is our next selection! I will be ordering books for us and hope to have copies for everybody next week so we can discuss it at our next meeting on February 21st.
Continue to check the Reading Rocks display in the library for more recommendations, and come join us in two weeks!
The Reading Rocks met this morning to talk about the book The Chosen One, about a girl who is raised in a polygamous cult and is being forced to marry her 60 year old uncle. I think we agreed that it was an interesting book that brought up issues that we don’t usually spend much time thinking about. Some of us were not crazy about the way it ended, but it got us talking about books and social issues and lots of other stuff, and that’s really the best part of book club. So if you were there, thank you for your input, even if you didn’t read the book you contributed to the discussion and that was just great! If you didn’t make it this morning but did read the book, or if you have more to say about it that we didn’t get to this morning, please feel free to post a reply here and we’ll keep the subject going.
Our next book club meeting will be in two weeks, on January 24th. We will be reading Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. This book was highly recommended by one of our members. I am looking forward to reading another zombie book, but am skeptical that anything could be as amazing as World War Z by Max Brooks. Warm Bodies is written from the zombie’s point of view, and apparently is a romance of sorts, so it will probably be a totally different reading experience.
Some other books were talked about and recommended today:
Graceling and it’s sequels, Bitterblue and Fire
By the time you read this, I’ll be dead by Julie Ann Peters
The Lying Game by the author of the Pretty Little Liars series, Sara Shepard
Slice of Cherry, girl serial killers! But they only kill bad people…
Generation Dead, zombies in high school!
Eat, Pray, Love, our reader liked the first and third parts…India not so much.
Join us for Reading Rocks on the 24th!
A small but dedicated group met today to discuss BOOKS! The discussion was far ranging for the small number of participants. We started with Huckleberry Finn, deciding that for something you’re forced to read it really is a great book, worthy of its status as a timeless classic…and made it all the way to Grave Mercy, a new book with a heroine that is (maybe?) the daughter of Death.
343 days from today, the movie version of Catching Fire will be released. Sounds like a field trip opportunity to some of the Reading Rocks!
For our next meeting on January 10th, we are going to be discussing a book from the 2013 Abe Lincoln list, The Chosen One. We will have several copies available in the library starting next Tuesday, the 18th. Stop and get one between taking your finals to read during Christmas break! It’s a quick, tense read, a great thriller with a main character that will get under your skin.
Thank you to the Reading Rocks for all your suggestions and energy!!
Merry Christmas to all and Happy Reading in the New Year!
