Wellington City Libraries

Te Matapihi Ki Te Ao Nui

Search options

Teen Blog

Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Month: November 2011

Newish to the e-book Library

Here’s a sampling of what’s new to the library’s e-book collection:

     

Fantasy and Supernatural Fiction

General Fiction

Fiction With a Certain Amount of Action

There’s heaps more. Have a look at the e-book collection here.

     

Classic Novels

Not only are these available free, but they’re also effectively yours to keep! Read more here. Browse through the collection here.

Maxed out your reserves on your library card?

Do you often find yourself juggling your ten reserves? If ten’s not enough to keep track of the things you want to read then My Discoveries on the Easyfind catalogue may be the way to go.

Once you’ve got a My Discoveries login (have a look at this tutorial to find out how to create one), you can create lists (“To Read”, or “For School” for example), and add things to those lists, referring back to them when you’re out of things to read. A list looks a little something like this:

mydiscoverieslist

Selecting an item from the list takes you to the catalogue record, and from there you can reserve it. Pretty easy!

To find out more, have a look a the Wish Lists tutorial here.

The Week in New Books

This week’s selection of new books kicks off with some alternating points of view:

Crossed, Ally Condie (367 pages) – sequel to Matched. Cassia finds that Ky has escaped into the canyons, where life is different and rebellion blooms. But it seems that Xander has some game-changing surprises up his sleeve. Told in alternating points of view by Cassia and Ky.

First sentence(s): I’m standing in a river. It’s blue.

Queen of the Dead, Stacey Kade (266 pages) – a Ghost and the Goth novel. Alona (ghost) is adjusting to her new job looking after the needs of lost spirits, for which she receives help from Will (goth). But her life becomes complicated, as her mother cleans out her room, and Will appears more interesting than loser-ish, and he, in turn, appears interested in someone else. Plus there’s a serious cliffhanging ending. Told in alternating chapters by the ghost and the goth.

First sentence: On television, ghost-talkers run antique stores, solve crimes, or stand on a stage in a nice suit giving the teary-eyed audience a toothy, yet sympathetic grin.

After Obsession, Carrie Jones & Steven E Wedel (305 pages) – told in alternating chapters by Alan and Aimee, who are drawn to each other by similarly supernatural secrets. Together they must help Alan’s cousin, Courtney, who has let herself be possessed by a demon/ghost in a desperate attempt to find her missing father. This proves not to be Courtney’s best move.

First sentence(s): You are mine. You all will be mine.

Sign Language, Amy Ackley (392 pages) – Abby North’s father has cancer, which changes her priorities, and her life perspective, as her family struggles to cope.

First sentence: The first thing Abby remembered about It was the scar.

I’ll Be There, Holly Goldberg Sloan (392 pages) – Sam and his younger brother Riddle were kidnapped by their father ten years ago, and now lead a life on the run. One day Sam hears Emily performing in a church, and they meet (in slightly awkward circumstances) only for him to vanish again. Emily, determined, tracks him down again, and things go from there, until Sam’s father discovers what he’s been up to… Great reviews!

First sentence(s): The days of the week meant nothing to him. Except Sunday.

Tiger’s Quest, Colleen Houck (479 pages) – a weighty tome. The second in the Tiger’s Curse series. Kelsey finds herself on another Indian quest with Ren’s black-sheep brother, Kishan, questioning her destiny.

First sentence: I clung to the leather seat and felt my heart fall as the private plane rose into the sky, streaking away from India.

Ashes, Ashes, Jo Treggiari (344 pages) – Things are bad bad bad for Lucy! Basically, the world as she knew it has ended (epidemics, floods, droughts), and she finds herself in the New York wasteland, alone, and fending off a pack of vicious dogs. Lucky for her, she is rescued by Aidan, who invites her to join a group of survivors; unlucky for them all, they are terrorised by the Sweepers, who threaten to infect them with the plague. Lucy and Aidan must save their friends from the Sweepers, but what if it’s actually Lucy the Sweepers are after?

First sentence: Lucy hunched over the corpse and felt a tiny bubble of hysterical laughter gurgle up.

Something Deadly This Way Comes, Kim Harrison (245 pages) – Madison died on the night of her prom, and now she’s in charge of Heaven’s hit squad. This has pros and cons, and when she has the opportunity to return to her body and be a real girl she’s torn: heaven or earth? Cool supernatural powers, or Josh?

First sentence: I’m Madison Avery, dark timekeeper in charge of heaven’s hit squad… and fighting it all the way.

Populazzi, Elise Allen (394 pages) – When Cara moves to a new school she has the opportunity to become one of the Populazzi – one of the girls at the top of the popularity ladder. The way up the ladder, her friend’s theory goes, is to form relationships with guys on further up rungs. So Cara tests the theory out, with some complicated results she doesn’t bargain on.

First sentence(s): “Don’t you see, Cara? This will be the year everything changes!”

Waiting on Wednesday

Here are a couple of titles we’ve recently ordered which might take your fancy:

The Fire, James Patterson (Witch & Wizard number 3, due soon). Being further adventures of Whit and Wisty Allgood, in which The One has executed the final member of their family, and Wisty realises it is time for her to confront The One. But in doing so, is she only going to lend more power to The One, or can she and Whit somehow overcome the seemingly all-conquering evil?

This is, I think, the conclusion to the trilogy (famous last words!).

How to save a life, Sara Zarr (soon also). Mandy is pregnant and looking for someone to adopt her baby. Jill lost her dad a year ago, and now her mother is seemingly trying to replace him by looking to adopt a baby. Needless to say, she is unimpressed with her mother’s actions, and suspicious of Mandy’s motives. Another thought-provoking offering from the author of Sweethearts, and Once Was Lost.

New CDs with poetic descriptions

Coast To Coast – Cody Simpson
Talented swimmer
leaves pool behind for a shot
at “Bieber status”

Making Mirrors – Gotye
Ashton Kutcher and
Lily Allen cosigned this
via the twitters

The Fall – Gorillaz
Recorded on tour
with Damon’s iPad, what an
age we live in, huh?

The Essential – Korn
Misspelled cereal
grain’s discography shoehorned
onto two CDs

Neighbourhoods – Blink 182
Together again,
“indefinite hiatus”
over, pop-punk back.

New Books This Week

Could ghosts be the new vampires? Here at the teen blog we’ve recently noticed a whole bunch of interesting ghost stories are being published, some of them with Victorian, 19th-century sensibilities. Could this be the new black? we wonder. We will keep an eye out for more.

The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater (409 pages) – The Scorpio Races happen each year in November, where riders race waterhorses (presumably underwater). They’re a dangerous sport, and some riders don’t survive. Sean Kendrick has, he’s the current champion, back to defend his title. Then there’s Puck, who is going to be the first female rider ever, not fully aware of what she’s got herself in for. We’re thinking everyone’s going to get more than they bargained for.

First sentence: It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.

Human.4, Mike A. Lancaster (231 pages) – When Kyle volunteers to be hypnotised at a talent show, he doesn’t expect the world to be completely changed when he wakes up. Now everyone behaves like he doesn’t exist, and TVs and computers just display a weird language. So, is this a new real world, or is Kyle still lost in a nightmare?

First sentence (Kyle Straker’s First Tape): … Is this thing on?

Drink Slay Love, Sarah Beth Durst (386 pages) – (The title is an Eat, Pray, Love reference, if you hadn’t already noticed.) Pearl is your average run of the mill vampire until one day she is stabbed through the heart by a unicorn. Now she can be out in daylight, which is kind of useful for vampires, and her vampire family agrees, and puts Pearl to use, enrolling her in high school with the intention of luring innocent humans to the vampire King’s feast (as, you know, the feast). But Pearl starts having second thoughts – especially about one particular cute guy – and finds herself torn between having her friends killed and being killed herself.

First sentence: “One hour until dawn,” Pearl said.

The Summer I Learned to Fly, Dana Reinhardt (216 pages) – Drew is a loner who hangs out in her mother’s cheese shop and owns a pet rat. One day she meets Emmett, a boy with an endless amount of mysteries surrounding him, and begins her first real friendship. The cover says “[it’s] about a cautious girl swept up by new feelings. It’s about a charismatic boy in search of a miracle. It’s about what happens when they find each other”, which is quite nice.

First sentence: For some people it’s the smell of sunblock.

He’s So Not Worth It, Kieran Scott (360 pages) – the sequel to She’s So Dead to Us. “Told in two voices, Allie and Jake continue to be bombarded by family issues and pressures from the “Cresties” and their poorer counterparts as they spend a summer dealing with the fallout of their breakup.” (Catalogue)

First sentence: I had imagined my reunion with my father so many times over the past two years, I had every last detail down.

Anna Dressed in Blood, Kendare Blake (316 pages) – Cas Lowood is a ghost-killer who travels the country with his mother and cat, following legends and stories to hunt down harmful ghosts and, well, kill them. They arrive in a new town on the trail of the ghost known as Anna Dressed in Blood, who has killed every person who has entered the house she haunts – except, mysteriously, she decides to spare Cas.

First sentence: The grease-slicked hair is a dead giveaway – no pun intended.

Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Laini Taylor (418 pages) – newly arrived, and featuring in our Most Wanted list: this one is “a sweeping and gorgeously written modern fantasy about a forbidden love, an ancient and epic battle, and hope for a world remade” (cover), which makes it sound fabulous!

First sentence: Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day.

A Long Long Sleep, Anna Sheehan (342 pages) – This is a kind of fairytale-meets-futuristic-semi-dystopian-tale, which sounds really interesting. Rosalinda Fitzroy’s mega rich parents organised for her to “sleep” for sixty years in a stasis tube. When she is kissed awake by a strange boy she discovers the world quite changed, and must reestablish herself. But when an assassin threatens her life, things are turned up a notch, and Rose is forced to uncover some past truths and face the deadly threat head on.

First sentence: I’d try to hold on to my stass dreams as long as I could.

Haunting Violet, Alyxandra Harvey (344 pages) – Set in the 19th century. Violet’s mother is a fake medium, who holds séances to relieve various willing members of society of their cash. But at one particular session Violet is confronted by the ghost of a murder victim, who won’t rest until the killer is brought to justice.

First sentence: I was nine years old when my mother decided it was time I took part in the family business.

Angry Birds Invade Teen Blog!

Are you studying for your exams? Is it frustrating? Well then, why not destroy a website or two? Thanks to Nokia Argentina you can use everyone’s favourite Angry Birds to wreak havoc on web pages (and a few pigs) from right inside your browser. Just drag this bookmarklet onto your bookmarks toolbar, then click it on any webpage to begin. Here’s a demo…

This Week’s New Books

VIII, H. M. Castor (399 pages) – Before he was Henry VIII he was Hal; young, dashing and handsome, and destined to become one of the most famous kings of England (not necessarily for all the right reasons). VIII tells the story of young Hal, tormented by his family’s ghosts and convinced of his path to lead his country. This has good reviews!

First sentence: I’m still half asleep when I feel strong hands grabbing me.

So Silver Bright, Lisa Mantchev (356 pages) – the concluding Act in the quirky, effervescent trilogy that began with Eyes Like Stars, So Silver Bright sees Bertie on the up and up, having rescued Nate from Sedna, and having discovered the identity of her father, the Scrimshander. Now she must try and reunite him with her mother, Ophelia, so they can be a family. But of course, things can’t go to plan: her father has disappeared, Sedna’s on the loose, and the Theatre Illuminata and her mother are on the verge of collapse. Plus: Nate, or Ariel?

First sentence: It is a nipping and an eager air.

Dark Parties, Sara Grant (313 pages) – Neva has lived in Homeland her whole life, told that the rest of the earth is just wasteland. But this is a lie! Neva is aware of The Missing, people who vanish without warning. She and her friend Sanna decide to start an underground rebellion, to uncover the truths the government has been hiding, but is Neva in danger of becoming one of The Missing?

First sentence: I’m standing in the dark, not the gentle gray of dusk or the soft black of a moonlit night but pitch-black.

Compuls1on, Heidi Ayarbe (297 pages) – Jake is obsessed with prime numbers, and this obsession lends him some sort of magic – it’s what keeps his family safe, and makes him so brilliant at football, and it’s what’s going to make his team state soccer champions for the third year in a row (3 = a prime number). He is sure that this final game of the season will set the magic free from the numbers, and he won’t be a freak – but what if this doesn’t happen? A story about obsessive compulsive disorder, obvs.

First sentence: Tanya Reese’s Tinker Bell taattoo flits on her pale shoulder, blowing on a dandelion, its fluff spiraling down on her back.

Following Christopher Creed, Carol Plum-Ucci (405 pages) – sequel to The Body of Christopher Creed. A body is found in Steepleton (could it be Christopher Creed?), so college reporter Mike Mavic ups stakes and moves there to follow the story, convinced this is his big break. What he finds, however, is a suffering town (unexplained sickness, accidents), and Justin Creed, Christopher’s brother, who is also obsessed with uncovering the truth of his disappearance.

First sentence: It happened on a dark and stormy night.

fishhookfishhookfishhookfishhookfishhook (we do love dark and stormy nights in first sentences)

Lola and the Boy Next Door, Stephanie Perkins (338 pages) – Lola’s life seems perfect. She’s a designer with an outrageous sense of style, and she has a hot boyfriend. But then (there’s always a but then) the Bell twins move back to the house next door, one of the twins being Cricket (yes, Cricket), a gifted inventor, and the boy Lola has unacknowledged feelings for.

First sentence: I have three simple wishes.

Cold Kiss, Amy Garvey (292 pages) – When Wren’s boyfriend Danny dies, she’s determined to bring him back… and so she does. Trouble is, new Danny is nothing like old Danny: “his touch is icy; his skin, smooth and stiff as marble; his chest, cruelly silent when Wren rests her head against it” (salute to Edward?). Wren tries to keep him a secret, but Gabriel DeMarnes arrives in town. He can sense her power and somehow knows what she’s done, and wants to help her, but only Wren can undo what she’s done.

First sentence: I wasn’t thinking about falling in love the day I met Danny Greer.

And finally for this week, two retellings:

Falling for Hamlet, Michelle Ray (348 pages) – Hamlet updated! Ophelia is a high school senior and girlfriend of Prince Hamlet, son of the Danish king. Her life seems glamorous, but there’s the paparazzi, and the controlling royals, and then the suspicious death of the king. Hamlet starts acting oddly – madly – and Ophelia finds herself isolated, and wishing for a normal life (preferably not in a nunnery).

First sentence: Hamlet’s father had the kind of laugh that made wineglasses vibrate and clink of the staff set them too close together, and Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, loved to hear it so much that she went to great lengths to provoke it.

Dark of the Moon, Tracy Barrett (310 pages) – “Retells the story of the minotaur through the eyes of his fifteen-year-old sister, Ariadne, a lonely girl destined to become a goddess of the moon, and her new friend, Theseus, the son of Athens’ king who was sent to Crete as a sacrifice to her misshapen brother.” (catalogue!)

First sentence: It isn’t true what they say about my brother – that he ate those children.

fishhookfishhookfishhookfishhookfishhook

Trailer Tuesday

Tuesday trailers! Like Hollywood but at home via your public library. And only for a few minutes.

Firstly here is some good (?) news – Fraggle Rock is to be turned into a movie! “Get your cares away!” “The trashheap has spoken!” That’s what you will be saying in a few years, probably.

A new trailer is out for for Mission : Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which seems to have action oozing from every pore.

 

The Lorax is a film based on the Dr. Suess book (for children, obviously). Until we saw the trailer we didn’t have much hope for this film here at Teen Blog Laboratories, but it actually seems very funny! And nice to look at. And that’s what you want in a film.

Here’s a new featurette for the Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn. Talking about the wedding or something?

And finally ParaNorman, about a boy who sees dead things? I am not sure what is going on! It is a teaser trailer.

-~~ T H E    E N D ~~-