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

Tag: Classic novels

Mould, Souls, and Demon Lemons

Over the weekend, I bought an old painting from my local thrift store. I walked home feeling immensely cultured and proud of myself, filled with visions of some day being in my sixties and telling my then-BFF Taylor Swift about the first piece of art I ever collected. HOWEVER. As soon as I reached my flat and started messing around with places to hang the painting, I noticed an accursed detail: MOULD.

THERE IS MOULD ON MY NICE NEW PAINTING. (Either that or the artist has made a very questionable choice with some black paint.)

A photograph of a framed painting, depicting a still life of fruit and drinking vessels.

A perfectly innocent and mould-less painting, or SO I THOUGHT.


While this was a very upsetting development to begin with, I quickly realised that there was more to the situation than appeared. The mould was only growing on a pair of painted lemons, which lead me to the realisation that they were, in fact, Demon Lemons.

The Picture of Demon Lemons

Once upon a time, a pair of lemons made a deal with the Devil. The deal was this;  that they should remain forever young and beautiful, while an enchanted portrait (ahem) bore the marks of their aging, rotting, and decrepit natures.

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8 reasons why you should check out our updated Teen book lists! (Number 3 will shock you)

Hopefully the excitingly click-bait-y title has managed to grab your attention. Let’s get into it!

We are always in the process of updating our Teen book lists. You can find them by clicking that link I just gave you, or by clicking on the “Book lists” tab under the “Teen Blog” header. And I am here to tell you about all the exciting reasons you should go read them!

1. New booklists = new books
When we update our book lists, we make sure we include recently released titles to give you something fresh and exciting to read. Maybe you’re a romance reader who’s read their way through every YA romance published before 2018 and desperately needs to find something new. Well never fear, because in our new-and-improved Romantic fiction book list you will find titles such as The Henna Wars (published in 2020), and Love in English (published in 2021)!

2. We’ve got your genre

Whatever genre you’re into, we’ll have something for you. We have many different lists of individual titles for you, as well as a list of the all the languages other than English we have books in and which libraries you can find them at.

Whether you’re into Horror, Dystopia, or Manga, we’ve got you covered!

3. They can help with your NCEA independent reading

If you’re looking for things to read for school, we can help! Our lists will definitely have something new to you, and you’ve got a lot to choose from. Choosing a book award winner or classic novel will almost certainly impress your teacher, or you could read a Māori author or a book from around the world.

We’ve also got a list specially tailored to those of you who are new to high school which covers many different genres

4. We pay attention to what you’re looking at

Over here on the Teen Blog, we pay attention to what you’re reading (as part of our mission to overtake the Kids Blog readership numbers!). And we noticed that quite a few of you have been browsing the “New Zealand Books” tag. So you didn’t ask, but we have listened and we have created a brand new New Zealand fiction book list just for you!

Yes, you.

5. Get recommendations from the best

While it may be a little proudful to claim that we are the best, this is our job and I think we’re doing pretty well. We work with books, we read a lot of books, and we know books. If there’s a book on one of our lists there’s a high chance it has been read and loved by one of your librarians (like The long way to a small, angry planet. Ugh, so good). So you can trust us! Or at least know that we’re doing our best.

And that leads me towards the next reason which is…

6. We’ve put a lot of work into these

As I’ve said, we try our best to make these lists the best they can be. The best example here is the Books from around the world list. This list features authors who write works set in their own countries, and it is one of our longest lists because our goal is to have at least one book for every country in the world! And what’s more, we’re not just picking books willy-nilly, no, we’re making sure that each book on this list (even if it’s not in the Young Adult collection) features kids or teens in prominent places in the story!

So it’s not that I’m begging you to look at our lists, but we did a useful thing – look at it please?

7. We’re always waiting for your recommendations

While we do rely on our own knowledge and reading preferences, we love hearing from you about what you’re reading and what you think. Whether you’re chatting with the librarian at your local branch or submitting a book review for the Teen Blog, we do want to hear what you think! And maybe your recommendations will make their way onto a list…

And that’s the end of my list of reasons why you should check out our Teen book lists. Like every clickbait article, I have made sure to promise more reasons than I have actually delivered, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not number 3 shocked you.

So go forth! Investigate, issue, reserve, and read!

Write to me, won’t you?

Following on from my last post, you may remember that I mentioned Jaclyn Moriarty often writes in an epistolary style, meaning the narrative is constructed of letters, emails, memos, newspaper clippings, blogs, text messages… You get the idea. Books written in this style can be very quick reads because they can be very casual and conversational, particularly with diary entries. I’ve compiled a list of some of my favourite epistolary novels (I read quite a lot of them…)

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsSloppy Firsts, Megan McCafferty

Sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling is devastated when her best friend Hope leaves their hometown of Pineville, New Jersey. Jessica is hyper-observant and without Hope to communicate with, Jessica feels more out of her depth than ever. Now she has to work out how to deal with the craziness of her classmates, her dad’s obsession with Jessica’s track meets and her mother’s obsession with Jessica’s sister Bethany’s lavish wedding – all without any help from Hope, bar the occasional email. And then Jessica begins to strike up an unlikely friendship with the biggest rebel in school Marcus Flutie… Jessica’s diary entries are hilarious, but balance out the humour well by dealing with serious issues, such as death and family drama. And it’s the first in a series of 5!

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsAngus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison

Georgia Nicholson is vain, a bit hysterical and boy-crazy. She has a lot of wild tales to tell about her mad little sister Libby, her feral cat Angus and the time she shaved her eyebrows and dressed up as a stuffed olive. Georgia’s just trying to be a regular 14-year-old girl but it’s not so easy. Set in England, this book (the first in a series) is fabbity fab fab and you’ll be speaking in Georgia’s completely made up slang and bent over in stitches by the time you’re finished with it! We also have this as an Overdrive eBook.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Junior is a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Junior has never felt like the rez life fitted him, so he takes matters into his own hands and leaves the rez school in order to go to the all-white local high school. Being Indian makes him stand out enough in the school, but he also has “an enormous head, gigantic feet, crazy eyes, ten more teeth than normal, a stutter, and a lisp” but Junior is not a complainer! He just wants to get through school and break away from the life he has been destined to live. The novel is interspersed with drawings and is based partly on the author’s own experiences. It’s a must read!

Letters From The Inside, John Marsden

“Mandy wants a pen-pal. Tracey answers the ad. The two girls write to each other about their families, their lives, their ambitions and their fears. But there are dark secrets surrounding Mandy and Tracey – secrets they can hardly bear to confront, let alone share.” Goodreads

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsI Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

Seventeen-year-old Cassandra lives with her family in a ramshackle castle in England. Over a turbulent six months, Cassandra attempts to hone her writing skills by chronicling in her diary the changes within the castle and her own first experience in love. I Capture the Castle is a “classic” novel that is timeless and the humour stands up today just as it did when it was first published.

Trailer Tuesday

Jane Eyre is on at the movies at the moment (good news!). So we thought we would spotlight another classic 19th Century adaptation, this time Wuthering Heights:

This one is directed by Andrea Arnold (notice she likes a square screen), and stars Kaya Scodelario who was in Skins. There have been lots of adaptations of Wuthering Heights, there’s a couple in the young adult collection here.

On a completely different subject, we have: whales. More to the point, whales caught under Arctic ice (true story):

And finally, because it’s topical (or it was a few weeks ago) and also polar, here’s Happy Feet 2!

The Last Post for Vampires?

Neil Gaiman thinks that vampires might be on the way out. He put it like this in an EW interview: “if they could go back in their coffins 25 years and come out the next time as something really different, that would be cool.”

Among other things NG acknowledges the important role that The Count (as in Sesame Street) has played in establishing vampires as loveable rogues, which is a triumph for preschool popular culture.

So what might the “something really different” be? Discover it and you could be the next big thing.

In the mean time, if you’re a bit sick of studying classic literature (or you’re dreading having to) then here’s a pretty cool thing:

 

Trivia: The Last Post is the bugle call you hear on ANZAC Day.

A Classic Reworking of a Classic

book coverThis is such a good idea I’m really quite dark I didn’t think of it myself. How to make Jane Austen better? Add zombies! But of course. With Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith has created a whole new genre (I guess you could call it B Grade Horror Movie Treatment of Classic Novels, or Classic Novel Mash Ups), which is not easy in the 21st Century.

I have reserved it myself, since I had to study Pride and Prejudice and I wasn’t a fan of Mr Darcy, so this is therapy. I have it on good authority that the books are actually in the central library building, so it won’t be long until they’re circulating happily; Mr Darcy, Elizabeth, Jane, the immensely irritating Lydia, and zombies!

Reserve it now (there’s a queue, but why wouldn’t there be?). 

Hot news is that Seth Grahame-Smith is going to apply the same treatment to Abraham Lincoln in a story about the great US president and his escapades as a top vampire hunter (you didn’t know that about Abraham Lincoln, did you?).

Gran of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables turns one hundred this year, and to celebrate an extensive website has been put together. It has an introduction to Anne, a list of Anne books (and there are lots), and an Anne quiz. If you’re new to the Anne of Green Gables books you will want to read from the beginning, which the library – believe it or not – has for you. If you don’t want to read it, you can always watch the television series (and two sequels).

An Anne book was written and published this year; Before Green Gables, a prequel to the original book.

Anne is also very popular in Japan.

For more links and news, check out Blogging Anne of Green Gables.

The Classic Novel List

The Classic Book list (written in Haiku) has been transferred from the old Teen webpages, and will soon be updated. We enjoy writing Haiku, and we enjoy reading classic novels – it only made good sense to combine our two interests.

Classic novels is one of the SubText genres this year, so if you want to enter the draw to win a spot-prize and get an extra shot at the main prize, then read and review one of these.

Seen Seekers?

Recently a film called The Seeker : The Dark is Rising was released. It is based on The Dark is Rising, the first second book in a series written by Susan Cooper in the 1960s and 1970s. We have two reviews of the DVD; one is by someone who had read the books before seeing the film, and the other is by someone who has never read the books.

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