The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, by Theodore Gray

I bought this book for my teenage son last Christmas, then found myself curled up with a cup of eggnog, regaling my family with nuggets of wisdom such as: Did you know that iodine disinfects by brute chemical attack on microbes? And that zinc slabs are attached to bridges and ships to stop them rusting? [...]

Read Full Post »

Toad Rage, by Morris Gleitzman

A misfit is a great subject for literature, because the character’s life story creates inbuilt dramatic tension before the plot even begins. And what a misfit we meet in Limpy the cane toad! He lives in Queensland, Australia, where introduced cane toads are an ecological disaster and Australians are attempting to exterminate them.  As a [...]

Read Full Post »

Made in the U.S.A., by Billie Letts

A teenage girl shoplifts a too-tight, red, sleeveless turtleneck from Walmart. Immediately afterwards, the only adult in her life (who turns out not to be her mother or official stepmother) drops dead in the checkout line. This roller-coaster start sets the tone for this stirring tale of Lutie and her young brother, Fate, as they [...]

Read Full Post »

We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, by Daniel Akst

I have to admit that I picked up We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess because I thought it would annoy me.  I saw a bomb made out of a chocolate-coated doughnut on the cover and thought, “Another screed blaming all the world’s ills on people the author considers fat!”  I [...]

Read Full Post »

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, by Rose George

Like many who have traveled I am intimately aware that umpteen people around the world have dirty, nasty, and awkward toilet facilities.  It is great to see the world but sometimes even better to get back to my own bathroom.  What I didn’t realize before reading The Big Necessity is that “2.6 billion people don’t have sanitation … Four [...]

Read Full Post »

Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake

Cas and his mother just moved to a new town. They move around pretty often, so Cas knows the routine:  find a house, find a school, find the popular crowd, and get them to share the local ghost story. Chances are, if Cas has done his research well, the ghost everybody thinks is just a [...]

Read Full Post »

The Magician’s Elephant, by Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo’s work has long been a staple on our Battle of the Books lists, but The Magician’s Elephant (on this year’s 4th and 5th grade list) is definitely my favorite. It features an eclectic cast of characters including a fortune teller, two orphans, a magician, a nun, a dog, an ex-soldier, a policeman and [...]

Read Full Post »

The Thief of Always, by Clive Barker

When Harvey Swick meets Rictus, Harvey is deep into the mid-winter blues. He’s desperate for some fun. So when Rictus offers to take Harvey to a place where children can have as much fun as they want, perhaps he doesn’t question the offer quite as much as he should. Rictus and Harvey travel to Mr. [...]

Read Full Post »

Instructions for a Broken Heart, by Kim Culbertson

The last thing you want to do with a cheating ex-boyfriend is take a ten day trip through Italy. Only one thing would be worse – missing out on the trip of a lifetime because you’re avoiding him. Jessa has just caught her boyfriend, Sean, with another girl. The next day, when some girls would [...]

Read Full Post »

The Sign of the Beaver, by Elizabeth George Speare

It is the spring of 1768 and Matt’s father has just left him alone in the middle of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. He is on property his family has purchased in Maine territory, in a cabin he and his father just finished building. Matt’s father is making the return trip to Massachusetts to bring the [...]

Read Full Post »

Introducing Your ABBC: All the Best Books Compilation for 2011

For the fourth year, I’m compiling the best-books-of-the-year lists from your favorite newspapers, magazines, websites, and other media–plus the major book awards–into one convenient, sortable spreadsheet. I’ll count up the votes from as many authoritative sources as I can find to give you the final word on which titles have been named “best” the most often. [...]

Read Full Post »

Lips Touch: Three Times, by Laini Taylor

“The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls.” Three’s the charm for the novella-length [...]

Read Full Post »

The Lost King of France, by Deborah Cadbury

Many years ago I read an extravagantly lurid little book called Strange Tales of Immortal Crimes by Harry Ashton-Wolfe.  This book contained nineteenth-century “true-crime” stories ostensibly taken from the files of the French police. One of the tales concerned the famous detective Vidocq and his search for a boy rumored to be the missing child [...]

Read Full Post »

The Queen’s Necklace, by Frances Mossiker

A country on the brink of revolution, a gullible Catholic cardinal, a forger, a prostitute, a mysterious alchemist with a dark reputation, the Queen of France, a scheming femme fatale and a priceless diamond necklace… all the elements of a great thriller, but The Queen’s Necklace by Frances Mossiker is not a work of fiction. [...]

Read Full Post »

The Affair of the Poisons, by Anne Somerset

Who knew what dark shadows lurked behind the gilt and glitter of Louis XIV’s Versailles? Enjoy some true crime, seventeenth-century style, in this exposé of the trafficking between the French nobility and the seedy backstreets of Paris. Somerset’s history begins with a sensational murder trial. The Marquise de Brinvilliers poisoned her father and two brothers, [...]

Read Full Post »

White Truffles in Winter, by N. M. Kelby

Mme. Escoffier is dying upstairs, and M. Escoffier is in the kitchen, drowning small lobsters in champagne. This delectable historical novel explores the marriage of the famed chef Auguste Escoffier and the poet Delphine Daffis (whom he won in a game of billiards. Yes, really). The couple were estranged for most of the 60-odd years [...]

Read Full Post »

Daughter of Smoke & Bone, by Laini Taylor

Karou is just like any other 17 year-old girl.  She goes to school.  She hangs out with her friends whenever she’s free from work.  She’s recovering from the heartbreak of first love.  But Karou is also different as much as she is the same.  Her blue hair isn’t just a dye job, it grows from [...]

Read Full Post »

Neighborhoods, by Blink-182

Well, who would have thought it? The Blink boys are all grown up.  “Neighborhoods” is the first album from the SoCal pop/punk trio in eight years and marks a significant shift from their previous albums.  Blink-182 originally grew out of the San Diego punk scene and made their name by taking the edge off punk [...]

Read Full Post »