The Fault in Our Stars Read Alikes

One of our most popular books this year by far has been The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. We have had a hold list going for this title for practically the whole school year. Have you read it yet? You need too. It is that good.

 And for those of you who have already read The Fault in Our Stars, check out these readalike selections:

CIA Poetry Slam!

Looking back at 2013

This morning, I'd like to take a minute to reflect on some of my favorite reads from 2013.  

1.

  "Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love--and just how hard it pulled you under."

2.  

"Varsity Tennis captain Ezra Faulkner was supposed to be homecoming king, but that was before--before his girlfriend cheated on him, before a car accident shattered his leg, and before he fell in love with unpredictable new girl Cassidy Thorpe.  Funny, smart, and including everything from flash mobs to blanket forts to a poodle who just might be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby, The Beginning of Everything is a refreshing contemporary twist on the classic coming of age novel--a heart-wrenching story about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings."

3.  

"Sandwiched between two exceptional siblings, Taylor Edwards never felt like she stood out--except for her history of running away when things get too complicated. Then her dad receives unexpected, terrible news, and the family makes the last-minute decision to spend the summer together in the cramped quarters at their old lake house. Taylor hasn't been to the summer house since she was twelve, and she definitely never planned on going back. Up at the lake she is confronted with people she thought she left behind, like her former best friend, Lucy, and Henry Crosby, her first crush, who's all grown up...and a lot cuter. Suddenly Taylor is surrounded by memories she'd rather leave in the past--but she can't run away this time. As the days lying on the beach pass into nights gazing at the stars, Taylor realizes she has a second chance--with friends, with family, maybe even with love. But she knows that once the summer ends, there is no way to recapture what she stands to lose." 

4.  

"Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol. But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart--obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school's class on the Holocaust. Speaking to each in turn, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets as the hours tick by and the moment of truth approaches. In this riveting book, acclaimed author Matthew Quick unflinchingly examines the impossible choices that must be made--and the light in us all that never goes out."

5.  

"Allyson Healey's life is exactly like her suitcase--packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she's not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson's life. A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the "accidents" of fate, Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know." 

6.  

"10 concentration camps. 10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly. It's something no one could imagine surviving. But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face. As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner -- his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087. He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later. Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will -- and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside?"

7.  

"After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the un lucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up."

8.  

"Finley, the only white player on his high school's varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town ruled by the Irish mob. When his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African-American student who has transferred from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their differences."

9.  

"Sixteen-year-old Kyra, a highly-skilled potions master, is the only one who knows her kingdom is on the verge of destruction-which means she's the only one who can save it. Faced with no other choice, Kyra decides to do what she does best: poison the kingdom's future ruler, who also happens to be her former best friend. But, for the first time ever, her poisoned dart misses. Now a fugitive instead of a hero, Kyra is caught in a game of hide-and-seek with the king's army and her potioner ex-boyfriend, Hal. At least she's not alone. She's armed with her vital potions, a too-cute pig, and Fred, the charming adventurer she can't stop thinking about. Kyra is determined to get herself a second chance (at murder), but will she be able to find and defeat the princess before Hal and the army find her? Kyra is not your typical murderer, and she's certainly no damsel-in-distress-she's the lovable and quick-witted hero of this romantic novel that has all the right ingredients."

10.

  

"Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day's breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother's death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage's grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can't, and they become companions. Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret--one that nobody else in town would ever suspect--and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she's ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she's made about her life and her family."

11.

"A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie--magical, comforting, wise beyond her years--promised to protect him, no matter what."

12.  

"Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But, it's not a skill that she's ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they've begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie. What Cassie doesn't realize is that there's more at risk than a few unsolved homicides-especially when she's sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive."

13.  

"The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney's office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery."

14.  

"Gray Weathersby has grown up expecting to disappear at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. They call it the Heist--and it happens to every boy in Claysoot. His only chance at escape is to climb the Wall that surrounds Claysoot. A climb no one has ever survived . . ."

15.  

"The world has no air. Ever since the Switch, when the oxygen levels plummeted and most of humanity died, the survivors have been protected in a glass dome full of manufactured air. If you want to live, you pay to breathe. But what if you can't pay? And what if you think everything could be different? Alina's a revolutionary who believes the Resistance can save the environment, can break free, and she's on her first mission. Quinn's a Premium who's never had to worry about having enough air. His best friend, Bea, is an Auxiliary who's never worried about anything but having enough air. When all three cross paths and walk into the Outlands with two days' worth of oxygen in their tanks, everything they believe will be shattered."

*All descriptions are from Destiny, our online library catalog.

New Books & Challenge Check In

Happy 2014!  

It's time for a Challenge Check-In!  


Mrs. Gumtow's Reads November & December 2013:
12.  My Beloved World by Sonya Sotomayor
13.  The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
14.  Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
15.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
16.  The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall

How are YOU doing on our 2013-14 BHS READS Challenge?  

It is going to be a chilly week here, with projected windchills at close to -45 degrees next Monday and Tuesday.  That's perfect weather for cuddling up under a warm blanket with a good book!  

Here are some of the newest additions to the BHS LMC Collection:

Nonfiction:

Experiment: A child is deliberately infected with the deadly small pox disease without his parents' informed consent. Result: The world's first vaccine. Experiment: A slave woman is forced to undergo more than thirty operations without anesthesia. Result: The beginnings of modern gynecology. Incidents like these paved the way for crucial, lifesaving medical discoveries. But they also harmed and humiliated their test subjects, many of whom did not agree to the experiments in the first place. How do doctors balance the need to test new medicines and procedures with their ethical duty to protect the rights of human subjects? Take a harrowing journey through some of history's greatest medical advances-and its most horrifying medical atrocities-to discover how human suffering has gone hand in hand with medical advancement.

Gareth Hinds's stylish graphic adaptation of the Bard's romantic tragedy offers modern touches -- including a diverse cast that underscores the story's universality. She's a Capulet. He's a Montague. But when Romeo and Juliet first meet, they don't know they're from rival families -- and when they find out, they don't care. Their love is honest and raw and all-consuming. But it's also dangerous. How much will they have to sacrifice before they can be together? In a masterful adaptation faithful to Shakespeare's original text, Gareth Hinds transports readers to the sun-washed streets and market squares of Shakespeare's Verona, vividly bringing the classic play to life on the printed page.

Fiction:

Otto and Leni thought they were safe: They escaped -- barely -- from war-torn Europe and are living as refugees in England. But now the Crown has recruited them: Great Britain wants them to go back. As spies! Dropped behind enemy lines, they embark on a top-secret operation. Code name: Wolfsangel. Their mission? Capture the one person who can defeat the ultimate evil of Nazism! Der Fuhrer has destroyed Otto's and Leni's families, but what ifthe tables were turned? What if Hitler's ultimate legacy was in their hands? Breathless pacing, nonstop action: By the screenwriter of Goldeneye , Hitler's Secret is a cinematic tale of revenge with an unexpected twist. A note by the author explains the truth behind the fiction and lets readers know what really became of history's greatest villains.

The last thing Amy planned to do this summer was sail around the world trapped on a yacht with her father and her stepmother. Really, all she wanted was to fast-forward to October when she'll turneighteen and take control of her own life.Aboard the Daisy May , Amy spends time sunbathing, dolphin watching and forgetting the past as everything floats by . . . until one day in the Gulf of Aden another boat appears. A boat with guns and pirates - the kind that kill.Immediately, the pirates seize the boat and its human cargo. Hostage One is Amy's father - the most valuable. Hostage Two: her stepmother. And Hostage Three is Amy, who can't believe what's happening. As the ransom brokering plays out, Amy finds herself becoming less afraid, and evenstranger still, drawn to one of her captors, a teenage boy who wants desperately to be more than who he has become. Suddenly it becomes brutally clear that the price of life and its value are two very different things...

Love can be a real monster. Sixteen-year-old Boy's never left home. When you're the son of Frankenstein's monster and the Bride, it's tough to go out in public, unless you want to draw the attention of a torch-wielding mob. And since Boy and his family live in a secret enclave of monsters hidden under Times Square, it's important they maintain a low profile. Boy's only interactions with the world are through the Internet, where he's a hacker extraordinaire who can hide his hulking body and stitched-together face behind a layer of code. When conflict erupts at home, Boy runs away and embarks on a cross-country road trip with the granddaughters of Jekyll and Hyde, who introduce him to malls and diners, love and heartbreak. But no matter how far Boy runs, he can't escape his demons both literal and figurative until he faces his family once more. This hilarious, romantic, and wildly imaginative tale redefines what it means to be a monster and a man.

Levi was simple, like a child. It was the best thing about him, and it was the worst, too." When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach. Pitch-perfect basketball plays, well-developed characters, and fine storytelling make this heartbreaking psychological sports novel a slam dunk.

When Hunter Jackson and his half sister, Ashlin, return to their dad's for the first winter in years, they expect everything to be just like as when they were kids, but secrets are quickly spiraling out of control and someone turns up with a bullet to the head, and now they have to prove that the childhood friend they both love didn't do it.

Series Books:

Anya's new prominence brings out friends, foes, and ghosts from the past. Certain scores must be settled; certain debts must be paid. Surviving a crime-ridden New York City in the 2080s is looking harder and harder for Anya.

As Kami Glass and her friends continue to battle the sorcerers of the Lynburn family in the sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, friendships and families are torn apart.

Since learning she is the Ruby, the final member of the time-traveling Circle of Twelve, nothing has gone right for Gwen and she holds suspicions about both Count Saint-German and Gideon, but as she uncovers the Circle's secrets she finally learns her own destiny.

Earth is in the middle of WWIII, a war to determine which governments and corporations will control the resources of the solar system. Teen Tom Raines grew up with nothing--some days without even a roof over his head. Then his exceptional gaming skills earned him a spot in the Intrasolar Forces, the country's elite military training program, and his life completely changed. Now in Vortex, the second book in the series, Tom discovers that the Pentagonal Spire, where he and his friends are being trained as superhuman weapons, is filled with corruption. He is asked to betray his friends--the first real friends he's ever had--for the sake of his country. Will he sacrifice his new life to do what he believes is right?

Don't forget, you can keep up to date with all of the library's newest books on the LMC Pinterest page here: http://www.pinterest.com/berlinhslmc/