On My Wishlist : April 23rd

On My Wishlist is a weekly feature ran by the great book blog Book Chick City. To learn more about this meme, get the details here.

Looking for Alaska-John Green

Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's adolescence has been one long nonevent - no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends. Seeking what Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps," he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the school's rich preppies. Chip's best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate, articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink, smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska's story unfolds in all-night bull sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious. Green's dialogue is crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles's inner monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension of sensitive teen readers.

I have to admit that I was first intrigued by this book because of the cover. It's beautiful! This book is a bit different than what I've been reading lately (almost non-stop fantasy and sci-fi) but I think it's always good to change it up a bit.

Amazon

The Underland Chronicles-Suzanne Collins

When 11-year-old Gregor follows his little sister through a grate in the laundry room of his New York City apartment building, he hurtles into a dark Underland beneath the city. There, humans live uneasily beside giant spiders, bats, cockroaches, and rats—but the fragile peace is about to fall apart.

I'm not a huge reader of books for younger readers or middle grade books (well, except for The Mysterious Benedict Society), but this series sounds intriguing. As a child, I used to imagine that there was a door in my closet that lead to somewhere interesting, so I was hooked by the first sentence in the description of this series. It's also by Suzanne Collins, so what's not to like?


Amazon


White Cat (Curse Workers Book 1)- Holly Black

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail -- he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

I've only read part of one of Holly Black's books-Tithe. I couldn't finish it, but this is not because Holly Black is not an excellent storyteller, but Tithe was the book that made me realize I hate fairies and have no interest in reading tales involving them. I figured if Holly Black's excellent storytelling couldn't make me like them-no one could. To get back on point, I love the premise of this book. I even love the title of the series, The Curse Workers. Doesn't it just roll off your tongue? I plan on using some of my birthday money to purchase this when it comes out in a couple weeks!

Amazon