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The lives of three
teens—Claire, Jasper, and Peter—are altered forever on September 11,
2001. Claire, a high school junior, has to get to her younger brother in
his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his
parents’ frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he’s okay. Peter, a
classmate of Claire’s, has to make his way back to school as everything
happens around him.
Here are three teens whose intertwining lives
are reshaped by this catastrophic event. As each gets to know the
other, their moments become wound around each other’s in a way that
leads to new understandings, new friendships, and new levels of
awareness for the world around them and the people close by.
David
Levithan has written a novel of loss and grief, but also one of hope
and redemption as his characters slowly learn to move forward in their
lives, despite being changed forever.
I read this book with my book club in honor of the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Like the rest of the world, I remember exactly what I was doing when the first plane hit; then the second; the crash into the Pentagon, two miles from where I worked; and the final plane exploding in a field in Pennsylvania.
I can't even begin to imagine how events played out near the Twin Towers. No matter how many news reports I see, or articles I read, I will never know just how awful and devastating things were in New York City. And that's okay. It's a painful subject and not an event that people need to relive over and over.
Powerful though this book was,
I kept my distance from the characters because I didn't want to
remember the absolute horror of that day.
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Their passionate
encounter happened long ago by whatever measurement Claire Randall took.
Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of a
gallant eighteenth-century Scot named Jamie Fraser. Then she returned
to her own century to bear his child, believing him dead in the tragic
battle of Culloden. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her...
and her body still cries out for him in her dreams.
Then Claire
discovers that Jamie survived. Torn between returning to him and staying
with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And
as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face
the passion and pain awaiting her...the deadly intrigues raging in a
divided Scotland... and the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can
reunite—or forever doom—her timeless love.
I
must have read this one too quickly because I had all sorts of "wait,
what just happened?" moments. I was so keyed up and wanted to know
exactly what happened next that I didn't let everything sink in. Big
mistake. I'll need to do a re-read of this book at some point.
Assuming I ever get through my TBR list, of course!
I do need to take a break before delving into Drums of Autumn. I love the world that Gabaldon has created, but I need to read something short before I read another of her tomes.
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For twenty years Claire
Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown
daughter to Scotland’s majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans
to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about
the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones ... about a love
that transcends the boundaries of time ... and about James Fraser, a
Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the
security of her century to the dangers of his....
Now a legacy of
blood and desire will test her beautiful copper-haired daughter,
Brianna, as Claire’s spellbinding journey of self-discovery continues in
the intrigue-ridden Paris court of Charles Stuart ... in a race to
thwart a doomed Highlands uprising ... and in a desperate fight to save
both the child and the man she loves....
Oh my holy hell.
I
hated how this book started. As soon as I finished Outlander, I opened
the next in the series. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Claire
was back in the present time and no longer with Jamie. WTF, Diana
Gabaldon?!?!?
I'm a bit irked at the heartfail this caused;
Pepcid, however, received a great boost in sales. And my kids learned
some new words.
Thankfully, I have book #3 ready to go on my Kindle. I NEED to know where the story goes from here.
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Kurt Vonnegut's
absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a
man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the
planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we
follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life,
concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an
American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
I'm
not quite sure why this is considered one of the best books ever
written. It was good. I enjoyed reading it. But I can't say that it
blew me away and my life is forever changed.
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At seven minutes past
midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his
bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting — he’s
been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly
every night since his mother started her treatments.
The
monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it
wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants
the truth.
From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan
Dowd — whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it
herself — Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of
mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
I recommend this book for anyone who is dealing with loss. Or grief of any kind.
I
am currently a blubbering mess and can't form enough coherent thoughts
for a review. This is such an amazing, cathartic book. It's a
surprisingly quick read; I finished it in one sitting.
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In the spring of 1708,
an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly
succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his
crown.
Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her
next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle,
she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to
write.
But when she discovers her novel is more fact than
fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory,
making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate
betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes
very close to destroying her...
I love this book! I'm not normally into romantic historical fiction, but if there are more like this, I want to read them!
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Lina is just like any
other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws,
she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge
into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've
known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train
car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way
north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches
of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for
beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina
finds solace in her art, meticulously - and at great risk - documenting
events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her
father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long
and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it
is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately
survives.
I
had no idea -- NONE -- that Stalin committed genocide on a larger scale
than did Hitler. I'm amazed that anyone was able to survive under the
conditions portrayed in this book.
Fantastic story, but very difficult to listen to.
