Fri Apr 24: what we talked about

Fri Apr 24: what we talked about
  • How do you keep your place in a book? We compared our bookmarks of choice:
    • Jenna showed a treasured bookmark featuring words and artwork from a friend
    • Mrs. Stevens said she uses an emery board as a bookmark, which helps as she tries to stop biting her nails
    • Ema enjoys the continuity of using a bookmark she found in a library book; the previous reader left artwork and notes on a sticky note
    • Ms. Tolva likes the hand-painted bookmarks Sasha gave us in December
    • Yona's scraps of paper and Emily J's tissues are OK, too!
  • Newest honorary Starbooks Book Club members are:
    • Sofia's dog, Darcy. He was not necessarily named for the hero in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but she said we can keep thinking that
    • Yona's trumpet-playing sibling
    • Braeden, Emily S's younger brother who says he doesn't like to read; we said, no problem, we're up for that challenge
  • American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
    • Summary: También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.
      Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of the new drug cartel jefe, or chief, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? 
    • Genre: realistic
  • Carry On and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
    • Summary: Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen. That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right. Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here. It's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up.
    • Genre: fantasy, written as fan fic of book mentioned in Fangirl
  • Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug
    • Summary: Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow throughout her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. For Nora, the simple fact of her German citizenship bound her to the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities and left her without a sense of cultural belonging. Yet Nora knew little about her own family’s involvement in the war: though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it. In her late thirties, after twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child and young adult. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier in Italy. Her quest, spanning continents and generations, pieces together her family’s troubling story and reflects on what it means to be a German of her generation.
    • Genre: non-fiction
  • The Rule of Three by Eric Walters
    • Summary: One shocking afternoon, computers around the globe shut down in a viral catastrophe. At sixteen-year-old Adam Daley's high school, the problem first seems to be a typical electrical outage, until students discover that cell phones are down, municipal utilities are failing, and a few computer-free cars like Adam's are the only vehicles that function. Driving home, Adam encounters a storm tide of anger and fear as the region becomes paralyzed. Soon—as resources dwindle, crises mount, and chaos descends—he will see his suburban neighborhood band together for protection. And Adam will understand that having a police captain for a mother and a retired government spy living next door are not just the facts of his life but the keys to his survival.
    • Genre: sceince fiction
  • Other pandemic books:
  • The Toll by Neal Shusterman
    • Emily S said, apparently, the tern " a Toll ending" is a new way of describing a resolution that is not all tied up, but still satisfying
  • Pretty in Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Crompton
    • Summary: Andie is the type of girl who always comes up with the perfect thing to say … after it’s too late to say it. She’s addicted to romance movies—okay, all movies—but has yet to experience her first kiss. After a move to Punxsutawney, PA, for her senior year, she gets caught in an endless loop of her first day at her new school, reliving those 24 hours again and again. Convinced the curse will be broken when she meets her true love, Andie embarks on a mission: infiltrating the various cliques—from the jocks to the nerds to the misfits—to find the one boy who can break the spell. What she discovers along the way is that people who seem completely different can often share the very same hopes, dreams, and hang-ups. And that even a day that has been lived over and over can be filled with unexpected connections and plenty of happy endings.
    • Genre: supernatural
    • Other books with circular storylines: