Karen Sandler

Tag: rtw

  • RTW – Favorite Book in March

    ImageThis week, YA Highway asks, What was the best book you read in March? I’ll make this quick and easy–it was Jasper Fforde’s One of Our Thursdays is Missing . If you haven’t read any of Fforde’s wacky literary-based fantasies (the Thursday Next series), you’re missing out on a real treat.

    In Fforde’s Thursday Next series, we have an alternate history in which such things as literary detectives work in Jurisfiction and the BookWorld actually exists. There are wonderful explanations for how books work when a reader is experiencing them (actual BookWorld people act out the characters’ roles). Along with the mind-bending aspect, there is always a very satisfying mystery solved in each book.

    I highly recommend you pick up book one in the series, The Eyre Affair, a marvelous send-up of Jane Eyre. After reading the first one, you won’t be able to resist the rest.

  • RTW – The Best Book I Read in November

    I just finished a post on why I love reading e-books and scheduled it for this coming Saturday. I mention this because YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday prompt for today is What’s the best book you read in November? and thanks to my Kindle, it was easy as pie to refresh my memory on what I read this past month. I could have also checked Goodreads, but since I’m not great about updating my reads there, it’s not as reliable.

    Anyway, my best book for November was The Declaration by Gemma Malley. In The Declaration, Anna and Peter are illegal children living in a hellish children’s home that’s like something from a Dickens novel. A Longevity drug that extends life indefinitely has led to an overcrowded world, and the illegal children are the ones who pay the price. It’s set in a futuristic Britain and its British voice is part of what led me to fall in love with this book and its characters. I very much enjoyed the humor interleaved with the very dire situation Anna and Peter were in. I also found the set-up intriguing and since we’ve recently reached the 7-billionth mark of the population on our planet, The Declaration had some very real-world elements to it.

    Of course, this is an “older” book (published 4 years ago), but as a newcomer to young adult, I’m still catching up on the great books. The upside to that is I don’t have to wait for the sequel. The Resistance is already available. And since I have the patience of a flea when it comes to waiting for the next book in a series, I am a happy camper about that.

    Has anyone else out there read The Declaration? What was your take?