He mea hoihoi - Interesting Things: Summer is here again!?

Collins, Suzanne. Hunger Games. [F Collins]

I normally limit my own suggestions to adult fiction for this blog but I have to break the mold this time and suggest a Young Adult fiction title. Good YA fiction also makes great reads for adults. I recently finished reading Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and could not put it down. Imagine a combination of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and Survivor reality series and you will have a taste of Hunger Games. Katniss lives in a future North America where the rulers of Panem have organized a competition between the twelve districts. Everyone between the ages of 12 and 18 must be entered in a lottery and each district draws two names, a boy and a girl, to be entered into a televised competition where the winner is declared after a battle to the death. Katniss impulsively volunteers after her younger sister's name is drawn. Grim topic but gripping. It's the first part of a promised trilogy so I'm anxiously awaiting number two.

Read on for recommendations from others.

Paul, Caroline. East Wind, Rain. 2006. [HC F Paul].
I enjoyed this suspenseful novel based on the true story of a Japanese pilot who crash-landed on Niihau after bombing Pearl Harbor. The isolated residents of Niihau, not knowing that Pearl Harbor was attacked, react in different ways to the pilot. Events unfold unpredictably.
-Susan Clark

Kundera, Milan. Immortality.
This is one of those novels which expands the boundaries of fiction. Kundera puts past, present and future in a blender, adds real and fictional characters (including himself, Goethe and Hemingway - who converse in heaven) and produces - believe it or not - a very readable novel. Some of it was over my head, but I couldn't put it down, save for the times I'd pause in amazement at Kundera's cleverness and inventiveness.
-Jay Seidenstein

Rusdie, Salman. Enchantress of Florence. [F Rushie]
Gorgeous writing style allows you to enjoy each sidetrack of this winding narrative as the unknown storyteller in 16th century India tells a tale of adventure from far-off Florence. Well-crafted as a tale within a tale, the pieces come together by the end to form a delightful story.
A pleasure to read and enjoy, I look forward to discovering more from this author this summer.
-Tiffany Coke

Atwood, Margaret. Blind Assassin. [F Atwood]
Another complex plot with a story within a story, Atwood's tale is set closer to our own time and in our own country but the story within pushes farther out into fantasy and even science fiction. The story begins with one surviving sister trying to understand the suicide of her sibling through her posthumously published novel. Constant flashbacks flesh out the family relationships as the imaginative tale of a blind assassin weaves in and out of the novel throughout.
It's easy to become completely immersed in this book and to rush through, trying to find out how it ends, however the beauty of the writing makes taking it slow worthwhile.
-Tiffany Coke

Cox, Beverly and Martin Jacobs. Spirit of the Harvest: North American Indian Cooking. [BLC 641.59 C83]
This award-winning cookbook celebrates Native American food and is conveniently divided into regions, such as the Southeast and the Pacific Northwest. The recipes are not overly complex and the photography is stunning. This book won both the James Beard Foundation Award and the Julia Child Cookbook Award.
-David Del Rocco

Am I Blue?: Coming Out From the Silence. Edited by Marion Dane Bauer. [F Am] Sixteen well-known young adult authors each contribute a short story about a teen who is gay or a teen with a gay parent. The stories are very varied; some are poignant, some are funny, all of them are quite good. The title story, Bruce Coville's "Am I Blue," is a very interesting fantasy. Share this one with your students. Winner of an ALA (American Libraries association) award for literature.
-David Del Rocco

Three nonfiction books I enjoyed:
Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. [153.8 Ar4]
Thaler, Richard A. and Sunstein, Cass R. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. [302 G450]

There's a collection of short stories set in India that I also liked:

Mueenuddin, Daniyal. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

Child, Lee. Gone Tomorrow.
Child has a new Reacher book out: Gone Tomorrow. It's up to his
usual page-turning standard.
-Bruce Schauble

Shaeffer, Frank. Portofino.
Last night (well, early early this morning: 1 a.m.) I finished "Portofino" by Frank Schaefer. Told from the point of view of a young boy, it's a novel about a family of Presbyterian missionaries who vacation in Italy each year. The boy, Calvin, narrates his experiences that are honest, funny, poignant and heartbreaking. It's a frank look at the realities of fallible humans trying to live the perfect life of the Elect.
-Chandra Peters

Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII [942.05 W43]
I'm not quite done with it yet, but I am thoroughly enjoying The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir. It's non-fiction and a page-turner.
-Leela Bilmes Goldstein
French, Tana. In the Woods.
This mystery is set in Ireland and begins with a prologue describing a horrific and unsolved crime which left a young boy clinging to a tree and bleeding. The story jumps ahead thirty years and the boy is now a police detective faced with a similar crime in those same woods. The book stays in the present and focuses on the new murder, but the older, unsolved atrocity never leaves the mind of the detective or the reader. The story is a bit grisly and does not necessarily make one feel good at the end, but I enjoyed it as a psychological thriller that begins as a mystery and ends as more of a character study of a damaged but worthwhile adult. The book kind of reminded me of an Irish version of Mystic River, and if you enjoyed that novel, I imagine you'd enjoy this one.
-Tim Dyke

Larsson, Steig. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Apparently this novel was a huge publishing sensation in Sweden and was the first book of a trilogy. The author died in the past year of a heart attack, sadly, and this book was translated into English and published in this country where it became a best-seller. I heard about it in Entertainment Weekly where Stephen King recommended it as one of the best books of the year. For some (including me) that will be a tantalizing recommendation, and for others that will probably keep them away. Fair enough. This book isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed it a lot. It begins by introducing a journalist who has just gotten himself into some professional trouble. Through plot twists and story machinations, he meets a private detective with tattoos and Asperger's syndrome. Together they are put on the trail of a forty year old murder that happened on a Swedish island where, at the time of the crime, a bridge was collapsed and only a finite group of people could have been suspects. At this point in my summary you are probably either interested or not. If so, I warn you that the book is kind of intense in its depiction of sexual violence, but in my opinion the overall tone of the story unquestionably condemns the violence it describes.
-Tim Dyke

Pelecanos, George.The Way Home.
Pelecanos, one of the main writers of the television show "The Wire," knows his way around the crime genre. Unlike some of his other novels, this book is less a mystery than a character-based novel about the affects of crime on a family. In the first part of the story, a teenager rebels against his family and finds himself sentenced to juvenile detention. The story then shows a bit what that experience is like for the character, and then in the last half of the book the person we met as a teenager is grown up and making an attempt to rebuild both his life and his relationship with his father. Just when you think this is an emotional and well-written story about a father and son, a crime does indeed occur late in the novel, and the book wanders back toward the mystery genre in a compelling and page-turning way.
-Tim Dyke

Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. [F Asher]
My sister and I were shopping for a book for my thirteen year old niece and the well-informed bookseller recommended this one. Apparently it is a big hit in the world of "Young Adult Fiction." In the first chapter of the story, a high school boy finds a box of cassette tapes on his doorstep, and when he listens to the first one he realizes that they have been sent to him by a girl in his class who recently killed herself. He is informed that the tapes will explain why she committed suicide, and he becomes convinced that in some way he is complicit in her death. I read this book on a flight from San Francisco to Honolulu and hardly looked up once from the page. It is compelling. By the time I finished it, however, it made me feel a bit uneasy; I am made slightly uncomfortable by the author's implication that suicide is a logical reaction to teenage mistreatment as I view it more as the tragic result of chronic depression. The fact that I wanted to argue with the author, however, probably means that it is a thought-provoking book. If you liked a book like "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" then you would probably like this one. I don't know if my niece has read this yet, and in a way I kind of don't want her to because I have a certain tendency to view the world with rose colored glasses, and I don't want her to read about the sadness that overcomes some teenagers. My niece's favorite book, however, is "The Lovely Bones," so I think she'd like this one. If you are drawn to the sad teenager genre, this story will probably appeal.
-Tim Dyke

Radish, Kris. The Elegant Gathering of White Snows.
A fun beach read for every female who ever wanted to take a walk and find herself.
A great escape for the plane ride to your summer adventure.
-Gail Peiterson

Murphy, Dervla. Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle.
Written in 1963, you get a glimpse of what Pakistan and Afghanistan were like "back in the day" through her journal as she suffered through extreme cold in the Himalayas and extreme heat in the desert - all with a very pragmatic, plucky spirit and descriptive admiration of the natural beauty of these areas. There's a wonderful chapter on the Swat Valley which makes me wonder what Murphy is thinking about all that is going on there now.
-Marian Lyman-Mercereau