I love end-of-the-year lists. You know the ones I mean. The top 10 movies, the 13 most embarrassing outfits worn by fashionable folks, the 9 most downloaded songs... And of course, the lists of best books. Those lists are my favorites. You can see what you missed or argue passionately about what book was picked -- or left out. So here are a few links of the supposedly best teen books this year. Let the arguing begin!








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As mentioned in a previous blog entry, when I was laid up, I discovered a fantastic new book: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I'm dying for someone I know to read it so that we can talk about how awesome it is.

The Knife of Never Letting Go is the story of Todd Hewitt, a boy who lives in a sparsely populated town in a future New World where an alien virus has somehow killed all the women and infected the men and animals so that all their thoughts are broadcast to the minds of others in a overwhelming mix of words, images, and sounds. This cacophony of others' thoughts in your head is called Noise.

In isolated Prentisstown, life is about survival. The hundred plus men in the town must hunt and grow enough food to fed themselves, build their own shelter, care for their sick. Todd's parents are dead and he's the only "boy" left in the town. His birthday and the mysterious ceremony by which he'll become a man are just weeks away. But before the fateful day, Todd and his dog Manchee discover an odd pocket of total silence. And that's when the story takes off.

This book is lengthy but once I started, I read quickly, only stopping when it all got a little too intense. The unique voice of Todd and the author's skilled creation of this strange and ominous world hooked me hard. Try it! The good news is that the second book in the series, The Ask and The Answer, is already out. The bad news? The third and final book, titled The Monsters of Men, doesn't come out until May 2010.
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There's a cool new book out from Uglies author Scott Westerfeld. It's called Leviathan and here's a warning up front: It's not like Uglies--at all. In my opinion, it's a whole lot better, but I know some readers may feel differently.

This book is set in an alternate England just prior to the first World War. The first main character is a young woman named Deryn who's disguised as a boy so that she can fly with the British Air Service. The ship she's flying in, called Leviathan, is acutally a genetically engineered living beast, sort of like a flying whale. In this world, genetic engineering is common and the "Darwinists" have created many such useful creatures. The other main character is Alek, a young Austrian prince. Alek and his people are "Clankers," or people who believe in machine technology rather than genetic tinkering. As the world teeters on the edge of war, Deryn and Alek become key players in the political maneuvering of forces they don't understand.

Reading Leviathan you'll find action aplenty, interestingly flawed characters, and lots of thought-provoking ideas, especially when the Clankers and Darwinists collide. I look forward to the next book in the series, Behemoth, but I'll have to wait. According to Westerfeld's website, it won't be out until October of 2010.
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Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I took some time off. But then my back went out. I found one recliner in my basement that made the pain go away and so that's where I stayed. I brought down my brand-new laptop, Chapstick, water, and assorted snacks. I had the last two discs of season two of The Big Bang Theory, the tv and DVD remotes, and, of course, a pile of books. In between snoozing, munching, popping ibuprofen, channel surfing, and web surfing, I actually got some reading done--real reading. You know, when you dig in to the big, fat, intimidating books that you're sometimes too tired to even lift when the day winds down. And I discovered a new favorite. So that was the up side of being laid low.
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I just put together a list of good books to give teens and that got me thinking about books I've received as gifts, especially when I was a teenager myself. One Christmas a few years after we'd moved from New Jersey to Illinois, my brother gave me a boxed set of four books by J.R.R. Tolkien. The set included The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The books had covers just like the one shown to the left, and there was gold on the box and on the edges of the pages of the four books. Very cool. I had never read any Tolkien before, and I soon became immersed in the world of Middle-earth, falling in love with Bilbo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, and Gandalf the Grey. I've read those books multiple times and after I grew up, I read them aloud to my own children. This was a present I treasured.

It's rare that any of us manage to get just the right book for just the right person, but don't give up trying. Because when you get it right, you've given something priceless.
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