[JodyJS Posts: 1,316 Status: Offline Who you gonna call? EMERGENCY KITTENS! WWW]

THE EXTRAORDINARY EDUCATION OF NICHOLAS BENEDICT by Trenton Lee Stewart. It's a prequel to his MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY series. And it's awesome!

[olmue Posts: 3,528 Status: Offline WWW]

J-Bert and Olmue: I'm glad to be in such great company! I'm already thinking--would it be weird o finish it and then immediately start reading it again? I don't think I've ever done that before.

I've er, done that lots of times! Especially if I wanted to study it in my mind and figure out what made a book great.

[KatyD Posts: 839 Status: Offline www.katyduffield.com WWW]

Yeah. I borrowed the copy I'm reading from the library. I'm thinking I'm going to have to invest in a paperback copy and get out my highlighters!

[ButterflyGirl Posts: 545 Status: Offline @kidlitSarah sarahfloydbooks.com]

I'm reading Erin Moulton's TRACING STARS (just finished her excellent book, FLUTTER: THE STORY OF FOUR SISTERS). Our own Mike Jung's novel, GIRLS, GEEKS, AND SECRET IDENTITIES was my ten-year-old son's book from Santa. I get to read it as soon as he's finished. He's already halfway through -- and loving it! It's a welcome change from a steady diet of graphic novels at home (he's read some of them three or four times), and novels only at school.  Yay!
 

[Pons Posts: 2,465 Status: Offline]

I read Origami Yoda by Angleberger before Christmas and really enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to MG age boys. Girls would probably like it to.

Laurel 

[stacebee]

Some of my most recent favorites : Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, East by Edith Pattou, the Sea of Trolls trilogy by Nancy Farmer and the Absolutely true diary of a part time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

[mirrorsandmagicfrogs Posts: 37 Status: Offline Must have coffee! WWW]

I finished Reached. Now I'm reading Rae Carson's Crown of Embers.

[LTMadison Posts: 109 Status: Offline Cover art avatar by 2020 WWW]

Has anyone else listened to the audio of The Graveyard Book? Neil Gaiman could make a living as a voice talent -- if he weren't already killing as a comic book and novel writer. This is not a book I would have normally picked up (I usually avoid paranormals as run the opposite direction from witches and goblins), but it's one of my favorite "reads" of 2012. It's interesting that it's targeted to such young readers. After all it opens with the MC's parents and sister getting slashed to death, and some of the vocabulary and much of concepts seem more appropriate to older readers -- including adults.

[JetGirl Posts: 288 Status: Offline Shiny! Let's be bad guys!]

Oh my goodness just finished The Darkest Minds...AMAZING!

Brightly Woven was really good but this is even better.

[Anthony Posts: 65 Status: Offline You know, for kids! WWW]

Agreed - the MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY books were great. I'll have to check out the prequel too.

Just finished: SERAPHINA by Rachel Hartman. Had high hopes for it based on what I'd heard. Even so, it exceeded my expectations. Great book.

Reading now: THE QUANTUM THIEF by Hannu Rajaniemi. An adult sci-fi novel. Steep learning curve. Not sure what to make of it yet.

On deck: ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS by Brandon Sanderson. I read the first chapter online and it looks funny.

[Shannywriter Posts: 507 Status: Offline Believe in yourself and never give up WWW]

Tonight I'm starting The Raven Boys By Maggie Stiefvater. It's been staring at me for months but I made myself get other things done first!

[LindaB Posts: 332 Status: Offline I want to write!]

I've been on a tear lately, finishing several books. I enjoyed Janie Face to Face, the final book in the The Face on the Milk Carton series. It's a fun read and quite satisfying. I've also finished Not Exactly a Love Story by Audrey Couloumbis. It's really quite different and another fun read.

[olmue Posts: 3,528 Status: Offline WWW]

Anthony, we all really enjoyed Alcatraz at our house.

Yesterday I read RJ Anderson's QUICKSILVER, which is a companion novel to ULTRAVIOLET, one of my recent favorites. I had to hold on to it until I finished because my girls also loved Ultraviolet, and kept trying to steal Quicksilver from me. Fast-paced, warm scifi. Plus, it was interesting to see some characters from Ultraviolet in a different light. Anything I say about Quicksilver is all kinds of spoilerish for Ultraviolet, though, so just read them both yourself.

[idahowriter Posts: 16 Status: Offline]

I just picked up The Raven Boys today.  I'm so excited about it!   

[AnneB Posts: 3,753 Status: Offline]

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd -- an anthology of short stories I learned about from this thread http://www.verlakay.com/boards/index.php?topic=65720.0.

Love it -- and appropriately, it's the first ebook I successfully downloaded from our federated library system. I can even follow most of it, even the gamer stuff which was never part of my particular universe.

[Lwrites Posts: 159 Status: Offline]

I finally read THE RAVEN BOYS. My plan now is...to re-read THE RAVEN BOYS! Absolutely wonderful, just amazing. (Also, the audiobook is excellent!)

[idahowriter Posts: 16 Status: Offline]

Lwrites, I am enjoying The Raven Boys audiobook right now...chapter 6 and loving it!  It is a great way to get me to clean my house.  I listen to a book and I'm amazed how much cleaner things are.  I don't want to turn off the book so I keep finding things to clean.  As I was listening to the audiobook, I kept thinking that it sounded like the coach on Remember the Titans.  IT IS!  He does a great job. 

[G.R. Posts: 633 Status: Offline I love kids' books!]

Just finished John Grisham's The Racketeer last night -- it's about a small-town attorney who has been unjustly imprisoned for money laundering; he makes a deal to be let out by claiming he knows who killed a federal judge. A fun book, if one of Grisham's more insanely elaborate plots!

[Mike Jung]

Egomaniacal moment: it's fun seeing my book in this thread. Thanks everyone!

I didn't read much at all from August through November, so it's been great to blaze through a handful of different books all in a row. Since Christmas I've read Doris Kearns Goodwin's TEAM OF RIVALS; James Swanson's MANHUNT: THE 12-DAY CHASE FOR LINCOLN'S KILLER; Anne Lamott's HELP THANKS WOW; Kenneth Oppel's SKYBREAKER; Ellen Potter's THE KNEEBONE BOY; Cherie Priest's CLEMENTINE and GANYMEDE; and Katherine Applegate's THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN. I liked them all for varied reasons, but THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN really floored me - it's phenomenally good.

[updog]

I'm reading A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving. I think I'm as in love with little Owen as everyone in Irving's fictional town seems to be, and the use of all caps to accentuate the unnatural screech of Owen's voice makes me smile every time I see it.

[KLM Posts: 44 Status: Offline WWW]

Just started our own Ellen Oh's Prophecy and loving it so far.

Recently finished both Crown of Embers and Days of Blood and Starlight. I am slavishly devoted to Laini Taylor and Rae Carson forevermore. They are deep fried awesome.

Oh! Oh! Let me also add: Seraphina! By Rachel Hartmann. FANFREAKINGTASTICAL!

[jojocookie Posts: 368 Status: Offline WWW]

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia

[Marcia Posts: 475 Status: Offline Never Too Late To Be What You Were Meant to Be WWW]

I'm reading REUNITED by Hilary Weisman Graham (debut novel 2012)

[jojocookie Posts: 368 Status: Offline WWW]

Rules by Cynthia Lord

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss

[olmue Posts: 3,528 Status: Offline WWW]

Jojocookie, I loved Rules! (And since this is ALA awards morning, I'm especially thinking of it, and how excited I was when it won a Newbery honor several years ago!) It's a great example of a realistic book that still has a lot of internal tension and a lot at stake.

[C. Lee]

I'm actually reading a thriller, something I don't usually read. I'm enjoying parts of it--good scenes about relationships and caring. The violence is hard sometimes, but the action is captured very well. I thought I needed a break from YA and MG, and I did.

However, I just read a great YA ms and loved it. Hats off to my crit partner MelHig!

[J-Bert Posts: 257 Status: Offline WWW]

I read THE FALSE PRINCE by Jennifer Nielson. Great read. I plan to buy a copy of it and the sequel to send to my niece and nephew.

I'm also reading WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT by Mary Kole and it's excellent so far.

[olmue Posts: 3,528 Status: Offline WWW]

I really liked The False Prince. And I'm looking forward to reading Mary Kole's book! She has some great insights that go beyond the same old stuff you hear everywhere.

Read and enjoyed The One and Only Ivan--I thought it was a great Newbery pick. It has a plot, both the writing style and content are aimed at the actual Newbery reader-aged kid, it's interesting to a kid and not just a middle-aged librarian, and it's a happy sort of book. Yay for this year!

Other good reads recently: Bomb (one of the ALA winners; good NF storytelling), Shadow and Bone (love the Russian undertones), and Quicksilver (companion sequel to Ultraviolet, by RJ Anderson--different and compelling). So, some really good ones.

[AnneN Posts: 509 Status: Offline]

I'm reading SIEGE AND STORM (Leigh Bardugo's sequel to SHADOW AND BONE), and enjoying it tremendously so far!

[rab Posts: 541 Status: Offline WWW]

KLM, I loved SERAPHINA, too---what a book!

Just read Lois Lowry's SON and am sorry it ended because I wanted to stay in that story.