What Great Books are You Reading Right Now?

[Sarah Bean the GreenBeanTeenQueen]

I've always got a list of books to read and books I'm currently working on. Right now I'm enjoying Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

What books are you currently reading? What do you recommend to be added to my ever lengthy to be read pile?

[larry clemenson]

MockingBird said:

A number of my boys (12-14 years) are all over the Mike Lupica sports books. I have started "Heat", with a promise to read "Summer Ball" as soon as it is returned. I'm enjoying the way Lupica captures a kid's pure love of baseball. Almost makes me want to root for the Yankees!

[larry clemenson]

what do your boys think of samurai shortstop, set in turn of the 19th century japan? there really were baseball teams in japan over one hundred years ago. also, what did they think of lupica's miracle on 49th st., which is about basketball? I loved the big field, by lupica i think, because it is about baseball and life, and not just baseball. there is a book by koertge called shakespeare bats cleanup. it is about a kid who loves baseball and is laid up for a while and starts to writing poetry about baseball and discovers that poetry and baseball can mix. ciao.

[larry clemenson]

i am reading a lot, being a guy who remembers the 70s. i am about to read rain is not my indian name and liked jingle dancer. oh to be teaching again! i mostly read award winners, and have dessen's lock and key and jinks' reformed vampire support group on the reading pile. i sort of agree with you about the portrayal of christians in teen lit. evolution, me, and other freaks of nature seemed fairly balanced to me, but sometimes this isn't so. i just finished anderson's wintergirls and was almost freaked out by it. hell, i was freaked out by it. better even than speak, maybe. but in a disturbed sort of way. i love this blog or website or whatever, by the way. i would like to make a website for homeschoolers or other teachers linking them with award-winning books on key social subjects such as the lewis and clark expedition. ciao.

[larry clemenson]

Cynthia Leitich Smith said:

I just finished Richard Uhlig's Boy Minus Girl (Knopf, 2008). I wasn't sure what to think of it of first, but it was set in Kansas (where I lived as a teen) in the 1970s (okay, I wasn't a teen until the 1980s, but still). However, I ended up falling in love with it. Among other things, there's a refreshingly non-cliched portrayal of parents "of faith."

[Andrew Cohen]

The World According to Garp.

Simply stunning =)

also read The Power of One which I just reread, by Bryce Courtenay. Wonderful!

-AC

[Lisette]

Right now I'm reading The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and really loving it :D

[Carissa]

Just got done Reading Evermore by Alyson Noel, and I'm starting to read Sleepless. I hope its good!

[Lois Klassen]

http://bestbookscms.wetpaint.com/page/What+Mrs.+K.+is+reading
Check out this link at the website Mrs. Klassen Recommends for some great ya titles. Hope you find some compelling reading for the last days of summer. I particularly enjoyed What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell.

[Alice Lovely]

Just finished Nokosee: Rise of the New Seminole by Micco Mann. Although it has teenage protagonists, it is surprisingly "adult" in its depiction of violence and teen sex yet it has little or no profanity. It's basically a contemporary teenage Tarzan and Jane tale set in the Everglades. Lots of action for the boys and romance for the girls. The story is told through the voice of a teenage girl punk rocker named Stormy Jones. Although I'm a Twilight fan, I related more to Nokosee because of his vulnerability and total lack of any superhuman powers (although he can kill with his little finger thanks to his crazy dad's plan to groom him into the first of the New Seminole who will wage an eco-war on the "Outside").

I'm in the middle of "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. It's a great comic novel that's been around for awhile. I think kids could get into it if given half a chance.