105 books down, 129 days to go!

Hey All!  I finished three books.

The first one is called Hate List by Jennifer Brown.  Doesn't the cover look spooky?  Intense?  Well, it goes pretty well with the book plot, so start reading this to see what I mean:  In this book a girl named Valerie and her boyfriend made a "hate list" of people they didn't like and why to take away the pain of being bullied.   But when Valerie's boyfriend shoots and kills six students and one of the teachers on the list during lunch at school, before killing himself, Valerie is stuck.  He had also shot many others without them dying and when Valerie tried to stop him she ended up getting shot in the leg. Even when the police conclude Valerie had nothing to do with the shooting, everyone in her small town, including her parents, think she did.  So Valerie's therapist is her only hope at being strong enough to go back to school the next year, which she does.  This book is told in past-tense and present-tense and I really liked it.  Good read; tough plot, okay writing.

I also read an amazingly good book called Hold Still by Nina LaCour.  This book is about a girl named Caitlin whose best friend, Ingrid, commits suicide and becomes functionless with pain.  She won't talk, she won't see a therapist, she won't live.  When Caitlin finds Ingrid's diary, she reads about Ingrid's depression.  But Caitlin wants to use this diary to live on and with the love and support of her new friends and family she learns that she really might be able to do just that.  The cover of Hold Still fits the book really well also and i totally recommend this book!  I won't soon forget it.


This next book, Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chalats had a heart-wrenching plot but I read this in hardcover, not nook format, and it was a little hard to get through since it was in what I think is called Verse.  Anyway, the cover is perfect once again and I thought this book was okay, though I would have loved it if it was just written in plain format.  So, this book is about a girl named Anke whose father is brutally abusive, but not to her, only to her brother and sister.  She seems to be invisible, just standing in the shadows, screaming silently with horror, too painfully shy from the sights she has seen to do anything about the situation.  But then Anke joins the volley ball team and hears her own real voice with passion for the first time, yelling to the other players that it's her ball.  Anke is noticed now, and after a while she begins to think about the day when she will be brave enough to say something that could rescue her family at home, including herself.

WORD OF THE DAY: format
FACT OF THE DAY: An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.  

Love, Elizabeth
105 books down, 129 days to go!