Which book is best, and why?

Thalia

2009-05-27 17:29:06 UTC

Can you explain why you liked any of these books if you've read them.

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Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies. (E)

Acceleration by Graham McNamee
Seventeen-year-old Duncan is haunted by the fact that he was unable to save a drowning girl a few yards away one fateful afternoon the previous September. This summer he has a job working underground at the Toronto subway lost and found where he uncovers, amid the piles of forgotten junk, an opportunity to exorcise his own guilty demons. (M)

Bless the Beasts and Children by Glendon Swarthout
Touching story of the castaway of parents too busy traveling, being divorced, remarrying and garnering fortunes to pay him any attention. The scene is Box Canyon Boys Camp, where the motto is, “Send us a boy – we’ll send you a cowboy.” (E)

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
The mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers was a team of great triumph and historical import. Roger Kahn, who covered that team for the New York Herald Tribune, chronicles the dreams and exploits of his heroes’ lives, intertwining them with his own. (E)

Call of the Wild by Jack London
Story of life in the Klondike. The hero, a St. Bernard dog, finally obeys the call of the wild and leads a pack of wolves because his last best friend has been killed. (E)

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
The story of a Laguna Pueblo man who returns from World War II deep in trauma, believing he has brought on a drought by cursing the rain that ruined his attempts to save his brother. The novel tells the story of his return to the center of the web of humanity and the world. (M)

Childhood’s End by Arthur Clarke
Science fiction concerned with the relationship between the Overlords, an immensely powerful but benign race of aliens whose spaceship suddenly appears in the sky to help mankind evolve to a new stage of development. (M)

The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Although they came from entirely different worlds, two Jewish boys in Brooklyn in the 1940’s develop a strange and intensifying relationship. (M)

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, elopes with Miss Love Simpson -- a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee! Thus, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy's adventures begin, and an unimpeachably pious, deliciously irreverent town comes to life. (M/C)

Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen
Da Chen describes his youth in mainland China with engaging humor and affecting warmth. It’s often a harrowing tale: born in 1962, Chen was the grandson of a landlord, which rendered his entire family pariahs during the Cultural Revolution. And though initially an excellent student, he was ostracized in school and told he could never attend college. He responded by making friends with a group of young thugs who drank, smoke, and gambled but were kind to him. After Mao died in 1976, the budding juvenile delinquent discovered that higher education might be available to him after all. Chen worked hard to make up for years of neglected studies, and his memoir closes with a jubilant scene as he and his brother Jin are both accepted into college; for his suffering family, “thirty years of humiliation has suddenly come to an end.” (M)

The Color of Water by James McBride
This memoir tells the remarkable story of Ruth McBride Jordan, the two good men she married, and the twelve good children she raised. Jordan, born Rachel Shilsky, a Polish Jew, immigrated to America soon after birth; as an adult she moved to New York City, leaving her family and faith behind in Virginia. Jordan met and married a black man, making her isolation even more profound. The book is a success story, a testament to one woman's true heart, solid values, and indomitable will. Ruth Jordan battled not only racism but also poverty to raise her children and, despite being sorely tested, never wavered. In telling her story--along with her son's--The Color of Water addresses racial identity with compassion, insight, and realism. It is, in a word, inspiring, and you will finish it with unalloyed admiration for a flawed but remarkable individual. (M)

The Dark Light by Mette Newth
Young Tora becomes an outcast from her Norwegian village when it is discovered that she has contracted leprosy. (M/E)

Death Be Not Proud: A Memoir by John Gunther
A memoir to John Gunther’s seventeen-year-old son, who died after a series of operations for a brain tumor. Not only a tribute to a remarkable boy but also an account of a brave fight against disease. (M)

Downtown by Ed McBain
This madcap escapade finds a