Abandoned at birth, Victoria Jones has lived in 32 foster homes by the time she emancipates at age 18. Homeless, she sleeps in a park among flowers she has grown. Flowers and their meanings are the only connection to the real world she has. She realizes her talent for healing and helping people through the flowers she chooses for them. Her own world of hurt proves more difficult as she faces single motherhood, attachment issues, homelessness, and anger. Told, alternately, by Victoria, age 9, living with Elizabeth, and 18 year old Victoria, homeless, eating half finished meals left by tourists.
Book Discussion Guide Available from NoveList.
Rusa Reading List - Best Adult Genre Fiction Award
Showing posts with label ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction Award. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction Award. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Night Circus / Erin Morgenstern 387 p. ALA Rusa Reading List - Best Adult Genre Fiction Award
“The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.
But it is not open for business. Not just yet.”So the reader is pulled into the magical world of Le Cirque des Rêves. Set in the Victorian era, a love story emerges between two competitors in a game of illusions. Each is fabulous at creating magical images. The competition turns to collaboration as each builds on the other’s work—and the circus expands. Great delightful tents appear—an ice garden that never melts, a living carousel, as each seeks to pleasure the other. The wonderful spell-bounding concoctions of Celia and Marco grow and grow. But like a garden, need their attention to stay and bloom. The dark secret is not revealed to Marco or Celia that the game ends when only one person is left standing. What will happen to the two lovers?
Many other characters emerge—Bailey, a Massachusetts farm boy who chums with the clairvoyant twins, Frederick Thiessen, clock maker extraordinaire, and Chandresh Christophe Lêfevre, the organizer behind the circus.
Slowly, practically imperceptibly, the world changes, pieces fall, the fanciful places begin to fail. The lives of everyone are at stake.
The reader is immerged in such lush and lavish descriptions that swirl around that one may miss important details. This work would benefit from being read a second time just to see how all the parts intertwine.
This feels somewhat like Harry Potter in that the author creates another world where perhaps things in the circus tents are not are they seem-- paper birds that fly, charms, and magic. The magicians work to make the illusions explainable in the Victorian world where it takes place. So that when the magician conjures impossible things, the circus audience willing accepts the show as being an illusion.
2012 ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.
But it is not open for business. Not just yet.”So the reader is pulled into the magical world of Le Cirque des Rêves. Set in the Victorian era, a love story emerges between two competitors in a game of illusions. Each is fabulous at creating magical images. The competition turns to collaboration as each builds on the other’s work—and the circus expands. Great delightful tents appear—an ice garden that never melts, a living carousel, as each seeks to pleasure the other. The wonderful spell-bounding concoctions of Celia and Marco grow and grow. But like a garden, need their attention to stay and bloom. The dark secret is not revealed to Marco or Celia that the game ends when only one person is left standing. What will happen to the two lovers?
Many other characters emerge—Bailey, a Massachusetts farm boy who chums with the clairvoyant twins, Frederick Thiessen, clock maker extraordinaire, and Chandresh Christophe Lêfevre, the organizer behind the circus.
Slowly, practically imperceptibly, the world changes, pieces fall, the fanciful places begin to fail. The lives of everyone are at stake.
The reader is immerged in such lush and lavish descriptions that swirl around that one may miss important details. This work would benefit from being read a second time just to see how all the parts intertwine.
This feels somewhat like Harry Potter in that the author creates another world where perhaps things in the circus tents are not are they seem-- paper birds that fly, charms, and magic. The magicians work to make the illusions explainable in the Victorian world where it takes place. So that when the magician conjures impossible things, the circus audience willing accepts the show as being an illusion.
2012 ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Before I Go to Sleep / S.J. Watson 360 p. ALA Rusa Reading List - Best Adult Genre Fiction Award
Christine Lucas lives one day at a time virtually the same day over and over again because she cannot retain any memory overnight. Every day Ben, her husband, must introduce himself. She doesn't remember her son or her best friend. Dr. Nash is helping her with her memory. He calls after Ben leaves for work to remind of her journal. There she learns about her life; and, bit by bit ads more each day. Gradually begins to see inconsistencies in what Ben tells her. In her journal she writes of her love for Ben. Why did she write "Don't Trust Ben" at the beginning. She loves him. He tells of the death of her soldier son in Afghanistan. Reconnecting with an old friend brings more inconsistencies in what Ben tells her. She doesn't know what to do especially as she can barely hold onto her thoughts. A psychological thriller.
2012 ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction
2012 ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction
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