Quotations Weblog

If you’ve ever had a conversation with an imaginary friend, you’ll be charmed by Slam by Nick Hornby:

• Unshelved comic strip – Slam by Nick Hornby

Sam is a disarmingly ordinary 15-year-old kid who loves to skate (that’s skateboarding, to you and me). But then he is blindsided: his girlfriend gets pregnant, and he lands in the middle of his mum’s nightmare (she had Sam when she was 16). This may sound like an old-fashioned realistic YA problem novel, but it’s a whole lot more. Sam, you see, has a sort-of-imaginary friend: the world’s greatest skater, Tony Hawk, whose poster Sam talks to when he has problems. And the poster talks back, maybe, or maybe Sam is just reciting quotes from Tony’s autobiography. And is it really Tony who is “whizzing” Sam into the future for glimpses of what is to come? With or without Tony’s help, Sam gives us the facts about his very eventful couple of years, but as he reminds us, “there comes a point where the facts don’t matter anymore . . . because you don’t know what anything felt like.”

From the author of About a Boy and Hi Fidelity, Nick Hornby tells the story of Sam.

Can you create an equation to explain why you date who you date? An Abundance of Katherines by John Green tries to answer that question:

• Unshelved comic strip – An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Green’s eccentric narrative follows the exploits of Colin Singleton, a fading prodigy whose hobbies include making anagrams, dating girls whose names are Katherine, and coming up with mathematical equations that explain why said Katherines have dumped him. After “Katherine the Nineteenth” breaks his heart, Colin and his best friend go on a road trip that lands them in Gutshot, Tennessee. Jeff Woodman delivers a solid narrative voice brimming with enthusiasm and energy. He embodies Colin by vocalizing his frustration and aimlessness while also executing great personalities and accents for the various characters Colin encounters. Woodman’s smooth, animated tone produces an engaging atmosphere for this amusing novel.

Don’t you think you’d start avoiding girls who are named Katherine after the eighteen one dumps you?

In time for Halloween, how about 13 Bullets by David Wellington:

• Unshelved comic strip – 13 Bullets by David Wellington

It’s a vampire thriller with a twist:

Special deputy Jameson Arkeley stopped a vampire rampage 20 years earlier, during which he whittled down all known bloodsuckers to a single survivor, Justinia Malvern. Kept alive at a sanitarium in rural Pennsylvania by minimal life support and bizarre laws preventing her extermination, wispy Justinia seems a threat to no one—until a series of vampire killings in the area suggest that she has found a secret way to spread her taint. Convinced that Justinia’s minions plan to spring her and revive her to full power, Arkeley commandeers state trooper Laura Caxton to help him find their lair and wipe them out before they can get their vampire queen the blood she needs.

As described by Unshelved:

This isn’t the movies. Crosses don’t work, blood makes vampires virtually unstoppable, and their undead servants have taken a personal interest in Caxton and her girlfriend.

Sounds like a great read for the season!

It’s the sixth book in a series, but it’s a great title for Halloween: Bride and Doom by Deborah Donnelly:

• Unshelved comic strip – Bride and Doom (Carnegie Kincaid, Book 6) by Deborah Donnelly

If anyone can make a bride happy, it’s wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid. There’s only one problem: this time she’s the planner and the bride. The nightmare begins at a party for Carnegie’s client, a sexy Goth rocker marrying a Seattle home run king. When murder strikes and Boris the Mad Russian Florist is charged with the crime, Carnegie steps up to the plate to clear him—despite the objections of fiancé Aaron Gold, who has suddenly become a full-time sports nut. With baseball, bimbos, and one explosive secret threatening Carnegie’s safety, this wedding planner needs a new plan. Or else the bride could be next up—to die.

An amateur sleuth series that follows Carnegie Kincaid, a wedding planner. If you would like to start at the beginning of the series, read this one first:

• Veiled Threats (Carnegie Kincaid, Book 1) by Deborah Donnelly

Growing up is hard to do, but doing it in prison is a story worth reading about in Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea’s Prisons by Cullen Thomas:

• Unshelved comic strip – Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea’s Prisons by Cullen Thomas

In May 1994, Thomas, a slacker vagabond teaching English, was arrested in Seoul, South Korea, for smuggling hashish into the country. He served three and a half years in various prisons and was released in 1997. Thomas presents himself as an innocent abroad—a symbol of the legions of disaffected middle-class youth wandering the globe aimlessly looking for, well, they don’t really know. While teaching English to Korean children, Thomas falls in with an unsavory lot and heads to the Philippines for a drug deal. This goes awry, and he lands in prison, where he meets and befriends various other foreigners.

The true story of an American in a Korean prison. Does Cullen Thomas take responsibility for his actions and serve his prison term with honor?