Tales from the Rushmore Kid

February Recommendations--Lynn Becker's Book Picks

Novels I have recently read and loved include:

THE IMPOSSIBLE KNIFE OF MEMORY, by Laurie Halse Anderson. For years, Hayley Kincain has been on the road with her dad, trying to outrun his PTSD and lose his memories of the war in drugs and alcohol. But when Hayley is a high school senior, the pair settle down in what was Hayley's grandmother's house, trying to find a bit of normal. Spoiler alert: It won't be easy. This YA reaches out and grabs you right in.

GLORY O'BRIEN'S HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, is another winner by A. S. King. Using her flair for inserting an element of fantasy into her realistic novels, this time she has Glory drink a potion made from desiccated bat, which gives her the ability to see into the future. For Glory, whose mother committed suicide when Glory was four and who doesn't know whether or not she will follow in her mom's footsteps, the question is whether she herself has a place in this future she is seeing. Not as gloomy as it sounds! This could pair well with Andrew Smith's Grasshopper Jungle, showing a similar epic scope, but told from a female point of view. (YA)

The Poem That Will Not End - Joan Bransfield Graham

Joan Brandsfield Graham is one of my favorite people.  Her new book The Poem That Will Not End is a fabulous book.  Here is the book trailer that I produced for the book.

We Were Liars--Lynn Becker's Book Picks

February's Book Pick is WE WERE LIARS, by E. Lockhart. She has done it again. Author of 2008's wonderful The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks, WE WERE LIARS is a gem of a novel.

Seventeen year old Cadence Sinclair, of the rich and beautiful Sinclair family, has been through a terrible trauma. When the novel opens, she is in awful shape. She takes lots of pills for her crippling headaches, she keeps her blond hair dyed black, and she is in the process of giving away all of her earthly possessions. She hasn't been to her family's private island since her mysterious accident the summer she and the other Liars were fifteen. Until then, the four Liars had spent their summers together, running wild and forging deep bonds of friendship. And love--Cady and Gat have fallen in love. But there is more to life than this idyllic little island. Gat isn't one of the Beautiful Sinclairs, and the eventually the Liars begin to see that all things in this world must come to an end. When Cady returns to the island to piece together the mysteries of her past, the Liars spend one last bittersweet summer together.