With finals week nearly finished, your friends in the CRC want to wish you a happy summer!

Maybe you are looking forward to some vacation time, a summer job, or even summer classes. Whatever you’ll be doing, here’s hoping that you enjoy the season and feel renewed.

Remember that the CRC will be open during the summer. Our hours will vary, depending on whether classes are in session. Check out the web site for the latest updates.

If you need a break from your studying, remember that the CRC is your source for great novels for your leisure reading.

So I want to go out on a little bit of Kathy wisdom which is absolutely unoriginal, yet true:

Don’t let anyone pee in your cereal.

 Try everything and appreciate what you have while you have it. Learn things. Take risks. And don’t vomit on anyone, it’s not cute. -John Green

Always, always, always consider the source.

Don’t buy into the drama and beware of “friends” who like to stir the pot.

Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize. – Libba Bray

Be well. do good work, and keep in touch. – Garrison Keillor and me

Title: Illuminate (Gilded Wings #1)

Author: Aimee Agresti

Summary: [from GoodReads]

Haven Terra is a brainy, shy high school outcast. But everything begins to change when she turns sixteen. Along with her best friend Dante and their quiet and brilliant classmate Lance, she is awarded a prestigious internship in the big city— Chicago—and is sent to live and work at a swanky and stylish hotel under the watchful eyes of a group of gorgeous and shockingly young-looking strangers: powerful and alluring hotel owner Aurelia Brown; her second-in-command, the dashing Lucian Grove; and their stunning but aloof staff of glamazons called The Outfit.

As Haven begins falling for Lucian, she discovers that these beautiful people are not quite what they seem. With the help of a mysterious book, she uncovers a network of secret passageways from the hotel’s jazz-age past that leads her to the heart of the evil agenda of Aurelia and
company: they’re in the business of buying souls. Will they succeed in wooing Haven to join them in their recruitment efforts, or will she be able to thwart this devilish set’s plans to take the souls of her classmates on prom night at the hotel?

My Review

This was one of those rare books that I hadn’t heard of before picking it up off the shelf at the library. I didn’t really know what to expect
- the blurb I saw hardly gave anything away. So I was delightfully surprised to find Illuminate was one of those books I just could NOT put down.

The premise is fairly simple – three teenagers are asked to intern at a hotel that is run by the devil’s minions. Haven, the main character, has a power that they want and they’ll offer her anything to get it. The plot relies fairly heavily on intertextuality – both Faust the The Picture of Dorian Grey are strong influences.
Despite such strong influences, this isn’t a mere retelling. Each borrowed element was used in an original way – some could even be said to explain mysteries left by their predecessors.

One of the things I really liked about this one is that even though Haven is “good” she still makes mistakes. It takes her a while to figure out what’s going on, and in that time she makes some really bad choices.
Some of them she even knows are bad, but she makes them anyway.
Throughout the book there’s a strong emphasis on free will. Even though they’re cheating a little, Aurelia and Lucian want Haven to choose the dark side. To me, that makes it all so much more realistic – we always have a choice, no matter what situation we face.

And through it all what really brought the book alive was the imagery. I especially loved the descriptions of the Vault – the bar attached to the hotel. It was almost like I didn’t have to read the book, just open it and let the pictures flow before me.

This was definitely a very interesting book and I’m looking forward to the next one!
This review was originally posted on my blog Creativity’s Corner

Title: The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle #1)

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Summary: [from GoodReads]

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem.
But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

My Review

Maggie Stiefvater is one of those authors that I have a kind of love/dislike relationship with. Every time I read a synopsis for a book she’s written it sounds like the most awesome book ever and I am dying to get my hands on it. Then, when I finally do read them I’ve hyped them up so much that they seem kind of mediocre. I’d been burned a little too often so when it came to The Raven Boys I just kept putting off reading it. I shouldn’t have been worried though – finally I found one that lived up to its fullest potential!

One of the big things that was better in this one that was better in this one was pacing. It still took me a little while to get into the book, but it didn’t take nearly as long as with, say Scorpio Races. Once I did get into it, it felt like there was always something happening, even when the main point of a passage was the relay of information. The mystery was big and exciting, but it never felt like we were just waiting for the next clue and filling time.

Of course, an easy way into my heart for any book is to use some fairly obscure (aka unknown to me) bit of ancient history, preferably from somewhere in the UK, so I may be a tiny bit biased. In this case, Gansey is looking for the supposedly sleeping body of King Glendower, an ancient Welsh leader. That entire plotline was absolutely fascinating to me – I would speed my way through entire scenes with Blue and her hilariously dysfunctional psychic family so I could find out where the quest was headed next.

I have to admit I was a little surprised, in a good way. This was an incredibly fun Gothic fantasy and I eagerly await the next book!
This review was originally posted on my blog Creativity’s Corner

Regardless of its origin, April Fool’s Day has long been known for tricks and hoaxes, from the French children’s “April Fish” tradition to elaborate hoaxes published by magazines as jokes.

Be careful what you believe today!

Title: Starclimber (Matt Cruse #3) Media Type: Audiobook Author: Kenneth Oppel Studio: Fullcast Audio Genre: Sci-fi Summary: [from GoodReads]

“Mr. Cruse, how high would you like to fly?”

A smile soared across my face.

“As high as I possibly can.”

Pilot-in-training Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries, expert on high-altitude life-forms, are invited aboard the Starclimber, a vessel that literally climbs its way into the cosmos. Before they even set foot aboard the ship, catastrophe strikes:

Kate announces she is engaged—and not to Matt.

Despite this bombshell, Matt and Kate embark on their journey into space, but soon the ship is surrounded by strange and unsettling life-forms, and the crew is forced to combat devastating mechanical failure. For Matt, Kate, and the entire crew of the Starclimber, what began as an exciting race to the stars has now turned into a battle to save their lives.

My Review:

This was a really interesting experience for me. I picked Starclimber up looking for something to keep me company on a 4 hour drive over a weekend, without realizing it’s actually the third in a series. OOPS! I listened to the majority of it before looking on GoodReads and noticed it was actually part of a series I’d been meaning to read anyway. Oh well!

The nice thing is that I really didn’t notice. Sure there were a few references to things I didn’t understand, but that happens in books, so I just passed it off as something they would explain later. The characters were all well introduced and fleshed out, and the storyline grabbed me and drew me in immediately. I liked the tension between Matt and his girlfriend Kate, caused by their difference in social class. And I especially loved the steampunk-ish flair. Who would have thought of a spaceship climbing a cable attached to an orbiting rocket?! Probably it’s impossible, but the story was so well crafted that I believed every second of it.

I also thought that the reading was very well done. I hadn’t listened to a full cast audiobook yet, and I have to say it was a much better experience than some audiobooks I’ve listened to. It was very easy to tell the difference between each of the characters, because they were all voiced by different people. There were a few with difficult-to-understand accents, but after a while I got used to them and was able to follow the story well enough that it didn’t much matter if I missed something.

All in all, I would say that this audiobook made for a very entertaining car trip – I was certainly in a much better mood than I should have been after a bunch of completely stopped traffic on the way there!

This review was originally posted on my blog Creativity’s Corner