Let’s Booktalk: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Your fate is not your own. Your path is chosen for you. If you diverge, you will be destroyed.

Beatrice Prior is facing the biggest test of her life. What faction does she belong to? She was raised as part of the Abnegation faction, but only her aptitude test will tell her where she belongs. But, what will she do when they are returned inconclusive?

Beatrice possesses qualities from all five factions. She can be selfless, as Abnegation; trustworthy, as Candor; intelligent, as Euridite; compassionate, as Amity; or brave, as Dauntless. To protect herself she must choose her faction, but her choice will only lead her to discover she is divergent.

 

Let’s Booktalk: Bellwether by Connie Willis

Fads and scientific discovery have a lot in common, as with any human accomplishment the come about through means that are “messy, haphazard, misdirected, and heavily influenced by chance.”

Dr. Sandra Foster’s job as a sociologist is studying the origins of fads for the HiTek research cooperation. She wants to know how and why fads begin, enter Flip a mail clerk who delivers a box.

The box was for Dr. Turnball, which takes Sandra to Dr. Bennett O’Reilly. Bennett is studying chaos theory and its trends on behavioral patterns. Only thing is Chaos Theory is not a fad and his funding form was not delivered by Flip at the right time.

Sandra and Bennett will then team up to advance their scientific discoveries of behavior patterns of fads and chaos. What will they find? The point of origin? The bellwether? Maybe, even Love?

Get your nerd on!!! If you enjoyed the book and maybe even the science behind it, check out this website about Collective Behavior--this is the umbrella theory that Sandra's research is based in. Collective Behavior, an introduction.

Let's Booktalk: V for Vendetta, the graphic novel by Alan Moore, David Lloyd (illustrator)

Courtesy of Barnes&Nobel

 "Remember, remember the 5th of November"

Violence, fear, hatred, conformity.

"The gunpowder treason and plot"

A man's vendetta, a young girl's reformation. They will live to overthrow a government that rules through malice, fear, and cruelty.

"I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason, should ever be forgot."

More than a man, more than a mission, more than a vendetta.

Let's Booktalk: Bad Unicorn by Platte F. Clark

Courtesy of Goodreads

Unicorns are beautiful, majestic, graceful, and pure. Princess is anything but that kind of unicorn. Princess, also known as the Destroyer, is a cruel and fearsome unicorn with a carnivorous appetite. Bored with the everyday diet of frobbits and hunting in the land of Magrus. She has enlisted her wizard Magar to help her reach the realm of Techrus where she can feast on human flesh and bones to her heart's delight.

Meanwhile, in Techrus, Max Spencer is trying to survive middle school. Unbeknownst to him he is in possession of a powerful book from Magrus called The Codex of Infinite Knowability. The book is being searched for by the wizards of Magrus, and they will send Princess to Techrus for this book in exchange for an all you can eat buffet of human.

Max along with his friends Dirkster and Sarah will learn there is more to being a teenager than just avoiding bullies and bad grades. They will enter a world where unicorns eat meat, dragons transform into cowboys, and one of them will learn they are the Codex.
lost descendent of the wizard who wrote the

Let's Booktalk: Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Courtesy of Goodreads

Eragon lives in Palancar Valley of Alagaesia. Daily life for Eragon is helping his family to run the farm and haggling with traders for a good price. Yet, fate will intervene when Eragon is given a strange blue stone.

"Suddenly a crack appeared on the stone. Then another and another. Transfixed, Eragon leaned forward...Standing in front of him, licking off the membrane that encased it, was a dragon."

Saphira is a beautiful blue dragon. She and her dragon rider Eragon will grow, learn, and fight together in the coming battle against the evil Galbatorix. Galbatorix is proclaimed king of Alegaesia, and the reason dragon riders and dragons had become all but extinct.

Is the age of the dragon rider returning? Will Eragon and Saphira be able to do what must in order to defeat Galbatorix? All that is known for sure is that Eragon's story is only the beginning of the Inheritance Cycle.

Let's Booktalk: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Courtesy of Amazon.com
Click HERE to read the e-book.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" (Austen 1).

Elizabeth Bennett is the second born daughter in a family of five daughters. In a time where only the eldest male of the family may inherit, her only hope is to marry a man of wealth. However, she will not marry for less than a man of intelligence and love, much to her mother's disapproval.

Enter Mr. Darcy, a rich young man with a stern and solitary disposition of great prejudice. He would separate his best friend Mr. Bingley from Jane Bennett, Elizabeth's sister, as well as propose marriage to Elizabeth in spite of her inferior birth. Things do not bode well for him in love, unless Elizabeth can somehow swallow her pride and he his prejudice.

"It was necessary to laugh when she would rather have cried...most cruelly mortified...by...Mr. Darcy's indifference...perhaps, instead of his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much" (338).

Let's Booktalk: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Courtesy of Goodreads

Would you give legal advice for only a payment of potatoes? Would defend a man in a town where the color of your skin determined you guilt? Would you stand up against an angry mob whose only intention was to kill? Would you allow a man who committed murder in defense of children to go free?

Atticus Finch would do all this and more as his daughter Scout narrates her story of life as a child in Maycomb, Alabama during the depression era. Scout's story of her adventures with brother Jim will show the world through a child's eyes. She will witness events that would show her a world divided by racism and money, and how doing the right thing, is not always legal, as well as how the law turns a blind eye on doing the wrong thing. Her story of only one year from her childhood will show how Scout will influence and be influenced by the people and the events surrounding her father and his pursuit for justice and raising his children to do the right thing even as you stand alone.

Let's Booktalk: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Courtesy of Amazon.com
Click  HERE to read the e-book.

Evil has a name, Edward Hyde.

Victorian London in the 19th century was a place of excitement and division. One did not associate with those outside of your social group. You most certainly would not leave your fortune and estate to one as nefarious and indescribably horrid as Mr. Edward Hyde.

Yet, this is exactly as the respected and good natured Dr. Henry Jekyll has done. Worrying his closest friends, who have to stand by as he struggles through an unknown trouble. They are only left with more questions than answers. Who is Edward Hyde? And what strange hold does he have over Dr. Jekyll?

"I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde" (Stevenson 83).