The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

When Hunger Games first came out, my husband gave a copy to our then 15-year-old son, adding'Apparently its good.' Our son, a reluctant and fussy reader finished it in one weekend! Since then, he's been an avid reader.

From then on, whenever I have a parent looking for a teenage book (especially boys), I press a copy of The Hunger Games into their hands and I'm yet to have someone come back unhappy. I too had marked it to read, but till recently, another book always managed to grab my attention away. I finally got around to reading it prior to the movie opening. And just like my son, I was instantly hooked till the nail biting finale.

North America is the nation of Panem, a country with 12 fenced-in districts that all work to feed the enormously wealthy and technologically advanced capital. Its a dystopian world. A dictatorship. Every year to remind the residents of its power, the capital hosts the Hunger Games, a bloodthirsty reality TV show. Twenty four contestants -One boy and one girl from each district - are chosen to battle against one another. The last contestant will return to their district

Our heroine, Katniss lives in district 12 - the mining district. Her circumstances have forced her to be resourceful and tough. She's a pragmatist. A survivor. A skill that comes in handy when facing her opponents.

Collins has written an action-packed narrative, guaranteed to thrill. Aside from the obvious page-turning plotline, Collins challenges the the reader with deeper issues of society's growing indifference towards suffering, and the foundations by which our core values are based.


My rating: 4 out of 5

Your Bookshop event at Centro Bankstown

The Perfect Flower Girl Book Launch.

Your Bookshop Bankstown and author Taghred Chandab would like to invite you to the launch of 'The Perfect Flower Girl'

To help celebrate the event we will have Henna artists, balloons and competitions. There will be prizes for the best colouring in and the kid with the best costume. Listen to Taghred read extracts from her book or purchase your very own signed copies.

Location: Your Bookshop - Ground floor Centro Bankstown
       Date: Saturday, 23rd of June
       Time: 11am              
Register your attendance on our FB page or at YB-Bankstown 02-9793 7701

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield

The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield

A richly tailored tale filled with mystery, feral midland traditions and gothic prevarsities. Its a tale of love and vengence, murder and intrigue, cruelty and conventions.

Vida Winter is the most popular author of her day. She is also a recluse, hiding herself at her Yorkshire estate. When interviewed by journalists on her life, she invariably recites outlandish life histories, altering them at whim. Now old and ailing, she finally wants to share the truth of her extrodinary life.

Margaret Lea has a fascination for the biographies of the long-dead. A curiosity that has led her to write them herself. Working in her father's antiquarian bookshop, she receives a letter from Vida with the invitation to write her biography. There, she learns of the Agelfield family and their dark secrets. The cruel-hearted Charlie and his insestuous obsession with his vivatious sister, Isabelle. It is also the story of her unruly and feral twin daughters.

At times squirmish and uncomfortable, The Thirteenth Tale is a dazzling literary masterpiece. The twist at the end is particularly gratifying.

New kids window display

Check out or new Childrens Fiction display! We've got a tonne of new titles in store, including Carole Wilkinson's new Dragon Keeper novel "Blood Brothers", Garth Nix's "A Confusion of Princes" and Michael Grant's "Fear".
If you like what you see, visit our Facebook page and press 'LIKE' on the link.

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

Still Alice

Lisa Genova

Simon & Schuster

At fifty, Alice is a respected cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a renowned expert in linguistics. Together with her husband, also a Harvard professor, they lead an idealistic life. They have three well-balanced children who look to be following their parents in becoming successful in their chosen fields.

This idealistic world starts to crumple when Alice begins to forget things. At first they are minor - a word just at the tip of her tongue. Nothing to worry about. But soon other more worrying signs start to emerge. She forgets the topic she is to lecture, misses an interstate conference she is to attend, and gets disorientated jogging a route she regularly takes in her neighbourhood. Although she knows there is something wrong, Alice's life and sense of herself is thrown into a spin when she learns she's suffering from Alzheimer's.

Through Alice's eyes, we see how the event takes a toll on each member of the family. Her husband, John struggles the most to accept her diagnosis. At times selfish and insensitive, he almost seems to be in denial of his wife's needs as he continues to make career plans that are clearly detrimental to Alice's condition.

It takes a lot of effort for anyone over the age of -say 30- to not become paranoid after reading this book. At one point I was convinced I may have early onset of the disease. The paranoia did not settle the further I travelled into the book.

Using a professor with a brilliant career as her protagonist, Genova has added extra poignancy to the narrative. The passages in the doctor's surgery are repeated to ad nauseam. Genova overestimates the reader's interest in wanting to learn to such detail about the treatments and the various trials or medication. What is interesting however, is the changes taking over Alice. The questions she sets herself daily and the deterioration in her answers as the disease takes hold, is a brilliant demonstration of the disease's devastating effects.

In the end, even as Alice forgets names and relationship of those around her, at her core, she remains the same. She is Still Alice.

And that my friend, is a good lesson for us all. 3 stars

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

Fingersmith
Sarah Waters
Virago
'My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called me Sue. I know the year I was born in, but for many years I did not know the date, and took my birthday at Christmas. I believe I am an orphan. My mother I know is dead. But I never saw her, she was nothing to me. I was Mrs Sucksby's child, if I was anyone's'

Susan Trinder, 17, grew up in the slumps of London. An orphan, she is raised by petty thieves and pickpockets. Her life takes a sudden turn when Richard Rivers, a trickster, comes up with a plan to make them all rich.

Maud Lilley also 17, is an heiress kept in seclusion by her uncle in a large house outside of London. Set to inherit a large fortune upon marriage, she is easy prey for the likes of Rivers - who plans to marry, then commit her to a mental asylum. Sarah is to abet Rivers in his plan by installing herself as Maud's maid and chaperon to help win her over.

Simple.

A tale of betrayal and treachery, where nothing is ever as simple as it appear and no one is to be trusted. Dastardly gentlemen, unscrupulous villains, vulnerable girls in peril, and transgressive heroines, Fingersmith does not dissapoint on any level.

A thoroughly enjoyable read. 4 stars