Don't Hurt Your Brain! Fun Summer Reads...

So, it's Summer and it's gosh darn hot and perhaps you've been having some minor difficulties focusing on that big thick book about the Boxer Rebellion. Hey, now! Abandon all ye boring books, ye who enter here, Summer is for FUN reading! It's for hanging out by the lake with your friends, quoting ridiculous quips from your beach ready reads, and not thinking too awfully hard. Give your poor brain a break and read something really fun and frivolous for a change.

Found II, by Davy Rothbart

Admit it, you've surrepticiously picked up a folded note addressed to someone else and drooled over the uninvited peek into another person's life. Imagine stumbling upon an entire book full of abandoned love letters, laundry lists, weird pictures, song lyrics from all around the country and from all walks of life. And who would have suspected that such a book could be so funny and heartbreakingly sad at the same time. A great book to read aloud with friends, it's the stark honesty reality programs only wish they could harness.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

So, you wake one morning to discover your home is about to be demolished due to its extreme misfortune of being directly in the path of an ambitious bulldozer paving a new super-highway. What do you do? Well, of course, you pop out to have a pint with your friend--who's actually been, to your astonishment, an undercover alien spy this whole time, waiting, as it were, for his ship to come in. What else is there to do, but stick your thumb out into the air and hitchhike on to bigger and better destinations? Hitchhiker's Guide is so funny and absurd and just brimming with odd English humour. What else do you really need?

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett

They're small. They're blue. And nobody messes with them. Oh, man it's great already. But wait, there's more. Young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching and these minute terrors of the not so high seas (well, what, the wee free men are only six-inches tall) band together to defend they're homeland against the monsters of Fairyland.

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

The Princess Bride has it all: "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles." You'll get so caught up in this wickedly funny and charming story you won't realize that you've sat and read the whole day and are now sporting a nasty sunburn. So, apply sunscreen liberally before heading out to the dock for some light reading.

Who We Are & What We Love

If you missed our After Hours Teen Night, I just know you're slapping your foreheads for shame, for shame! wondering what fabulous books you missed out on! Not to worry, friends. The following is The List of our favorite books for teens. If you like the picks of a particular person, don't hestitate to come up to him/her and ask what else we like. Seriously, it's what we live for.

Jessilyn's Picks:

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Death meets the Book Thief, a 9-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger, when he comes to take her little brother. She is too interesting to ignore, and he tells the story of her childhood.

2. 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

This whirlwind adventure begins as Ginny, 17, receives 13 letters in a box from her sprited, unpredictable Aunt Peg.

3. Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

Mixing nostolgia, baseball and a boy's correspondences with a 1940s baseball star, this inventive but sentimental novel is told through fictional newspaper clippings, telegrams, war dispatches, report cards and other documentary fragments.

4. Fables by Bill Willingham

This elaborate fantasy series begins as a whodunit, but quickly unfurls into a much larger story about fabletown, a place where fairy tale legends live alongside regular New Yorkers.

Matt's Picks

1. Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

The debut novel is set in a feudal Japan on the edge of the imagination.

2. 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello

What would you do if you were given the opportunity and the means to get away with murder scot-free? That's the question posed in 100 Bullets.

3. Crooked Tree by Robert Wilson

Crooked Tree evokes ab old Ottawa Indian Legend as it explores the strange and increasingly violent behavior of some large furry woodland creatures.

4. Y: The Last Man by Brian Vaughan

Yorick is the last man on Earth, and in the resulting chaos, he must find a way to help save the human race.

Leighanne's Picks

1. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Nine-year-old Ender Wiggin's skill make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity.

2. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman

Here, Earth is one of only five planets in the solar system, every human has a daemon (the soul embodied as an animal familiar) and, in a time similar to our late 19th century, Oxford scholars and agents of the supreme Calvanist Church are in a race to unleash the power that will enable them to cross the bridge to a parallel universe.

3. La Linea by Ann Jaramillo

Six years ago, Miguel and Elena's mother and father left Mexico and crossed la linea into California. On the morning of Miguel's 15th birthday, he recieves a note from his father telling him it is time to join them.

4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist presents a simple fable based on simple truths and places it in a highly unique situation.

Bryan Charles: Author Signing July 12th, 1-3 pm

Bryan Charles, the fellow who wrote Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way, will be at McLean&Eakin July 12th from 1-3 pm signing his book.


It's 1992, and as Vim Sweeney deals with the recent end of his high school career and the uncertainty of his future, America shares his angst. In Seattle, Kurt Cobain reeks of teen spirit. In Washington, George Bush (the first one) has just finished rattling his saber at Saddam Hussein. And in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Vim is trying to put off adulthood and all that comes with it, whatever that is, for as long as he can. He's already juggling guitars, girls, and a long-absent biological father who's suddenly making noise about Wanting to Be Involved. And he still can't convince his friends why local schoolboy hero Derek Jeter is bound for obscurity.
Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way traces Vim's stumble toward adulthood as he comes to terms with his parents, balances friendships and infatuation with varying levels of success, and accepts that the things he thought would last forever probably won't. Generous in spirit and laugh-out-loud funny, here is a novel that introduces a tremendous new talent and deftly captures the alternately amusing and harrowing process of holding on until you find your way.



Q: In the acknowledgements, you say that your years in Kalamazoo, MI, helped define you. How much of your own life is reflected in Vim's?


A: Well I can't lie—not that anyone would believe me anyway—but quite a bit of my life is reflected in Vim's—my parents divorced when I was quite young, I was obsessed with tits and music, I played in a band, at some point in my late teens, my biological father, whom I'd never been close to, did decide that that was the perfect time to really start bonding and he started making those bland kind of overtures, saying "now we can be a family." Oh, and he did send a note my first summer out of high school, though in reality much shorter and to the point, saying he'd heard I quit my job and that was very irresponsible of me and I was wasting my time, etc. So the book is certainly autobiographical in the broad sense. At the same time, many of the particulars are invented, perhaps most notably the character of Helene. I mean, I did meet a girl who resembled her physically, under similar circumstances—she had scars on her arms, she was reading Naked Lunch, it was hot—but the rest is made up, her personality, those situations, the band ending in that way. It was more like I was going from feeling there, thinking of all the borderline-obsessive crushes I've had over the years, the hot urgent longing for just that one kiss, if I could just get that one kiss, you know, then I could die happy. And I'm not talking about just my teen years here, this is well into my adulthood, until pretty much now. And that's the thing that may surprise people in terms of the book being autobiographical—surprise people or embarrass me, I can't tell which—but my mindset is still very much like Vim's, that kind of extreme highs and lows, happy and sad acting out kind of thing. When I was writing the book, I was all over the map emotionally. I was dealing with some things and I'd just quit a well-paying job with a lot of comfortable adult perks like health insurance and all that, but my heart wasn't in it—was twenty million miles from it, actually—and I had to take the leap. My mom flew out to New York to try and talk me out of it. "Well, hold on here, don't do anything rash." But I did, and as I was writing, I thought a lot about freedom in the existential sense and I sat in my room asking myself all kinds of questions like "Why am I here?," all this stuff we tend to associate with a kind of teenage solipsism, or like an undergrad on weed. But I was 27, 28, and I put it all in there. So there are definite parallels between Vim's and my early life, but the book is also closer to the way I think and feel now than one might expect. It's probably truer than most memoirs coming out these days.

Jim Lynch and a Happy Hour to Boot!

Tons of folks have been coming in for a copy of The Highest Tide, written by Jim Lynch, for their AP English class at Petoskey High. But did you know that said author is going to be here July 10th for a signing and a shin-dig? Come and meet Mr. Lynch and then you can show off in the Fall and and brag about how you're on a first name basis with a famous author!

Jim Lynch will be at McLean&Eakin July 10th, 6:30 to 8:30.

The event is free, but tickets are required. Call ahead to reserve a seat.

231-347-1180

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