Skip to main content

Staff Picks Spotlight - James M.

James


Eragon by Christopher Paolini

A great fantasy book for all ages. The story is written well and shares the life of a young farm boy who is cast into a world of magic and dragons without much say in it. Losing his family and loved ones while fighting off evil forces with his blade. The choices the main character has to make also makes the reader question what would be the best option, and how it’ll affect the story.



My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi 

A heart warming yet intense story of superheros and a sense of rags to riches is within this Japanese comic. The story of a young boy born without powers in a world where everyone is super, makes him lesser for being different. The story  is based off of him wishing to be a great hero. Eventually gaining the abilities to achieve his dream he embarks on a journey of entering a super school to learn how to become the best hero he can be.



Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli 

The story is about a young man dealing with his sexuality and the issues of hiding it from the world. A good story for those of the LGBT community, that faces real life struggles people go through. there are breaks in between the story  where it involves the main character and his email exchange with his penpal discussing topics and romance. It’s an interesting format of writing and engaging the reader throughout the story.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fault Lines by Nancy Huston

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, Fault Lines takes an interesting narrative approach and follows four generations of a family counter-chronologically. Family secrets start to unravel as each generation's character is revealed. We first meet 6 year old Sol, a coddled spoiled brat of a character, as he and his family are on a trip to Germany to revisit a long-lost relative. Huston then introduces the reader to the other generations; his father Randall, grandmother Sadie, and great grandmother Erra. As each character's story unfolds, you can see how each narrative weaves into one. The last section, which centers on Erra, is the most eye-opening one and is the final piece of the novel's puzzle. I don't want to say much more because it'd be giving too much away, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty intense (and sad) read.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

A short but very moving tale about a man who uncovers the awful truth about a former lover. Michael is 15 when he first meets Hanna, who is 36. Despite the creepy age difference, the two become lovers, though Michael is far more captivated by the mysterious and distant Hanna than she is to him. Their affair is all too brief and one day, Hanna just disappears. Years later, Michael unintentionally sees Hanna as the defendant when he is observing a court case for law school. As Michael slowly learns about Hanna's horrible past, he must struggle to accept the question - if he loves (or loved) a monster, what does that make him? There is redemption in the end, but it's very bittersweet. And of course, they made a movie out of this one. If the weather is decent, perhaps I'll go see it this weekend - Kate Winslet is supposed to be fabulous.

"A Banquet of Consequences" by Elizabeth George

      Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story.       One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...