Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

“Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things…” (taken from the Goodreads summary ) ***       American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett follows the story of former policewoman Mona Bright, as she tracks down information regarding her deceased mother and finds herself in the small town of Wink, New Mexico. Suddenly the benefactor of her mother’s old house, Mona decides to temporarily reside in the town of Wink while she decides what to do with the house. The town is strange, mysterious, and dangerous as a whole, and even stranger as individual residents are introduced. The undoubtedly human residents seem quite content to make arrangements and conditions for strange unseen forces while never ever venturing out of their houses after dark; staple community members are unquestio...

  *** The Bone Clocks is the latest novel from David Mitchell, the author who brought the world Cloud Atlas. Set up as a series of six 100 page novella sections, The Bone Clocks follows the life of a teenage runaway named Holly Sykes from her adolescence to her old age; while at the same time following the story of an ancient secret organisation twisting the laws of nature, science, and morality in order to perpetuate the ideals and hunger for eternal youth. *** A foray into the realm of realistic fantasy, this latest novel by Mitchell explores the idea of conscious reincarnation and randomly chosen rebirth--what happens when a select portion of the  population is born with a genetic predisposition to be able to transfer their consciousness from the body they currently occupy to either the body of a currently alive individual (temporary, and usually with the consent of the person) or an individual who has just died (permanent, and with the understanding that the...

Maybe because it's winter and that's a naturally dreary time of a year, but I enjoy a good dystopic novel every once in awhile. The Unit filled that hole quite nicely. Set in the near future, Dorrit, a 50 year old woman with no family or children, enters the Second Reserve Bank Unit. The unit is a government established program for elderly "dispensibles," or those without families, to donate their vital organs and participate in clinical trials and pharmaceutical experiments. Though it's a terrifying place, the unit is set up to be quite comfortable to its residents - plenty of free food, accessible health care, expensive clothing and spacious apartments. When Dorrit falls in love with another resident, she begins to question the whole notion of the Unit...and that's when things start to get a little bleak. There are bright spots throughout the novel, but overall, as the genre dictates, the book is kind of depressing.

This book serves as a companion piece to Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake , in which the world has changed irrevocably due to political and biotechnological uprisings. In this book, a horrific pandemic plague has killed off virtually everyone, leaving Toby and Ren alone in their hideouts (a luxury spa and a sex club respectively). Atwood spends a lot of time describing the womens' pasts- they were both members of an agrarian compound group/cult called God's Gardeners, and there is a fair amount of sociological, Biblical and cultural commentary. This is Atwood's third novel that deals with dystopic societies - as usual, she delivers a critical and thoughtful book.

Set in any city at any time, Blindness is a story about what happens when everyone loses their vision together. Well, everyone but one brave and courageous woman. As the government struggles to deal with this massive impairment, all hell breaks loose - think Lord of the Flies meets The Road . Through all of this nightmare, the woman (none of the characters have names because what good is a name when you can't see the individual?) must bear the brunt of watching society decay into something far worse than anyone imagined. The one time in my life where I didn't follow my cardinal rule ( always read the book BEFORE you see the movie ) and man, did that screw me up! This book is an extremely dark allegory for all the awful things that mankind is capable of. While you're reading the book, all of this washes over you and hits home. The film was far too literal for my taste and mildly exploitative. There are many graphic scenes of violence, rape and death that work better in th...

Set in the not-so-distant future where the government runs everything, a group of 24 teenagers from 12 different "Districts" (some as young as 12) are picked to participate to the death in the annual "Hunger Games." Told from the perspective of Katniss Everdeen, a teen who volunteers to participate to save her sister, this is a brutal but compelling tale. Who will win and at what cost? I know some people may think this book is a total rip off of the Japanese work Battle Royale , and while the two do share a lot of similarities, I'd say there are enough differences to merit reading Collins' work. What's nice too is that Hunger Games is Book 1 of the series, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. At any rate, if you liked reading this, you might want to also check out the old Stephen King (Richard Bachman) novel The Running Man , which is set in the future and shares the same kind of "survive while the government tries to kill you...

As a rule, I have a tendency to love dystopian novels - 1984 , Brave New World , Children of Men , and so on. Daughters of the North is another work that slides quite nicely into that genre, albeit with a considerably feminist agenda. Cumbria (read: England) has deteriorated into a colony filled with disease and anarchy. Women are fitted with metal coils to keep from reproducing and there is no sense of personal freedom. The protagonist, Sister, escapes from her home and sets out to join Carhullan, an all female commune located far outside city limits. Once there, she becomes indoctrinated into the organization, only to find that its agenda has changed to more terrorist matters. Overall, a good read, though the ending occurs rather abruptly. As a heroine, Sister is kind of annoying, simply because she rambles on a lot over things that probably could be stated in a few words. Oh well.