Customer Comments

Secret Society Girl is a chick book with a vocabulary.

A story told in obituaries, newspaper clips, and anecdotes. Heather Lende's stories of life in a small town in Alaska make clear how a person's attitude toward death affects their life, and how death can affect the lives that we lead. They are stories to laugh and cry through as we get to know the residents of this town as well as Heather does herself. She gives a brief glimpse into the interactions of the native culture of Alaska and the modern world with all of its different views and cultures meeting in one tiny place in Alaska. All of these people, their experiences and attitudes, come together to shape one tiny world they all live in. It's a book not only about how each one of us can live but how that we can all live together.

This book touches on so many emotional life changes. I have seen the words culture clashes to describe it, but it refers not only to the clash of cultures between Americans and those recently arrived, but also to the culture differences between the generations. I loved how the Anne Tyler takes us into the feelings and motivations of each character and then how those same characters are percieved by others. Unfortunately we all tend to react based on our perceptions of others, and not who they truly are.

People become who they are not only because of the decisions they make, but also the decisions that others make. Kim Edwards creates a family drama where we see one decision made by one man lead to a complete change in existence for him, and all of those near him. She writes of these characters lives in a personal way and we see into each one's heart over a period of 25 years and all of the emotional changes they go through. And 25 years later, no one is who they were at the beginning, or who they would have become if one baby had not been rejected by its father and hiddens from its mother.

Marley is a member of the Grogan family from the very beginning. He is a part of John and Jenny learning about each other, love, marriage, commitment, parenting, arguing, forgiveness, grief, fear and that it is okay to grow up and then grow old. He may chew up the furniture, but he is there for it all, and through John's stories we learn Marley's lessons and more: to love Marley as one of the Grogans.

The Book Thief is an absolutely amazing piece of literature. The author's use of words in wildy unusual ways makes us feel the scenes rather than see them. We smell the sounds of footsteps, see a sky made of boiling soup, watch words drop from character's mouths to lay on the floor, and we feel exactly what he means. The narrater death uses all sorts of methods to tell the story of the book thief, Liesel Meminger and along with it all of the people in her life. He quotes from a dictionary, uses exerpts from Liesel's own book and from the books that the hidden Jew in the basement writes, tells us what he himself sees, and gives his very unique point of view. An excellent book to read aloud as it will inspire lots of discussion on anything from grammar to philosophy.

We are drawn into the lives of two brothers, , as different as a hammer and calliopy, whose decisions when they are young affect so many people for so many years in the small town of Struan. These characters reach out with a power that affects the reader's life just as much as they affect each other across time, place, imagination and reality.