Customer Comments

**WARNING: Spoilers throughout the following text** ?Forgotten Fire? is a fitting title for this novel. I mean, how many times do you hear about the Armenian genocide in comparison to its Jewish counterpart? Not many know that, much like the Jewish race, the Armenians were persecuted for their ?inferiority? and dubbed unfit by the Turks. Now, the term ?Forgotten Fire? comes from a saying Vahan Kenderian?s (the main character) father told him before he was whisked away by the Turkish government. He told him: ?Steel is made stronger by fire.? In this scenario, the Armenians are the steel and the fire is the horrible, violent, destructive genocide brought upon them. Therefore, the title ?Forgotten Fire? simply means the forgotten struggle of the Armenian race. And from Vahan?s vivid account (which was based on the author?s grandfather?s actual retelling of the genocide), one can see what kinds of ?fire? the Armenians had to withstand. Throughout the novel, Vahan is forced to watch as his father is taken away by Turkish authorities, as his eldest brothers are shot to death in their backyard, as his sister commits suicide by drinking a vile of poison, and as his grandmother is killed by a rock-wielding Turkish official. At that point, it is just him, his brother Sisak, his mother, and his sister Oskina. He and Sisak are forced to leave Oskina and their mother, and just when Vahan believes they are safe, he and Sisak are separated and he later finds him near death on the street. Finding an abandoned home for shelter, he tries to nurse him back to health, but to no avail. All alone in the midst of a large-scale murder, Vahan goes from place to place: Begging on the streets, being a stable boy for Selim Bey, one of the most feared Turks of the time, living with a kind Armenian doctor and falling in love, running away from the doctor?s house after Seta (with whom he was in love with) dies, boarding a ship to Constantinople, where he would be free, and entering St. Gregory?s Orphanage. Overall, I believe this story is worth a five-star rating. Maybe someday the Armenian genocide will be taught in schools so that their will be no need to call it ?Forgotten Fire.?

To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to reading this. We had been doing an extremely long unit on the Holocaust, and reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" was our final assignment. I had heard enough about Anne Frank to last me good into my Senior year (I was in 8th grade). But when I began reading it, my opinion changed dramatically. I felt like I was Anne, going through her relationship woes and growing pains. And I was reduced to tears by the end; an inconsolable wreck. What can I say, I was a teenage girl. But even if you're not a teenager, you'll still find this book to be extremely sad -- I'm sure of it. And I bet you'll love this book as much as I did... maybe even more! It is a classic that I think all people should read, not only to learn about the Holocaust, but also to learn about the human mind and how even in the midst of disaster, a postive outlook can change everything.

"The Bomb" is the fictitious tale of the trials a teenager named Sorry Rinamu faces when his home is threatened to be taken away. The year is 1944, and America has created a new weapon -- the Atomic Bomb. Sorry and his fellow villagers on the Bikini Atoll are promised wonderful rewards for letting the military test their new bomb on the Atoll, but Sorry doubts his home will be the same after the bomb is dropped. In a bold and indescisive instant, he and two other villagers decide to stop the test -- the day it happens. I can't tell you how it ends, but I will tell you that the last few pages will take you on a ride from the highest high to the lowest low. Brace yourself for the ultimate twist! I highly recommend this book to teens in middle school and high school alike. The plot is incredible, and I'm sure you'll be turning pages for hours!

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The title says it all: "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." I can remember many times when one person has done one thing that was "new" or "different" and it spread like wildfire. This book really helps explain why and how this happens. I highly recommend it!

Totally unpredictable: That's all I can say about this one. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good suspense novel, because "Locked in Time" is just that!

A really great read, but a little too predictable. Although I highly recommend this book, it would not be surprising if you figured out the ending within the first few chapters, as I did. Still, check it out. Young adults everywhere will love it!

"Jeannette Walls's father always called her 'Mountain Goat' and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls' childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover." --Brangien Davis, Amazon.com Love the book... I highly recommend it!

[Quoted form Amazon.com] "Sex and drugs and shlock and more--Jacqueline Susann's addictively entertaining trash classic about three showbiz girls clawing their way to the top and hitting bottom in New York City has it all. Though it's inspired by Susann's experience as a mid-century Broadway starlet who came heartbreakingly close to making it, but did not, and despite its reputation as THE roman ? clef of the go-go 1960s, the novel turned out to be weirdly predictive of 1990s post-punk, post-feminist, post "riot grrrl" culture. Jackie Susann may not be a writer for the ages, but--alas!--she's still a writer for our times." Man, do I love this book! I highly recommend it to teenagers and adults as well.

"There is no clinical, sociological, or mythic seriousness about Lolita, but it flames with a tremendous perversity of an unexpected kind." - John Hollander, Partisan Review "And now, 50 years later, it?s hard not to see Lolita as a marker for the end of the world (including the larger way in which education has been abandoned) and the shattering of complex artifacts of civilization like the novel. I?ve found no novel in the years since 1955 with so many mixed feelings, or such a natural grasp of a strange, special story and its universal meanings. This is a book in which the caress of words breaks adoringly on the skin-bright beach of the new land, refreshing it briefly but not disturbing its snooze. And so it becomes language?s last gasping tribute to silence or the loss of words." - David Thomson, The New York Observer The only novel I've read that is effectively serious and funny at the same time. Great read - I recommend it!

Very easy to relate to; a novel you won't soon forget! I recommend this book to young adults everywhere. It's worth your time!

[Quoted from www.grouchy.com] "This is the best story ever written about teenage love, and it just happens to be about two young women. Very cool! Nancy Garden has written other books -- including some mysteries and another more serious novel with a lesbian protagonist called Lark in the Morning, but... this one is still her best." It really is a great book; a very gritty and realistic story about a topic not often told. I recommend it for all young adults.