Princess on the Brink (The Princess Diaries, Volume VIII) by Meg Cabot

Oh Mia. Mia, Mia, Mia. You are always getting yourself into the worst situations!

She's baaa-ack. Yup, Mia Thermopolis is back in the latest entry in the Meg Cabot's popular and well-written Princess Diaries series. All of Mia's diary entries from less than a week are crammed into this title, which probably makes you ask, what does Mia have so much to write about? Well, my friend, Michael (Mia's beloved college boyfriend of the several books now, not to mention her best friend Lilly's brother) is moving to Japan. FOR A YEAR!!!! Yikes. This revelation has Mia thinking seriously about her game plan, and leads her to think that maybe she could give him Her Precious Gift (!!! she had been waiting until prom to do this). How is this one going to backfire? You know you've got to read Princess on the Brink to find out!

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, by Charles J. Shields

As you may know from spending any amount of time on Facebook.com, To Kill A Mockingbird comes up again and again as a favorite book. One of the most-assigned books in high school, and the best-selling novel of the twentieth century, To Kill A Mockingbird has reached heights of fame never anticipated by its author, Harper Lee. Mockingbird, Shields' biography of Harper Lee, whose real first name is Nelle (a backwards spelling of a relative's name, Ellen), explores the woman behind the book as well as the forces that influenced her writing - in particular, her father A.C. Lee, on whom Atticus Finch is based. Raised as the daughter of a prominent lawyer in small-town Alabama, Lee dropped out of law school and moved to New York City to attempt a career in writing. It was there that, with the encouragement and financial backing of two friends, she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird. At this point in her life, Nelle is somewhat of a recluse, refusing to grant interviews and appearances to pretty much everyone. As a result, the sources Shields uses are the people around her and the print material he found researching at libraries across the country. Still, I finished the book with a strong sense of who Nelle really is - how spunky she was as a child and young adult, how close she once was to another famous writer and neighbor in Alabama, Truman Capote, and how baffled she was with the success that came from her first and only novel. If you're curious about the woman who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird or about the writing process of a successful writer (I sure was), I highly recommend this book.

Cathy's Book

There's a new book in the Teens Only! section at the Homewood Public Library, as of a few days ago, and it's unlike any other book you can check out right now. This book, Cathy's Book - is really Cathy's journal, and it comes with over a dozen clues - in the form of notes, tickets, and photos. Cathy was dumped by her boyfriend Vincent, and while that was pretty awful, what's been going on since is even worse. More than that, she's starting to think Vincent isn't quite who he said he was. Things aren't quite adding up, so to speak. Cathy's Book entices you to examine her diary and myriad clues as you read. This exciting new book, recommended for fans of Donnie Darko and Lost (wow, I guess that means me), is much more than a book. Come check it out, literally!

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

So much can happen in one night. This is certainly true for Nick and Norah, the narrators of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. After Nick's band takes the stage as an opener, he runs into the one girl he doesn't want to see at the show - his ex, Tris. To show her he's over her (he's not), he asks the girl standing next to him if she'll pretend she's his girlfriend. She goes along with it - he's cute, she's getting over someone, why not? - but then she realizes his ex is someone she knows too. And as the night goes on, and on, Norah can't decide how much she likes Nick, if he's really over Tris enough to be with her, or if she's over her ex. Nick is similarly confused over what's so quickly transpiring, and what he wants. We also see how Nick and Norah are perceived by each other, when they are not narrating. Rachel Cohn wrote the Norah chapters, while David Levithan wrote Nick's. The two of them drag you into the noisy, sometimes vulgar music scene, where your life can kind of change in a night, if you let down your guard, and allow it. A must read for scenesters and music lovers.

For all you audiophiles

Do you like to listen to audiobooks, on your iPod or in the car or just hanging around the house? Well, there's this pretty neat site that has book reviews of audiobooks that are podcasts, so you can hear clips of the the audiobook (find out if you dig the reader's voice, or maybe find it annoying) and get a better sense of what the book is about. Check it out; it's called Audiopolis.

A Great and Terrible Beauty

How I Live Now