Railsea by China Mieville

I am comfortable admitting that I haven't read Moby Dick (there are too many great books out there to be embarrassed over missing a few). And I'm glad I didn't know Railsea is something of a re-do of Moby Dick before I started because I probably wouldn't have picked it up. I would have missed a great book.
This story takes place far into the future when the oceans are gone and the seabeds are lined with railroad tracks. Hunters make their livelihoods by riding trains in search of giant moles that live below the surface of the soil. Yes, there is a mammoth white mole that eludes the captain of the train our hero, Sham ap Soorap, rides, but this is Sham's story, not the captain's. Sham embarks on adventure to solve some of the greatest mysteries of the railsea - where do the tracks end? who made them? what are the great machines (called angels) that tend to them? and what does the obsessive pursuit of one white mole do to a person's soul?
I love Mieville's writing and the strange (sometimes very, very strange) worlds that he creates. I highly recommend this book (appropriate for roughly 13 and up due to complicated language and some violence). At the end of reading this I had two requests to make of the media universe: please, China, write a sequel and please, please Miyazaki make this into a movie.

My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

In a deep forest, in some vague agrarian time period of horse carts and superstition, Peter and his father, Tomas, are woodcutters in a new town. Their simple lives are interrupted both by a series of strange deaths and by a group of gypsies who know something about Tomas’ past.
This slim novel, aimed at Young Adults, is the best vampire book I've read. It’s completely different from those other teen vampire books that are really more about identity, romance, and belonging. This feels like a folk tale that might have been passed around small communities in Central Europe. Based on research and imagination it feels almost like a companion to The Historian. It gave me goose bumps.

Hunger by Michael Grant

Michael Grant is back with the next installment in the Gone series. It is equally violent, but darker and (thanks to fewer talking coyotes) even better than the first. The title tells you what is occupying the minds of the kids left in San Perdido. They're starving. It's not just that they don't have adults around to go to the grocery store; they're cut off from the means of distribution that we are all so used. The kids may be savvy enough to think of alternative options, but let's just say that the other strangeness (it has a name, but I don't want to give too much away) of the FAYZ makes those options not so easy.
There's more than just hunger going on in this book, though. The politics of the FAYZ aren't quite working out. It's an interesting lesson these kids need to learn. I think the teens I know (mostly customers here at the store) would have figured out how to make this work before the characters in the book, but where would the fun be in peaceful conversation?

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

(Any reviews on this blog from before summer of 2012 are reposts from when I worked at Queen Anne Books. I've back-dated them to when they ran in the in-store flyer. I had a good laugh when I found my review of Twilight from February of 2007. I considered not reposting it because of  what a thing it became, but (obviously) I changed my mind. I never really got into the later books in the series and I haven't seen the movies, but I stand by my enthusiasm for the first book.)

This book is the definition of a guilty pleasure. It is a Teen-Vampire-Romance. It doesn’t try to be much more than that. The writing isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. It is not what I normally read. Teens have known about this book for over a year, but it wasn’t until an adult customer came in gushing about it that I considered picking it up. I read it in 2 days, my breath catching in my throat at times, constantly thinking of the first time I saw Sixteen Candles or Valley Girl, and the first time I thought I might actually just die if I didn’t go out with Him. I’m renaming this book Pretty in Black.

The main character is, of course, very cool and pretty but not one of the in-crowd. She has just moved to Forks, WA from Phoenix and she hates it. The other main character is the Vampire, the bad boy (who wants to be good), the tortured soul, the brooding musician, the most beautiful boy in school. Oh, he works on so many levels. And they are destined to fall hopelessly, painfully, endlessly in love. His being a Vampire is no match for their destiny together.

It’s safe to guess that very few men will like this book. It’s also safe to guess that most women (who are craving that perfect guilty/light read/beach read/romance) will like it. If you think too hard about this book, it won’t work. It’s not about thinking. It’s about that flood of emotion, that tingle from your toes to your scalp, that sick but pleasant twist in the stomach, that happens when He walks in the room. It’s best to get a copy now, dedicate a good part of the weekend to it, and then try – just attempt – to hold off buying the 2nd book in hardcover.
Yes, a movie is in the works.