Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

I love love love John Green; I am so grateful to JBean for telling me to read, The Fault in Our Stars , which has now become the book I tell EVERYONE to read. Everyone. My sister. My Mom. My favorite aunt. My best friends. Folks at the Library. Prairie Dawn. Before Prairie Dawn had even read it I made her put it on the fall lineup for our Teen Book Group. (More on that soon!) I love that John Green writes real teenage characters, tangible to real teens. These characters are coming into their own and trying to understand the world, sometimes poetically, other times emotionally stumbling through it like a weaving drunk. Green's characters are sometimes sweet and funny, sometimes self loathing or self deprecating, sometimes funny as hell, other times over the top dramatic, sometimes raw as hell, but always BELIEVABLE! I love that John Green celebrates nerds, and being honest, and wearing your heart on your sleeve, and has the most quotable lines and lovely sentiments. And ...

Just finished Kenneth Oppel's This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein #1 yesterday. Loved it. Though Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are twins, they couldn't be more different. After Konrad grows gravely ill with a mysterious sickness Victor, cousin Elizabeth, and Victor's best friend Henry set out in search of a cure. After stumbling upon a "dark library," (rife with books on the study of Alchemy, an outlawed subject), Victor discovers a recipe for "The Elixir of Life," and against the specific command of Victor and Konrad's father, the trio seeks for an infamous alchemist to help them. In their quest for the ingredients, Victor, Elizabeth, and Henry experience close calls and some nail biting moments--I already am a terrible nail biter, but somehow managed to gnaw my nails into smaller stumps during a certain scene. I must have looked nuts as I sat at a stop sign, pounding the steering wheel and screaming, "RUUUUUNNN!...