{read: World Book Night 2013} What's your favorite?

World Book Night announced its 2013 selections!

The selection seems more diverse than last year. It includes titles translated into Spanish, young adult books, memoirs, classics, and fiction. My favorite of those I've read on this list is City of Thieves by David Benioff.

What's your favorite?

You can sign up to give away books on April 23. Just go to http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/how-do-i-get-involved/apply-giver-us to get the application and guidelines.

Also, a small disclaimer: {th}ink's book reviews are on hold until December, thanks to National Novel Writing Month. Need a book fix before then? Follow @think_books on Twitter.

{crafts} Etsy Treasury List

Are you familiar with Etsy? I have created a treasury list titled First Snow. Have a look, and if you are getting your first snow, I hope you are enjoying it!

{read: end of the world} The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

I'm usually not one for post-apocalyptic novels, so I previewed the beginning of The Dog Stars first before putting it on my TBR. The language on the first page drew me in, and I was hooked.

This story of Hig (Big Hig, if you want two names), his dog (Jasper), and his neighbor (Bangley). Hig and Bangley survived the flu that killed Hig's wife and most of the rest of the country, and they live at a small, deserted airport. Hig owns a Cessna and he and his dog, Jasper, make reconnaissance runs. During one of these runs, he hears a radio transmission and wonders if there is someone else out there. The trouble is that if this transmission is real, the person is outside the point of no return, or the distance that Hig can travel and have enough fuel to return. Yet one day he decides to take the chance, knowing he may never come back.

The language is beautiful, the story is compelling, and Hig is a character that you'll root for from the first page. This is one of my favorite books of 2012.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Knopf, 2012)
My rating: 5 stars

{read: the end of the world as we know it} The Age of Miracles

This story about the end of the world is more of a coming-of-age story that happens to be set in a time when the days on Earth are slowly getting longer, causing all sorts of other changes: There's not enough sunlight for the crops, the nights are so long that they get frigid, the tides roll in over the beachfront homes, the magnetic field of the Earth is changed, and the atmosphere lets the sun's radiation in.

I liked the contrast of the narrator growing up and encountering the normal adolescent challenges like falling in love at the same time that the earth is dying. In the post-apocalyptic category, this definitely trumps The Leftovers.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House, 2012)
My rating: 3 stars

{read: coming of age, finally} The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino

I enjoyed this story of Calvin Moretti, a 20-something guy with a college degree, tons of student debt, and no real plan for his life now that he's dropped out of graduate school. He's living at home, trying to figure out what to do with his life.

Yet aside from his own personal struggle, his family is faced with a series of challenges and he has to decide whether to step up and help them or opt out and save himself. Will the small amount of money he's saved up make a difference in the end? Is it important to make the gesture anyway? Will he be stuck forever at home? Should he try to make it on his own? Can he stand living at home for one more minute? He wrestles with all of these questions and more as events unfold around him.

I was afraid this would end up being whiny, but the narrator's voice ended up being mostly engaging and sometimes funny. The conversations and arguments around the dinner table and the description of some of the scenes with the mother and grandmother are hilarious. This is a great read that made me laugh out loud. Yet if the first line, "I work with retards," offends you, it's probably not for you. I was immediately drawn in.

The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012)
My rating: 3 stars

{wordless wednesday} Old trains

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

{read: historical fiction} The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

This was another book on my fall TBR list, and I was eager to read it after hearing Chris speak about it on his book tour this summer. Pieces of it are autobiographical (he is Laura's brother) but the story itself, which revolves around the Armenian genocide that the Turks committed in WWI, is fictional. (It's not his grandparents' story that he's telling.) The genocide, however, is true, and it's amazing that we as a society have erased this from our collective conscience while we remember the Holocaust. The details of the genocide in the book are horrifying, but the storyline kept me turning the pages.

Some of the suspense was lost, however, because of the way the story was told. The reader knows from the beginning that Armen and Elizabeth both survive and get married, so the story is more about how they manage it. I thought the story would had more suspense if I hadn't known that, but it would have changed the entire structure of the plot, which is Laura (the granddaughter) investigating her grandparents' history. The book also felt a little stilted to me, pushing me away. Laura's sections are told in first person, but the sections about Armen and Elizabeth are in third person. Also, truth be told, I didn't find Laura to be that interesting as a character.

I think this is an important book to read because we should learn about the Armenian genocide and, for me, fiction is a more pleasant way to learn history than reading nonfiction. However, as a story, this was only average for me and didn't measure up to his previous work.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian (Doubleday, 2012)
My rating:  3 stars