Six of the best YA books featuring furry (or scaly) companions

At the BN Teen blog Samantha Randolph tagged six incredible animal friends in YA fiction. One entry on the list:

Even the Darkest Stars, by Heather Fawcett

In Heather Fawcett’s Even the Darkest Stars, Kamzin longs to explore the world outside her small village. When a chance arises to accompany River Shara, a famous explorer, to climb the tallest mountain, Raksha, she seizes it. Alongside her is her familiar, a spunky and adorable fox. What I love most about Fawcett’s depiction of their relationship is the way Kamzin’s familiar refuses to leave her side and how Kamzin protects him. Though Kamzin is on a very dangerous journey filled with witches, snowy mountain ranges, and deception, her familiar stays by her side, even when she tells him not to. If anyone has had a beloved pet before, you know how loyal they can be and how much you’ll fight to make sure they stay safe and happy.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Kernick's 6 best books

Simon Kernick latest novel is The Hanged Man. One of his six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

STONER by John Williams

An old book that became a bestseller a few years ago. I'd had enough of a grisly crime book I was reading and was drawn to this. It's about a university professor and it just goes through his life. The way it's told is brilliant and I was moved constantly.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Stoner is among The Secret Teacher author's ten top books about teaching, Jamie Fewery's ten best fictional fathers, and Colum McCann's top ten novels featuring poets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven politically-charged contemporary YA novels

At the BN Teen Blog, Nicole Brinkley tagged seven socially conscious contemporary YA novels, including:

Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles

Marvin decides to tag along with his twin brother Tyler to a party—and it ends with Tyler dead, shot and killed by the police. As their mother unravels and his brother becomes immortalized as just another hashtag, Marvin struggles to figure out what justice and freedom really mean. Featuring one of my favorite YA covers of all time, Jay Coles’ debut has set expectations sky high.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about high tech

Leslie Berlin is the author of Troublemakers: How a Generation of Silicon Valley Upstarts Invented the Future. One of her top ten books about high-tech, as shared at the Guardian:

Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove

The greatest guide to how technology becomes business – from one of the tech industry’s greatest managers. Grove, who died in 2016, was a hugely influential and successful CEO at Intel, the pioneering microchip company. He describes how he led the company and fostered teamwork among employees (measuring everything and imposing discipline are key features). In some sense a harbinger of today’s data-heavy management practices, the book also shares great stories. My favourite details how Grove and board chairman Gordon Moore made the wrenching decision to abandon the company’s core memory business to focus on the microprocessors that today are at the heart of Intel’s success.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top sci-fi locked-room mysteries

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and the Ustari Cycle from Pocket/Gallery, including We Are Not Good People. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog he tagged ten fiendishly clever sci-fi locked room mysteries, including:

Lightless, by C.A. Higgins

On board the ship Ananke, computer scientist Althea has a relationship with the ship’s artificial intelligence—and the AI is evolving into a sentient personality, complicating her work. As are the intruders, including handsome Ivan, who have somehow tricked the ship into letting them on board. One of them escapes into the ship while Ivan is being interrogated, but what worries Althea is how they got onboard in the first place—and what they’ve done to the AI’s code. What ensues is a pressure-cooker story, a locked-room mystery in which the room itself cannot be trusted to play fair.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Lightless is among Sam Maggs's five books about awesome women in space.

The Page 69 Test: Lightless.

--Marshal Zeringue

Krysten Ritter's six favorite mysteries

Krysten Ritter is the star of the Netflix series Jessica Jones. Her debut novel is Bonfire.

One of Ritter's six favorite mystery books, as shared at The Week magazine:

In the Woods by Tana French

Tana French is a master of the mystery genre. This story of a detective with a hidden past was the first of her books I read, and ever since I've been obsessed. In the Woods is mysterious and thrilling while also managing to be a cathartic and heartbreaking character study.

Read about the other entries on the list.

In the Woods is among Megan Reynolds's top ten books you must read if you loved Gone Girl, Emma Straub's ten top books that mimic the feeling of a summer vacation, the Barnes & Noble Review's five top books from Ireland's newer voices, and Judy Berman's ten fantastic novels with disappointing endings.

The Page 69 Test: In the Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top YA novels set at boarding school

Alyssa Sheinmel's new novel is R.I.P. Eliza Hart. At the BN Teen blog she tagged five favorite books set at boarding school, including:

Looking for Alaska, by John Green

A new John Green book may have just hit the shelves, but that’s no reason not to go back and read an oldie—and a goodie. In this award winner, Miles “Pudge” Halter starts attending the Culver Creek Boarding School and his life has just become a lot more interesting—because at Culver Creek, Pudge lives down the hall from Alaska Young. Alaska isn’t like anyone Pudge has ever met before: she’s beautiful and funny, smart and sexy—and she has a dangerous self-destructive streak. Pudge’s life goes from dull to thrilling—he survives a hazing, plots his revenge, and has a new group of friends, including Alaska. But one night, after an upsetting phone call, Alaska sneaks off campus. The next morning, the school announces that she was killed in a car accident. Pudge is certain that there’s more to the story—and he’s determined to find out what really happened the night Alaska died.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about mental hospitals

A.F. Brady is a writer, psychotherapist and mental health counsellor. Her debut novel is The Blind.

One of the author's ten best books about mental hospitals, as shared at the Guardian:

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

Vizinni’s beautifully narrated tale of institutionalisation after a suicide attempt is made all the more powerful and relevant in the wake of the author’s suicide. Having grown up in New York City, Vizzini created a semi-autobiographical young adult story of a privileged New York City teenager trudging through the depths of depression, who learns in treatment that he has talents that he can use to aid in his recovery. It’s a hopeful story, highlighting the often overlooked hopeful possibilities of psychiatric treatment.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: It's Kind of A Funny Story.

--Marshal Zeringue

Terry Waite's 6 best books

Terry Waite was the Church of England hostage negotiator held captive in Beirut by Hezbollah from 1987 to 1991. His books include Taken On Trust and Solitude. One of Waite's six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

THE MEMORY CHALET by Tony Judt

Judt was a great social historian who was completely immobile in his later years when he wrote this remarkable book, looking back on his life. He was a man of deep feeling and many contradictions. To a lesser extent, I know what it's like to be confined and your mind does go back.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great coming-of-age stories

In 2012 David Nicholls tagged five favorite coming-of-age stories at the Telegraph. One title on the list:

Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides (1993) deals with similar ideas in an innovative way; it’s written in the first person plural; the protagonist is not an individual but “we”, every single lovelorn young man idolising the unattainable.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Virgin Suicides is among Julia Fierro's thirteen most dysfunctional parents in literature, Rosa Rankin-Gee's ten top novellas about love, Kate Finnigan's top ten fictional fashion icons, Patrick Ness's top ten "unsuitable" books for teenagers, Cathy Cassidy's top ten stories about sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five forgotten classics worth revisiting

In 2013 Parul Sehgal tagged (for NPR) five forgotten classics worth revisiting, including:

My Last Sigh: The Autobiography of Luis Bunuel by Luis Bunuel and Abigail Israel

I've long loved this strange, slanted little book for its offhand genius and excellent gossip. But I used it to prop up a wobbly table in Calcutta in 2003 and haven't seen it since. It's been reissued, and I'm happy to find it as remarkable as I recall. Like any surrealist masterpiece, it's playful, subversive and (frequently) baffling.

Devoted to protecting the "essential mystery in all things," Bunuel doesn't excavate the past or take us behind the scenes of Belle de Jour (a pity). It's not information he cares for, or veracity, but wisdom and beauty; not memories but the act of remembering. Scenes come to us highly aestheticized. In one early memory, Bunuel walks with his father in an olive grove. They come across a strong, very sweet odor, and then the bloated body of a dead donkey. Around the carcass, vultures staggered, too full to fly.

He's a confident, discursive writer eager to riff on what he loves ("vast damp forests wreathed in fog," "little tools like pliers," firearms) and loathes (crowds, Borges, newspapers). He recounts meeting Hitchcock, collaborating with Dali, mourning Federico Garcia Lorca, attempting an orgy with Charlie Chaplin. He settles scores and spills his friends' secrets shamelessly. On the topic of Dali's sexual proclivities he tells us that the painter was fond of seducing American heiresses, but being almost entirely asexual, "those seductions usually entailed stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the women's shoulders, and, without a word, showing them to the door."

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books on late-stage capitalism

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a staff writer for The Millions. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate, Salon, Guernica, Poets & Writers, and The Guardian. Her novel is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster (when she finally finishes it). She teaches fiction at Columbia and shares a hometown with Bob Dylan. One of five books on late-stage capitalism she tagged at The Millions:

Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? (2016) by Katrine Marçal

I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis in economics on “Economic Development and Women’s Labor Force Participation,” and concluded that in developed versus under-developed countries, the end game was the same: women did most of the work, including the never-off labor that does not get counted in traditional economic measures. Additionally, the financial penalties of this unpaid work (family stress, “mommy track” drag on careers, unequal pay due to gender discrimination, etc.), don’t factor into our economic world view because the variables that are “important” in economic models have been mostly decided by men. Marçal does a brilliant job making economics accessible and shows the egregious mistake of excluding women from basic economic market principles, and how this invisibility reinforces inequality.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue