Number The Stars by Lois Lowry and other bookish catchup

Despite taking a huge stack of books, and buying even more, I only managed to read one book on my vacation- Number the Stars by Lois Lowry- and that one I read on the plane home. Number the Stars is set in 1943 Denmark. It's the story of the Jewish detainment and one 10 year old girl's role in it. This is a very quick book, written for middle school aged kids. It won the Newbery Award in 1990.

The story is very clear, and simple to read, but I didn't think it was nearly as good as The Giver (also by Lowry) or The Book Thief (also about WWII and the Holocaust). The writing isn't as good, and I didn't find it as emotionally hard as either of the others. This was on my Newbery Challenge list, and I am glad that I read it, but it's not going down as a favorite book.

I also finished Hex in the City by Simon R Green. This is the fourth in the series and it just keeps getting more outlandish and better with each installment. This one sets up the story for the next few titles and ends with a bit of a cliff hanger. I have the next two at home (borrowed from the library) and hope to get to them soonish. I'd like to have at least one series that I'm all caught up on.

Reading goals for the next month or so- Harry Potters 5 and 6, finish up the Newbery Challenge, wrap up a couple odds and ends (The Faith Club, I Am the Messenger, Carved in Bone.) This is a lot of reading for me, those HPs are huge! I'm determined to reread them all before July 21 though.

Two weeks worth of math- 7 more from Paperbackswap (the last being How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater) plus the 7 I bought on vacation brings me to 86 books in since January. I finished two whole books in that time. This brings me to 52 books behind. This experiment is starting to get depressing. Good thing it's summer and tv is all reruns!

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Today I had an unexpected afternoon off, and decided I would spend it catching up on my reading. I was closest to finishing The Giver and so I started with that. Wow. I knew from about the halfway point that this book would make an emotional impact on me, but did not expect it to be so powerful.

Here's the summary from Amazon.com:

In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of Brave New World, in this 1994 Newbery Medal winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price.

I read this book as part of my own Dystopian Challenge. (heh, I was putting it off cause I thought I'd chosen it for the Newbery Challenge. I'm getting my lists confused!) For the first half of the book or so, Jonas' world seems perfect, very rule driven, very orderly. The people are happy. There aren't any secrets. At his 12th December, he is assigned his career, and from then the book takes a turn. The truth of the happiness is revealed, but only to Jonas.

I can't say much more without giving away plot points, so I'm going to jump over here with a some spoiler points that I need to say outloud. If you have not read the book, and plan to, I would not read these.

This is my first finished book for the Dystopian Challenge.