The Five Chinese Brothers is a tale of five traitorous brothers, who must use their superpowers to escape or survive various forms of torture and/or execution the government subjects them to. Read to discover the astonishing conclusion to this age old tale.
Availability: USMAI and SMCM Library
Reviewed Submitted by: Matthew Lachkovic
Rating: Must Read
Published in 2009, The Windup Girl is the first novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. Winner of the Hugo and Nubela Awards (Sci-fi industry top prizes), The Windup Girl is set in a near-future Thailand. The kingdom of Thailand is a kind of fortress state, crouched in a defensive stance vis a vis the rest of the world. And not without reason; rogue diseases such as “blister rust,” “cibiscosis” and others only obliquely hinted at are poised to destroy Thai sovereignty. These diseases are both the unintentional, and quite intentional machinations of “calorie companies” (think Monsanto, Cargill, etc.) who have “taken over the world” by enslaving its peoples to genetically modified crops resistant to the latest competitive enterprise plagues. The plagues have greatly depleted natural biodiversity, and only those nations who have jealously cultivated and guarded seed banks have the bio-capital to engineer food and energy independence from the Iowa-based calorie companies. Bangkok runs expensive coal-fired fuel pumps to keep the city alive below rising seas, and the Environmental Ministry ruthlessly fights “Trade” and other foreign “invasives.”
Wind-Up creations, also called “New People,” are one such invasive. Like the androids and replicants typical to science fiction, these Wind-Up creations are human-like products of big industry and bioengineering. Emiko is the eponymous “Wind Up Girl,” and is the unwitting catalyst of the fast-paced political and environmental intrigue which propels the novel forward. Emiko was designed to be a sex-slave for a wealthy Japanese businessman who abandons her in Thailand (it’s too expensive to pay her passage back to Japan). In Thailand, Emiko is liable to be “mulched” by the zealous Environmental Ministry, and has to gain “employment” with a black-market sex club for protection from the Ministry. She is nightly assaulted and humiliated. While Emiko deplores her very existence, she struggles with her innate propensity to obey and please a master (traits supposedly lifted from Labrador retrievers in the gene-lab) and the indoctrination she received as a child. Emiko’s struggle to gain independence and safety ultimately breaks the fragile political and environmental truce the other characters strategize around for much of the novel, hurtling the nation and the characters towards an uncertain fate in a warming world.
The book is most distinctive and original in its conception of a post-fossil fuel, post-global turbo-capitalist future, and its interesting magic-realist moments (ghosts unable to reincarnate into a world too-full of suffering amble alongside living characters) are a cool genre-bending element. While Bacigalupi’s futuristic Thailand is rich in inventive detail, the fast-paced action and dialogue easily captivate the reader and keep you turning the pages so fast you won’t believe this beast of bookdom is over 450 pages. I shutdown my life to finish it in two days. Putting it down wasn’t an option.
If you wind up reading only one piece of genre fiction this summer, Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl should be it.
Availability: COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Shane D. Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended
A classic for the young adult fiction crowd. Reading this book is like taking an adventure. Throughout your adventure you make friends, learn new things and great evils. Take a chance and have an adventure.
Availability: COSMOS and SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Andrew Lachkovic
Rating: Highly Recommended
Rikleen writes about how millennial, and the previous two generations interact in the workplace, particularly how they perceive each other. Rikleen especially focuses on showing us that these perceptions are often reflective of the generation viewing it, and that these perceptions are typically misunderstood. One of the first examples is how our (upcoming) generation is very much seen as “entitled” and lazy, however Rikleen goes on to describe how that isn’t true. Surprisingly good book.
Availability: USMAI and SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Matthew Lachkovic
Rating: Must Read
Anne Perry paints such realistic pictures regardless of the period she is writing about and this first novel of likable British characters who find themselves on the brink of war draws the reader into a very different world from what we have today–a world where war is unthinkable instead of almost commonplace. I wouldn’t call this light summer reading, but it certainly isn’t very taxing and does bog down at times. Still, the novel takes us back in time to a very different mindset and I found that curiously refreshing. Great for taking along on vacation!
Availability: COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Jane Kostenko
Rating: Highly Recommended
This book is an intriguing twist on an old story; how do you live a life where you can only remember the current day? However, as the story continues, you begin to realize there’s a dark secret being hidden from Christine by the one’s around her. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, even more secrets are revealed you begin to despite S. J. Watson (author) for what she’s doing to you.
Availability: USMAI and SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Matthew Lachkovic
Rating: Highly recommended
It is the fourth book in a series about a female bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. The book is a fast paced light-hearted read, even though it contains dead bodies and explosions. It is not necessary to have read any of the other books as the author introduces the main characters as they appear.
Availability: COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Sue Banaszak
Rating: Highly Recommended
My Secret is a collection of numerous secrets sent to the infamous PostSecret, particularly presenting secrets of younger participants. Each secret lets one see into the soul of the sender, seeing their fears, worries, regrets and joys. With each page, you read a secret. Sometimes they seem strange, and sometimes the secret touches you. As you read, you will reveal secrets that will never be shared with anyone else and, once in a while, reveal secrets about yourself.
Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Andrew Lachkovic
Rating: Recommended
Twenty-four years after her mother and two sisters are brutally murdered in their own home in the early hours of January 3, 1985, Libby Day is out of money and seemingly out of options. Being only seven-years-old at the time of the murders–giving a coached testimony that would convict and send her brother Ben to jail for the crime–Libby looks back into her painful past and uncovers secrets and twists that will change her life and her family forever. When Libby gets caught up with a “Kill Club,” a group of crime-obsessed locals, she is encouraged to investigate and eventually discover the unthinkable truth regarding her family’s deaths.
Dark Places is simply a gripping story that will take you for loops. A chilling portrayal of the human experience after such devastation such as losing your whole family, Gillian Flynn creates a haunting puzzle in which you won’t mind spending an entire weekend putting together. With clever writing full of twists and turns, Dark Places will not let you go until the very last page. It will certainly leave you thinking about it long after you’ve closed the book.
If you haven’t gotten the chance to read any of Gillian Flynn’s novels–not just Dark Places–you should take this summer as an opportunity to do so. In addition to Dark Places coming to the silver screen, one of her other critically acclaimed novels–Gone Girl–is being made into a movie this fall. Flynn’s writing already jumps off the page, her characters and story so real and vivid. Hopefully Hollywood will do the novels justice.
Availability: COSMOS
Review submitted by: Taylor Schafer
Rating: Highly Recommended
The Hunger Games (Book 1 of the Hunger Games trilogy) is a book that shows what one will do if they are truly faced with danger in order to save friends and family, what they will do to survive. Hallucinations, actual terrors, love and survival are all read in this book which creates a world unlike an other, one that you would not want to leave, but never want to live in. If you want to read a book for four hours non-stop, read this book.
(Hunger Games trilogy in order: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay)
Availability: USMAI, COSMOS and SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Andrew Lachkovic (still Matt’s brother)
Rating: Highly Recommended
Read more reviews of The Hunger Games series.
