Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Jun 6, 2019
May 12, 2018
Feb 1, 2018
Jan 11, 2018
Nov 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017
Jun 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017
Jan 7, 2017
Sep 1, 2016
May 1, 2015
Gattaca (DVD)
Summary: As one of the last "natural" beings born into a genetically engineered world, Vincent Freeman has none of the 'pre-ordered' DNA that will guarantee him success. Desperate to realize his dream of exploring space, Vincent assumes the identity of a genetically superior athlete. Avoiding detection using the athlete's genetic markers, Vincent becomes a rising star at Gattaca Aerospace, attracting the attention of a beautiful co-worker. When a flight director is brutally murdered, a clue left at the crime scene threatens to shatter Vincent's plans.
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Aug 1, 2014
Noggin - John Corey Whaley
Summary: After dying at age sixteen, Travis Coates' head was removed and frozen for five years before being attached to another body, and now the old Travis and the new must find a way to coexist while figuring out changes in his relationships.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Travis Coates has lost his head—literally. As he dies from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, his head is surgically removed and cryogenically frozen. Five years pass, and, thanks to advances in medical science, it becomes possible to reanimate his head and attach it to a donor body. Travis Coates is alive again, but while his family and friends are all 5 years older, Travis hasn't aged—he is still 16 and a sophomore in high school. Awkward? Difficult? Puzzling? You bet. In the past, the two people he could have talked to about this were his best friend, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Cate. But now they're part of the problem. Kyle, who came out to Travis on his deathbed, has gone back into the closet, and Cate is engaged to be married. Stubbornly, Travis vows to reverse these developments by coaxing Kyle out of the closet and persuading Cate to fall in love with him again. How this plays out is the substance of this wonderfully original, character-driven second novel. Whaley has written a tour de force of imagination and empathy, creating a boy for whom past, present, and future come together in an implied invitation to readers to wonder about the very nature of being. A sui generis novel of ideas, Noggin demands much of its readers, but it offers them equally rich rewards. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Whaley's sleeper debut, Where Things Come Back (2011), won both the Michael L. Printz Award and the William C. Morris Award, so readers will be eagerly awaiting this second effort. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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Aug 1, 2013
Openly straight - Bill Konigsberg
Summary: Tired of being known as "the gay kid", Rafe Goldberg decides to assume a new persona when he comes east and enters an elite Massachusetts prep school--but trying to deny his identity has both complications and unexpected consequences.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Now a junior in high school, Rafe, who has been out since he was 14, is thoroughly sick of being labeled "the gay kid." So he does something bold: he leaves his Colorado school to enroll in a private boys' academy in New England, where no one knows he's gay and he can be a label-free, "openly straight" part of a group of guys. Does this mean he goes back into the closet? No, he tells himself, not exactly: "It was more like I was in the doorway." But is he fooling himself? Can you put a major part of yourself on hold, and what happens when you then find yourself falling in love with your new (straight) best friend? Lambda Literary Award winner Konigsberg (Out of the Pocket, 2008) has written an exceptionally intelligent, thought-provoking coming-of-age novel about the labels people apply to us and that we, perversely, apply to ourselves. A sometimes painful story of self-discovery, it is also a beautifully written, absolutely captivating romance between two boys, Rafe and Ben, who are both wonderfully sympathetic characters. With its capacity to invite both thought and deeply felt emotion, Openly Straight is altogether one of the best gay-themed novels of the last 10 years. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2013
Kiki Strike: The darkness dwellers - Kirsten Miller
Summary: While Kiki Strike is in Paris trying to stop her evil cousin, the princess Sidonia, from all sorts of terrible deeds, it is up to Ananka and the other Irregulars to help Kiki find the cure for baldness, foil the evil plans of Oona's twin, and keep Ananka herself from falling in love with the wrong young man.
Voice of Youth Advocates Reviews
In volume three of this adventure mystery series, Kiki is off to the small nation of Pokrovia to decline the throne and dismantle the monarchy once and for all. Ananka is left in charge of the Irregulars, a band of badass teen girls, back in New York City. Kiki is kidnapped and held captive in Paris, and Irregular Betty must head to Paris to rescue her. Once in Paris, Betty becomes embroiled in her own mystery involving jilted royalty, an accused World War II traitor, a humorless headmistress, and a secret community, The Darkness Dwellers, who patrol the Parisian catacombs. While Ananka helps another Irregular, Oona, solve the problem of her evil twin wreaking havoc in Chinatown, the intercontinental mysteries twist and turn and eventually entwine until the truth is revealed and order is restored, thanks once again to the Irregulars. What is interesting about the Kiki Strike series is that Miller's Irregulars are not static types, nor does Miller reduce the Irregulars' victories to distractions from "normal girl" activities. The Irregulars are smart, tough, and skilled, their exploits of worldwide significance. In turn, the familiar conflicts of young adult "girl books" are not present in this series, or if they are, they are made to seem petty and inconsequential compared to the real battles the girls must fight. That the girls like doing battle and solving mysteries, and that they are depicted as being dedicated to strengthening their individual talents in order to strengthen the group, makes this mystery series unusually smart and original.—Jennifer M. Miskec 4Q 4P M J S Copyright 2011 Voya Reviews.
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Dec 1, 2012
Far from the tree - Andrew Solomon
Summary: Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon (2001), tackles daunting questions involving nature versus nurture, illness versus identity, and how they all affect parenting in his exhaustive but not exhausting exploration of what happens when children bear little resemblance to their parents. He begins by challenging the very concept of human reproduction. We do not reproduce, he asserts, spawning clones. We produce originals. And if we're really lucky, our offspring will be enough like us or our immediate forebears that we can easily love, nurture, understand, and respect them. But it's a crapshoot. More often than not, little junior will be born with a long-dormant recessive gene, or she may emerge from the womb with her very own, brand-new identifier—say, deafness, physical deformity, or homosexuality. Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium. Solomon focuses on the creative and often desperate ways in which families manage to tear down prejudices and preconceived fears and reassemble their lives around the life of a child who alters their view of the world. Most succeed. Some don't. But the truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Jun 1, 2012
Insurgent - Veronica Roth
Summary: "As war surges in the dystopian society around her, sixteen-year-old Divergent Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves--and herself--while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
While the hugely popular Divergent (2011) welcomed dystopian fans of every stripe with its irresistable concept and hybridization of genres, this sequel is more for hard-core fans—a good thing if you're a devotee but a bit overwhelming for fence-riders. Rocked by the recent simulation war, the five factions engage in increasingly dangerous power plays to pick up the pieces. Tris and her love, Tobias, both daredevils of the Dauntless faction, are key players in these skirmishes, most of which focus upon the fiendishly logical Erudites and almost all of which are complicated by backstabbers and turncoats. It remains a great deal of fun to watch these cliques-taken-to-extremes duke it out with their various strengths and weaknesses, and Roth delivers the goods when it comes to intense, personal violence (no superpowers to be found here) and compelling set pieces (as when Tris undergoes a public "truth serum" interrogation). Newcomers, and even some old hands, might get buried under all the transposable characters and faction minutia, but those who stick it out will be rewarded with quite the cliff-hanger HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Divergent was the kind of best-seller juggernaut debut authors dream of. With high-profile movie rights already sold, you can bet you'll see this sequel on everyone's must-read list. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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