My abandonment - Peter Rock

Summary: Living with her father in a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon, thirteen-year-old Caroline only merges with the civilized world once a week when they go into the city, but an encounter with a backcountry jogger derails their entire existence. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews

Rock s previous novels and stories have been imbued with a sense of unease and uncertainty (The Unsettling, 2006). So it is with this deeply unsettling and finely wrought tale. It s narrated matter-of-factly by 13-year-old Caroline, who lives furtively in Forest Park, a large nature reserve on the edge of Portland, Oregon, with her father, who has turned his back on society. Their lives revolve around remaining invisible to the larger world. Homeschooled in the woods and at a public library, Caroline appears fully at home with minimal possessions and without much human contact. At first the lives of father and daughter seem nearly idyllic, but Rock deftly ratchets up the uncertainties, and the idyllic edges past the unusual toward the unthinkable and the tragic. Based on a true story (think Krakauer s Into the Wild), My Abandonment is a haunting novel, masterfully told. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Wildwood Imperium - Colin Meloy

Wildwood Imperium - Meloy, Colin

Series: The Wildwood Chronicles 

Booklist Reviews
The third tome in the Wildwood Chronicles continues the quirky adventures of 12-year-old Prue as she reenters the Wood to find that the postrevolution world she helped create isn't going especially smoothly. In fact, she finds herself involved with a plot to resurrect Alexei, the automaton prince, who is foretold to bring peace to the land. But there is another resurrection in progress, too: naive teenager Zita is gathering the materials to bring back the evil Alexandra. A third story line—the most purely enjoyable—involves the Unadoptables as they join up with a band of beatnik saboteurs intent on raiding the Titan Tower, where an important hostage is being held. Meloy is the Wes Anderson of authors (characters with names like Ambrose Pupkin are many), and he nails the tone of this gentle, but not inconsequential, adventure; though filled with few genuine surprises, it is a warm, comforting read, and its massive page count allows readers to further lose themselves in the enchanting stroll through some very unusual woods. Final illustrations (including color plates) not seen. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This best-selling series continues to get a major publisher push: an author-illustrator tour, launch events, limited-edition art prints, stickers, videos, playlists, you name it. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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Tattoo machine: tall tales, true stories, and my life in ink - Jeff Johnson

Tattoo machine: tall tales, true stories, and my life in ink - Johnson, Jeff

Summary: A behind-the-scenes tour of the fabled tattoo industry on the arm of a swashbuckling insider and natural-born storyteller.




Booklist Reviews
Fans of the TV show Miami Ink should gravitate toward this memoir written by a veteran tattoo artist. It's a fascinating book, especially for a reader unfamiliar with the whole tattoo scene, somebody who imagines a tattoo shop to be the clichéd (and, these days, largely nonexistent) dark, smoky, unsanitary little hole in the wall. Tattooing, author Johnson explains, is an art form, and its practitioners are dedicated experts. Yes, some of the old-school butchers and scam artists still exist, and we learn all about them, but mostly Johnson is interested in explaining how a formerly disreputable profession has achieved not just reputability but also respect and pop-culture status. Still, he reminds us, tattoo artists are people who turn living human bodies into works of art; it follows that there are bound to be some seriously offbeat characters in the mix. Not to mention, of course, the customers, who run a wide gamut from straitlaced to way strange. This book is an engaging look not just at the tattoo artist's profession but also at the artists themselves. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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