Friday Finds 10/30/09

I meant to get this posted yesterday but I didn't get to it in time so these are technically my Saturday Finds ...

1. The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story, by Richard Preston - found @ At Home With Books - "A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction."
   
   
   
2. Skeletons on the Sahara: A True Story of Survival, by Dean King - also found @ At Home With Books - "Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men - who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback - is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival."
   
   
   
3. Someone Named Eva, by Joan M. Wolf - found @ Maw Books - "Just a few short weeks after Milada’s eleventh birthday, Nazi’s storm every home in her town in Czechoslovakia and take everybody away. Milada and another classmate are torn again from their families, placed on a bus and sent to Poland. When they arrive in a new girls school, Milada realizes that each girl there shares two traits in common: blue eyes and blonde hair. In addition, each has exactly the right size head or nose. It is at this school that their indoctrination to Germanization begins. She is renamed Eva and each girl is trained to forget everything about their past. [...] Eva struggles with her new identity, the new language and to remain true to her upbringing and background. [...] And then the impossible happens. Eva can no longer remember her true name. What did people use to call her? Can she recall it? She can’t remember her name. The Germans have taken everything from her." [...] Will Eva be able to remember who she really is? Or will she be lost forever?"
   
   
4. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker - I've been intending to read this book for a long time but Lost In Book's review reminded me that is isn't on my official TBR list. "The Color Purple is a story of suffering, a story of violence, a story of love, a story of sexuality, a story of family, a story of finding one's self."
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - I haven't read either of her novels but I've heard they are wonderful. This Nigerian-born author now has a short story collection (this book) and I heard about it in an article on The Baltimore Sun's site. Adichie "'started writing stories at about age 6 that were just like the books we read in school,' she says, 'about children with blue eyes and poodles who played in the snow. My mother kept all my stories and occasionally threatens to give them to local journalists if I don't do what she wants.' Though Adichie can be critical of her adopted country - The Thing Around Your Neck contains pointed observations about the U.S. - she has 'an immense affection' for her second home. '"It is the only Western country that makes an effort to address its past,' she says. 'And, I have space here. If I'd gone to school in Britain, I wouldn't have developed the sense of possibility I acquired here.'"

And for Kiddo ...

• The Dragon Keepers Chronicles series, by Donita K. Paul - found @ Book Dragon's Lair - "This is a good vs. evil series written from an obvious Christian perspective. Yes, it is fantasy but there are eternal truths within that, sometimes, we all need to be reminded of. Things like finishing the job you said you would. Always looking for the good inside. Not judging by appearances. Search for truth, even in unlikely places. This is in now way a preachy book, it is just a way of life for the characters that can cross over to ours." There are 5 books in the series, beginning with Dragonspell.
  

As always, please check in at Should Be Reading for more finds or to join in the fun!