I read The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. The book is about this guy, Caelum Quirk, and his wife, Maureen, moving from Connecticut to Colorado to work in Columbine High School, and when Caelum goes back to Connecticut to attend to some family emergency, his wife was stuck in the library during the Columbine High School Massacre. Maureen then suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and she took this Xanax drug to calm herself down and soon she got addicted. When she was high on her drug, she killed this kid while driving and she got jailed…

The story itself is pretty long and naggy at times, and there are tons of characters and their names to remember. But the author will attempt to refresh your memory and most of the time it works for me (: The book is quite interesting in the sense that the author uses the real names of the victims and killers of the massacre but other than that all the other stuffs are fictitious. So it’s actually a mix of fiction and non-fiction.

I would say that it is quite a worthwhile book to read other than the ending which I feel is quite abrupt such that the impact you are supposed to feel (I think) doesn’t get felt. But other than that it’s a nice book but it’s a bit too long.

Oh, if you like animals, you should read jz’s A Friend Like Henry. The dog is so cute! :D

BY VIVIEN



'A friend like Henry' is a true recount of what the writer, Nuala Gardner, had experienced with her children which has autism- Dale and Amy. Dale's autism is more severe that his sister's.Since the time that he was born, he would not interact with people, preferring to stay in the enclosed world of his own. His autism was so severe that his behaviour could veer from silence to shrieking banshee in just a few seconds. Violent behaviour accompanied when his parents tried to pacify him, and this would result in them suffering scratch marks and cuts from Dale's screaming episodes.

However, as not much treatment and diagnosis were available for autistic patients, Dale's autism could not get diagnosed until much later. This caused his condition to deteriorate further. Luckily, everything changed after Nuala and her husband chose a Golden Retriever (named Henry- after one of Thomas Trains which Dale was obsessed about) for their son, Dale. Henry was able to break into Dale's autistic world, and together with Dale's parents, Dale was eventually able to overcome most difficulties and was able to merge together with the society.

'A friend like Henry' is certainly an interesting and heart-warming read!

-Jia Zhen :D

Book title: Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of young British boys stuck on a deserted island after crash landing into it during the thick of the Cold War. The theme of survival is well expressed in the novel as the schoolboys try to govern themselves, setting rules and maintaining order, until some no longer obeys. Death, committed incidentally in the middle of the novel, becomes increasingly brutal and savage towards the end, threatening those who are against the boys in power.

Done by Yew Ying Teng

By Su Gi Chandran (08)

A fantasy novel that explores themes and issues affecting America and, to a larger extent, the modern world, its premise is this: Shadow, a convict, is released from prison just as his wife, Laura, dies. Heartbroken, he begins to work for a mysterious man who calls himself Wednesday, in actual fact an ancient god from a distant land. Throughout the novel, Wednesday and the other old gods prepare for a war with the new gods - gods of the technological age; of television, the Internet, what have you.

This book is remarkable in a number of ways. Firstly, it mixes outright fantasy with the modern world in a way that seems completely believable. Thunderbirds swoop from the skies and leprechauns get drunk in bars - the way Gaiman writes about them, one thinks that they are not entirely out of the ordinary, and they could actually happen to someone. But more impressively, Gaiman skillfully dissects various themes while keeping the reader entertained: the fickleness and superficiality of the modern age and humans in general; cultural clashes; and how the strength of ideas lies in belief, to name just a few.

Certainly a worthwhile read that will set you thinking.

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