Parenthetical.net

Russ and DJ have been best friends forever, and so have their “outrageous courageous” firefighter fathers. When both men die fighting a house fire, they’re town heroes — until the coroner finds drugs in their systems. All Russ wanted was to be just like his dad, but how can he accept the flawed man his [...]

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After the discussion of trilogies (and Martini-Corona’s eternal John Christopher obsession), I decided this project wouldn’t be complete without a Tripod book. The Tripod trilogy (…heh) might have been the first major YA science fiction trilogy, and is certainly a classic.

If you somehow missed these books, the premise is that aliens invade, in giant metal [...]

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A group of bad-ass teen criminals get kicked off Earth to be the lead team of colonizers of the planet Klydor. If they die, eh, no harm done. If they survive, ColSec — Colonization Section, part of the massive government that runs Earth — shows up to claim a nicely broken-in planet. There are giant [...]

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Ah, vampires. Sexy, powerful, immortal vampires. What if you achieved immortality at your dorkiest? Would you be stuck an awkward high school boy forever?
While we’re asking questions, what if you were sick to death of vampires, but the author of The True Meaning of Smekday, one of the most brilliant pieces of children’s fiction in [...]

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My main gripe with the first Bartimaeus was how much Nathaniel’s chapters dragged as compared with Bartimaeus’s. The Golem’s Eye ameliorates this problem by giving us plenty of the ever-delightful Bartimaeus, and adding a third point of view: Kitty, the young Resistance leader. Nathaniel is also older now, and more of a love-to-hate [...]

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I was rather torn between wanting to love this book (evocative title, colleague recommendation, a flap that begins “In re: James Sveck — eighteen-year-old New Yorker, charming, precocious, confused, doesn’t quite fit in (doesn’t really want to)”) and expecting to hate it (how very much the reviews, and the book itself, want it to be [...]

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(The full title, for the record, is Salt Water Taffy: the Seaside Adventures of Jack and Benny, v. 1: The Legend of Old Salty.)
Ok, get a load of this plot summary: Jack, Benny, and their parents go to a small coastal Maine town to spend the summer. Upon arrival, they meet a crusty old [...]

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After a motorcycle accident that puts a girl he barely even knows in a wheelchair, Tomomi Nomiya gets kicked out of school — which means he can’t play basketball anymore. His old teammates treat him like dirt. One day he comes to the gym to practice by himself, and meets Kiyoharu Togawa. [...]

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