Recommend Me (4)

Recommend Me is hosted by Kate@The Neverending Shelf

Recommend Me is a weekly event in which you pick one of your all time favorite reads to share. This could be a book that you read as a child or even finished yesterday.

To play along, grab a favorite read and tell us about it. You can include
-- your thoughts about the novel
-- its summary,
-- your favorite memory related to the novel... the possibilities are limitless.
-- If you are up for a challenge, you can also include: your review of the novel, links to others' reviews of the novel or you can recommend the book to a general group of readers or if you want to be extra daring, to specific reader friends

Read more about this meme at http://www.theneverendingshelf.com/

This Week I Recommend:

Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt Children's Books, Oct 2008)

Summary from author's website: Graceling is the story of Katsa, who has been able to kill people with her bare hands since she was eight. Katsa lives in the seven kingdoms, where very occasionally, a person is born with an extreme skill called a Grace. Gracelings are feared and exploited in the seven kingdoms, and none moreso than Katsa, who's expected to do the dirty work of torture and punishment for her uncle, King Randa. But then she meets a mysterious stranger named Po, who is also a Graced fighter and the first person ever to challenge her in a fight. The two form a bond, and each discovers truths they never imagined about themselves, each other, and a terrible danger that is spreading slowly through the seven kingdoms.

Lately, I have been gravitating towards books with strong female characters.  By strong, I mean emotionally strong, sometimes combined with physical strength but not always.  Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, Shadow by Jenny Moss, and Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell are books with strong female characters that I have enjoyed reading recently.  So, for this week's Recommend Me, I wanted to showcase another book that has a strong female character.  Graceling is such a book.

In Graceling, Katsa, who has a killing Grace, must decide if she wants to continue being her uncle's tool.  She is tired of being sent after people who have angered him in some way and she is tired of being feared.  After meeting Po and learning about some strange happenings in another part of the Seven Kingdoms, Katsa decides she must find out what is happening.  She leaves everything and everyone she has knows to travel to Monsea and along the way learns about herself and who she really is.  I really like that Katsa's journey is not only about self-discovery, but about learning to trust other people and learning to be loved. 

Last year I was able to talk to Kristin about Graceling, her writing process and her thoughts on YA Literature.  She had some interesting things to say about her characters and the state of YA literature.  If you are interested in hearing that interview it can be found at The Mount Kisco Library Podcast.

What do recommend this week?