Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created “perfect” life is about to unravel before her eyes. She’s forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she's worked so hard for—her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that... (more)

Along for the Ride

by Sarah Dessen

It’s been so long since Auden slept at night. Ever since her parents’ divorce—or since the fighting started. Now she has the chance to spend a carefree summer with her dad and his new family in the charming beach town where they live. A job in a clothes boutique introduces Auden to the world of girls: their talk, their friendship, their crushes. She missed out on all that, too busy being the perfect daughter to... (more)

Fade to Black

by Alex Flinn

Three perspectives -- one truth The victim: After his windshield was shattered with a baseball bat, HIV-positive Alex Crusan ducked under the steering wheel. But he knows what he saw. Now he must decide what he wants to tell. The witness: Daria Bickell never lies. So if she told the police she saw Clinton Cole do it, she must have. But did she really? The suspect: Clinton was seen in the vicinity of... (more)

Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together

Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together

by Ron Hall

Meet Denver, a man raised under plantation-style slavery in Louisiana in the 1960s ; a man who escaped, hopping a train to wander, homeless, for eighteen years on the streets of Dallas, Texas. No longer a slave, Denver's life was still hopeless-until God moved. First came a godly woman who prayed, listened, and obeyed. And then came her husband, Ron, an international arts dealer at home in a world of... (more)

Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After

Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After

by Bella M. DePaulo

People who are single are changing the face of America. Did you know that: * More than 40 percent of the nation’s adults---over 87 million people---are divorced, widowed, or have always been single. * There are more households comprised of single people living alone than of married parents and their children. * Americans now spend more of their adult years single than married. Many of today’s single people... (more)

Notes from a Small Island

An Affectionate Portrait of Britain

by Bill Bryson

"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it." After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson-bestsellingauthor of The Mother Tongue and Made in America-decided to returnto the United States. ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another,so... (more)

Tortilla Flat

by John Steinbeck

"This is the story of Danny and of Danny's friends and of Danny's house. It is a story of how these three became on thing." Danny returns from the Great War to inherit two houses in the shabby district of Tortilla Flat. He falls in with a group of poor paisanos. Together, they gossip, talk about life and plan the next drinking binge. And, when money does come their way, the parties are the kind that are not... (more)

Castle: Book 1

Howl's Moving Castle

by Diana Wynne Jones

In the land of Ingary, such things as spells, invisible cloaks, and seven-league boots were everyday things. The Witch of the Waste was another matter. After fifty years of quiet, it was rumored that the Witch was about to terrorize the country again. So when a moving black castle, blowing dark smoke from its four thin turrets, appeared on the horizon, everyone thought it was the Witch. The castle, however,... (more)

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters

by Jessica Valenti

Feminism isn't dead. It just isn't very cool anymore. Enter Full Frontal Feminism, a book that embodies the forward-looking messages that author Jessica Valenti propagates on her popular website, Feministing.com. Covering a range of topics, including pop culture, health, reproductive rights, violence, education, relationships, and more, Valenti provides young women a primer on why feminism matters. Valenti... (more)

Jessica Darling: Book 1

Sloppy Firsts

by Megan McCafferty

“My parents suck ass. Banning me from the phone and restricting my computer privileges are the most tyrannical parental gestures I can think of. Don’t they realize that Hope’s the only one who keeps me sane? . . . I don’t see how things could get any worse.” When her best friend, Hope Weaver, moves away from Pineville, New Jersey, hyperobservant sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling is devastated. A fish out of water... (more)

Realm of Possibility

by David Levithan

Here’s what I know about the realm of possibility— it is always expanding, it is never what you think it is. Everything around us was once deemed impossible. From the airplane overhead to the phones in our pockets to the choir girl putting her arm around the metalhead. As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits are of our own world’s devising.... (more)

The Boyfriend List (Readers Circle)

by E. Lockhart

Ruby Oliver is 15 and has a shrink. She knows it’s unusual, but give her a break—she’s had a rough 10 days. In the past 10 days she: lost her boyfriend (#13 on the list), lost her best friend (Kim), lost all her other friends (Nora, Cricket), did something suspicious with a boy (#10), did something advanced with a boy (#15), had an argument with a boy (#14), drank her first... (more)

Maniac Magee

by Jerry Spinelli

After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary as he accomplishes athletic feats and other extraordinary exploits that awe his contemporaries. Paperback.

Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life

Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life

by Joan Gould

What’s your favorite fairy tale? Whether it’s “Cinderella,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Hansel and Gretel,” or another story, your answer reveals something significant about you, your experiences, and your soul. In this penetrating book, Joan Gould brings to the surface the hidden meanings in fairy tales and myths, and illuminates what they can tell you about the stages in your own life. As Gould explores the... (more)

I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight

by Margaret Cho

INCLUDES NEW MATERIAL FOR PAPERBACK EDITION With all her notorious, righteous comic rage, Margaret Cho lays out in no uncertain terms what's wrong, what's right, and what's definitely worth fighting for. That includes: freedom of expression, gay rights, racial equality, the right to choose, and the right to life-a real life, on your own freethinking, liberty-loving all-American terms. Cho's is a... (more)

Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (Feminist Cultural Studies, the Media, & Political Culture)

Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (Feminist Cultural Studies, the Media, & Political Culture)

by Sherrie A. Inness

A quick stroll through the toy aisles in any American superstore splits gender as neatly as Moses did the Red Sea. On your left, the pink and purple ghetto reserved for girls intent on dolls and their endless accoutrements; to the right, the swaggering, bare-chested superheroes with bulging plastic muscles doled out to boys. Once out of the toy store, a gazillion more real and imaginary "tough guys" like... (more)

Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War

Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War

by Peter Leese

To the British soldiers of the Great War who heard about it, "shell shock" was uncanny, amusing, and sad. To those who experienced it, the condition was shameful, unjustly stigmatized, and life-changing. The first full-length study of the British "shell shocked" soldiers of the Great War combines social and medical history to investigate the experience of psychological casualties on the Western Front, in... (more)

Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television

Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television

by Donald Bogle

A landmark study by the leading critic of African American film and television Primetime Blues is the first comprehensive history of African Americans on network television. Donald Bogle examines the stereotypes, which too often continue to march across the screen today, but also shows the ways in which television has been invigorated by extraordinary black performers, whose presence on the screen has been of... (more)

Manhood in America: A Cultural History

by Michael Kimmel

For more than three decades, the women's movement and its scholars have exhaustively studied women's complex history, roles, and struggles. In Manhood in America, Second Edition, author Michael Kimmel--a leading authority in gender studies--argues that it is time for men to rediscover their own evolution. Drawing on a myriad of sources, including advice books, magazine columns, political pamphlets, and popular... (more)

The Bell Curve Intelligence and Class Structure in American LifeRichard and Mujrray, Charles Herrnstein

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Tags: stereotypes

by Simone Elkeles