Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence by Geoffrey Canada

If you have paid any attention to education reforms in the toughest parts of the Bronx, New York then you may have heard the name Geoffrey Canada. He is behind some revolutionary schooling options that have demonstrated proven results. Canada hails from those tough parts and grew up having to learn some harsh life lessons. This book in graphic novel format is a take on the novel of the same name. Jamar Nicholas did the illustrations.

Roller Coaster Science

Summer means different things to different people, but as a teen (before I was old enough to get a job) summer was the time I got to do the things I really wanted to do and learn. I took ceramics classes and learned to swim and read the books that I wanted to read. I also came up with all sorts of crazy projects, like tearing apart my bike and rebuilding it as a lowrider chopper. One summer, I made what I called 'ramps' which, essentially, was a marble roller coaster. Through trial and error I learned about drops and turns, what worked and what didn't, and had a great time figuring out what sort of things I could recycle into my amusement.

Who knew I was learning physics in the process?

While Roller Coaster Science hews toward tweens who might be only vaguely familiar with the concepts and principles involved, the text is friendly without being condescending to more knowledgeable readers. Each spread introduces a concept -- acceleration, force, mass and weight, etc -- along with an experiment to demonstrate how it works. Or doesn't work as the case may be. The back half of the book includes pre-printed paper ramps to punch out and assemble. Build the coaster according to directions, get a marble, and let it rip!

Then get some paper towel rolls, funnels, old garden hoses, scraps of wood, whatever you can get you hands on and go crazy with some "practical" physics!

The Torch Keeper

    

The Culling is the first book in The Torch Keeper series, a sci-fi adventure quite similar to The Hunger Games. Lucian "Lucky" Spark is Recruited into a challenge that weeds the weak from the strong, and must then become an Imposer in the corrupt Establishment. 

If he fails, they will kill his little brother. 

He will do anything to keep his brother alive, even sacrificing the other Recruits. When Lucky falls in love with another recruit named Digory Tycho, he must balance his feelings for Digory with needing to keep his brother alive. The Establishment will take your loved ones, and they will use them against you. Lucky must keep his loyalty to his loved ones while hiding his hatred of The Establishment.

Fast-paced and exciting, The Culling is a great dystopian series with a male protagonist and LGBT relationships.

In the second book in the series, The Sowing, Lucky has made it through the brutal Trials and almost completed training to become an Imposer for the Establishment, all while secretly fighting back as a rebel called The Torch Keeper.

77 Things You Absolutely Have to Do Before You Finish College by Halley Bondy

Just in time for high school graduation, Zest Books has released 77 Things You Absolutely Have to Do Before You Finish College, a follow-up, if you will, to their book 97 Things to Do Before You Finish High School. It's got some really practical items in it - like tips on how to decorate your dorm room to make it feel more like home, how to find and rent an apartment (and avoid being scammed by rental agents and landlords), suggestions on how to interact with the community where your school is located (including volunteering at a shelter and joining a political campaign), maximizing your college experience by taking a class outside your major just because you're interested in it or learning a language you've never studied, and more. Split into seven sections of eleven suggestions each, it provides a mix of fun and practical tips.

One of my favorite tips is one that my favorite college junior employed earlier this year: Tip #40 - Sever toxic relationships. It's great for helping to identify what a toxic relationship is (complete with a sidebar on what an abusive relationship is, because yes, abuse sometimes happens with friends, too), and tips on how to do it. Heck, rather than just describing it, how about I give you this tip as an excerpt?

Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff

Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff is a charming book. And if you think “charming” sounds too effeminate a for a book by a guy, about a guy (in part), in a review by a guy, and thus forms a lesser compliment because of that supposed feminine connotation, then you need to read this book more than you know.

“It’s all role-playing, I think as we walk (116).”

Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger

Tom Angleberger’s Fake Mustache is quite possibly the weirdest book I’ve ever read. Or at the very least, it’s in the top 10.  I keep thinking it’s what would happen if director Wes Anderson  (Grand Budapest Hotel; Moonrise Kingdom) tried to rewrite Captain Underpants.

Virgin Territory by James Lecesne

Dylan's got enough problems before the Virgin Mary shows up.  He's stuck living in Jupiter, Florida, having moved there wih his widowed father, Doug, to take care of his Alzheimer's-riddled grandmother.  He's not exactly enamored of his job caddying at one of the town's ten million golf courses.  He's been banned from the internet after Doug caught him "trading e-mails with a thirty-seven-year-old woman with a filthy screen name."  He's grumpy that Pluto has been downgraded from planet to dwarf.  And slowly but surely, his memories of his mother are fading bit by bit; when they left New York City several years earlier, Doug inadvertently left behind the bag containing all of the family photos, leaving Dylan without any visual reminders of her.

Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence #1), by Max Gladstone

A god is dead. Who killed him? And why? And what's going to happen to the six million people who live in a city powered exclusively by his magic?

"Three Parts Dead" is a very unusual detective story. Tara is a young magician, expelled from her academy in disgrace after she attempted to expose a professor's sick experiments. She's got a lot to prove, and when she's hired to help solve the mystery behind the untimely death of fire god Kos Everburning (patron deity of the city of Alt Coulumb) she knows it's her only shot at building an independent life for herself. When she learns that her old nemesis professor from the academy is involved in the murder of Kos, the stakes get significantly higher.

The Second Triennial MrChompchomp Commencement Address

Three years ago I stood before you and complained. I complained that no one had ever asked me to deliver a commencement address. And because no one had ever asked me to deliver a commencement address, I took it upon myself to deliver one anyway. And you took as it was intended: as a lesson in self-bootstrap-pulling-uppedness.

And yet three years have gone by. That's plenty of time even for the most ardent of commencement-organizing procrastinators. I have been diligent, nay, obsessive about checking my email and answering my telephone and while I have had the most fascinating conversations with people selling some very interesting pharmaceuticals, I have not, even a little bit, been asked to deliver a commencement address. Not even for a preschool promotion or an Email for Seniors training class. No words preceding the certificating of a boating safety instruction group. No final thoughts before a leatherworking badge ceremony. Nothing. Nada.

And so I am emboldened to deliver my second commencement address to you, the ever-loyal readers of GuysLitWire.

As you sit out there beneath the cool protective shade of your mortar boards considering what comes next in your life, I know you aren't worried. You are thinking there's nothing I can do to screw up my life too bad. And even if someday I do, say, fail the bar exam or accidentally destroy a city by haphazardly messing with my pet lizard's DNA, I can always fix it. I can fix it because soon someone will invent time travel and I can buy a trip to the past or steal one or just crash a time travel party and I can return to the point of my mistake and do things differently this time around.

Do I have it right? It's as if I've read your minds, isn't it?

Catalogging Penguin, Summer & Fall 2014

And in the latest round of looking at publisher catalogs, this time we're talking about Penguin and some of their titles that caught my eye. Here we go!

Circle of Stones by Catherine Fisher (August). We've got 3 separate narratives that all come together across time. This includes a teenage girl with an a lot of questions in her past who is on the run in Bath, England; a apprentice in 1740 dealing with a creepy boss and, in ancient England, a druid King because druids = mysterious. Fisher is called "the first lady of British fantasy" and never disappoints so this is certainly one to watch out for.

Like No Other by Una La Marche (July). A bit of a modern day Romeo & Juliet here: Devorah and Jaxon live in the same Brooklyn neighborhood but don't meet until stuck in an elevator. She has always followed the rules of her strict Hasidic upbringing while Jaxon "is a fun-loving nerd who has never had much luck with girls." Their families forbid any relationship (presumably after they emerge from the elevator) but the teens risk all to be together. HOW FAR WILL THEY GO TO BE TOGETHER???!!! Classic teen fare, interesting twist with the Hasidic upbringing, here's hoping it skates afternoon special melodrama and gives good story.