Many reached their goal

The first annual Pursue 100 reading challenge wound up last week with the Three major prizes drawn in the library on Thursday afternoon. We were really impressed by both the quantity and especially the quality of all the reviews we received over the summer. Most of those who tried reached the goal of 100 points which put them in the draw for an apple iPad.

I can now reveal the big winners;

Our third prize, an iPod Nano went to Georgina Kennedy.

The second prize of an iPod Touch was won by Bonnie Mcleish.

And congratulations to Israel Christie who won first prize, an apple iPad.

As well as the major prizes everybody who sent in a review over the summer won at least one minor prize. These consisted of books, DVDs, CDs, vouchers and some other toys. I've posted pictures below of a selection of our prizes including the big three.

If you missed out this year don't panic we hope to hold the challenge again next summer and think we can make it bigger and better. So keep watching this space and we'll let you know all the details.

The passage

Justin Cronin

Yes, this is a novel with vampires involved. But before you yawn and say "Not another vampire book!", this is not your Twilight version of vampires. In fact, the word "vampire" is hardly mentioned. It is more like a post-apocalyptic novel than a vampire one; the first half of the book

descibes the beginning of the apocalypse, the second is set 100 years later when a vampire virus has wiped out most of the world, leaving only a few survivors. Yes, there are a lot of characters and the tale is reasonably complex, but the story is held together by Amy, a little girl abandoned by her mother, who may hold the key to the whole situation. If you enjoy Stephen King's epics, you might just enjoy this engrossing tale too. Apparently the movie rights have already been taken up by Ridley Scott, so it will be interesting to see how the story is tackled in film format.

(Reviewed by Angela)

The Drowning Girl

Kirsty and I went out shopping the other day for minor prizes for the Pursue 100 reading competition so I thought I'd take a few pictures to let [people know the sort of things they can win. As well as the 3 major prizes (The iPad, The Ipod touch and the Ipod Nano) we've got a whole heap of books, CDs, DVDs, and Itunes vouchers.

Just for a bit of fun we've got a few things like these little flash drives (I like the fish).

Remember you need to give us at least 1 review to win some of these things so if you haven't yet send one in. Something like the one below would be perfect.

The Drowning Girl

Margaret Leroy

This book is about a single mother’s struggle to understand what is wrong with her young daughter. Young Sylvie has violent tantrums, doesn’t relate well to others at all and it deathly afraid of water. Her mother Grace takes her to children psychiatrists but when money is tight she begins to feel like there is nothing she can do. It isn’t until Adam Winters begins to take interest that everything begins to become clearer in a journey that takes the three of them to Ireland in the hopes they can work out what is wrong with Sylvie.

This book started off really good. It begins with the most interesting prologue I have read, confusing but interesting, really making me want to read more. It then goes in to Grace and Sylvie’s lives; with Sylvie’s tantrums and issues quickly coming to play. As soon as it showed Sylvie’s fear of water I knew it had something to do with drowning, or near drowning. When Grace says about how she feels like her daughter isn’t really her daughter sometimes I was massively confused. All until the characters start to suspect Sylvie isn’t Sylvie, but another girl. This is when I predicted that she was another girl, one who had drowned years before and was now recalling her past life. Ordinarily I would think it a bit weird, but I was right on the dot. The annoying thing was the characters, Grace and Adam, didn’t seem to think as fast as I did and I then had to keep reading as they slowly...very slowly...worked it out. The time-line was a little slow, but then, the characters didn’t read the prologue like I did. The prologue where Grace was wondering what it felt like to drown. Good prologue, my favourite bit because it was so mysterious. This book definitely had the mystery element down, which definitely made me read right to the end and have the whole mystery solved. I so wanted to know if Sylvie ever came right (and she did).

(Reviewed by Toni)

Full dark, no stars

Stephen King

This is a collection of four novellas dealing with, as King puts it, ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and how they deal with them. Being King novellas, the events faced are dark and disturbing (a wife's murder, cancer, rape, a serial killer husband) and the outcomes are not always pleasant or as you'd expect. There are some real gems in the collection, particularly "Big driver" which sees a cosy mystery writer attempting to avenge being attacked and left for dead while taking a shortcut home from a library talk. I can see decent films potentially being made of a couple of the stories, (like "Shawshank redemption" began as a King novella called "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank redemption"). An excellent collection for King fans, or people who enjoy dark tales.

(Reviewed by Angela)

A Bite to Remember

Lynsay Sands

Set in L.A. ‘A Bite to Remember’ is an ingenious novel based on the story that immortals/vampires originated from Atlantis. Atlantis was so advanced that they combined nano-technology and bio-engineering to create healing nanos that repair damage and keep the body in peak condition. In this novel an immortal, Vincent Argeneau, is being sabotaged by another unknown immortal and so he calls in Jackie Morrisey, a mortal P.I., to catch the saboteur. As the attacks escalate from property damage to bodily harm Vincent and Jackie discover they are life mates. But when the saboteur kills Vincent’s employees and kidnaps Jackie after she becomes immortal with the intent of killing her in a twisted irrational bid for revenge the race is on for Vincent to save her.

The character I most admire is Jackie because even though she has bad experiences with immortals she overcomes it in order to find her destiny. I would recommend this book to mature teens and rate it 8/10.

(Reviewed by Samantha)