15. Shadowmancer, by G.P. Taylor
This book was about a priest, Obadiah Demurral, who goes bad and seeks to become God himself. He steals this artifact from Africa, called a Keruvim, that allows him to control the elements. The Keruvim is part of a pair, though, so in order to take over the world he has to have the other. This isn't a problem, though, since having the first naturally draws the second to him. All Demurral has to do is bide his time until the second Keruvim comes. Meanwhile, an African boy named Raphah shows up on shore looking to take back the Keruvim. He enlists the help of young Thomas and Kate to help him retrieve the Keruvim from Demurral and pretty much prevent the world from being taken over by the devil.
This story was pretty different from anything I've read. It was pretty heavily Biblical (even quoting the Bible at times), which was cool, although I didn't completely get all the parallels the author was trying to make. It may just be that I always want things to have direct correlations and explicit explanations. Like, at one point Thomas has a dream where Jesus comes to him and shows him that He's real and tells him that He'll be with him in the struggle to come. But it never explicitly says that it was Jesus, He's just referred to as a King. Which irritates me. Also, Raphah calls God Riathamus, so I spent half the book trying to be sure whether Riathamus was just a different word for the same God, or if the author actually had two different gods in his story. I guess I just like to know for certain that how I percieve what's going on is consistent to what's actually going on, and it bugs me when the author refuses to tell me.

11. Seekers: Great Bear Lake, by Erin Hunter
This is the sequel to the Seekers book I wrote about last week. Basically, the journey continues, with Lusa travelling with Toklo and Ujurak. Eventually they get to Great Bear Lake, where white bears, brown bears, and black bears all gather (at different places) on the longest day of the year, either to thank the sun or to tell it to go away. The white bear, Kallik, also arrives, and she finally finds her brother, Taqqiq, whom she's been looking for since the beginning of the last book. They meet up and help to avert a potential crisis when a big dumb bunch of white bear boys try to invade the black bear territory.
So far, I'm enjoying the series. Obviously I can't read any more of it right now, but I think I'll try to get some more books next year (it's on my list!). Now the travelling group includes members of all three kinds of bears discussed so far in the series, so I'm interested to (eventually) see where the story goes.
12. The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
This is the original book that the musical and movie were based off of. It has the same basic plot, though the sequencing and some of the characterization is different. Like, the chandelier falls pretty early on, as opposed to being a part of the Phantom's climactic kidnapping of Christine from the stage. Christine is pretty much the same, but Raoul is a lot easier to empathize with, because we see his perspective a lot. Also, the Phantom (who has an actual name!) is much more gruesome and insensitive, though he still redeems himself at the end. For the first time, I think I actually like both the novel and movie versions. There are significant differences, like I said before, but they were both really enjoyable. I know that's not really a summary of the book, but you guys should already know the basic layout of the story, and I don't want to ruin all the differences, in case you ever want to read it for yourself (which I would recommend :).
13. I Am America (and So Can You!), by Stephen Colbert
This is nonfiction book that Colbert wrote to give his opinions on everything. He's a comedian, so everything he said was done jokingly. I don't really know much about Stephen Colbert, like, his actual views on anything. The book was entertaining and funny, but he pretty much spent so much time being ironic and goofy that I couldn't really tell what his actual opinions were on anything.
14. The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into In College, by Harlan Cohen
I started this book and I Am America a few weeks ago (I think during the week when I didn't actually finish any books), but after I finished Phantom, I finally got around to finishing them! Since they're both nonfiction, it was a little difficult just to sit down and read them straight (maybe I should have spaced it out a bit more, but oh well). But this was still a good read. Since I'm now a junior, a lot of the tips were things that don't apply so much any more. Others were on drugs and alcohol and things that I don't really get involved in, so they weren't especially applicable either, though they did reinforce my preexisting stances on just staying away. The book's formatted so every tip has a story from an actual student followed by the author's advice on the subject. There are also statistics and relevant websites, in addition to other quotes from college students. The students come from a lot of different colleges, even WKU, though I was dismayed to see that the only representative of our school was talking about how easy it is to access free condoms :/ Overall, it was a funny and helpful book.  And now I'm almost halfway through my list! Hopefully next week I'll be over the hump. Yay!

9. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford
This story tells about the life of a Chinese man, Henry, who lived in America during World War 2. It goes back and forth between flashing back to his childhood in the early '40s and then returning to the present day, in 1986. As a child, he is the only Chinese student at a prestigious white school. His father is making every effort to aid China in the war. He absolutely hates the Japanese, so when a young Japanese girl named Keiko starts to attend his school, he is not sure what to do. The two gradually become friends, despite Henry knowing that he is directly going against his father by "fraternizing with the enemy." Yet it cannot last. Keiko and all the other Japanese in the area are soon rounded up for internment. Henry goes and visits her a couple of times, and he tries to send her letters, but as the war continues, the letters gradually stop. In 1986, Henry is still dealing with the death of his wife, Ethel, from cancer. When he learns that an old hotel in what used to be Japantown has many possessions left there by Japanese before the internment, he is determined to go and see if he can find anything that used to be Keiko's.
That wasn't the best summary. Sorry :/ Anyway, this book started out pretty slow for me- I wasn't really sure what the point of the whole thing was supposed to be, so I wasn't very motivated to read it. Once I got farther in, though, and I started to see Henry and Keiko getting closer, I got really curious about what happened with them, since I could clearly see from the 1986 part of the story that Henry and Keiko had not ended up together. I've never read very much about the Japanese internment during World War II, either, so reading about that was really new to me. Overall, I thought it was a really good book, even if it took me awhile to see it.
10. Seekers: The Quest Begins, by Erin Hunter
This is the start of a new series by the author of the Warriors story arc. The Seekers series tells the story of three bears, a white (polar) bear , a brown(grizzly)  bear, and a black bear, as they journey far from their homes to find this place they've heard of where they don't have to worry about not having enough food or being in danger from other animals. In this first book, we meet Kallik, a white bear cub. Spring is coming, so she and her mom and brother have to leave the ice and go live on the land until the ice comes back. As they make the treacherous journey, however, Kallik's mother, Nisa, is attacked by killer whales, and Kallik and her brother, Taqqiq, become separated. Kallik makes it to the land on her own, and now she has to look for her brother, holding out the hope that he made it to land alright as well. Meanwhile, brown bear cub Toklo is traveling with his mother Oka and brother Tobi. They are journeying to the river, where they will be able to catch Salmon, but Tobi is sickly and weak. He dies before they reach the river, leaving Oka miserable with grief. Her first litter all died when they were young, and all she has left is Toklo. The way she sees it, though, Toklo is going to die, too, and she can't stand to see her last cub go, so she sends him off on his own. Oka gets captured and taken to a zoo, where she meets black bear cub Lusa. She tells Lusa how she regrets losing Toklo, and how she doesn't think Toklo knows that she loved him just as much as she did Tobi. Lusa promises to escape from the zoo and find Toklo to give him the message, and at the end of the book, she has done just that. Toklo has already teamed up with another brown bear cub, Uzurak, who has the strange ability (that he can't really control) to morph into other animals.
So, the sequel to this is on my list too, and I've already started on it. The series looks pretty good so far, though it's hinting at some greater purpose to this journey all the bears are on, and I'm not really sure what that's supposed to be. So far it just looks like the sad story of a bunch of orphaned bear cubs trying to survive on their own. I think they're all supposed to join together by the end of the next book, so that should be interesting. This is probably a series I'll want to read more of. You know, 20 books or so down the road.