Search Results for: printz

22 Mar 2012

The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

I love YA romance, but I am extremely picky.

  • I don’t like a lot of gratuitous descriptions of the characters’ hotness.
  • I don’t like a lot of completely obvious foreshadowing – it’s a romance, we know you are gonna hook up no matter how star-crossed your love may be.
  • I don’t like love that comes on too quickly, or can be easily confused with that of an obsessive stalker (sorry, Twilight)

I like romance, but I’m a smart girl. I don’t fall for silly romantic ploys, in real life or in fiction.

Pete Hautman’s The Big Crunch is probably the smartest romance I’ve read in quite some time. Apparently I am not alone in this thinking, as it was given a Los Angeles Time Book Award nod a few weeks ago, standing up against former Printz winning author Libba Bray, critical darling Life: An Exploded Diagram, Printz Honor The Scorpio Races, and the immensely popular Patrick Ness. The Big Crunch doesn’t feel out of place in this bunch – he did win a freaking National Book Award – but it is of  certainly quieter than the LA time nominees. Contemporary realism that doesn’t scream LITERARY. Lots of pink on the cover. Romance.

It’s quiet, but yes: it’s smart. Very smart.

The Big Crunch is the story of two teens and their completely typical love affair. June and Wes remind me that teen romance is rarely of the Romeo & Juliet, the Edward & Bella, or even the Sarah Dessen variety. Teen romance is not often foreshadowed, not always quick to bloom, not always logical. Teen relationships are weird.

June is new at school, but she’s used to it. Her dad’s job has her at multiple schools every school year. She knows how to fit in enough to get what she needs – a group to sit with in the cafeteria and maybe someone to kiss, if she feels like it. Wes broke up with his long-term girlfriend over the summer and he’s not sure why he did it, especially now that she’s moved on and it’s stressing him out. It’s not love at first sight for Wes & June – their social circles occasionally collide, they meet by chance walking home, and eventually, these tiny moments add up to a love.

But even then, things are not easy. Some factors that challenge their relationship are beyond their control – parents, friends, timing – but Hautman also doesn’t hold back from exposing, through close third-person narration for both Wes and June, the many tiny ways that people in love can betray one another. The pettiness. The exhaustion of being together and the tendency to blame the other party.

People are not always nice. All endings are not happy. Love is awful sometimes, and this is the kind of love that can shapes our future relationships sometimes, shape who we become.

I find that much more compelling than anything perfect.

 

19 Feb 2012

William C. Morris Award, 2012

This is a new book award to pique my interest. In the past, actually, I’ve been skeptical of debut authors. I think I just have a bad case of JudgeABookByItsCover-itis, actually – whenever I buy a book by a new author, I usually make my purchase because I am blinded by the cover art and then get let down with the content. And being that I’m the stingiest human in existence, I remember every single instance that I feel my money has been wasted, and it hurts my soul.

However, after reading a handful of Morris Award finalists for a class last year, I was pleasantly surprised. I think if you’re going to read a debut author, might as well start with the cream of the crop? Plus, as a future-librarian/children’s-lit-professional, it’s important to stay on top of what’s new – so I’m adding this award to the list of Awards To Get Geeky About.

I know, like I need another one.

Award

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

I think I have talked long enough about this book, which in addition to taking the William C. Morris also won the Printz award, and snagged a top spot on the highly competitive Books Jessica Read in 2011 Championship.

Honors

Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

This book went under the radar in the blogosphere, but has received really positive reviews in almost every review journal. It reminds me a lot of Inside Out and Back Again, because A) they both take place within families of non-American cultures living in America B) they are both written in verse C) they basically have the same cover. Anyway, the journal reviews are incredibly glowing – “beautiful debut,” “authentic,” “emotional,” etc.

Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard

This is a book about an all-boys boarding school, the tragic accidental death of a student who was doing some dumb teenager crap, and the guilt/redemption of the friends who watched it happen.

A Separate Peace? Finny? Have you been resurrected?

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

I will say that although my indoctrination to the science fiction and fantasy genres has softened me to the idea of reading books about Things That Just Don’t Exist, I still feel awful uncomfortable with selecting an epic fantasy quest to read. Even if they are purportedly quite good, which this one is.

My not-so-fantasy-hating-former-roommate did see it necessary to send me an email specifically to tell me about this title, though, even though she knows how I feel about SFF. For me, this is probably the equivalent of a blurb by Tamora Pierce or Megan Whalen Turner.

Which this book also has, by the way.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

This is the only book (other than WTCB) that I had picked up before the beginning of awards season. However, it was also one of Those Books That Got Away. I tried listening to it on audio, recently, and couldn’t pay attention. Le sigh. Some audiobooks are just like that, no?

 

26 Jan 2012

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I don’t feel like I am qualified to write a decent “review” of this book because yes, I am a full-fledged John Green fan-girl.

To my credit, I was a fan-girl before it was actually normal to say you were a fan-girl of John Green (iosome people prefer the term “nerdfighter”). No, I was just an adoring college student with a very tiny literary/not-so-literary crush on an author and his work.

But let me tell you this: despite years now of fan-girl-dom, I find that the more I read Green’s books, the more I like them. The more meaning I find within them. The more they stir up my emotions. I first read Looking for Alaska when I was a senior in high school; last summer I read it for the umpteenth time for a class and found myself Crying While Using Public Transportation.

Despite the near-continual hype – the tour bus, the video blogs, the thousands of signed books – Green continues to deliver.

The Fault in Our Stars put my little bit of Looking for Alaska train-boo-hooing to shame. Narrator 16-year-old Hazel has cancer. For three years, she submits to the gamut of painful treatments, comes very close to dying, and transforms from a normal teen to a sick one. She does survive, but only by the benefit of an experimental treatment and constant oxygen supplementation – she’s still frail, but now she’s isolated too. But when her parents force her to attend a kids-with-cancer support group, Hazel meets Augustus – a cute osteosarcoma survivor with a prosthetic leg who sets his sights on Hazel.

They fall in love. They take a trip to Amsterdam to track down Hazel’s favorite reclusive author. They get sicker, they get better, they get sicker, they get better. But even when they get better, there’s always the promise of getting sicker. And if they get sicker, there’s the promise of dying too soon.

Of course, this is also a very sharp, deeply funny novel. It’s not all kids-with-cancer. But what Green captures brilliantly here is that even when your daily life/immediate thoughts are not about suffering and unfairness and the insane brevity of life and death… your life is still about cancer and suffering and unfairness and the insane brevity of life and death. When you are a kid with cancer, these things are just closer to the surface. In many ways, this book reminded me not of other young adult fiction, but of books like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking; narratives that transcend narrative and become primers for death, grief, and, ultimately, life.

So go read this book and laugh and cry because… yeah. Life. That’s it.

20 Dec 2011

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

#5 The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

This book first caught my eye when I was working at a public library, spending many hours digging through the YA collection in an attempt to weed out enough books to counteract the books coming in. (This was a largely futile endeavor, by the way). I worked very hard to ignore my own biases when weeding – I once tried to weed the entire Chronicles of Prydain series only to find out that oh, they are somewhat historically important despite possessing tacky covers and only being checked out once in three years. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t acknowledge and remember my own biases.

I do remember spotting The House of the Scorpion on the shelf. I do remember its circs weren’t great. I do remember looking at the cover and thinking “Oh, my. That looks like a book I would never like.”

I also remember thinking. “Oh, MY, look at all those MEDALS!”

I’m still not sure how one book can be shortlisted for the Newbery AND the Printz. But moving on, I did finally read this heavily-medaled text and found my initial reactions to be incorrect. The House of the Scorpion is not the kind of book I would never like; it’s the kind of book that I do like.

And it’s probably the kind of book you like, too. This is a dystopia from before dystopias ran rampant – not a cutesy romance with a futuristic cover-plot, but a complex, painful, dark version of the future. Matteo Alacrán begins his life in a way that reminded me distinctly of the first few chapters of Room – I haven’t read the rest of the book, so maybe this is a terrible association, but the trappings of Matteo’s young life is really quite similar: a small apartment, a single female caretaker, a predictable daily routine, and he never goes outside. But when two children appear at his window,  Matteo realizes there is a greater world outside… and once Matteo himself ventures out there, he realizes that in this greater world, he is not just a bright young boy, but somewhere in between an heir to the opium fortune of a feudal drug lord and an inhuman monster.

So we have our dystopian hero. Check. Now we need a completely insane rendering of the near future that could very well happen at any time. Farmer’s future is a horrifying example of what happens when corporate interests and wealth take over government interests. The Alacrán family runs the world’s opium trade, their territory has become, simply, a country called Opium that lies between the US and what was once Mexico. Opium, then, serves as a barrier between the two countries – both of which are fairly third-world and destitute – and among other heinous deeds, the Alacrán estate has the freedom to grab at any illegal immigrants who enter the borders. The Alacráns themselves, however, live in a complete oasis – a compound of mansions with fountains, pools, delicious food, hired help, and air conditioning. The 1%, in the middle of the desert, and Matteo and the other children have little idea of what kind of corruption and violence occurs outside the walls of their compound.

I feel like I have ceased making sense, but please believe me (and the bevy of medals on the cover) when I insist that this is a complex, engaging, rewarding read. Think The Giver, think Hunger Games… and I don’t mean that in a “these are dystopias, so you will like this other dystopia.” I mean that the intensity/readability of  The House of the Scorpion will remind you of why you started liking the genre in the first place.

03 Jun 2011

May 2011 Reading Round-up

Oh, May.

You were a treat.

I read a lot. I read a lot of books I really enjoyed. I read a lot of books that I really enjoyed and then wanted to read more.

All around, a fun month for reading!

1. Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

My last “on-syllabus” book of the semester, but also the first “on-syllabus” book of my grad school career that had me completely at hello. Maybe there are books you read that make you want to give the book a hug, or maybe, a smart, mature book might leave you wanting to marry a book, but this book made me want to eat it. And it would taste like candy.

Actually, that’s a fairly accurate description of many of the books I read in May!

But anyway, the story begins with Amy’s family dissolving. Her father died in an accident, her twin brother was shipped off to rehab, and her mother decided to take a new job in Connecticut, leaving Amy behind in California while they sell one house and buy another. When it comes time for Amy to join her mother, it also seems like a great way for Amy’s mother to be rejoined with the red Jeep she left behind.

One problem: Amy doesn’t drive. Enter romantic interest: Roger. An old family friend finishing his first year of college and spending the summer with his father in Pennsylvania, Roger needs a ride and Amy has a car that needs driving. Amy’s mother has their route calculated and hotel reservations made along the way… but of course, what kind of book would it be if Amy and Roger didn’t decide to take off on their own?

Hijinks, emotional arcs, likable side-characters, make-overs, road trip playlists, local food indulgences, and tortured flirtation ensue.

Devoured it.

Loved it.

2. Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger

This is one of those quintessentially “YA” Young Adult book. One of the original Printz Honors, I feel like this book could be voted Most Likely To Show Up On Your Children’t Lit Course Syllabus. I, therefore, have read it three or four times before, and at least once when I was an actual teenager.

If you are one of the two people on this planet who have not read this novel, it is quite good, I think, and here’s what you need to know:

John’s parents are divorced. He lives with his mom and takes the train into Boston to visit his Dad’s bachelor pad on the weekends. His father ignores him and goes on dates, his mother weeps about her divorce and doesn’t show John any affection. John has one friend who is kind of a loser and spends too much time representing a heteronormative, nerdy kind of teenaged lifestyle.

John’s life sucks, so why not recreate yourself a little? John writes a zine (aww…. how nineties is that!!) under the name “Gio,” and gets the attention of another zine-writer, Marisol, who lives in Cambridge. Marisol is gorgeous, challenging, mercurial, and a lesbian. Of course, John/Gio falls in love.

The whole “girl falls in love with gay best friend” is almost a narrative trope at this point, but I can’t say I’ve heard of a story about the reverse other than this one!

2000 Printz Honor

3. Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi

I picked up this book for two reasons.

Reason #1: I used to watch Ally McBeal in high school, and I remember clearly all of the hype about the show’s actresses, including Portia de Rossi. Supposedly, the environment on the set was toxic: Calista Flockhart was clearly a too-skinny freak of nature and the show dressed her to accentuate her thinness, so the rest of the female cast felt like they needed to be gaunt to compete. I hoped that de Rossi’s memoir would be an insider account of what was going on there, in the cast of an only moderately successful television show, that seemed to formally usher in the stick-figure-body aesthetic of the late 90s and early 00s.

Reason #2: I heard it was actually a decent read, not obviously ghost-written or trashy.

I was right about #2, for sure. The back cover has blurbs from Jonathan Safran Foer, Jeanette Walls, and Augusten Burroughs for goodness sake! This is not your average celebrity memoir!

I didn’t find what I was expecting with #1, but what I found was equally interesting. This book really is not a Hollywood tell-all but a memoir. De Rossi describes her childhood in Australia, her career as a model that segued into acting, and her struggle to identify (inwardly and outwardly) as a homosexual woman.

By the time she made it onto the cast of Ally, she was already heavily into disordered eating, habits that developed when she was a young, aspiring model that her peers and parents seemed to approve of (or at least look the other way from). Hanging out with Calista Flockhart and Courtney Thorne-Smith and Lucy Liu didn’t drive de Rossi to anorexia, but the pressure of being a working actress in LA, with frequent costume fittings and sample-sized clothing, and with the means to over-exercise and seek professional help from a nutritionist, it was easier for de Rossi’s already present disorder to escalate quickly.

She barely mentions her female costars in this book, but she so clearly portrays this kind of pandemic Hollywood attitude toward women’s weight and appearance that it is easy to imagine that Flockhart and Thorne-Smith and Liu could have easily had similar personal experiences that kept them losing weight during the show’s filming… and contributing to whatever effect that had on women watching their show from home.

Anywaaaaay, super interesting read that I breezed through in an afternoon. I found myself very invested in de Rossi’s life and career and worried for her health, and I was glad to know that in Real Life, she was doing okay.

And yes, I’ve been watching Ally McBeal reruns on Netflix. It’s kind of like Grey’s Anatomy with lawyers!

4. Made for You and Me by Caitlin Shetterly

I picked this up from one of my favorite places to hear about quirky new books: NPR’s weekly “What We’re Reading” report.

And while I was reading it, I realized that when it comes to narrative non-fiction, I have a really big soft-spot for books like Shetterly’s.

I think I might call them “Memoirs by normal-ish people who have done little noteworthy other than craft their particular life experience into an interesting story.”

And this is why I don’t get mad when 20-somethings write memoirs. For me, a memoir isn’ about the destination, it’s about the journey! If you can take me on a journey, I love you.

Anyway. I loved this book. The journey Shetterly takes you on is one from New England to Los Angeles and back again. Caitlin gets married and she and her husband decide to pursue their lifelong dream of moving to LA and living as working artistic-people. However, the move is neither cheap nor smooth (as very few moves tend to be), and their savings is pretty much shot… just in time for the Great Recession to swing in to eliminate the middle-class day jobs the two were hoping to acquire to pay the rent, and for Caitlin to get pregnant…. and if that weren’t enough, she develops hyperemesis gravidarum and can’t walk across the living room much less find a job or work.

So the thirty-something couple and their new baby end up moving back to Maine… and moving in with Catilin’s mother. But that’s not really the point. The point is that Shetterly takes you on this very American journey of hope, pursuit of happiness, and the nuclear family… when she fails, you can see how thousands of other American families can so easily fail even when they are doing everything right… but also that we are all kind of in this economic rollercoaster ride together.

Her story could be anybody’s story, but in a good way.

5. Bumped by Megan McCafferty

My awesome roommate pre-ordered this book for me for my birthday in March! This is one of my favorite methods for gift receiving – I would gladly forgo a gift on my actual day of birth in exchange for an Amazon delivery on pub day! It’s a little like Christmas!

I have waxed poetic about my love of Megan McCafferty’s Jessica Darling oeuvre before.

I had mixed but generally positive feelings about Bumped, which is McCafferty’s first “straight” YA novel, as well as a departure into the oh-so-trendy world of futuristic dystopia.

The dystopian premise: every adult gets a disease that renders them sterile. All procreation lies on the shoulders of the teenage demographic… so of course, the whole system becomes heavily monetized, with babies being purchased, adoptions and surrogacy brokered by the powerful and rich, and the more fertile you are, the cooler, most popular, and closer to celebrity you become!

I didn’t have any problems with the story itself. The premise was interesting with lots of surprising and thought provoking details, and the main plot clever and snappy (two twins, separated at birth, meeting for the first time: one who lives in a private, religious cult that favors traditional attitudes toward procreating such as “marriage” and “don’t sell your baby,” the other a popular overachieving girl with a contract to bear a child for a high-powered couple as soon as they find a suitable sperm donor).

But I am, sadly, getting a little bored/overwhelmed with the poor, beat-int0-the-ground dystopia.

Similarly, the recent influx of built-in-trilogies. Can’t we just write longer books instead of spreading out the goods intentionally?

I’ll be excited to read book 2, though, whenever it comes out…

6. What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

What to say about a Sarah Dessen book that hasn’t already been said?

Janssen wrote a pretty solid review a few months ago. I stand by everything she says about this novel and the whole “Sarah Dessen” aesthetic.

There’s just something comforting about her novels. Everything you want out of this book, you will get. So while some people might find her novels formulaic, I delight in finding out exactly how she plays with the formula with each successive book, and how her knack for creating likable, three-dimensional characters and rich settings (although they are always suburban?!? who can do that?), make me, the reader, seduced into her novels.

Another win for Ms. Dessen.

An aside for fellow Dessenophiles: this is the THIRD book that Jason has appeared in as a significant minor character… what is it about that boy? Do you think Sarah Dessen has a soft spot for the old nerd? Do you think he’s having some kind of multi-book storyline that will end up with him as a love interest two or three books down the road? I’m so obsessed with this…

7. Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

Okay, at this point in my summer-break reading, I’m not even pretending to be a literary-type person.

Whatever.

This is chick lit! It’s been turned into a RomCom! It’s got a lot of silliness and betrayal and sex and consumerism!

I liked it.

This is probably like saying “I like eating Krispy Kreme donuts.” Of course you like eating Krispy Kreme donuts! They are deep fried in fat and covered in sugar! Your body was made to like eating Krispy Kreme donuts!

I ate a book donut in May and it was good. I put the sequel on hold. I was a little disheartened that the book ended with the protagonist kind of “falling into” the resolution of her love-triangle, but all in all I thought the conclusion was an interesting way to end the novel. Is it too much to ask for a female romantic protagonist who isn’t either A) totally confident and outgoing and take charge or B) completely mousy and ineffective and doesn’t DO anything?

I guess I can’t eat a bunch of donuts and expect them to be better than… something that’s not just a donut.

8. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Do you ever get into a reading mood? When you just want to read a certain type of book or books about a certain topic or maybe the same book over and over again?

Maybe it’s just me.

But I hope you like books about running, because that’s what I’m in the mood for.

That being said, I really liked this book for many reasons other than the fact that it is a book about running. The author is a well-known writer of fiction in Japan, so he can craft a sentence for sure. And I loved the Not-Western-ness of some of his attitudes and of his writing style in general. Refreshing.

But above all, this is one of those kind of meandering, philosophical books that has you reaching for a pen and paper to jot down quotes that say something so perfectly, something you never thought anyone else ever thought about except for you.

For example, this quote that has nothing to do with writing but everything to do with life (and maybe YA fiction):

Sixteen is an intensely troublesome age. You worry about little things, can’t pinpoint where you are in any objective way, become really proficient at strange, pointless skills, and are held in thrall by inexplicable complexes. As you get older, though, through trial and error you learn to get what you need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact) that since your faults and deficiencies are well night infinite, you’d best figure out your good points and learn to get by with what you have.”

Good stuff. The book is structured as short essay-type pieces that revolve around Murakami’s experiences a long distance runner, but yeah, it’s not all about running. Don’t worry. Try it anyway.

9. Hush by Eishes Chayil

Okay. I am pounding out a whole system of weird reading philosophies here, but bear with me. Along with reading moods, I think people have “hot topics” that they just can’t resist. Ever. Sometimes, the topics just come to you: my mother has read more books about mountain climbers than 95% of the population, but very rarely chooses to read a book just because it’s about mountain climbers. She reads them because somebody recommended the book or because it’s about something entirely other than climbing mountains but somehow is also about climbing mountains, et cetera.

Anyway. One of my hot topics for reading/documentaries/Dateline specials?

Secluded religious communities that hold onto traditional ways of life in spite of all the 21st century America happening around them.

So, basically, stories about fundamentalist Mormons, the Amish,

and Orthodox Jews!

Hush is an intense young adult novel about life for young girls in extremely Orthodox communities. The kind of child abuse that occurs in this novel is by no means unique or even prevalent to this religious community, but the religious beliefs regarding women, sex, marriage, and the pressure placed upon a family unit to be godly, to be pious, to be normal, creates a kind of strange environment in which severe child abuse gets swept under the rug. Young victims are ignored or silenced and perpetrators are never confronted and can continue to abuse other children.

It’s a vicious cycle. This book is not only an “insider’s look” at a religious community that still thrives today, slightly outside the focus of the average American, but also calls attention to this systemic problem and calls for action to be made within the communities themselves.

2011 William C. Morris Award Finalist

10. My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel

File this one under “Trying to Read Those Children’s/YA Books Everyone Has Already Assumed I’ve Read.”

Also file this one under “Weird Books That I Don’t Quite Appreciate Because I’m A Modern Reader With Modern Expectations.”

This is Zindel’s “problem novel” about abortion. I read it a few weeks ago but don’t remember much about it other than the fact that female low-self esteem was usually followed by this random older guy appearing to take the offending (and desperate) girl out on a date… where they found this guy and decided he was worth speaking to was a mystery to me: his character is basically Generic Offensive Asshole.

I guess when you are feeling down, this is what you get, ladies. A Generic Offensive Asshole to punish you for making bad decisions.

11. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

See: Reading Mood… but also see: Reading Candy! This book was awesome and I ate it right up in like, two days.

This book is…

One part Intro to Ultramarathons. Running 50 to 100 mile races might not seem like the most interesting topic for a book, but it certainly attracts a very interesting breed of person and McDougall does a great job of capturing the many interesting characters who have found and excelled at the sport. (Spoiler: they are all kind of crazy)

One part History of People. Running, McDougall posits, is an innately human thing to do. He gathers the data and research on primitive running cultures and examines how they run, why they run, what they eat, how they live, and talks about how those choices keep them free from injury and able to maintain superior athletic performance. I now want to run around barefoot all the time and eat chia seeds.

One part Epic Adventure. McDougall does a story on the notoriously elusive and skilled runners, the Tarahumara. In digging into the jungles of Mexico to find them, he meets a random crazy ultramarathoning white dude who has earned the Tarahumara respect… and who also wants to bring some of America’s best ultramarathoners down to the jungle to have an epic 50 mile race. Somehow McDougall and this Crazy Guy convince some of those crazy characters to travel down into Mexico (while avoiding food poisoning, falling off cliffs, and Mexican drug cartels) and compete against the Tarahumara.

They pull it off in the end, but the path to get there is pretty ridiculous.

I really just want to buy this book for people. I don’t know why, but I do.

12. Bossypants by Tina Fey

I read this book from start to finish last Wednesday while I sat in various airports for various lengths of time!

I’m not sure I have much to say about it, though. This book is getting a lot of good press and for good reason. Everyone wants Tina Fey to be their best friend, and here she is, telling you about her life and making you laugh.

My favorite part is when she writes about 30 Rock, and how she wanted to write a really popular, accessible sitcom that would make a lot of money… but for some reason, 30 Rock just wouldn’t have it. It just became weirder and weirder.

That just makes me smile.

13. Good Eggs by Phoebe Potts

When I was planning out books to bring with me for my trip to Michigan, I had this feeling that I would find at least one good book lying around my house. Probably a book I hadn’t heard of, or maybe one I’d been meaning to read that would just appear on a kitchen counter…

This was that book! And it was really good!

Remember how I like “Memoirs by normal-ish people who have done little noteworthy other than craft their particular life experience into an interesting story?” Here’s another one! AND it’s a graphic novel!! Best day ever!!!

This actually did kind of remind me of Made for You and Me, but in reverse. Where Caitlin is an artistic New England girl struggling to find a place in the world after she gets married and becomes unexpectedly pregnant, Pheobe Potts is an artistic New England girl struggling to find a place in the world after she gets married and becomes unexpectedly infertile.

I’m glad I spotted this book hiding on the bottom level of the end table sitting next to the chair in my parents’ family room.

 

13 books read in May

(you overachiever, you!)

 

31 Mar 2011

March 2011 Reading Round-up

Even though I have a week off for Spring Break, March is usually a fairly light reading month for me. Maybe because a week off from school means a week off from my syllabus? But heck, who am I kidding, I am having trouble even attending to my obligatory 2-novels-a-week quota.

Ah, well. Some months are lean, some have books of plenty, their reading cups runneth over, et cetera. Take it easy, Jessica, it will all get read, in time.

1. Alice in Charge by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I read my first Alice book in 5th grade, when Alice was a year ahead of me. Now, 10 years later, Alice is finally a Senior in high school, and Lester – her epically older, working on his Masters since I was in middle school, brother – just turned 24.

I am now the most epically old person alive.

Anyway, this year, Alice is going on (underplanned, heavily misguided) college visits, helping a friend report unsavory teacher-student relations, and investigating an undercover hate group that has targeted her friend, a refugee from Sudan.

But, most importantly, she’s pining over Patrick, who has started college a year early (what an idiot). Ah, sigh, Alice and Patrick, Patrick and Alice. Some things just don’t change in 10 years.

2. Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart

I wrote about how much I enjoyed reading this book, but I didn’t go into much detail as to why.

Here’s the quick and dirty: E. Lockhart’s books, without fail, remind me of the sheer complexity of attempting to maintain a romantic relationship with another human being, the triumphs, the pain, the importance of keeping at it. They might be considered “romantic comedies,” but they never sell a single character or interaction short.

These books make me want to hug them. Like, actually hug.

3. Split by Swati Avasthi

Return of the Syllabus… but I really enjoyed this book. The novel begins with Jace knocking on the door of his older brother, who he hasn’t seen in a number of years and who isn’t expecting him for a visit, much less to move in and stay awhile. Christian is miffed, but he understands, since he ran away from the same home years before to escape the domestic abuse of their father… who is a District Judge. The story focuses on Jace adapting to a new life while trying to reach out to the mother he left behind, trying to relate to a similarly emotionally damaged brother, and dealing with a bit of a secret past that could come back to haunt him.

I found this to be one of those books that zips right along, the pages flying by for a few days and when you are done, you don’t feel floored (or prone to book-hugging) but just satisfied.

2010 Cybils Winner – Young Adult Fiction

4. The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

We read this book for class alongside Split, which turned this class period into a Domestic Abuse Extravaganza!! (These books are pretty much all super depressing this semester)

This time around, we have a crazy, occasionally violent mother. Nikki has three kids from two different fathers, and this novel is a letter written from the oldest (Matthew) to the youngest (Emmy). Matthew and his sister Callie have done a great job of keeping Emmy safe from Nikki’s crazy outbursts and drunken rages, but Matthew still secretly hopes that somebody – a Knight in Shining Armor – will show up and save them all, even though he’s not sure that Nikki is really “all that bad.” Matt and Callie see a strong, kindly stranger in their neighborhood and decide that he is the One, and they hunt him down and find his name and address. However, Nikki finds Murdoch first and seduces him, and when their romantic relationship fizzles, Nikki turns her rage towards him.

I’d read this book a few years ago and I definitely enjoyed the re-read, but unlike say, Split, the end of the book felt a little scrapped together, a little disconcerting. Well, the whole book was a bit disconcerting, but I didn’t close the novel feeling resolved – I left feeling a little lost, a little confused… and all the more glad that I have a pair of mentally balanced parents.

2006 National Book Award Finalist

5. Stolen by Lucy Christopher

I’ll say this first – this book has me all sorts of riled up, for a number of reasons.

I feel like I don’t want to spoil much, but I’m going to anyway. In chapter one, the narrator – Gemma – is drugged and abducted at the airport and flown against her will and her knowledge to the remote deserts of Australia where her captor has spent years building a little homestead for the two of them to live.

The novel has two storylines, then:

1) Gemma tries to escape

2) Gemma falls in love with her captor

The second story line bothered me, but it mostly bothered me because it was really obvious that the story line was SUPPOSED to bother me.

I don’t like feeling manipulated…

but I suppose it DID make me think, right? And also we talked about Colonialism in class – Stockholm Syndrome = the oppressors tricking the oppressed into wanting to be oppressed – which I thought was crazy-interesting.

So I’m torn.

2011 Printz Honor

6. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

It was a BPL miracle: this book was getting a lot of hype in the media/blogosphere, I went to put a hold on it, I WAS NUMBER FOUR IN LINE.

Anyway, last week when I was recovering from my terrible illness, I missed out on 12 hours of work on Thursday and thought I would go onto campus and do a little extra on Friday. But first, I had to walk to the library to drop off my overdues and pick up my holds.

The bags were really heavy, though, and I forgot my caffeine in my fridge, and walking a mile was a little exhausting. I did not make it to work on Friday – I made it back onto the couch and read through this book in the span of an afternoon.

I found the book to be not much at all like the media portrayed it – it wasn’t a parenting polemic, it was a memoir. It wasn’t a “This is How You Should Raise Your Kids,” this is “This is How I Raised My Kids and It Kind of Worked and Kind of Didn’t.”

The book revolves around her two daughter’s music lessons and skills – they are both highly advanced musicians because Ms. Chua lorded over their hours-a-day practicing and arranged for them the best lessons available – so I naturally handed this one off to my boyfriend.

However, I didn’t expect him to eat it up like he currently is…

more about THAT later…

02 Mar 2011

February 2011 Reading Round-up

All-syllabus, all the time.

At least I’m getting more reading done than I was last year at this time, what with The Semester of the Picturebook weighing me down. And I’m actually caught up with my reading to the point that I *gasp* picked up a JUST FOR FUN book yesterday! And I might have time to finish it! Yowza!

1. Trash by Andy Mulligan

This book is much more action-y than I usually like, but I did like this book. It has a strangely dystopian-feel, but maybe that’s because the kids in the book make a living digging through the trash of the rich and selling what they find. It seems hard to believe that kids like this really exist in the world, that communities like this exist, but they do. These kids get in and out of a fair amount of trouble when they find some trash they shouldn’t have, and they end up doing the whole Fighting Off the Evil Opressors! thing throughout the novel. Really engaging.

2. Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz

I love me a good addict memoir, but this fiction is just as good. Alex is in rehab, but he doesn’t remember why. Actually, he just doesn’t want to remember why, so he doesn’t. But if he wants to leave, wants to stay sober, wants to return to the real world, he has to work with his therapist, with his friends, and with himself to figure out what’s worth remembering from his past and what’s worth returning to.

3. Boy Toy by Barry Lyga

I read this book when it first came out, a few years ago. I thought it was pretty good, whatever. Read it again, and suddenly, I felt like a big fat creep. This could be because I’m currently enrolled in a graduate program, that besides from being freaking AWESOME, it also requires that I think about what it means to be an adult who wants to read about teenagers, and the inherent creepiness about the whole process. ANYWAY, the book is about a 13-year-old kid who has affair with his 24-year-old social studies teacher. Five years later, he’s 18 and she’s being let out of jail on parole, and he’s finally forced to dredge up the past and figure out what exactly happened in seventh grade.

The difference between my two readings of the book? When I first read the book, I was 22. Now, I’m older than his teacher.

Insert squeamish faces and noises and feelings in the pit of your stomach.

4. Fell by M.E. Kerr

This was one of my favorite audiobooks as a kid. Yeah, I listened to a lot of Books on Tape while I played with my Legos… what’s it to you? Anyway, I’ve heard this story a lot, but I’ve only read it a couple times in print. This time around, I was surprised that there was a lot that my mind had inflated – I knew the story so well, I was sure of this EPIC nature of the book, that scenes went on longer, that the plot moved slower. Nope. This is a lean, fast read. It’s about a boy, Fell, whose girlfriend stands him up at Prom. Angry, he backs out of her driveway too fast and runs into her neighbor’s car, an accident that ends up changing his life when the neighbor offers to get him out of his struggling single-parent home and take a place at a prestigious boarding school under a false name. I also wrote a paper on this book…. which was probably not very well executed. Urgh.

5. Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

I brought this book home in the summer, thinking it looked like a nice literary, edgy read. I never got around to it… THANK GOODNESS. It popped up on my syllabus, and I first found it…. dense. A lot of description. It wouldn’t have been what I wanted to read over the summer…. and then, close to the end, it becomes completely horrifying. I don’t even want to get into it, but jaw-dropping, eye-covering, horror. 2007 Printz Honor.

6. Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

No offense intended to Mr. Myers…. but how can you write a book like Monster and then KEEP writing books about kids in prison? I can’t read a single book about a kid in prison without comparing it to Monstermuch less another book written by Walter Dean Myers.

So it was good, fine, yes. But no Monster. 2010 National Book Award Finalist.

7. Nothing by Janne Teller

Just when I thought I couldn’t be more horrified by a book (See: Surrender), more horrifying books come along!

This is one of those books that you’ll find yourself trying to explain to every person you meet. It starts off with a bunch of seventh graders, one of whom decides that life is meaningless, climbs up a tree, and proceeds to harass everyone that walks by, screaming at his former friends for continuing to live when there’s really nothing to live for. So the rest of the gang want to prove him wrong and shut him up: they start to gather a pile of things that have meaning, to show their friend. Only, the things they put on that pile…. oh my good Lord. This book was so disturbing, but I do feel I’ll have to read it again, someday, when I’m done being horrified. (And want to be re-horrified?). 2011 Printz Honor.

8. Punkzilla by Adam Rapp

No one in my class seemed to like this book, but I was quite fond of it. Punkzilla is a fourteen-year-old runaway who has gone AWOL from military school. He’s living a questionable, drug-laden, crime-driven lifestyle in Portland when he finds out his older brother – also estranged from their parents – is dying of cancer, so he sets off across the country to see him before he dies. The novel, however, is told in letters. Letters Punkzilla sends to his brother, which may or may not have been sent, while he’s on the road. Letters he’s received from his parents and family and friends. Letters that are non-chronological, unreliable, and hard to decipher. What really got me was the last letter – after an entire novel about this really troubled, confused kid, the last letter is an older one, sent right after he left military school: Punkzilla – or Jamie, which is his real name – used to be a totally normal, kid with normal-league problems. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM IN PORTLAND? Gah! Also, I’m fairly certain this was edited by my internship supervisor at Candlewick. *smile* 2010 Printz Honor.

9. Inexcusable by Chris Lynch

I heard about this book a lot, but never actually read through it until it -duh- appeared on my syllabus. The premise: the narrator, Keir, has raped his friend Gigi. The rest of the book: him explaining himself. So based on that, I thought the novel would be pretty salacious, pretty ridiculous, pretty over the top, whatever. But it wasn’t. I was reading, feeling like there would be some revelation at the end of the novel, that there would be some explanation that would make Keir’s actions make sense. But there wasn’t. So the whole book becomes, then, Keir trying to figure that out for himself – that there’s no explanation. Some things are inexcusable, and not just things that people do to him, but things he’s done to others. It’s a bit of a mind-trip, and really compelling. 2005 National Book Award Finalist.

10. Sorta Like A Rockstar by Matthew Quick

My roommate kept asking me if this book was any good. I kept answering “Yeah, it’s okay. It’s more like something we would actually read for fun.” I’m still trying to figure out what that means, exactly, other than 1) Not so literary 2) Kind of silly/fluffy 3) Not so depressing. Well, I mean yes, the book is depressing, and I *may* have shed a tear at the over-the-top Hollywood ending, but it’s nothing like.. oh… Nothing. It’s basically the story of a really plucky homeless girl who is really into Jesus and befriending the kind of people who nobody wants to befriend, and whether or not true tragedy can or should break your faith in God or the goodness of life or your eternal optimism. A nice way to round out the month. I flew through the last half of the book.

31 Jan 2011

January 2011 Reading Round-up

There was a lot of reading going on this month, 95% of it Required Winter Break Reading of Young Adult Classics.

Wait a second. Make that 100%.

What does this mean? That I should have been keeping a Death Count. Seriously, people are dying/going crazy/trying to kill themselves all over the place in historic YA!

1. Forever… by Judy Blume

I forgot how much I FREAKING LOVE this book. It’s 200 pages of amazingly raw first romance, gratuitous drama, and of course, sexy-sex. RALPH!!! Judy Blume is my hero.

2. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

I was assigned this book for my Reading class in 7th grade… and I remember very clearly not finishing it on time and failing a reading test because I didn’t know what happened with some fire at the end of the book. I felt a little better when, 13 years later, I still didn’t quite understand what happened with that fire. I mean, I get it now, but it took me a few read throughs. Other than that, I was disturbed by how annoyingly didactic this novel is. “If you just go to school and save your pennies, you can rise out of poverty and racism and oppression, kids!” “Be one of the GOOD black people (Logans), children, not the BAD black people (T.J.) 1977 Newbery Medal.

3. Unleaving by Jill Paton Walsh

Rich, pages-long descriptions of the ocean. Thick, pages-long conversations between professors and students about the meaning of life and morality. If that’s what you’re into. Titled after one of my favorite poems. 1976 Boston Globe- Horn Book winner.

4. I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier

Did I tell you that Robert Cormier’s daughter works at my school… and last semester, she worked withe ME for a few weeks? How bizarre, how bizarre. Much like this book! A psychological thriller with two competing timelines. I’m not sure I figured out what was going on by the end of the book.

5. The Language of Goldfish by Zibby ONeal

Really enjoyed this book. It’s a short, delicate story of a stressed out 13-year-old girl, a budding artist, who can’t figure out how to grow up and may or may not be going crazy. I wish I had time in my busy reading schedule to give this one another read-through.

6. Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

Read this one during my hellish day of air transportation. A certain classmate of mine *cough* Kristina *cough* hated it and called the main character silent, self-pitying, and self-loathing. I suspect this particular classmate is not an oldest child with gorgeous, spoiled younger sisters. 1981 Newbery Medal

7. Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

Love, love, loved this book. I wish that 95% of people writing mainstream, heterosexual YA romance/high school stories right now would read this and take extensive notes. It’s really pitch perfect.

8. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

A literal coming-of-age novel. Each chapter is an unfolding of Annie John’s life in Antigua, beginning with early childhood memories of idolizing her mother, through the social challenges of high school, and ending when she boards a boat for college off the island. Pretty readable, but I wasn’t in love.

9. House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

I read this using my patented, completely ineffective method of Wii Reading. Meaning – Read 10 pages, play one level of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Read 10 pages, play one more level. Consequently, I don’t remember much about this one.

10. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

This is a book about teenage soldiers in the Vietnam War. I expected it to be vaguely horrifying. It was. But I did not expect to actually enjoy the story. I did.

11. Remembering the Good Times by Richard Peck

Okay, there wasn’t anything WRONG with this book, plot-wise, content-wise, whatever. It was fine. However, all three main characters suffered from acute Dawson’s-Creek-itis, constantly waxing poetic about the Difficulty of Life, the Strength and Duration of their Friendships, the Horror of Growing Up. The three main characters are constantly running around talking about how close a friendship they have, how the three of them grew up together and have an unspoken bond of eternal trust. However, all three characters seem to have forgotten that A) They met A YEAR before the book’s main plot takes place and B) THEY ARE FOURTEEN. THEY ARE TOO YOUNG TO BE TALKING LIKE THEY ARE 50 YEARS OLD. /rant

12. Stotan! by Chris Crutcher

I forget that I like Chris Crutcher’s books so much… but there you have it. I do. Teen male camaraderie at its finest, and sports so well-rendered you’ll forget you hate sports.

13. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Yet another case of the I-Swear-I-Read-This-Book-But-I-Really-Can’t-Remember-Anything-About-It. I was dutifully impressed, however. So impressed, I would prefer not to write a paper on this book. Unfortunately, the syllabus begs to differ.

14. I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson

Ever read a book whose plot relies on some character revelation midway through the novel, and then you read it again and catch all the foreshadowing you missed in the first half of the book? Yeah, that happened here. Such a sad, sad book.

15. A Step From Heaven by An Na

Lyrical prose, vignette-style narration, depicting the suckiness of family life as a new immigrant. 2002 Printz Winner.

16. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Reading this for the umpteenth time, still tickled by Anderson’s wit and Melinda’s survival tactics. Will be spending a significant chunk of the semester thinking and writing and presenting about this novel… 2000 Printz Honor.

26 Jan 2011

Library (Student) Day in the Life, 2011 edition

It’s that time of year again… time for…. Library Day in the Life!

6:30 a.m. “Jessica!”

“What are you doing here? How is it possible for you to have ANOTHER snow day?”

“I’m sick! I’m taking a sick day!”

“—-”

“What! I get 20 sick days a year.”

“I hate you.”

7:00-9:00 a.m. A little alarm clock snooze, followed by an egg sandwich, shower and blowdry, and generally readying myself for the day. Boyfriend wakes up too and insists upon driving me to Starbucks before work. Well, I mean, if you REALLY WANT to, I guess we can go… Am very excited to avoid taking the damn 39 bus. Every day, I leave earlier and earlier and the bus gets later and later, and – of course – the temperature outside gets colder and colder. The day before, I shivered for so long – knees locked – at the zero-degree bus stop that once I boarded, I had to ask a lady to let me sit down before I passed the heck out. And the bus died. I hate the 39.

9:00-10:00 a.m. Boyfriend texted his friend saying, “Hey, I’m home today if you want to hang out later,” and he of questionable sleep habits replied, “Do you want to hang out right now?” Swing by his apartment on our way, debating whether he actually went to sleep the night before or not. Park in front of the Starbucks – have to shimmy over to the driver’s seat to get out of the car because of severe snowbankage. Order my usual – double tall two pump mocha with skim, and sip while we talk about circular time.

10:00-noon Job #1. Sent about 50 emails, made a few phone calls, and listened to two undergraduates debate where you should and should not study abroad and what majors you should or should not attempt. Briefly discussed Eyes on the Prize and how once you’ve seen the whole series and read the reader, it’s pretty much impossible to speak about race to anyone who hasn’t done the same.

noon-2:00 p.m. Job #2: Reference Desk! The desk is double-staffed at this time of day, so while the library foot traffic is heavy (never fewer than 5 girls huddled around a Laser Printer for two straight hours), I have few questions. I help a student from the Massachusetts School of Pharmacy get set up to search for and borrow books and help a GSLIS student find our secret gratis databases over chat. My boss then puts me to work looking up Choice‘s Outstanding Books of 2010 in the library catalog, and making a list of what we don’t own in Books In Print. Which is exactly the kind of busy work that soothes my soul. Ahhhh. And a friend came to visit me at the Ref desk, too, and we exchanged strategies for pub trivia that evening.

2:00-2:30 p.m. Wait in the interminable Laser Printer Line for some articles to spit out, then headed over to my First Library Class of the Semester! Chat with a few friends before class started, mostly about how much work we will have this semester, how little time, how little money, and how little health insurance.

2:30-5:00 p.m. Programming for Young Adults. The second class of the semester that opened with the question “So what exactly IS a young adult?” Uhhhhhhh. Went over the syllabus – booktalks and observing teens in their natural habitat and critiquing teen library spaces – then went over a brief history of adolescence and library services for teens. Feeling like a bit of a seasoned pro when I can identify the name drops – G. Stanley Hall, anyone? – and random Printz and Newbery winners.

5:00-5:30 p.m. The godforsaken 39 bus…. a;sij;ansdjfkljngksdfa. Call my best friend who I haven’t spoke to since she had a baby last week, and try not to speak too inappropriately while she recaps labor and other gross baby things. Have to squeeze myself out of the bus like a sausage at my stop.

5:30-7:15 p.m. Help my Delinquent Boyfriend make the chipotle corn chowder from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters cookbook, although he took his friend and our roommate to an Indian buffet for lunch and isn’t even hungry enough to eat. Chill out on the couch for a bit before bundling back up and out into the cold for a little pub trivia.

7:15-10:00 p.m. The Brendan Behan is packed. We can’t get a table – just a few bar stools – but with a seven-person entourage, we put up a damn good fight, and answered some seriously obscure questions about weird Coen Brothers films, European explorers and Sailor Jerry’s rum. We were in third place at the final round, and we decided to just bet 10 on both questions… and if we’d got both right, we would have tied for first! However, we got one wrong: apparently The Color Purple was the Steven Spielberg flick that earned the most Oscar nominations without any wins… not E.T. Ugh. We are annoyingly Gen X (or are we Millenials? I’ll report back after a few more classes)

10:00-10:30 p.m. Frosty cold walk home, sleep in a nice warm bed, dreaming of… the 10 to 12 inches of snow on their way to Boston.

Oh, wait. Those are nightmares.

Maybe a few Library Day in the Life’s from now, I’ll be posting from somewhere a little more temperate.

04 Jan 2010

Reading Resolutions 2010

1. I will read at least 103 books in 2010.

2. I will read one work of fiction written by Barbara Kingsolver.

3. I will read all the 2010 Printz winners and honors.

4. I will read the 2010 Newbery winner.

5. I will read Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

6. I will read Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

7. I will read Hunger Games #3 by Suzanne Collins

8. I will read Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

9. I will read Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart

10. I will read a nonfiction book on the topic of religion or spirituality.

11. I will read at least 20 young adult fiction books released in 2010.

12. I will read a collection of poetry.

13. I will read a collection of short stories.

14. I will re-read Sarah Dessen’s books, in order of publication.

15. I will read the Twilight Series, unless it makes me gag.

16. I will read 5 books off my Book Bucket List (2 out of 5 does not count)

17. I will continue to keep track of my reading online (Eh, 90% counts)

18. I will get rid of the books I own that I will not be reading over and over again forever and ever.

19. I will read 99% of my assigned reading books.

20. I will read more like Mandy Brown discusses on her simply inspiring blog, A Working Library.

Reading must occur everyday, but it is not just any daily reading that will do. The day’s reading must include at minimum a few lines whose principle intent is to be beautiful—words composed as much for the sake of their composition as for the meaning they convey.

All other goals aside, these will be fun 🙂