19 Dec 2011

Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

#6. Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Okay. I’ve talked about a few syllabus books that surprised me by being really good reads. But you guys… I have like, 30+ books to read each semester. 95% of the books I’m required to read fall somewhere between a monotone kind of “oh, well, that was interesting. I really like x, y, z… ” and “Uh… ugh. What the heck.” I am so happy to do my reading, I swear, and think it is so essential to read outside your preferences… but the books I read for school are not, typically, the same ones I will buy for my bookshelf, that I will read multiple times, that I will love foreverandeverandever.

Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour was the first big exception. This is 100% the kind of book I love, and it magically appeared on my Realism syllabus last Spring as a selection for our “New Voices in YA” class period.

Amy is faced with one of those probably-not-likely-in-real-life-but-hey-let’s-roll-with-it scenarios: her father has just died, her younger brother is in rehab, her mother has decided to move from California to Connecticut but for some reason cannot take the family car; Amy, rocked and reeling from all this sudden change and tragedy and only 17-years-old, simply MUST drive the car across the country on her own.

(Because this makes all the logical sense in the world.)

Anyway, Amy’s mother makes up for this parental disregard for her offspring by micromanaging her daughter’s trip. She will take a thoroughly boring, quickest way from A to B route through middle America. She will only drive X amount of miles a day and stop at specific, pre-paid hotel rooms. And because she doesn’t drive anymore, Amy will be chauffeured by a friend of the family – a boy, Roger, who is going to spend his first summer back from college with his dad on the east coast and needed a ride anyway.

The two set off on their journey, stopping in different cities and meeting all variety of local characters. Between CA and CT, Amy confronts her grief and her relationship with her mother while slowly falling for Roger. Of course. Sorry if you thought that was a spoiler, but it wasn’t. This is a classic contemporary YA romance – Sarah Dessen on the highway, if you will – but very well done, well-written, etc. There’s a bit of multimedia going on with this book as well – Roger’s mix CDs, scraps of tickets and receipts, etc. I usually find this gimmicky, but Matson uses it sparingly, like an accent rather than a substitute for content.

And I do love me a good road trip. Next Saturday, I set out on my own Epic Non-detour between MA and MI, and even though it is a long-ass, boring-boring drive through some long, horizontal states… I still get a little excited planning for road snacks and stocking my iPod, and thinking about what kind of epic conversations I might get into. Matson really captures all of this classic road trip excitement and made me want to hop into my car and go.

18 Dec 2011

Hush by Eishes Chayil

#7 Hush by Eishes Chayil

Question:

How many young adult books did I read in 2011 that featured a young person committing or attempting to commit suicide?

Answer:

8

In Hush, our protagonist must deal with the personal and social aftermath of her best friend’s suicide. In fact, her dead friend still seems to haunt her, six years after the event. Although emotionally gripping, this is not exactly a fresh story formation. In fact, Nina Lacour’s Hold Stillwhich I read within the same month as Hush and talked about last weekis basically the same concept. I was going to blame Jay Asher’s immensely popular 13 Reasons Why, maybe even Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls,  but even just looking at my own 2011 reading, this is a historically common YA theme. Heck, even Forever… took a break from all the sexy-sex for poor Sexually-Confused Side-Character Artie to attempt to kill himself! As if that book were not overly dramatic enough…

Hush, however, made me forget about the rest of the bunch. Protagonist, Gittel, lives in a highly secluded Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, and everything about her life revolve around her religion and her society – her world, her grief, and the circumstances surrounding her best friend Devory’s death.

Gittel’s pain is just as complexly rendered as any surviving character in these suicide narratives, but Hush is also engages in an examination of the societal factors that led an 11-year-old girl to kill herself, and keep Gittel from fully expressing and understanding her grief. The author, Chayil, is herself a member of a Chassidic community, writing with a pseudonym and recalling actual events that occurred within her community. Realizing this fact while I read had two effects. First, and most obviously, the tragedy had much more impact knowing that this is, actually, not the stuff of history but a pattern that occurs today in these communities. But second, I found myself more engaged with Gittel’s struggle, imagining that this is how many young women in Chassidic communities must feel. Gittel wants to understand and talk about her friend’s death, but she also wants to live up to her role as an Orthodox woman – to marry and have children – and to earn respect from her community and God. Gittel can’t speak up without bringing shame to herself and her family, but she can’t forget what happened to Devory.

Chayil also recently un-pseudonymed herself in The Huffington Post: from this article and reading the book, I think Chayil wrote this novel as a way to grapple with her own conflicts as a Chassidic woman and expose some of the dangerous patterns that the community would otherwise keep under wraps.

So fascinating, so heartbreaking, and I basically couldn’t put it down.

17 Dec 2011

Out of my Mind by Sharon Draper

#8. Out Of My Mind by Sharon Draper

I don’t read a lot of truly “children’s” books for fun. This probably makes me a terrible student of children’s literature/future children’s librarian-type-person… but I’m really just in it for the YA. So it’s probably bizarre and inaccurate of me to be so shocked by how amazing of some of these books for younger readers are, but I did not expect Sharon Draper’s Out Of My Mind to keep me tethered to the couch the day I picked it up. It was one of those books you speed through, finish and say…

“woah.”

(Note: my book reactions for this round of reviews are getting closer and closer to irrelevant. I acknowledge this.)

So, the premise/protagonist/amazingness of Draper’s novel is Melody. Melody is eleven. She’s amazingly smart with a photographic memory, she has synesthesia which gives her this multisensory passion for old country music, and she was born with cerebral palsy. She’s this awesome little girl who can’t express her awesomeness. Her parents believe in Melody – in her capacity to learn and improve and participate – but with work and her baby brother, they don’t have the time or money to explore her condition medically or socially. But when Melody gets the chance to sit in on the “regular kids” fifth grade class, she realizes all that she is missing – learning, friendship, etc – she starts devising ways to get more attention, so that maybe she can participate with the real world.

I don’t want to give much more away because I enjoyed some of the plot surprises here, but trust me – there is a surprising amount of plot in this book. Although Melody’s cognitive capacities are speculative (as far as I can research and as far as Draper acknowledges in interviews), Draper paints Melody with such a rich inner life that I didn’t care. And the ending? Hearbreakingly ridiculous.

Again:

“woah.”

16 Dec 2011

And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

#9. And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

I am a big fan of Maira Kalman. I am also a big fan of American political history. I am also a big fan of heavy, colorful books that look nice on your coffee table, feel nice in your lap, and make you feel like you bought an object rather than a book.

And the Pursuit of Happiness is all of those things. This book was first a blog (what a concept! I know!) at The New York Times. After attending Obama’s inauguration in Janury of 2008, artist Kalman was inspired to spend the rest of the year studying the rich political history of American and American democracy. Each month, Kalman takes a mini-pilgrimage to a different place of historical interest, and she captures her trip with words and paintings.

I liked how this book was political without being political. Kalman’s work shows a real respect for the wide range of people who influenced our nation in various ways: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and others are featured here. Kalman also follows democracy in all directions, visiting The Supreme Court, a town meeting in Vermont, and a 4th grade student council in the Bronx. This would make a really lovely gift for 9 out of 10 people. If you live in America, you should like this book.

But maybe I just liked it because it fueled my persistent historicrush:

Oh, Abe.

P.S.! Maira Kalman has a YA book coming out this month, Why We Brok Up, written with Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). I would have read it already, but my cat went into my roommate’s room and dumped a glass of water on her ARC. Peach!! What is your problem??? It also has a cool/depressing website.

15 Dec 2011

Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden

#10: Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden

For my Spring class, I read a lot of YA classics, or “touchstones,” as we called them. Out of the bunch (20+), the only ones I really loved?

The Catcher in the Rye

To Kill A Mockingbird

and Annie On My Mind.

That’s kind of a high compliment, eh?

It’s hard to read YA/work in libraries/get an advanced degree in children’s lit and have not hear about Nancy Garden’s book. For those of you who aren’t in any of those circles, Annie On My Mind was published in 1982, at a time when novels featuring GLBTQ protagonists were scarcely available or accepted. But, as you know, I’ve never been into history, especially YA from the 80s, and maybe I’m horridly heteronormative, but I never felt the urge to pick up this one on my own.

However, this is a prime example of how the almighty syllabus sometimes leads me to the kind of book I like. I loved this book because it was a contemporary YA love story, and a damn good one. Many YA romances feel forced to me, like an author really would like to create some romantic tension so they throw in a girl and a guy and hope for the best. But Liza and Annie have this authentic, complicated connection that is rare for two characters. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this in literary terms. Magical on-paper chemistry.

And if I am a sucker for YA romance, I am a super-sucker for YA romance that tells it like it is, and Annie On My Mind does that as well. As I read, I was rooting for Liza and Annie – just wait it out until college, ladies! It will get easier! – but I was also concerned that they were falling in love too fast, that someone was bound to be heartbroken because they hadn’t laid out the terms of their relationship, that their entire school and community would rally against them. And Garden doesn’t shy away from all of this – to a certain extent, all of these horrible things do happen to Liza and Annie. To make matters worse, this is a Senior Year book – the story ends with everyone getting ready for college, for a new life. Who knows what will happen after that???

And in case you need further convincing, I give you this: I read this book during one of my airline nightmare days, and despite being distracted by weather/running through airports/not knowing who was going to pick me up/fear of flying… I still remember this book clearly and fondly.

14 Dec 2011

Best Re-reads of 2011

Forever… by Judy Blume

Ah, I used to really enjoy some Judy Blume when I was a child. Just As Long As We’re Together. Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? I’ve read Summer Sisters more times than I can recall. Mmm. But despite my prodigious love of Ms. Blume, reading Forever still makes me think:

Judy Blume, you are a bad. ass.

This book is a like, no holds barred teenage love. Even 30+ year after its publication, and after countless other sex-fueled YA novels, it still feels kind of racy. And call me a sucker, but even after so many re-reads, I still root for Katherine and Michael to stay together. For Ralph’s sake.

Okay fine, I just like making Ralph jokes. So sue me.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

This book came in the middle of my Spring syllabus, like a breath of fresh air in the midst of a pile of rotting corpses.

Really, though. We read a book about a pile of rotting corpses. Gross.

This is one of my all time favorite books, and it stands up to multiple re-reads, sucking me in every time.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

I think I may read this book once a year, every year until I die. I am especially fond of the audio, read by the author – it’s great to listen to in late March, early April. It’s getting a bit warmer, you’re thinking about fresh produce again, you’re walking around out of doors again, enjoying nature…

oh good grief, I am annoying.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

I liked this book the first time around, but I found it easy to pseudo-skim. Not skim-skim… I am not great at skimming. But a pseudo-skim is more like “I’m reading, I get the plot, but I’m not really focusing enough to really get what’s going on.” The nice thing about Going Bovine is that even doing a pseudo-skim, the book is enjoyable. Lots of plot-twists and jokes etc. But on my second read, I slowed down and found the novel to be this labyrinth of mythology and symbolism and weird allegories… so bizarre but so complex.

Hardly anyone in my class liked it though! What is their problem?

The Pigman & Me by Paul Zindel

This was one of my favorite audio books as a child, and I re-listened to it this year for the nostalgia of it. This is Paul Zindel’s autobiography – mostly a tale of his slightly unbalanced mother who dragged Paul and his sister from town to town and engaging in hijinks that ranged from the-stuff-of-sitcoms (getting so obsessed with Lassie she starts breeding Collies, improperly bug-bombing their house, etc) to completely tragic (threatening to kill herself when the kids act up). This is a great tween-age gem, I think: Paul is on the brink of deciding what to do with his life, about to become a teenager, but he’s trapped in a family and living situation that he alternately loves and hates. The rawness and the humor reminded me of Jack Gantos… or rather, Jack Gantos should have reminded me of Zindel.

Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas

This is my #1 most recommended, most lent, most given away book. We have owned a few copies in my household – all grungy and yellowed, some of them library rejects because we dogeared them so much they needed to be withdrawn –  and I think I just bought another because I left them all in Michigan. I recommend it a lot because it’s a solid YA novel that isn’t too whiny, fluffy, or girly, and also because I can trick Veronica Mars fans into reading it by throwing the name “Rob Thomas” about.

This year, I wrote a paper on it! I think this fulfills my lifetime dream of academicizing every book from my childhood that I adored. This paper was for my class all about THE BODY, and it was entitled “The Wildest, Largest Passions: The Male Perception of the Female Body in Young Adult Literature.” Sounds pretty racy, huh?

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

So, I re-read Harry Potters 1-7 in a span of two months.

Once I was done, you know what I wanted to do?

Start reading them again.

So I did.

I’ve been listening to them on audio, when I run/cook/clean. Oh, and when I fall asleep to drown out my neighbors, who have a tendency to choose my bedtime to park themselves in their own bed, directly below mine, and proceed to be noisy noisy noisy.

Harry Potter: Improving Lives Since 1997.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I just finished a paper on this award-winning 2009 book, and while the paper was a fairly painful, convoluted affair, When You Reach Me was not. Mild spoiler: this is a book that once you get to the very end, you realize things about the stuff you’ve already read. So it was nice to read through again having the full picture. Also, Stead is just a fine writer. She can write romance into a tween-y type book that doesn’t seem forced or creepy. She can switch from prose that seem so mind-blowingly true you want to jot down quotes, to pre-teen mother-daughter angst, to goofy friend banter, and you don’t even know how it all flows, but it does. The buzz about this book when it was published was not just faddy chatter – this one has staying power.

 

13 Dec 2011

Best Adult Books of 2011

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

You are all probably sick of hearing about this book, but I will tell you why I liked it on two different levels.

Level One: I just really enjoy parenting memoirs. This one is about as down and dirty as they come: Chua never pretends that her work as a parent is glamorous, even as she shuttles her two talented musician daughters from fancy lesson to fancy lesson. Chua is sure she’s doing the right thing, then she’s unsure, then sure again, and I could never quite figure out how she felt about the life she’d chosen for herself, her family, and her daughters. Parenting choices are cultural, personal, and bound to be wrong. Chua doesn’t back down from telling us the good and the bad.

Level Two: Sometimes, I don’t feel like Western media asks its viewers to do much interrogating of the status quo. Although I think most Americans would like to see parenting as purely a product of their own choices and decisions, I think much of what we think of as “good” or “bad” parenting is determined by American parenting culture. So I liked the way Chua questioned American norms, and I like the way her book creates a conversation about it.

My roommate and my boyfriend also read the book: my roommate was staunchly against some of Chua’s restrictions while my boyfriend, apparently, has Tiger Mother aspirations of his own. I am somewhere in the middle. Which could be potentially… uh… interesting. Check back in a few years to see how this all works out, haha.

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

Okay. Running memoirs.

I don’t think I am a runner. Not yet. I have been trying to cultivate the skill for a few years now, but I still have trouble convincing myself to run for more than 2 miles, and 9 out of 10 of these small runs require stopping. However, I think my stamina is improving somewhat. I went for a run on Saturday for the first time since Thanksgiving morning; I ran a mile without stopping and without feeling as though I might die. It helped that it was below 40 degrees and I was freezing, I think.

Anyway, people always say that running is more of a mental game than a physical one. I don’t know if I agree, but I do think they are on near equal footing, and not in a way that I expected it. Mental Game, for me, isn’t about being able to shut off pain receptors during a long run, not about talking myself into going farther and faster than my body would like. For me, the mental game is tackling the thousands of things that keep me from running in the first place – managing my eating so I’m not too full or too hungry while I’m running, deciding on a “training plan” that will motivate me enough to keep going, knowing what to wear in what weather so I am comfortable. It’s also about acknowledging my body for what it is – a bit too tall, heavy, and wimpy to push too hard, to run whenever I want how ever long I want… but still capable.

And this book I’m supposed to be talking about? This book greatly improved my mental game. The book is a series of memoir-ish personal essays about Murakami’s life as a runner. And while I’m far from a marathoner or triathlete like Murakami is, he talks about the way running fits into his life in a way that is universal to even the amateur jogger. There’s one passage that I remember almost every time I run. Murakami was getting back to running after taking some time off and finding it difficult on his body. But instead of giving up/finding excuses not to go/taking up knitting/freaking out, he simply says to himself  (excuse my god-awful paraphrase) “My body is finding this difficult because it’s not a runner’s body yet. I am asking it to do something hard. But if I keep asking, day after day, it will become easy again. My body will adapt to what I ask it to do, plain and simple.”

Very zen, like the rest of this book. This was definitely a jot-down-quotes-to-remember-for-life kind of book, and I think that even non-runners would like it in a philosophical kind of way.

Good Eggs by Phoebe Potts

I love  love love a good graphic novel memoir, and I couldn’t put this one down. This Potts’s story about infertility, but it’s also a story about Potts. About how life, inevitably, meanders – careers, goals, beliefs, etc.  About recovering from depression. About falling in love later than you’d like to, but falling in love just as hard as you would have if you were younger. About entitlement, optimism, and growing up.

Oh, and I just love her art. I wish that she would make some more books, post haste.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Like the poor Tiger mother, I am sure you are all sick of hearing about Tina-Fey-Tina-Fey-Tina-Fey.

I however, would like to bore you for a bit. This book is obviously a memoir-ish book by actress/writer/comedian, Tina Fey. I liked it because the humor was so hard to pin down. Fey’s lived an interesting life – a geeky childhood full of hijinks, an adulthood full of awkward jobs and relationships, and a comedy career that led her to a successful sitcom. Reading these stories is like listening to your parents tell you about their childhood – the stories don’t need much embellishment or added jokes, just a deft storyteller to recount them. But then she changes subjects completely, switching to a missive about parenting or a deadpan moment or a silly joke about accidentally becoming a Republican. She’s all over the place, and after a certain point, you can’t exactly tell what is supposed to be funny and what is a joke. It creates this strange feeling that although you are reading a memoir, you still know nothing about the author.

Ah, celebrity. You are so mysterious.

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh, you thought I’d forgot about old Eustace, did you?

I did a bit of a longer review back in June, when I read the book, and you can read that here. Basically, I love Elizabeth Gilbert. You can’t make me not love her. I mean, have you SEEN this TED Talk? Anything Gilbert wants to tell me about  is something I want to know more about. Including reclusive, anti-establishment mountain-men who walk the fine line between passionate genius and passionately insane. Can I meet him? Can I meet them both? Can I go on a horseback ride across the country? Have some pet turtles?

One of those was a joke. I’ll let you decide which.

Up next… My favorite Re-reads 🙂

12 Dec 2011

Best YA of 2011

The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

If you are thinking that sci-fi/fantasy is a little too white, a little too European, a little too hyper-masculine, a little too predictable, then this is the book for you. Okorafor-Mbachu’s novel is set in post-nuclear Africa. A bizarre act of bioterrorism has left many children with supernatural powers, and perhaps also created some kind of space-time rift into another world. Protagonist Ejii, has a power that calls her to leave her family and follow Queen Jaa – this crazy, wild leader who has 2 husbands and who also beheaded Ejii’s father, years ago – into the desert. The ending was a bit over the top, but I really enjoyed being immersed in the non-Western mythology and navigating the mix of science and fantasy here.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

I wrote a nice long review of The Scorpio Races for the Words on Paper book club. You should go read it, if you’d like, but here’s the short version:

Book about two teens who live on an island where every year, man-eating waterhorses rise from the sea… and instead of relocating to a safer home, the islanders capture these horses and race them.

Why I liked it, despite the man-eating-water-horses? Great setting, complex character relationships, and short chapters.

What? Short chapters are awesome! Leave me alone…

Split by Svati Avasthi

Ah, realism. There you are! This was a syllabus-book from back in March, but I still remember much about the characters and the story that really pulled me in. The novel opens with Jace knocking on his older brother’s door. His older brother – Christian – isn’t expecting Jace; they haven’t spoken in a number of a years after Christian left home, fleeing their father’s abuse. Christian lets him invade his tiny apartment even though Jace isn’t being particularly forthcoming about why he left home. Both Jace and Christian fight some very real demons from the past and present, and basically have to learn how to be family for each other when neither boy knows what that means. I found the relationship between brothers to be so touchingly honest and painful that I wanted to reach out and hug them both.

Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart

Look, guys. Y’all know I love E. Lockhart. This does not need to be reiterated. But, heck, every time I read these Ruby Oliver books, I feel like they are just some of the most underrated young adult novels of life.

Why do Ruby and her romantic debacles get the short shrift? Is it because Ruby’s books aren’t long enough? They are written in first person? She doesn’t have enough trauma in her life? Because the covers are cute and girly? Because there’s not a “cover plot” to disguise the romance?

I am not sure. All I know is that I was a little heartbroken to realize this was the last in the series. You had a good run, Ruby!

Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Álire Saenz

This book has a lot of things I like. Psychological mysteries. Rehab & drug addiction. Emotional triumph. I read this book for my Realism class in the spring, during which we probably read every Most Depressing Book Ever, and Last Night I Sang to the Monster fit right in. But unlike many of our novels that semester, this book had me legitimately concerned about the protagonist’s future. Zach is in rehab, but doesn’t remember why or how he got there. With the help of his friends and therapist, his past starts to reveal itself, but it’s not good. So basically, this poor kid has to deal with addiction, with PTSD-amnesia, and figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of his life. All at the same time.

Poor guy. Great read.

Breath by Donna Jo Napoli

As a child, I eschewed many genres. This included every genre that Ms. Napoli usually writes, so I missed out on her retellings and historical treatments until reading The Smile a few years ago. The Smile – the story of the Mona Lisa – was good. I liked it okay. But Breath? Good God, I have no idea why I liked this book but I ATE IT UP, I really did. Maybe, in my old age, I am warming up to all sorts of genres!

Okay. Breath is a retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, set in a German village in the 1200s. The main character, Salz, is a sickly, skinny teenager, which means that his burly older brothers resent him for getting out of chores and he generally feels out of place in his agrarian town. But then, everyone in town starts getting a strange sickness. Salz isn’t so much trying to solve the mystery of this illness as trying to survive and keep his family alive, but part of the fun of reading is trying to figure out why everyone is going berserk every night. Salz and his grandmother are also part of this pagan group that occasionally gets together to trip out on drugs and have a little rural bacchanal… so the whole of the novel – the plot, the setting, the historicity – I found completely and unexpectedly enthralling.

Bumped by Megan McCafferty

I had mixed feelings about this book when I read it back in May, but the more time I have to stew over it, the more impressed I am by McCafferty’s first foray into non-realism.

Bumped is, indeed, Yet-Another-Freakin’-Dystopia. The dystopic premise? Adults can no longer procreate, leaving teenagers to carry out the reproductive responsibility for the entire human race. The subsequent commodification and commercialization of teen pregnancy is fairly horrifying – i.e. prosthetic pregnant bellies are the new skinny jeans – but the story focuses on two particular girls who reside on opposite ends of the reproductive spectrum. Melody and Harmony are twins separated at birth; Melody is a career-bound goody two-shoes who has finally snagged a choice conception contract and is waiting for her reproductive agent to select a fitting partner for procreation. Harmony shows up on Melody’s doorstep unannounced, on unexplained leave from a religious compound where sex is reserved for marriage and babies are kept in the family (gasp!).

Wacky hijinks ensue. This is a fun premise for a dystopia, but more than that, after reading and thinking about dystopias for my SF/F class this semester, I started to see Bumped as more of a satire of other dystopias. McCafferty writes humor so well that she can pull this off, I think. I am looking forward to the sequel, coming out in April!

Chime by Franny Billingsley

Boston Globe-Horn Book Award finalist. National Book Award finalist (after all the nonsense, anyway). Tons of starred reviews and blog buzz. After having renewed this book 5 times (aka an entire semester), I decided to run with my recent tolerance for the paranormal and read Chime.

I have to say, I was pleased.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, but the book opens with our heroine, Briony, confessing to crimes unnamed, asserting her inherent wickedness, and asking to be hanged. It doesn’t take too much time to figure out that Briony probably doesn’t deserve to die, but it takes the entire novel to reveal exactly what crimes she committed, which ones she didn’t, and who is ultimately responsible for the lot of bad things that have happened to Briony and her family. But more importantly, to Briony anyway, is the Swamp Cough. The town children are slowly dying from a strange sickness that is baffling the doctors. Briony suspects that it has something to do with the spirits who live in the swamp, but she can’t figure out a way to negotiate with them without revealing that she can speak to them – and if she does that, she’ll be hung as a witch.

The last hundred pages of this book sped by. I predicted the ending fairly well, but not in a way that made me feel like it wasn’t worth the effort to read. More like I felt clever to have solved the mystery on my own.

Also, there is a fairly steamy, but non-cheesy romance, which I totally ate up. Yum.

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

Another great Sarah Dessen book. I’m not sure she can write anything I don’t like. Some books might be stronger than others, but they are all solid reads, in my opinion.

This chapter is about a girl, McLean, who lives “on the road” with her divorced dad as he fixes up dying restaurants. McLean reinvents herself at every port, doesn’t get vulnerable, remains pissed at her mom for ruining her family, etc. She meets a cadre of unlikely, plucky friends and of course, falls a little bit in love with a boy. There’s also city planning, blended families, and college basketball!

Really, though. Sarah Dessen, you are both my bread and my butter. Keep on keepin’ on.

Hold Still by Nina LaCour

As mentioned, I don’t get a lot of time to try out new authors. With limited time for reading, I usually stick to the especially buzzworthy, the tried-and-true authors, and re-reading favorites. So it’s a rare feeling for me to read a book and say to myself “hmmm… I want to keep an eye on this one.” Hold Still felt like a rare book, and I am indeed keeping an eye on Nina LaCour (new book, The Disenchantments, coming out in February.

Hold Still is about Caitlin, learning to recover from her best friend’s suicide. Caitlin is suddenly filled with regret, doubt, and complicity for being the best friend who didn’t realize her friend needed help. She herself begins to slip into a depressive state as she mourns her loss, but she does, eventually, begin to scrape her way out.

This sounds like a big fat downer of a book. And that’s true, actually. But it’s depressing like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak is depressing: raw, painful, but ultimately reminds you – the reader – that life is a big mess of goodness, badness, beauty, and pain, and we have to handle it all to survive.

Up next… Books for Adults!

11 Dec 2011

Best Middle Grade of 2011

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce

I thought I’d start this 2011 Reading Extravaganza off properly with a book that was published in 1958. Nice, huh? To make matters worse, Tom’s Midnight Garden definitely harkens back to another book about gardens, written in 1910. Oh, and it’s a historical fiction time travel book, too! Oh me, oh my.

Tom is your average rambunctious young fellow who loves nothing more but to play outside. So when his little brother comes down with the measles, and Tom is relegated to his boring aunt and uncle’s apartment, the first thing on Tom’s mind is “OH MY GOD! THEY HAVE NO BACKYARD.” City-living, Tom. City-living. I feel ya. Anyway, so Tom is so bereft from his lack of vitamin D, he develops a nasty case of insomnia… but as he lays awake each night, pouting and longing for the sun and worrying about his health, he notices that  after midnight, the giant grandfather clock in the downstairs porch strikes 13 each night. Soon, Tom’s investigations reveal that every night, in that extra hour between midnight at 13, the parking lot behind the building becomes a beautiful, well-kept old-fashioned garden.

Okay, so maybe it seems like I am making fun of this book, but I really did enjoy it. I found Tom very likeable – quiet, inquisitive, a little sensitive- and I too became very interested in the hows, the whys, the physics of this “mystery garden.” As Tom becomes more involved with the mystery and the summer draws closer to the end, it’s fairly suspenseful to read along and wonder if he will figure it out before he must leave. I feel like this is a lovely classic-y children’s book that nobody has read, but more people should!

Diamond Willow by Helen Frost

After reading this novel, I have determined that I just like Helen Frost. I never feel particularly drawn to the subject matter of her books, and I am quite ambivalent about poetry as a form. But no matter my intentions to not enjoy Frost’s novels, I do. Actually, I feel a little fluttery about how much I like them. That’s rare for this jaded reader.

Willow is a twelve year old living in a small town deep in Alaska, where her family has lived forever. She has the usual smattering of twelve-year-old issues – grasping for friends, boys, and maturity – but what she really wants is to run her father’s sled dog team. She’s especially close to one of the lead dogs, Roxy, so when Willow loses control of the team and Roxy is injured, Willow is devastated.

What I loved most about this book was the way Frost interspersed Willow’s diamond-shaped poems – describing her sled-dog adventures as well as her everyday life – with poems from the point of view of the animals that watch Willow in the woods. These animals, the text quickly reveals, are the spirits of Willow’s ancestors. With this simple narrative decision, Frost places young, impetuous Willow within the context of this vast family unit, that not only encompasses her parents and relatives, but perhaps the entire natural environment where she lives. I find this to be a very compelling concept, and very well realized in this book.

Oh! And on a less abstract level, there’s a fairly awesome twist at the end that I definitely did NOT see coming.

The Old Country by Mordecai Gerstein

This story is one part fairy tale, one part folk tale, one part Holocaust narrative, one part complete nonsense. The story begins when Gisella leaves home on a grudge mission: a fox has been feasting on the family’s chickens, and Gisella is going to kill him.

The story gets weird when Gisella finds the fox, but the other woodland animals insist on a fair trial first, including a testimony from the chicken who has recently been ingested.

The story gets even weirder when Gisella looks the fox in the eyes for too long, and they pull a Freaky Friday mind/body swap.

Despite all the weirdness and talking animals and magic, I think the novel was supposed to, ultimately, provide commentary on warfare, on human oppression, and moral justice. I think the message gets lost underneath the crazy; there were many points in this short text that I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to find a scene completely ridiculous or completely horrifying. But you know what? I liked feeling uncomfortable about what the text was trying to do. I liked the weirdness. I am not sure you could compare this book to anything else out there.

Half Magic by Edward Eager

That was a nice little jaunt into the 2000s. Now back to 1954!

Edward Eager’s Half Magic is a short novel about a large group of siblings who get into adventures together. For those of you stuck in the 21st century, think of a retro version of The Penderwicks! For those of you who prefer things to be logical, think of The Penderwicks as a modern version of Half Magic... which itself is a direct result of E. Nesbit’s work, but that’s getting a little bit TOO logical.

The children in Eager’s Half Magic are somewhat bored. Their widowed mother works a lot to keep the family afloat and their nanny is quite stuffy. When they chance upon a magic coin, their summer vacation takes a turn toward exciting – the children suddenly can wish for anything they want. But they quickly learn that the magic comes with a catch – it seems the coin only grants “half-magic,” meaning the children are constantly having to wish for things doubly and devise clever phrasing to undo their misdeeds.

Maybe I am just a sucker, but I was won over early in the novel when the youngest sibling wishes her cat could talk. The next chapter is filled with this kitty speaking mangled half-words (half magic! remember!), attempting to communicate with the children. Once they figure out how to wield their new powers, they determine that the cat is just plain distressed at its new ability, and they quickly un-speech the poor thing.

What can I say. I was endeared. The rest of the novel continues with similar endearment.

Clementine by Sara Pennypacker

Okay. Clementine. First, I present to you, Marla Frazee:

Marla Frazee is one of my favorite illustrators. She provides seriously impressive full page illustrations to the Clementine series that really do GREATLY impact the reading experience. Together with Pennypacker’s text, I found the first installation in this series to be completely beguiling. Yes, Clementine is Ramona Quimby, Clementine is Junie B. Jones, Clementine is Junie B. Jones… but Clementine is also Clementine. She’s self-consciously artistic, she gets upset at her family and friends, she’s ballsy enough to cut off her own hair.

She’s a little-girl character who is well-deserving of her own series.

Also see: Marla Frazee.

11 Dec 2011

Best Reads of 2011!

Yes, it is that time of year again. Time for me to spend hours and hours…

  • Gazing on my long list of books read in 2011
  • Placing said list in various spreadsheets, organizing and re-organizing
  • Deciding which ones I like the most
  • Changing my mind about which ones I liked the most
  • And oh yeah, writing up reviews!

This is not one of those “Best Books Actually Published in 2011” lists, however. You see, I spend much of my life beholden to the syllabus. It is difficult to squeeze in a significant number of new releases while keeping up with the old coursework. Also, I am poor and cannot buy books, and BPL is notoriously bad about purchasing children’s/YA new releases in a timely fashion (You hear that, BPL?? Hire a youth librarian or two already!!) I do what I can, but this is entirely based on the set of books that I have read during the year. Actually it’s more like a “fiscal year” of reading. Dec 1 to Dec 1. This is getting boring. Moving on.

My editorial process for selecting my top 10  goes a little like this:

“Book! I finished you, but I loooooove you and want to squeeeeeeze you and maybe sleep with you under my pillow tonight!”

The rest of the topical lists are books that are awesome, but were ultimately eclipsed by all that loving and squeezing.

The fun will begin later tonight, and continue until Christmas Eve! Which is startlingly close to today! Like, 2 weeks! Oh my gosh! I have no money left to buy Christmas presents! Let’s not get distracted!

 

Sunday, December 11thBest Middle Grade Reads

Monday, December 12thBest Young Adult Reads

Tuesday, December 13thBest Adult Books

Wednesday, December 14thBest Re-reads (they still count for something!)

 

Thursday, December 15th through Friday, December 23rdTop 10 Best Reads!

 

10. Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden

9. And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

8. Out Of My Mind by Sharon Draper

7. Hush by Eishes Chayil

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

5. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

4. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

3. Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

2. Made For You And Me by Caitlin Shetterly

1. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

 

Yay books! Get excited! And at this time, you may place bets as to what percentage of this years mentions are of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. The answer MAY SURPRISE YOU!