bookshelves of doom

Speak -- Laurie Halse Anderson

I finally got up the courage to read Speak.

I know that it's wrong for me to have waited so long--it's an important book, one that everyone in this field should read at least once. At least.

It affected me pretty much the way that I thought it would--it threw me for a total loop. I actually read it weeks ago, but I haven't been ready to talk about it until now. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to get all mega-sensitive and Hunter-esque on you guys. (God, she'd probably be so happy to know that her name has ended up in my vocabulary, even though it's totally not flattering. I hope she isn't reading this. If you are, did you pay Steve back yet? I think that you might owe him some money).

But, regardless of how ironic and funny and good this book is, it's a really, really, really painful one. And an angry one. Especially if you go into it knowing exactly what's going on from the beginning.

Anyway. Hmmm. Apparently I'm not as ready to talk about this one as I thought. Well. I highly recommend it, at any rate.

Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen -- Wendelin Van Draanen

Sammy Keyes continues to rock.

In Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen, we get:

Sammy's thirteenth birthday

Casey Acosta

an Elvis impersonator

a new place in town that teaches pro-wrestling

a lot of dead cats

an AWESOME fight with Heather Acosta AND Tenille AND Monet

a secret that Sammy's mom has kept for almost ten years

some great moments with Officer Borsch

and yes, a psycho kitty queen:

...something catches my eye. Something pink off to my left. Behind some bushes. Along the far side of Hudson's porch. So instead I whisper, "What was that?"

"What was what?" Hudson whispers back.

I stand up and tiptoe the length of Hudson's porch. And when I sneak a step down the side stairs and peek around the bushes, I choke out, "Aaarrh!" and jump back. Right on the other side of Hudson's bushes is one of the scariest sights I've ever seen.

A super-sized, batty-eyed Barbie.

If you haven't read these books, (adult or otherwise), start! They're so much fun. Sammy is as tough as Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, as well as a million times cooler than Nancy Drew, as well as (gasp!) a REAL character, not a cardboard cutout.

The Golden Hour -- Maiya Williams

Proof that Maine isn't boring.

There's a town in coastal Maine called Owatannauk. Yeah, big deal, you say--there's a ton of coastal towns in Maine with weird names. That doesn't mean that Maine isn't boring. (You say).

Maybe so. But, according to Maiya Williams, for two hours during the day (the Golden Hour and the silver hour, (otherwise known as dawn and dusk)), in Owatannauk, Maine, you can travel in time. You can only travel by appointment, and only someone who lives in Owatannauk can make the appointment for you.

I love time travel stories--IF the time travel is done well. (If not, I end up picking everything apart and getting all irritated. Yes, I know. It's a rough life that I lead). I really liked the way that time travel worked in this one--I liked that the author had created a system of rules that made sense (the more you time travel, the more static electricity you generate, so a lot of people in the town don't have electricity at all--stuff like that), and that it was actually dangerous. (Of course, the kids would head straight for Paris, 1789).

The author clearly did a lot of research about the time period as well, so I'd totally recommend it to a student who needed a historical fiction novel and didn't want a dull one. Any book with a guillotine on the back cover has to be entertaining. It's a rule.

Speaking of RULE... The Popplewells' aunts--the ones that actually live in the town--are AWESOME. I love reverse psychology. (Ask Briana).

"Sister, I believe that young man is going to go exactly the opposite of what you suggested." Gertrude, who had been sitting under the staircase, emerged from the darkness. "Your overcautioning and mystified gobbledygook has only emboldened him to explore that rundown resort with his friends."

"Yes," said Agatha. "I was worried that his fear of ghosts would keep them from going there. I had to give him a push."

"And brilliantly so, Sister. It is time."

It looks like there's going to be a sequel. Fine with me. I just hope that there's a map in it. I need to find this town. Josh and I are totally moving there.

The Year of Secret Assignments -- Jaclyn Moriarty

Another awesome Aussie author. (Ah, alliteration!)

The Year of Secret Assignments was a blast. It's an epistolary novel, like Ella Minnow Pea.

For an English project, the students at Ashbury High have to become pen pals with their rivals, Brookfield High. And, with quite a bit of moaning and groaning from some of the parties involved, they do.

The Ashbury girls:

Lydia:

I'm having trouble concentrating because Tic Tacs keep hitting the side of my head.

What should happen is this:

You should send me some dope and I should sell it. Or use it. We should do it regularly. You send it, and I sell it. It would be a bit like drug trafficking.

I've heard that Brookfield has a marijuana plantation instead of a sports oval. So I guess it's easy enough for you to get. Or are they strict about who can pick it? I hope not.

Emily:

1. My Name: Emily Thompson (aka: Em)

2. My Interests: Well, there's too many to write out! My hand will fall off from the repetitious strain injury! But okay. You twisted my arm. I'll choose the top three!

(a) Shopping

Shopping, shopping, shopping! HEY, DID I JUST USE UP MY THREE? OOPS!

Cassie:

In actual fact, I always think it's funny when a teacher tries to be cool. Most people want to slap them across the face, but I want to sit them down, like with a hand on their forehead, and say, "It's okay, you're a grown-up, you're allowed to be a nerd, just breathe in and out, that's all you need to do, " and they would look up at me confused but also relieved and teary-eyed.

The Brookfield boys:

Sebastian

It's great that you're a fish, because I'm a heron of the kind that flies around the sky and then swoops down to the ocean and screws your brains out.

You thought I was going to say I was the kind of heron that swoops down and eats you, didn't you?

I was, but I thought that might be offensive.

Charlie

Well, I have to say that your letter was a bit of a shock. Maybe it's a girl/guy thing? Do you want to ask the teacher if you can write to a girl in my class instead of me? Or else, I've got a sister if you want to write to her? Just say the word, if you do.

Seriously, what grade are you in? No offense, but do you realize you talk like an eighty-five-year-old?

Matthew

Eat shit and die, private school slag.

Those quotes are all from their first letters to each other. As you might suspect, a lot changes over the course of the book--and it's over 300 pages long, so there's quite a bit of room to maneuver. There are a LOT of laugh-out-loud parts in it--when Emily gets mad, her letters are PRICELESS. When I hit the halfway point, I started doing the read-super-fast-just-so-I-could-find-out-what-would-happen thing. So I'm going to buy it and read it again.

The True Meaning of Cleavage -- Mariah Fredericks

cleav·age (klvj) n.

1. The act of splitting or cleaving.
...
6. Informal. The hollow between a woman's breasts, especially as revealed by a low neckline.

A lot of boppy teen-angsty high school books are really entertaining and have fun characters, but usually none of them (except sometimes--hopefully--the protagonist) are real people. (I mean, really. Lilly Moscovitz? There's not a whole lot there). The True Meaning of Cleavage does it right. The characters are real people; no one is completely, utterly awful, and no one is perfect.

A brief synopsis of this book makes it sound like one of those generic, run-of-the-mill YA novels: Jess (the geek) and Sari (the pretty rebel) are best friends, they start high school, Sari falls psychotically in love (her description) with a senior, problems ensue.

Jess would be happier with the more black and white world of science fiction (or, like I said, of many other books in Cleavage's genre):

A lot of people ask me why I love science fiction so much. Here's what I'll tell them if they ever ask me again: In science fiction, people are either good or evil. If they harm someone, it's because they want to. If they're good and they want to save people, they have the power to do that. There are no screw-ups in sci-fi. Nobody who would like to do the right thing but can't quite get it together. Nobody who doesn't mean to hurt someone but does it anyway. There's good and there's evil; you love one and you hate the other. And that's that.

Montmorency: thief, liar, gentleman> -- Eleanor Updale

This made me want to watch the old Raffles movies. And read the books.

I suspect (and hope) that this book will be the first in a series. How's that for a recommendation? Montmorency: thief, liar, gentleman? was a blast.

A thief in Victorian England has the misfortune to fall through a skylight while running from the police. He's badly hurt--badly enough that even now, in 2004, it would be a rotten recovery--and without Doctor Fawcett's experimental new medicine and treatments, he would have died, or at the very least, he would have been crippled for life. The doctor's achievement is so amazing that Montmorency is brought from one scientific lecture to another, so that others can learn about the new techniques. At one of these lectures, he learns about the new sewer system that has been constructed under London. And so his planning begins.

It was wonderful. Secret identities, awful (and wonderful) characters, total gross-out scenes, and a lot of pretty realistic description of the time period. Fun fun fun.

The Girl Who Owned a City -- O. T. Nelson

I apologize in advance to anyone who likes this book.

Or, A Book That Broke Leila's Will to Read.

It isn't often that I can't get through a book. I finished Artemis Fowl, even though I thought it was the most overated piece of garbage that I had come across in a long, long time. The last time that I couldn't finish a book was when I tried to read Shadowmancer. (So sue me. I made a mistake. I forgot that the publishing industry is just trying to sell books, not necessarily good ones).

So. The Girl Who Owned a City is the book that gets to be the illustrious followup to Shadowmancer. I made it to about page 50, and I had to stop. It was just bad. The writing was crap, the pacing sucked (there were long stretches of BOR-ing, followed by action that was often boring and ALWAYS lame), the characters were annoying, the dialogue was stilted and flat, and it was dated. MEGA dated.

The plotline is probably familiar to anyone who actually daydreamed as a kid: everyone over twelve has been wiped out by a plague. Unfortunately, the plague didn't wipe out the author before he wrote this crap book.

Margaux with an X -- Ron Koertge

My major issue with Ron Koertge. (And more, obviously).

I think that his books feel like he's writing an Honors Thesis for a Creative Writing program.

I don't even know exactly why. They just do. Maybe it's because, somehow, the words seem forced--I feel aware of his writing process, rather than completely drawn into his stories. The writing seems aware of itself. Not in a Terry Pratchett look-at-how-clever-I-am way. Maybe more of a I'm-trying-really-hard way. And that's distracting. I usually like his books well enough, but not so much that I jump around and say things like, "OOOOO. This is the BEST BOOK EVER!!"

(Anyone who knows me in real life can attest to the fact that I do do that. Often).

I will say, however, that I really did like Margaux with an X. I liked it enough that as Josh and I were driving around yesterday, I kept picking it up off of the dashboard and reading it. (This lead to three things: Josh saying, "Wow, I'm sure glad that we're spending this quality time together", and other such snarky things, me getting carsick multiple times, and Josh laughing at me for making myself carsick over and over again).

Anyway. It was good. But not great.

Saving Francesca -- Melina Marchetta

What is it about Australia?

Why is it that I've liked every book that I've read by an Australian? Is it because the junk gets weeded out before getting all the way over here? (Or am I being completely biased because I've adored Paul Kelly since I was in high school?)

Saving Francesca was a great book. I thought it was so great, in fact, that I will buy it, and also so great that I'm going to find and read Melina Marchetta's other book, Looking for Alibrandi.

It has components that would make you think that this is going to be a typical teen angst book (Francesca goes to an almost all-boys Catholic school where she has no friends, has a extremely outgoing (and somewhat overbearing) mother who up until very recently pretty much ran the family but now is extremely depressed and can't even get it together to get out of bed), but it isn't a typical teen angst book. Francesca even addresses it:

There are thirty of us girls at Sebastian's and I want so much not to do the teenage angst thing, but I have to tell you that I hate the life that, according to my mother, I'm not actually having.

Her way of getting through school (and life) is this:

My theory is to lay low, and my reluctance to get involved has nothing to do with fear or shyness, contrary to popular perception. I have this belief that people hate change and, more than anything, they hate those who try to change things. I might not be interested in being the most popular group in the world, but I'm less interested in being the outcast. Anyway, my being political would make Mia [her mother] happy and I wouldn't want that. She thinks she knows who I am because she thinks who I am is who she tells me I am.

That passage is only from page thirteen, so as you might imagine, things change. A lot. Not only is Francesca a great character, but the other kids at school--especially Thomas Mackee (the musical burper) and Jimmy Hailler (bully, but of a different sort than most)--are wonderful. I LOVED them. But I also loved all of the other characters that I don't have time to mention.

So, here I am, bossing people again. Read this book. I mean this for everybody, but I do think that Lauren might especially like it. So get moving.