bookshelves of doom

NBA finalists.

As I was on blog-world hiatus when the National Book Award finalists were announced, I wasn't sure if I was alone in thinking that the inclusion of David Small's Stitches on the Young People's list was surprising and a little bit annoying*.

So it was nice to see this blog post at NPR.

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*Not because there's anything remotely wrong with Stitches, of course.  But as it is on the YPL list, that means that a book that was actually published for Young People was cut to make room for it.  Which doesn't seem right.

Should I be losing faith in NPR's book coverage?

Because isn't this exactly like that Cathy's Book series?  With the pocket of stuff and the website and phone numbers?

That, in addition to that the fact that I'm 91 pages into The Magicians, which is enjoyable but certainly not exciting or ground-breaking in a way that makes me want to hand out copies on the corner, has me thinking that the answer to my first question is a resounding YES.

Not that I'll stop following it, mind you.

I am so happy that other people think about stuff like this.

I am even happier that other people think about stuff like this and ACTUALLY TAKE ACTION:

Choose Your Own Adventure #2: Journey Under the Sea
Analysis of paths and outcomes

Happy Accidents*.

I've discovered that while full-length novels don't really work for my daily commute (it makes me bananas to stop and start in the middle of a chapter), I've discovered that short stories really work for me.  So I've been listening to David Suchet and Hugh Fraser read Poirot's Early Cases.

I'm in love.  I'm going to be so depressed when I've listened to them all.

Oh, the serendipitous part?  I just noticed (via sarahw) that Christie week is coming up.

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*I love that movie.  Do you love that movie?   YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT??  For shame:

Happy Accidents Marisa Tomei Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio | Movie Trailers

Roundtable: Girls and Fandom.

Even more interesting than the roundtable itself* (which deals with girls and fandom and Twilight and the San Diego Comic Con) are the comments.  Broad range of opinions and experiences.

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*Mostly because, in the case of the BoD audience, I suspect it's preaching to the choir.

YA on stage.

There's a brief review of the Griffin Theatre Company's adaptation of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother at Time Out Chicago, and lots of pictures at the Griffin Theatre Blog:

 

Nooooooooo!

I just heard back from the publicist, and Posh and Prejudice got pushed back to December.

Which means you'll have to wait ages for it and I'll have to wait even longer for the third installment. 

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

I loaned both ARCs to my co-worker and she said that while she really liked the first one, she thought that the second blew it right out of the water.  So put 'em both on your TBR lists, kiddos, even though there's going to be a horrid, horrid wait.

I think I need to order this...

...partly because the author addresses the online introduction: "Well Mr Imaginary Internet Arse Hole".  But also because it looks way fun: 

Chloe Noonan, Monster Hunter.

Emily the Strange lawsuit: in backwardsland.

I am so very off my game -- this story broke a couple of weeks ago:

So, in an example of how twisted our legal system can be, Cosmic Debris (owners of the Emily the Strange property) has sued Marjorie Sharmat and Marc Simont.

There's a bit more in this SLJ article.

(via Tea Cozy and You Thought We Wouldn't Notice)

Posh and Prejudice: A Diary of a Chav Novel, #2 -- Grace Dent

After receiving unexpectedly fantastic grades, our Shiraz Bailey Wood, 16, finds herself with a choice:  stay on full-time at her mind-numbing minimum-wage job frying eggs at Mr. Yolk OR enroll in Superchav Academy's new "Center of Excellence" for Sixth Formers.  Despite her mother's opinion that pursuing any higher education equals "farting about after school instead of earning a living", Shiraz decides to GO FOR IT. 

And go for it she does.  The Center for Excellence pulls in students from all over the area, so Shiraz finds herself at school not just with the people she's grown up with, but with some posh types.  Which leads to a real change in perspective for her, and a whole lot of new questions, theories and dramatics about life.

Oh, I LOVE THESE BOOKS.  So much so that I've had to physically restrain myself from going all Fangirl RRROWR on the teen reviewer who has been describing Book Two as "boring and not funny" in various spots online.  I'm very proud of my maturity.  Anyway. 

I finished Posh and Prejudice* and followed it up by throwing a tantrum** because I didn't have another one.  Seriously, how long will I have to wait for Book Three?  A whole year?  Because I don't know if I can do it.  "Boring and not funny" does not these books describe.  At least for me.

Again, there are surface similarities to the Rennison books (diary format, lots of British slang, chicklitty feel), but I like Shiraz so much more than Georgia.  She's more of a real person, for one, but beyond that, she's also less selfish and more loving.  She cares.  A lot.  Her family drives her bananas and when her perspective begins to change, she definitely feels some embarrassment about them, but she loves them none the less.  And she's protective of them.

I loved that Shiraz's feelings about Wesley***, her family, her world, the new people she's getting to know and the new worlds she's beginning to explore (the world outside Goodmayes, the world of academia, the world that the posher students inhabit) are complicated.  She doesn't have easy answers and even if she was willing to ask someone, there wouldn't be any easy answers to give. 

I think these are books that can easily be read on multiple levels -- yes, on the surface, they're light and funny and some people might be tempted to dismiss them as being substanceless.  But they aren't.  Shiraz's situation -- at home, romantically, at school, her vision of the future -- is complicated.  And so is she.

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*Supposedly, P&P is being released this month, but Amazon has it listed as December and doesn't have cover art up -- I emailed LB to see what the deal is, and I'll update this, hopefully later today.  The only image I could find online was this eensy one:

**Not even remotely exaggerating.  Ask Josh.

***This storyline was especially well-done -- I don't even have a direction I'm rooting for the story to go in, because it's such a difficult, mix-y situation.  I feel sad for both of them.  And I love them both, too.

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Previously:

Diary of a Chav/Diva without a Cause

I'm reading...

...Posh and Prejudice (the sequel to Diary of a Chav) at the moment.  Two things:

1.  I love it so very much that I found it very difficult to tear myself away, get out of bed and shower this morning.  I'm very proud of myself for doing so.

2.  I think that Shiraz Bailey Wood could have a future career in writing Cliffs Notes so wonderfully entertaining that they'd be worth reading just for the sake of reading, whether you actually wanted help with the source material or not.  Her summary of King Lear was priceless.

Diary of a Chav -- Grace Dent Reprinted in the US as Diva without a Cause

From the book description:

Chav: (n.) A British insult for white working-class people fixated on street fashions derived from American hip-hop such as imitation gold and fake designer clothing, e.g., "It's a bruv who wears crap clothing and manky gold jewelry, innit?"

As she's been "ramming the word iPod into every sentence since last June", 15-year-old Shiraz Bailey Wood is less-than-pleased to receive a diary for Christmas.  But, as there's nothing else to do, she starts writing.

And she keeps writing.

And thank goodness she did, as her hilariousity kicked me right out of my reading slump.  With her crazy family (difficult mother, nice but useless father, incomprehensible and artsy older sister, obnoxious video game-obsessed younger brother, and morbidly obese dog), her quick wit and constant stream of slang that made me wish I wasn't reading an ARC because the real book includes a glossary, Grace Dent's Shiraz Bailey Wood reminded me of a slightly older, less sheltered, working class version of Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson. 

But while Georgia, over the course of at least nine books, never really worries overly much about anything other than her eyebrows and who to snog, Shiraz, over the course of one, starts to wonder if there might be more to life than the world she's grown up in and around.  Shiraz's voice is different from everything I've picked up lately, so refreshing and new -- she won me over immediately and I spent the entirety of the book rooting for her.

AND I wouldn't have guessed it from the cover (a thought that Shiraz would have labeled "prejudicial", so Shiraz, I do apologize and I was very wrong), but Diary of a Chav had depth.  It also made me laugh out loud A LOT -- so much so that as I read, I kept interrupting Josh's own reading to read bits aloud to him* -- so it wasn't the sort of depth that ever felt heavy.  It was the sort of depth that made Shiraz feel like a real person trying to figure out real stuff.  I love my Georgia, but she's a bit of a cartoon.  That can't be said of Shiraz. 

I'm looking forward to the sequel in a big, big way.

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*He laughed, too.  And he wasn't pulling the old smile-and-nod to get me to shut up.  Believe me, I know the difference.

Oh, hell.

As if I needed another irresistible distraction.

Thanks a lot, Brian.

More on the Tintin movie.

No adorable Thomas Sangster, but Mackenzie Crook has joined the cast!

Excerpts from upcoming Doctor Who comic.

I haven't been to the comic shop in ages, but this could get my rear in gear.

Visually odd, but I don't care. I'm in love with the idea anyway.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are going to play Thomson and Thompson in the Tintin movie.

I'm not fangirlish about all that many people*, but I do lurrrve Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

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*For reals!  I'm not!  I swear!

I Heart You, You Haunt Me -- Lisa Schroeder

After the sudden death of Jackson, the boy she thought she'd spend the rest of her life with, Ava realizes that he isn't really gone.  He's with her.  Not just in her heart or in her memory or some other platitude-sounding version of "with her".  No, he's actually there.  In her house:

As I stand in the bathroom,
carefully lining my eyelids
bronze,
I feel a splash
of cool air.

I shiver.

I feel something.
Something behind me.
Something familiar.
Hauntingly familiar.

I glance behind me,
but I don't see
anything.
Or anyone.

And then,
when I look in the mirror
again,
I see,
for just a split second,
not just me,
but someone else.

Jackson.

What follows is kind of the YA verse novel version of Truly, Madly, Deeply, minus Alan Rickman's amazingly obnoxious ghost buddies.  Ava and Jackson both need to let go -- Ava of Jacksonand of her own guilt about his death, and Jackson, more simply, of Ava. 

Ava needs to find a way to embrace life again.  But how is that possible when her dead boyfriend comes to her every night in her dreams?

For the most part, I enjoyed I Heart You.  It didn't hold any surprises, and it occasionally felt VERY Stereotypical Teenage Girl Poet*, but the lack of surprises didn't particularly bother me and the STGP aspect makes sense as the narrator is, um, a teenage girl.

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*Remember the Veronica Mars episode where she infiltrated what she thought was a cult by writing Angsty Poetry with a purple pen?  Yeah, poetry like that.

Happy guy.

Josh has been running around like a freak, all happy because we just received a review copy of The Gonzo Tapes in the mail*.

As he's the fan in the house**, he'll be doing a guest post about it in the near future.

There's an audio sampler available online.

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*When he found out it was coming, he started listening to this old adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during our drive in to work -- it makes for extremely odd morning listening, but it works, somehow.

**Thompson is one of those people who's been on my list for a bazillion years but who I still haven't gotten to... but to my untrained eye, this set looks pretty cool.

Say what?

What?

Ha ha.

No, seriously.  There's an upcoming Wicked Lovely graphic novel:

   

Iiiiiiinteresting.

One-minute Weird Tales.

I should check to be sure that my subscription hasn't expired.  I love my Weird Tales.

!!!!

Best team-up ever:

 

YES!!!! 

Venomous -- Christopher Krovatin

When Locke Vinetti gets angry, bad things happen.  When the venom takes over, he feels fantastic and all-powerful:

It welled up inside me, like tears well up in your eyes--only this thing was pure, liquid hate, anger and rage and depression, all in a physical manifestation.  This was no simple emotional response; this was a real, honest-to-God, all-over change.  It percolated up in my head, bubbling, bubbling, and then bursting, overflowing.  I felt it burning in my veins; every part of my body was so alive, more alive than I'd ever felt it before.  And once the feeling, the substantive emotion, had filled me and solidified, it took control.  But the worst part about it was that I enjoyed it--Fuck, I loved it.*

...but once it is gone he is left shaken, weak, ashamed and often in tears.  Now, over ten years since it first manifested itself, Locke has realized that he needs to get rid of the venom once and for all -- both because of the effect it has on his family and his friends and because he's getting the feeling that the venom is ready to take over permanently.

Each chapter is followed by a full page black-and-white comic-style illustration by Kelly Yates paired with an installment about Blacklight, Locke's imaginary superhero alter-ego.  Those passages parallel Locke's real-life story, are pulp fiction to the max, deliberately over-the-top (I assume) and great fun.  Venomous is by turns fast-paced, slow-paced, violent, tender, frightening, funny, joyful, sexy and angsty. It is always gritty.

I read Christopher Krovatin's first book, Heavy Metal and You, back when it came out in 2005**.  I hands-down adored it in every way.  Venomous, I had a harder time with.  I identified much more with Randall, Locke's best friend, much more than with Locke -- as this book is a first-person narrative, I found myself extremely frustrated with Locke on an almost-constant basis.  Like Randall, I just didn't get the venom.  I'm still not sure if that was my problem or the book's problem.

The book, and even more so, Locke himself, reminded me very strongly of another angry book and another very angry character -- it's a problematic comparison because of the associations so many people have, but I'm going to go for it anyway:  Locke Vinetti and his journey reminded me very much of James Frey's character and his journey in A Million Little Pieces.  Do with that what you will.

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*This text was taken from an advance copy of the book.

**When the author was a junior in college!

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire

Huh.

I wasn't aware that the movie version is called Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.

LAME.

Or that there still doesn't seem to be a US release date.

LAMER.

(first link via Bookslut)

Jules Feiffer @ The A.V. Club.

From the interview:

AVC: In 1997, you ended your run at the Voice and started focusing on writing and illustrating children's books, which is what you've mostly been doing since.

JF: It had nothing to do with giving up the strip. It had to do with giving up the theater. I always need an obsession, something that occupies me on long-term things. The strip is a day's work, or a day and a half at most. I need something that's going to make me think of character and events and storyline and what happens here, and if she does this, then what does he do? This makes me very happy, to do this kind of work. What happened was, a good friend of mine wanted me to write his children's book that he was going to illustrate, and then we had a difference of opinion, and I got so mad, I said, "Okay, fuck you, I'll write my own children's book, and it will be better than yours," and that's what I did.

Most of the children's book stuff is on the last page, but I found the whole interview interesting -- I loved the section about political cartoons.  And what do you think about the upcoming musical adaptation of The Man in the Ceiling?  Huh?  Huh?

Newsarama interviews Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg about Janes II.

From the interview:

NRAMA: Also, Jim, what have been some of the challenges of working on the book, particularly one where a lot of the story relies on character interaction?

JR: I remember reading interviews with people who drew team books. And they would talk about how much more difficult a team book is than a book that features a solo character.

Well, it’s true! It can be tough drawing a room full of distinct characters, especially if they are all doing their own thing. But it has advantages too. I’m sure if the book was about a single character, when there were group scenes, the other characters wouldn’t be designed as well. In this case, I think the Janes are all pretty interesting visually, and that helps with some of the more elaborate compositions.

Grrr.  I still haven't read Janes in Love.  Of course, it isn't due out until mid-September, so I shouldn't be grousing.  Hopefully my library will get a copy when it's released.  Oooo!  And CC mentioned that she's working on a new YA novel called Rose Sees Red.  I wonder when we can expect to see that...

Gabe Soria at Largehearted Boy.

Gabe Soria co-authored Life Sucks with Jessica Abel; there's a feature at Largehearted Boy entitled Book Notes, in which authors create music playlists that are "in some way relevant to their recently published books".

Go.

I'm so there.

From PW:

Thus were laid the seeds for what became Salt Water Taffy, a new all-ages series from Oni Press, the first volume of which—“The Legend of Old Salty”—will be published in May. It tells the tale of two brothers on a family trip to what appears to be a dull, sleepy little town called Chowder Bay, Maine. The boys quickly discover, however, that the town is actually filled with mystery, excitement, and the aforementioned giant lobster!.

I mean, what's not to love?  And Lauren thinks Maine is boring!

My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park -- Steve Kluger

Juniors T. C. Keller, Augie Hwong and Alejandra Perez's English assignment is to write an essay entitled My Most Excellent Year*.  The book is comprised of those essays, of diary entries, transcripts of their IM sessions, letters, notes between their parents, student advisers and others, emails and other related documents.  It's split into alternating chapters, so we get the story from all three perspectives.

T.C.:

But even though Augie and I had never talked to each other before, he was the only one who knew what to say and how to say it.  (Everybody else thought they could get away with blowing smoke up my ass about Guardian Angels and Eternal Paradise, like my mother had gone on a Princess Cruise.) ... Well, anybody who can pull off something like that for you isn't just a best friend--that's brother territory.  So Augie told his mom and dad that they had a new son, and I told Pop the same thing.  Screw biology.

Augie:

My father and I are both ABCs (American-born Chinese), but that's where the resemblance ends.  He once played Bruce Lee in a college production of Dragon, and I once played Ethel Merman in a living room musicale for Grandma Lily.

Alé:

Naturally there were bound to be a few conflicts with Papa, Mamita, and Forever Flawless Carlos.  The family business depended on tact and diplomacy, and meanwhile they were raising a ten-year-old activist who could find a social issue in a box of Kleenex.  After I'd told the Korean ambassador that I had little use for either half of military Korea but at least the south knew how to say "May I?" before they shot you, I was persona non grata all along Embassy Row.

Among other things, over the course of their ninth grade year: T.C. falls in love and meets a six-year-old boy who can predict (with perfect accuracy) which balls T.C. should swing at, Augie falls in love, figures something out about himself that everyone else (his parents, T.C., his friends) have known pretty much forever, and Alé (surprise!) falls in love and comes to terms with the fact that her vision of her future doesn't at all resemble her parents' vision of her future.

Fans of Last Days of Summer will recognize a lot of subjects and themes:  family (not just the families we are born into, but the families we choose and the families we create), baseball, musical theater, Japanese internment camps, friendship, politics and true love.  I do think My Most Excellent Year could have been a bit tighter and for me, it didn't quite reach the same heights as Last Days of Summer.  But it had me grinning most of the way through, occasionally made me guffaw and yes, got me a little bit teary here and there.  The word 'heartwarming' generally makes me want to barf, but in this case, it's very definitely accurate.  It's a most excellent romantic comedy, and will be a totally enjoyable springtime read.

Oh, a note:  I loved it that Augie's coming out was never an issue.  That angle of the book made it fall into avengingsybil's "Gay = Yay!" genre.  Which is such a nice thing -- I'm always glad to find more books to put onto that list.

*Actually, the assignment originally was to write an essay entitled "My Totally Excellent Year", but as T. C. says, that "would have been like so 1995", so they changed it.

Eeeep.

A sequel to Repo Man!  In comic format!

Awww.

Adorable Michael Cera in an adorable black hoodie in a scene from what I hope will be an adorable film version of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist:

(Thanks for the link, Liz!)

I have GOT to buy this for my co-worker who calls the overdues.

Bookhunter.

Of course, she'd be too busy to read it, as she's still working her way through her back issues of National Geographic (in order, obviously).  She's about fifteen years behind because she only skips the articles about space.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Movie.

I do hope they look for an unknown to play Greg Heffley.

It's oh-so-much better.

Garfield Minus Garfield:

(via Bookslut)

Life Sucks -- Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria & Warren Pleece

Dave is stuck working the night shift at a crappy local convenience store, he's in love with a gorgeous Goth girl who doesn't know he exists, and he's constantly taking crap from Wes, an annoying-yet-vicious surfer.

Oh, and he's a vampire.  He refuses to kill people, so not only is he living on stale blood bank blood, but he isn't able to use the traditional vampire powers.  No traveling via mist for our Dave.  Nope, he's stuck riding his bike.  He was turned by Lord Radu, the owner of the convenience store, so he has to do his bidding.  And now Wes -- who is also a vampire, but a much more powerful one, as he has no problem whatsoever with killing people -- has taken an interest in the girl Dave's crushing on.  So, yeah.  Life Sucks. 

Lots and lots of fun.  It's basically Clerks with vampires -- Dave is Dante, his friend Jerome (who a huge smartass and who has no problem whatsoever with locking up the copy shop he works at to wander over and hang out with Dave) is Randal and there's a biker vampire who gives sage advice just like Silent Bob. 

It's well-written, funny and smart, it's easy to believe that Dave and Carl (his mortal roommate) have been friends forever, and the squabbling/ribbing between Dave and Carl and Jerome rings true.  David's vampire master, Lord Radu, looks a whole lot like Ian McShane as Al Swearengen, which was also fun.  Some of the panels were very dark and hard to make out, but my review copy is in black and white and it's going to be published in color, so I'm sure that won't be an issue in the finished copies.

I'm always a sucker for the Real Vampires Check Out the Goth Scene and Giggle At It setup, and there's plenty of that here -- it made me laugh out loud quite a few times.  "Nice cape."  Hee hee. 

I heart The Goon.

Love him, love him, love him.

So much that we have this poster of him up in our apartment, though the Lego Millennium Falcon is kind of blocking it. 

Luckily for me, there are four free Goon comics up at Dark Horse Presents this month.

YAR!!

Love is a Many Trousered Thing -- Louise Rennison

The moment I finished my Cybils reading, I went tearing to the bookshelf, grabbed this book, went tearing into the bedroom, threw myself on the bed and read the hell out of it.  I'd like to think that I looked like The Flash*. 

Due to Robbie's unexpected return from Kiwi-a-Go-Go Land, Georgia finds herself with a choice: will it be the Sex God or the Luuurve God?  Or, in Georgia-speak, "after queuing up at the cakeshop of luuurve for ages I have accidentally bought two cakes".  Mysteriously, every time she thinks about the Robbie/Masimo situation, Dave the Laugh seem to pop up, too.  (Oo-er, as Georgia would say.)

First off, the title.  Josh took one look at it and said, "Shouldn't that be called 'Luuurve is a Many Trousered Thing'?"  Yes.  He's oh-so right.  And he hasn't even read** any of the books!

I don't think it's the very best book in the series, but like all of them, it has its moments.  I know that some people have a problem with Georgia herself (and she's especially awful in this one), but even though she's a complete beast, she's a vair vair entertaining beast.  So, of course, recommended to fans of the series.

As much as I enjoy the books, I'm thinking that the series really does need to be wrapped up soon.  We've been reading them for, what -- eight years now?  The only one who has aged at all is Angus, and that's just by association.  (What with having a son and all.)  Libby is still stuck toddling around.  Toddling entertainingly, of course.  But it is starting to feel a bit strange.
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*Minus the yellow boots, which I used to secretly covet*** -- look at the wings!  Nice.

**Well, not technically.  But I've read so much of so many of them aloud that at this point, he speaks fluent Georgia.

***I still covet them, just not so secretly anymore.

As much as I'd like to be Lucy, it's just never going to happen.

I have no idea how I got a 40% on the physical component.  I am, in real life, the Queen of Sloth: 

Your Score: Woodstock

Wishy-Washy: 46%, Mental: 50%, Physical: 40%

Perhaps the world's most uncoordinated bird, Woodstock is Snoopy's best friend, activity partner and occasional secretary. With his erratic flight patterns, he has trouble avoiding anything roughly between him and his destination and usually spends the winter holed up in Snoopy's kennel. Be extra careful playing baseball or football, as sports become a lot more challenging when the ball is six times bigger than you are.

Link: The Peanuts Character Test written by timberlineridge on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Auuuugh.

His legs look six inches long! 

Is Jughead getting engaged?

BAH.

Yes, yes, I read the post.  It's temporary.  Whatever.  Still don't like it.

(via GalleyCat)

Even manga stylings can't make me like Heathcliff and Cathy.

From the Daily Yomiuri Online:

Aiming to create freshly copyrighted works based on popular classic movies in the public domain, a new comic book series featuring the movies' stories has been launched, with each volume sold as a set with a DVD of the corresponding film.

Supervised by Kenshi Hirokane, renowned for his successful Kacho Shima Kosaku (Division Chief Shima Kosaku) series, the new comic book series, titled Manga: Sekai Meisaku Movie, was launched Nov. 17 with its first four titles: Kasaburanka (Casablanca), Sharedo (Charade), Ekibasha (Stagecoach) and Arashigaoka (Wuthering Heights).

(Link and image via Newsarama)

Grown-up pop-ups.

The kids at Something Awful have created their own pop-ups. 

My favorites:

"Yes, Albus Dumbledore shares the same secret harbored by this charming little scamp..."

Find out who!

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 -- David Petersen

Three years after the defeat of a weasel warlord, the members of Mouse Guard have returned to their usual peacetime activities:  trailblazing, escorting civilians from village to village, weather-watching and scouting.  On a routine patrol, Lieam, Kenzie and Saxon (that's them on the cover -- Saxon, in the red, is pretty much always scowling, so of course I loved him) discover that the peace is threatened, but this time, not by outsiders:  there is a traitorous plot against Lockhaven, the headquarters of Mouse Guard.

Due to the pretty, pretty cover, I've had my eye on Mouse Guard for quite a while now.  Buuuut, as pretty as it is, I've been avoiding the actual reading part because of my Animal Book Problem*.

Luckily, Josh has also been eyeing it, so he brought it home, read it first and pronounced it SAFE.  I was so happy to hear that, because -- just look at them!  Mice!  With Swords!  And Capes!  So noble!  And cute!  (But don't tell them that, they'd probably cut you.)

And now, after reading it, I can tell you with confidence:  It is not a weeper in any way.  Yes, some cute little mice die, but Mouse Guard is more action movie and less Bambi.  It's really mostly worth reading for the illustrations and for the world he's created -- the characters aren't all that developed (They mostly fall into very familiar fantasy/action character archetypes.  But you know what?  That didn't really bother me -- I always find those character types to be super-fun -- Saxon, for instance, is the Attack First, Think Later, Always Angry type.) and the story is very simple.  But this is just the first installment -- it's an introduction to the world and to the characters, so maybe in the future there'll be more depth.

Absolutely don't miss at the very least flipping through this one in the bookstore, because the illustrations are gorgeous. 

I think it'll be a hit with tweens.

*Nine times out of ten, books (movies**, songs***...) about animals (anthropomorphic or not) make me cry.  Even if they have happy endings! 

**As I know I've mentioned before, the Seabiscuit trailer made me cry.  As if that isn't embarrassing enough, we were there to see Hulk.   

***They had to remove me from the classroom in second grade when I disrupted the poor folksinger lady's presentation with my wailing.  She was trying to sing Puff the Magic Dragon.  Not my finest moment.

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall -- Wendy Mass

After being hit in the head during a gym class game of dodgeball, 16-year-old Tessa finds herself soaring towards Heaven... and ends up at the mall.

After being lead to the the Lost and Found, she is left to confront her memories and relive significant moments in her life, which will hopefully lead her to a Big Answer -- except that she's not really sure what the question is.

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall is a verse novel.  It begins:

For fifty cents and a Gobstopper
I lifted my shirt for the neighborhood boys.
My older brother Matt caught us
and chased the boys with a Wiffle bat.
Word got around, and at nine years old
I became the girl
other girls' moms
didn't want them to play with.

Like some other verse novels I've read, this book felt less like poetry to me and more like prose with a lot of extra line breaks.  That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it -- but I felt it was worth mentioning.  I could imagine the book working just as well as a connected sequence of short stories or even vignettes.

I really enjoyed Tessa as a character.  She's far from perfect, but that makes her more real, and I do think that most teens will find that they identify with at least a part of her.  I also felt that Tessa's memory sequences were strong.  (Especially those involving Ben -- the moment under the bleachers and the scene in the elevator both really worked for me.)  They ranged from momentarily joyful to downright heartbreaking:

Just because Mom had, like a million
friends when she was my age
because she competed in pageants
(a concept that makes me shiver
just thinking about it) she thinks
there's something wrong with me
because I only have three real friends,
and they each have more
important friends than me.

I found myself less interested, less involved and less invested with the actual Heaven part of the book.  Once the "Is it all a dream?  Am I dead or aren't I?" questions started, I felt that I knew exactly where that angle of the story was going and just... lost interest.  For me, that made her revelations anticlimactic, because, well, I've already read A Christmas Carol and I've already seen It's a Wonderful Life.  I knew where it was going.  I think, though, that the same aspect of the book that didn't work for me might make it a comfort read for others.

Again, her life story always held me and kept me curious -- and that makes up the majority of the book.  My feelings about it as a whole are mixed, but more positive than negative. 

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: The Movie.

I had no idea.

(Via a. fortis at Finding Wonderland, who had to work much harder for the information.)

I really want to read it, but...

...I'm worried that it'll break my heart.

From the NYT review:

Schulz was raised in what sounds like a grim, even more isolated version of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon — a close-knit place ruled by church and family, where book learning was regarded with suspicion and where, far from being above average, children were discouraged from thinking too highly of themselves. Early in grammar school, Schulz was bumped ahead a grade, which guaranteed that for the rest of his school career he would always be the smallest, skinniest, most awkward kid in the class. Though a decent pickup hockey player, and a good enough golfer to play No. 2 on the school team, by the time he got to high school Schulz was so crippled with shyness he had become virtually invisible. “I wasn’t actually hated,” he said later. “Nobody cared that much.”

My new favorite comics blog.

Nad Shot.

Yes, the title says it all.  For instance:

Hee hee.

(via Newsarama)

Nick and Norah -- the movie.

From zap2it:

Michael Cera and Kat Dennings will star in "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," a badly titled romantic drama from Mandate Films.

I'm having a hard time picturing Michael Cera as Nick, because I've only ever seen him play the one kind of character.  I love him though, so I've got the trust.

God, I really hope they don't butcher it.

And, hey, zap2it kids?  Badmouthing Nick and Norah's title?  Just... shocking. 

Spud -- John van de Ruit

1990:  Nelson Mandela and Pretty Woman are released, and thirteen-year-old John Milton enters an all-boys boarding school in Durban, South Africa.

Once there, he is almost immediately nicknamed 'Spud', due to his lack of hair Down There.  Over the course of the year, his diary entries describe his relationship with his English teacher:

06:40  Our first lesson was English with an extraordinary teacher called Mr. Edly (nickname The Guv--a nickname he said he was given when he was a boy at the school).  He has a very posh English accent and strides around with a walking stick, swearing like a maniac.  His long legs and bulging eyes make him look like a giant praying mantis.  He had some spectacular outbursts (within five minutes he'd threatened to shoot off Boggo's head with a shotgun).  The highlight of the class was when he threw a pile of Henry James novels out of the window and called the author "a boring poof."  We all applauded; he bowed and then told us to get lost.

Falling in love with Julia Roberts:

20:00  Watched Pretty Woman, starring Julia Roberts, in the common room.  She is perfectly beautiful.  Wickedly envious of Richard Gere.  When I leave school, I will drive around looking for prostitutes like Julia.

Going illegal night swimming, trying out for the school musical, falling in love with a Mermaid and reading The Best Book Ever Written.  Also, his father's terror about the end of apartheid and his mother's conviction that their maid is running a brothel out of her apartment.  And then there are the Wombat stories.

Okay -- this doesn't really have a whole lot to due with the book itself, but I feel like I have to mention it anyway:  Other than the fact that they're both coming-of-age stories, the comparison to Catcher in the Rye (both in the publisher's marketing info and the blurb on the front of the book) doesn't make sense to me.  The books are both emotionally honest, but the tones (and plots) are so very different that if there hadn't been a blurb on the front of the book describing the book as "South Africa's Catcher in the Rye!", it certainly wouldn't have come to mind.  Regardless of Spud's personal feelings about him*, if I had to describe the book in ten words or less, I'd have said: Imagine Adrian Mole at boarding school in South Africa.

The odd marketing didn't detract from my enjoyment, though.  Spud is bawdy, touching, vulgar, rowdy, hilarious and again, honest.  I'm looking forward to the next installment.

*This is what he has to say about Adrian Mole:

Worst book:  The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Any boy's diary written by a woman is not to be trusted.)  Adrian Mole is a raving nerd who wouldn't last one day in our dormitory.  Even Gecko is less cowardly that this Lucozade-drinking, pill-popping, pimply Brit!  (I did think the book was hilarious, though.)

Sounds like the author was aware that comparisons were inevitable, so he decided to address them right in the text, no?

No Tinin in the Congo in upcoming boxed set.

From Publishers Weekly:

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which had been planning to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book criticized for its racist, Colonial-era depictions of Africans, has quietly pulled the title from its fall list, PW has learned. The publisher also said it will not include the book in a forthcoming box set of all 24 books in the Tintin series.

8 Little Known Facts about Charles Schulz...

At (of course) Mental Floss:

2.  He came "this close" a lot:

That wasn’t the only rain cloud hovering over little Charlie’s existence. As a child, he was once super-excited to be in line at a movie theater because they promised candy bars to the first 100 kids to buy tickets. Of course, Schulz happened to be the 101st.

I finally subscribed to Mental Floss a few weeks ago, and I'm still anxiously awaiting my first copy.