bookshelves of doom

How It Ends -- Laura Wiess

15-year-old Hanna wants Seth, and she wants him above all things.  He always seems to have a girlfriend, but she hopes that sooner or later, his eye will fall on her.

Being so preoccupied with her heartache, she hasn't been spending much time with her adopted grandparents.  Who aren't getting any younger.  And who have dealt with -- and are still dealing with -- their own head and heartaches.  Grandma Helen, especially, knows that there are things she needs to tell Hanna, and she needs to do it while she still can.

How It Ends is made up of Hanna and Helen's alternating narratives, as well as a transcription of the audiobook they listen to together.  It's a coming of age story and a romance -- multiple romances, really -- a story about family, about aging, loss, death and dying, about obsessive love, and about strength, hardship and about how the connections we make with other people can carry us through fire*.  With, you know, bonus Gothic elements.

It's one that won't be for everyone -- many adult readers, especially, will have a hard time with Hanna's bad choices and inability to see much of anything beyond her own situation, and some might feel that the beginning of the book is slow-going -- but it'll hit some people hard.

Like me.

Hoo boy.  I haven't cried so hard since I read The Subtle Knife.  We're not talking Book Thief tears pouring down the face.  We're talking red-faced-mouth-open-can't-breathe-no-holds-barred crying so hard that I was worried Mrs. Across The Street would hear me and come nosing around because she was "concerned". 

I do think that my response was, in part, intensely personal:  How It Ends deals with some of my greatest fears, and there are many parallels between Helen's lifestyle and my own.  So it resonated.  But setting my personal reaction aside, I think it's an extremely strong book on its own -- Hanna's behavior, while maddening to those of us with more life experience, is quite realistic, and the slow beginning is necessary to allow the reader to actually get to know and care about the characters BEFORE the big payoff.

It's one, I think, that could benefit from cross-promoting -- definitely, definitely a good pick for adult readers of the YA.

___________________________________________________________________

*Sorry if I got a little overly dramatic there.  I'm still fighting back tears about this one (even though I finished it days ago), and also we re-watched Babylon 5 recently, so I currently have Jeff Conaway's voice on loop in my head:  "It was the YEAR of fire..."  Plus, you know Delenn or Sheridan probably said something or other about carrying one another through fire.  I mean, it SOUNDS like something one of them would say.  Okay.  I've distracted myself away from another crying jag.  Back to it.

___________________________________________________________________

Book source/other info:  Review copy from the publisher; Cybils nominee.

_________________________________________________________________________

I'm part of the Amazon Affiliate program.  Which I'd assume would be apparent by the ad in the sidebar, but assuming that you're bright enough to understand that is not enough for the FTC.  So, I will spell it out:  if you click through to Amazon and buy something, I get money.

The Wild Girls -- Pat Murphy Read for the 4th Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge.

I've been meaning to read Wild Girls since it came out -- I remember that People I Trust loved it, and that there was a minor kerfuffle about a mediocre review somewhere and I remember putting it on my list.  Then my library never bought it and I promptly forgot about it.  (The dangers of a much-too-long TBR list.)

Yesterday, as I was checking an ILL in, I realized that I held it in my hands.  It was already overdue, but the ILL delivery had already gone out, so the earliest it could go back would be on Tuesday, so OBVIOUSLY it was meant to be. 

None of that has anything to do with the book.  But Wild Girls kind of messed me up, so I'm postponing what I suspect will be a big ramble by, um, rambling.

It's about two girls.  It begins:

I met the Queen of the Foxes in 1972, when my family moved from Connecticut to California.

The narrator is Joan.  The Queen of the Foxes is Sarah, or as she calls herself, Fox.  It's set in 1972, as you may have deduced, and while there aren't a bunch of unnecessary details To Let The Reader Know It's The 70s, it feels very seventies.  Which is cool.

For some reason, I can't really do the synopsis thing here.  I think it's because, as I said, it messed me up.  In terms of actual plot, actual happenings, it's a very simple story, and Pat Murphy uses very clear and simple language to tell it. 

Beyond and beneath that simple plot, it's also a story about families falling apart, about families tearing themselves apart, about people losing themselves and finding themselves again, about finding ways of figuring life out and creating family.  It's about, as Joan would say, the subtext.  And it's about writing.  And the whole book rings clear and true.  Regardless of whether it's fiction or not, it's one that rings so true that I'm getting all choked up again.  I believed in the girls, and I believed in the parents, and while Joan and Fox were the focus, the adult characters were so real that this book could have been about them instead. 

It's one I wish I'd had in fifth grade.

Heck, I wish I'd had it in college.

________________________________________________________________

Previous Challenge Books:

The Name of the Game Was Murder
Bloody Jack

Well, now I don't just want to read it... I need to read it.

There's a really nice post about Just Henry up at the Guardian.

And according to the commenters on my Costa winners post, there are a bunch more Magorian books I should read as well.  I'd better get to it.

Skin Deep -- E. M. Crane

Pretty cover, right?  It looks almost like it could be a Feiwel & Friends cover, and that's high praise indeed.

The storyline is simple:  A girl, Andrea Anderson, who describes herself as "plainish, boring, nervous", takes a job helping a neighbor.  From that first connection, she begins to form others, and in doing so, she begins to actually become a participant in life, rather than just an observer. 

From Skin Deep:

I study my message for a long time.  It seems pretty strange to write something like this on a bathroom wall.  It seems pretty strange to cringe every time someone looks my way.  It's definitely strange to have an imaginary dog you call on your walks in the woods, then leech onto the dogs of neighbors for companionship.

Strange is so arbitrary, yet so vital to a person's existence.  What made me suddenly strange, or was a strange from the beginning and just not aware?

The bell rings a short time later and the bathroom door almost immediately swings open.  Three goody girls planning a movie and a sleepover.  I flush the toilet and leave the stall, wondering why it feels like high school will never end.

I enjoyed Andrea's voice, that she was lonely and often sad, but never dramatically angst-ridden, that she was bright but never overly sarcastic or snarky.  I thought that the contrasts between her life at home with her mother and her solitary walks in the woods and her time with Honora Menapace were well done.  I loved seeing people reach out to her again and again, and finally seeing her begin to reach back.

Skin Deep deals with a lot of issues, but it never feels issue-y, and while the ending is predictable, it feels right.  It's a quiet book, introspective, melancholy, thoughtful and full of heart.  I'll be watching for E. M. Crane's next book.

An Infamous Army: The Alastair Trilogy, #3 -- Georgette Heyer

Though she's loath to admit it, Judith Audley, wife of the Earl of Worth, would like to match her brother-in-law, Colonel Charles Audley, up with her young friend, Miss Lucy Devenish:

The Earl put up his quizzing-glass.  "Ah!  May I inquire, my love, whether you are making plans for Charles's future welfare?"

Down went the embroidery; her ladyship raised an indignant rueful pair of eyes to his face.  "You are the most odious man that I have ever met!" she declared.  "Of course I don't make plans for Charles!  It sounds like some horrid, match-making Mama.  How in the world did you guess?"

But her plans are upset when Charles has no interest in the quiet, sweet, proper Miss Devenish -- no, it's the ravishing, fascinating and somewhat scandalous widow, Lady Barbara Childe, who gets his attention.  Almost immediately, he proposes -- and to her surprise, almost immediately, she accepts.  Oh, but if it were only so easy!  Lady Barbara wants to be sure that Charles knows exactly who and what he'll be marrying, so she sets out to prove just how awful she can be.

An Infamous Army is set in and around Brussels in the time leading up to and during the Battle of Waterloo.  The young Alastairs -- Lord Vidal*, Barbara, George and Harry, the grandchildren of Dominic, The Devil's Cub -- all have their parts to play, but Barbara is the one to watch.  She's a firecracker.

After reading the first two Alastair books, I thought I'd be in for another light, somewhat silly romp.  I was wrong.  The tone of the book was so different that I struggled a bit with the first half -- there's quite a lot about Wellington's preparations for his inevitable battle with Napoleon, and that's just not my cuppa.  

This is much more of a historical novel than a romance novel -- the second half of the book includes a description of the Battle of Waterloo that had me sobbing.  Sobbing.  And yet, on occasion, it still made me laugh:

"Oh, we don't give a button for the cavalry!" replied Mercer.  "The worst is this infernal cannonading.  It plays the devil with us.  We've been pestered by skirmishers, too, which is a damned nuisance.  Only way I can stop my fellows wasting their charges on them is to parade up and down the bank in from of my guns.  That's nervous work, if you like!"

Even though it totally wrecked me, the second half was what did it for me.  Her description of the battle was a pretty amazing piece of writing.  I do think that the first half will improve on me upon a second reading -- after actually reading about Waterloo, the preparations and lead up will be much more interesting.  But it wasn't just the war element that made this a darker read -- the romance itself was distinctly non-frothy.  It's very different than the romance in the first two books.  I honestly didn't know if it would work out between Charles and Babs.  And at times, I didn't know if I wanted it to. 

This story doesn't end in glittery rainbowed sparkly vampire kittens -- it's much more muted, bittersweet and real.  But as much as I loved the first two books in the trilogy, this is the one that will stay with me the longest. 

According to Wikipedia, this book is a crossover with Regency Buck -- so rather than moving on to the Inspector Hannasyde books, which was my original plan, I'm going to hunt that one down instead.  I'm actually really excited to read it, because I adored the Audleys so I'm looking forward to reading about their courtship.

__________________________________________________________

*Because, of course, Dominic became the Duke when my darling Justin died.  (I assume at a very great age.)

__________________________________________________________

Previously:

1.  These Old Shades
2.  The Devil's Cub

Deadline -- Chris Crutcher

Ben Wolf goes in for a routine physical at the beginning of his senior year.  He walks out with a year to live and some big decisions to make:

I walked away understanding I have a rare form of whatever the hell it is and without treatment my chances sucked, but with it they still sucked and somehow I knew my chances aren't about living, they're about living well.  I wouldn't recommend this for anyone else, but I'm not going out bald and puking.  I don't have anything to teach anyone about life, and I'm not brave, but I'd rather be a flash than a slowly cooling ember, so I'll eat healthy food, take supplements, sleep good, and take what the universe gives me.

And I'm turning out for football.

Not only does he decide to forgo treatment -- he decides that he wants his last year to be as normal as possible.  So he doesn't tell anyone.  His parents, his brother, his coach -- no one.

He sets out to do a lifetime's worth of living in a year.  He wants to learn as much as he can, understand as much as he can, get up the nerve to talk to Dallas Suzuki and, yes, go out for football. 

Oh, hell.  I'm getting all choked up again.

In non-weepy news, Chris Crutcher has left the No Swearing Realm of The Sledding Hill behind. 

Crutcher fans will recognize a lot of the themes and issues from previous books (child abuse, racism, our education system, censorship), and they'll recognize some character types (the Coach/Mentor, the Tough Sporty Girl, the Kid Who Regurgitates Everything Her Father Says), but A) just because it's been explored doesn't mean there's nothing left to say, and B) for me, those themes and character types are part of the appeal.  I like what Chris Crutcher has to say, and I like how he says it.

I'm getting off-track.  Sorry.  I get like this when I'm weepy.

Really, more than any of the other stuff I rattled off up there, Deadline is about truth-with-a-capital-T. 

And there you have it.

Vive la Paris -- Esme Raji Codell

Vive la Paris is a* companion novel to Sahara Special, which you probably already know and love**.  Like Sahara, Paris is in Miss Pointy's fifth-grade class.  I've been bossing all of my co-workers into reading page one:

Excuse me for saying so, but I could not understand why this old white lady was talking to me like I was born into her hands.  She don't even know me.  I just come for piano lessons, and within two minutes she had offered me:

1.  grapes, which were plastic,
2.  a seat, on her sofa, which was also plastic and which made an impolite noise when I sat on it, which to me was specially uncomfortable because I am a polite person or try to be, and
3.  her advice, which was, I believe the word is, unsolicited.

I'm not sure how anyone could even imagine resisting a book that starts like that. 

Our narrator is, of course, Paris.  She lives in a smallish apartment in Chicago with her parents and her four (four!) older brothers.  She's been having problems with a classmate at school lately.  Tanaeja hasn't been beating up on Paris -- it's even worse than that. She's been beating up on Paris' older brother.  As he believes very strongly in non-violence, he won't fight back -- and Paris knows that it'll ultimately be worse for him if she, his baby sister, steps up to defend him. 

Paris' voice is genuine -- by the end of the book, I'd forgotten it was fiction.  I'm not exaggerating.  Part of that realism, I think, is due to Esme Raji Codell's treatment of adult characters.  Paris doesn't always understand what they're talking about -- there are some one-liners in there that will go right over young readers' heads, too.  (Adults, though, will howl.)  But the lines are still in there, because... that's real life.  I'm not explaining myself well at all here, but trust me.  It works.

There's a lot more going on in this book than any of that, though.  Paris learns about Big Things.  Life Things.  I don't think I'd call it a coming-of-age story so much as a loss-of-innocence story.  It made me cry a whole lot.  But it made me laugh a whole lot, too.  So there you go.

Highly, highly recommended.

Oh, also:  Note the awesome cover art by Giselle Potter.  It actually reflects the contents of the book!  Imagine that!

*The book says it is "the" companion novel, but I'm hoping for more.  So I'll stick with "a" companion novel, thankyouverymuch.

**If not, how do you not know it?  Get on that.  And if you don't love it, wowza.  What's the deal with that?

***Spoiler coming up***:

Also... As stories about the Holocaust go, this one KICKS THE PANTS off of that Striped Pajamas book.  (Which, no, I still haven't finished.  But that doesn't make my statement any less true.)

Keturah and Lord Death -- Martine Leavitt

Keturah -- beautiful, sixteen, the village storyteller -- follows a hart into the forest and quickly loses her way.  After three days, she is exhausted and starving.  She knows that death can't be far away.

But when he finally comes for her, she finds that Death is a young man -- melancholy and brooding, lonely and not without compassion.  Keturah tells him a story, and they strike a bargain:  He will allow her to live one more day.  If, in that time, she hasn't found and married her One True Love, she will return to him, finish her story, and become his Queen.

Keturah becomes a Scheherezade of sorts, spinning out her story and escaping Lord Death again and again.  But her fellow villagers are aware of her new acquaintance. The relationship terrifies them.  Rumors fly.

And a plague is coming.

Keturah and Lord Death has a bit of everything -- bravery, love, romance, comfort, magic and sacrifice.  The storytelling is such that, given the right reader, it'll make a fantastic audiobook. 

Though it isn't technically a retelling of another story (as far as I know), I'll be recommending it to readers who are drawn to Donna Jo Napoli, Robin McKinley and older fans of Gail Carson Levine.  I'm also going to try it on some of my Twilight girls.  Stylistically, they're very different books, but the dark romance is similarly attractive.

The prologue suggests that Keturah herself is telling the story at a village gathering -- she is a storyteller, has the same name as the heroine, the names of her friends at the gathering are the names of her friends in the story -- and that the story of Lord Death is entirely her own creation. By the end, I was so wrapped up in it that I was convinced that the story was a true one -- it just HAD to be -- I just couldn't bear to think of Keturah and Lord Death as imaginary creations. 

Mark of a good storyteller, no?

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane -- Kate DiCamillo

I've had Edward Tulane sitting at home for about a week now.  I was saving it for a day when I'd be home alone -- I suspected that it would be a weeper, and I was right.  Boy, was I right. 

This book is a tearjerker.  It made me cry so much that my nose was running.  Not just little sniffles.  I'm talking full-on-vile-hanging-snot-threads crying.  It was brutal.

By now, you've probably already read a synopsis, so I'll be brief:  Edward Tulane is a china rabbit.  He is much loved, but he doesn't know how to (or why he would even want to) love back.  Even after a terrifying fairy tale told by the equally terrifying grandmother of his owner, Edward doesn't feel the need to love.  When he is separated from his owner by two horrible boys and the ocean, his long journey -- physical and emotional -- begins.

When Edward Tulane first came out, it was embraced by critics.  Then there was a bit of disagreement.  So I really didn't know what to expect.  All I knew was that I was definitely going to cry.

After finally reading it, I'm firmly in the pro-Edward camp.  The Washington Post reviewer objected to the book partially because "it is aimed at children, who will be surprised and disturbed by a great many unpleasant thoughts before they, and Edward, are done."  But really.  When was the last time that reviewer sat down with some of the classics of children's lit?  Charlotte's Web?  Wilbur almost becomes a pork chop and Charlotte dies.  The Day No Pigs Would Die?  Another pig, this time dead -- not to mention the dog that dies trapped in a barrel with a rat.  Where the Red Fern Grows?  Dead dogs, among other things.  Don't even get me going on The Velveteen Rabbit.  Children's lit is filled with horrible things.  It's partly a way of working through our early fears -- and yes, Edward Tulane is full of them. 

Heck, think about the stories of Hans Christian Andersen or the Grimm Brothers -- not the ones that have been cleaned up and Disney-fied, but the real ones.  The prince in Sleeping Beauty gets his eyes pierced by thorns and wanders around blind in the desert covered in his own blood for years before he gets his happy ending.  Red Riding Hood's grandmother gets eaten.  The Little Mermaid's human feet are so painful that every single step she takes feels like walking on knife blades.  And she doesn't even GET a happy ending.

The Washington Post article also asks:  "What, exactly, are they meant to take away from this tale...?"  Here's what I don't understand.  Why does a story have to have a moral?  Sometimes a story is a story is a story.  Lessons are not always necessary.  If they were, children's lit would have to take a gigantic step backwards.

Edward Tulane is beautifully written and illustrated.  Edward himself is pretty funny, which, given the tear-jerker-iness of the story, was a relief (and he's that wonderful, no-sense-of-humor-perfectly-serious kind of funny that I always love):

She smiled.  "Have you ever in your life seen anything so fine?" she said.

Edward felt immediately that Nellie was a very discerning woman.

...

A doll.  How Edward loathed dolls.  And to be thought of as a likely replacement for a doll offended him.  But still, it was, he had to admit, a highly preferable alternative to hanging by his ears from a post.

I think that the detractors are just failing to give kids enough credit.  Again.

each little bird that sings -- Deborah Wiles

Oh my GOD.  You should read this book because:

1.  If I was still working at the store, I'd be handing it to pretty much every customer that walked in the door.  I'd also be blathering about it to all of my co-workers until they read the thing out of self-defense.

2.  I was warned by a friend that "you must be prepared to bawl your eyes out.  In the delicious kind of way".  That was a huge understatement.  I read the whole book this morning before work--by the time I was done, my shirt was drenched with tears.  I'm talking about big gasping sobs, not little weenie sobs.  I thought I was going to die.  Don't get me wrong.  There were laughing parts, too.  But ultimately, "tearjerker" is not a strong enough term.

3.  Then, when I got here, I told a co-worker about it and started crying all over again.

I loved it.  At first it kind of reminded me of Because of Winn-Dixie, but Comfort's voice and the relationships between the characters were so different that the W-D similarities pretty much ended with the southern setting and the dog.

I don't want to give anything away.  Just read it.  It's wonderful.  <SOB>.

(PS.  C.C., Mali would love this one, I think.)

Atonement -- Ian McEwan

This was my first Ian McEwan.  Now I need to go back and read all of his other books.  Soon. 

He's fantastic.  A lot of the critics seem to compare him to Jane Austen, which I thought was strange.  He reminded me much more of E. M. Forster.  At least, the first part did.  The second part made me think of Hemingway, a bit.  (Not that I've read a whole lot of him, but the style changed significantly and it was set during the war and that was who I thought of.  So there.)

I'm flipping through my copy now, and I marked page after page, passage after passage of bits that I might include here.  But I've decided not to.  The book should be read as a whole.

The story starts in 1935 England--Briony, the youngest of three, witnesses two interactions between her older sister and the son of a servant.  Her immaturity prevents her from fully understanding what has happened, and due to this, an innocent man is taken away in handcuffs.

As much as I want to blabber on and on about it, I'm not going to, because I'll end up giving away too much.  It'll very definitely be on my Best Books I've Read This Year list.

I highly highly highly recommend it.  So read it.  (But not if you're in the mood for something light.  I thought I was going to die by the time I finished it.  I sobbed.)

My Friend Leonard -- James Frey

Call me crazy, but I don't think that the cover art really fits with the text.  Try the first paragraph:

On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray.  I was standing in line for lunch and I didn't see it coming.  I went down.  When I got up, I turned around and I started throwing punches.  I landed two or three before I got hit again, this time in the face.  I went down again.  I wiped blood away from my nose and my mouth and I got up I started throwing punches again.  Porterhouse put me in a headlock and started choking me.  He leaned toward my ear and said I'm gonna let you go.  If you keep fighting me I will fucking hurt you bad.  Stay down and I will leave you alone.  He let go of me, and I stayed down.

This book is the follow-up to Frey's first book, A Million Little Pieces, which chronicled his time in rehab.  My Friend Leonard picks up with James leaving rehab to serve a short stint in jail and then, after jail, trying to put the pieces of his life together and stay sober.  The title character is a mobster that James met in rehab, a man that decides that James is his adopted son, a man that continues to support James (emotionally and sometimes financially) after they both re-enter the real world.

I loved this book.  I loved the story--sometimes it would seem so unreal that I had to remind myself that it was a memoir, that it was true.  I loved Leonard and Snapper.  I loved James.  I loved his writing style.  He ran words together to describe mixed feelings in a way that I found extremely effective--in another, different book it wouldn't have worked, it would have felt lazy, but in this book it seemed right and perfect. 

It made me cry--at some points my eyes would just well up and at others I would sob.  I cried all over the damn book.  Highly recommended.

I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade -- Diane Lee Wilson

It seems that very few libraries in the area have this book--we were only able to borrow two for my book group.  So I spent the morning looking for it in used bookstores (no dice) and reading it (so I could hand off the library's copy to one of the kids). 

It's a very good book, and it prompted me to check out a book about Genghis Khan (Genghis isn't in the book, but Kublai is). 

But.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Did Bayan really have to die?  Is is a goddamn rule that horses always have to die?  And don't give me any crap about about how Bayan had a baby before she died, etc.  It sucked.  This is why I don't read books about horses.  She could have just and easily had her baby and lived to a ripe old age (Yes, I know that she was already old, but she could have lived longer--and died off screen, thank you very much).  I was sitting at the beach (in the car--it's still February, you know) sobbing my brains out.  THAT SUCKED.  I am never, ever reading another horse book again as long as I live.  Except for The Blue Sword.

I feel slightly better now. 

The kids are going to be some wicked pissed about this.  They're totally into the blood and gore angle--we just finished The Wreckers, and they were into all of the violence.  Stumps getting his nose shot off?  Cool.  Caleb standing on a sailor's head to drown him?  No problem.  Eli getting pitchforked?  Sad, but still pretty cool.  The major issue?  When the no-name pony falls through the mine shaft and (probably) dies.  They were mad that John didn't save it, even though he was trying to save his father who was having his feet chewed off by rats.

The Lovely Bones -- Alice Sebold

I read it because the new Chris Crutcher book is from the perspective of a dead boy.  Since I won't be able to read that one until May, I figured I'd read a book from the perspective of a dead girl instead.  I suspect that's about all they'll have in common.

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.  I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.  In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair.  This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail.  It was still back when people believed things like that didn't happen.

People seem to love this book.  If you do, don't hate me.  I thought it was... eh.  It was okay.  But all that it really did was make me want to do was watch Defending Your Life again.

I didn't feel like I connected with any of the characters.  I felt removed from the story--like I was always being held at arm's length.  Some of that might actually be due to strong writing--since Susie isn't really able to communicate with any of the people she's watching, it seems appropriate that the reader would feel the distance. 

The problem was, I never really connected with Susie, either.  This isn't to say that it left me completely dry-eyed or anything. I did tear up.  But that was it.  It didn't leave me thinking about the characters, wanting more, or searching for another book by Alice Sebold. 

Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

A veritable sobfest.

So I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife last night. It falls into the category of science fiction, but the kind of sci-fi where you actually care about the characters. And I think that it would also fall into the category of science fiction that people who normally don't like science fiction would like, and that hard-core sci-fi people might not like. And it was a love story. And, yes, a major tear-jerker. At least, I thought so. So will someone else please read this? Because I want to know if it's really as good as I thought it was, or if I'm just getting sappy in my old age.

Oh, right. I've discovered (and I'm not the only one--I talked to Collomia and she said the same thing) that due to only reading YA books for so long, sex scenes in grown-up books totally freak me out.