bookshelves of doom

Chosen: House of Night, #3 -- P.C. and Kristin Cast

Okay, so in Chosen, Zoey's got problems because she has three boyfriends, her best friend Stevie Ray is an undead monster and the head of House of Night (her vampyre finishing school) is an evil beeyotch.  Zoey has just discovered that Aphrodite, her sworn enemy, now has an affinity for earth, which means that she has to let her back into the Dark Daughters group in Stevie Ray's place, even though everyone hates Aphrodite.  And also, no one knows that the aforementioned evil beeyotch IS an evil beeyotch EXCEPT Zoey and Aphrodite and they can't tell anyone because they don't want to tip their hand.

Teaming up with your sworn enemy can be tough.

Improvements from last time:

Zoey has mostly stopped referring to her "exotic Cherokee looks" on every other page.

Stevie Ray's story arc is decent.

Problems:

The pop culture references continue to be dated.  The book came out this year and... Sean William Scott?  Really?  Hardly anyone knows or cares about him now.  Just imagine how this'll read in five years.

The term "popped cherry" was used.  Okay, I'm sorry, but gross.  And does anyone even say that anymore?  Even grosser, it was an adult who said it.

Every single time Zoey mentioned the fact that she had three boyfriends (and there were many times), she called herself a "ho-bag".  Zoey:  Either revel in it or dump two of them.  It's not that hard.  Or at least deal with the self loathing and guilt and move on.  Please, please, please, please, please don't moan about how much of a "ho" you are for pages and then go hump someone.  It's REALLY ANNOYING.

Okay, speaking of the three boyfriends:  One of them is your childhood friend who you keep accidentally biting... so you should probably dump him.  One of them is the most milquetoast vampire in the entire history of vampires and I am INCLUDING Anne Rice's Louis AND that kid from that episode of Buffy who just dressed up as a vampire and wanted to be called Diego... so you should probably dump him, too, because he's boringer than boring with a side of boring.  And thirdly, we have your teacher.  Do I even need to explain myself here?  Gross.  Just... gross.

If I, the heathen, find it semi-offensive that the only Christians in this series are complete lunatic bigot freaks, I can't imagine how someone who was actually remotely religious would feel while reading it.

Typos galore.

Zoey's friend Damien continues to wow their clique with his amazing grasp of two-syllable words.  It's his THING.  His boyfriend, Jack Twist, stands out because he's Damien's boyfriend.  That's his THING.  And her other friends, the Twins, also have a THING.  Actually, two:  finishing sentences for each other and lusting after every male that moves.  So, yeah.  Zoey's friends continue to be a group of incredibly multi-faceted and three-dimensional characters. 

Lastly, Zoey is an IDIOT.  I can't go into my reasons due to huge spoilers, but she is, I'm sorry, just dumb.  I dislike her intensely. 

And yet, I really want to know what happens next, in a let's-look-at-the-train-wreck sort of way.  I don't know what is wrong with me.

_______________________________________________________

Previously:

1.  Marked

Get ready for tomorrow's SDQ interview.

Check it out.  Fun with a kicky lady.

Happy Twilight release!

I don't know why I'm getting such a kick out of the Twilight premiere stuff.  A bunch of my young ladies from the library are going to a midnight showing tonight.

I, however, have some amount of self control.  I'm waiting until Saturday evening to pay my eight bucks to see the sparkly horror.  And I'm wearing my shirt.

Do go and read this Fug post.  It almost killed me.

Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery -- Susan Juby

For years at Harewood Tech, the girls have lived in fear of being D-listed.  The Defiled aren't simply made unpopular:  they're made to disappear.  Other students don't speak their names, interact with them, even look at them.

When Sherman Mack suspects that his crush, Dini Trioli, may become the next victim, he decides that it's time for a change.  His mission?  To discover the identity (or identities!) of the Defiler (or Defilers!)... and put an end to the tradition, once and for all.

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

What I'd really like to do is just quote a ton of it to explain why, but if I quoted all of the bits I marked, I'd end up quoting most of the book.  So just know that Getting the Girl is a stand out.  One of the very few that I've read recently. 

One of my favorite things about it was that it did not contain even a single solitary microscopic droplet of angst.  I mean it.  Not a one.  Sherman is sensitive, but not in that his feelings are easily hurt or that he's mushy or deep or a dreamer*.  He's sensitive in that he cares about other people.

Sherman's voice is sometimes deadpan, sometimes sarcastic and always original.  He tends toward the literal in a way that just killed me.  I read this entire book with a huge grin plastered across my face, and it was mostly due to how much I loved him.  He's a small guy -- one of the incredibly attractive girls from his school thinks he's twelve, though he's almost fifteen -- but, like Summer Roberts, he suffers from rage blackouts:

The problem is that when I lose it I also kind of lose the ability to make good judgment calls.  I am similar to the Incredible Hulk in that way.

He's being raised by his mom, who had him when she was sixteen, has given up on dating, and spends most of her free time dancing burlesque:

Thinking about my first case got me quite depressed, which my mother noticed as soon as I walked in the door.  She may be abnormally youthful and obsessed with an inappropriate hobby, but you could never say she doesn't care about me.  Other than her bad taste in names, clothing, dance style, and home decor, my mother is basically a good person.

Rather than go on and on, I'm just going to say it again:  I LOVED THIS BOOK.  Despite the swearing, the drugs and Sherman's body's tendency to physically display his appreciation for the ladies, this book felt really, really... wholesome.  Susan Juby's affection for Sherman comes through on every page, as does Sherman's affection for his friends, his mother and his mentor.  Highly recommended for anyone who's over The Angst, anyone who loves crime fiction and would enjoy a book that pokes fun at the genre, anyone who's in need of a book that feels like the literary equivalent of a hug.

_________________________________________________________

*Though he does have a tendency to get a bit tangential.

WBBT: Day Four.

Interviews with/at:

Martin Millar at Chasing Ray
John Green at Writing and Ruminating
Beth Kephart at HipWriterMama
Emily Ecton at Bildungsroman
John David Anderson at Finding Wonderland
Brandon Mull at The YA YA YAs
Lisa Papademetriou at MotherReader

2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize.

And the winner is...

The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness

I need to get on that.

Question.

Does anyone know if the vampires in the Twilight movie actually sparkle?  It doesn't look like it in the trailers I've seen.

As anti-sparklevamp as I am, it would be JUST WRONG if they didn't...

More on the upcoming movie at Smart Bitches.

(link via Chrissy)

Say what?

What?

Ha ha.

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

   

Iiiiiiinteresting.

Costa shortlists announced.

The Children's shortlist is:

Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd
Just Henry by Michelle Magorian
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

All the others are at the Costa Award website.  (Obviously.)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

At Gimme Noise, a synopsis of the upcoming direct-to-video Clique movie based solely on the soundtrack:

Slo-mo tracking shot as Kristen, the peppy honor roll student and plucky protagonist, breezes through the halls of Octavian County Day School (Here With Me Now-- Clique Girlz). Your favorites are all there-- Dylan, the crash dieting goofball, Massie, the aristocratic social queen, Alicia the Latin goddess who hides a roughneck past. Oh, and let's not leave out Claire, the dimwit, virginal initiate.

WBBT: Day Three.

Interviews at/with:

Ellen Klages at Fuse Number 8
Emily Jenkins at Writing and Ruminating
Ally Carter at Miss Erin
Mark Peter Hughes at Hip Writer Mama
Sarah Darer Littman at Bildungsroman
MT Anderson at Finding Wonderland
Mitali Perkins at Mother Reader

Full schedule at Chasing Ray!

Still waiting for my library to get a copy of Chalice...

From the Boston Globe:

These books are for anyone who likes novels that recall truths about human nature or suggest new ones. Without removing McKinley from the YA/fantasy shelves, I'd like to slip a few volumes into the adult section, so that readers willing to abandon their reliance on the utterly believable can enter one that's believable while in it. They will find that the themes are not "who marries the princess" and "who inherits the fortune" but are the nature of the state, the sanctity of work, the primacy of loyalty.

I know I mentioned it in an earlier post, but...

...THE LADIES AT FINDING WONDERLAND INTERVIEWED D.M. CORNISH!!!

Go read now.

I heart him and his Half-Continent.

Winter Blast Blog Tour: Day One.

Interviews with/at:

Lewis Buzbee at Chasing Ray
Louis Sachar at Fuse Number 8
Laurel Snyder at Miss Erin
Courtney Summers at Bildungsroman
Elizabeth Wein at Finding Wonderland
Susan Kuklin at The YA YA YAs

Full schedule at Chasing Ray, of course.

The fun starts about 3 minutes in...

So is RPattz trying to get fired, or what?  If so, I heart him.

(Thanks, bee!)

The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second -- Drew Ferguson

Upon being asked about what I was reading by a couple of guys my age:

Me:  Oh, it's called The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second.  I'm about half-way through.  Not much has happened yet, except that Charlie just got his first boyfriend.  Other than that, there's been a masturbation scene on, like, every other page.

Guy 1 and Guy 2 look at each other.

Guy 1:  How old is this kid?

Me:  He's a senior in high school.

Guy 1 and Guy 2 look at each other again.

Both guys, in unison:  Yep, sounds about right.

Charles James Stewart, II -- Charles the Second, not Charles, Jr., even though his father bears the same name -- is known as Charlie to his friends, as Chip at his running-for-state-attorney father's press conferences, and as Smart-Ass at home.  He's never particularly fit in at school, drives his parents crazy (the feeling is mutual), lusts after his unfortunately straight best friend Bink (and Bink's brothers, for that matter), has failed his driver's test six times, can't seem to get his college essays written, and has never had a boyfriend.

That last part is about to change.

The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second is not an action-packed book.  It's about a guy in high school.  There are no car chases,government conspiracies or evil geniuses.  He is not a vampire.  So if that's what you're looking for, you'll probably want to look elsewhere.  But if reading about a Midwestern, Lutheran, gay Adrian Mole sounds attractive, you're in for a treat.

It had a fantastic opening paragraph:

Okay, so maybe getting my scrawny ass pushed into the back of a Crystal Lake cop car wasn't the smartest thing I've done, but Dana's party last night--it sucked.  She should thank me.  The only thing anyone'll remember about the party is me being busted.

but it still did take me a little while for me to get into the book.  Once Charlie won me over, though, once I was invested, I didn't put the book down -- I just sat where I was and read the whole thing in one go. 

Charlie's smart and sarcastic and frustrated and funny, but some people might find his voice off-putting -- his descriptions of sex (whether, to use his term, "making knuckle babies" or with a partner) are pretty graphic and his descriptions of other people, while vivid and probably apt, can be somewhat cruel.  I, personally, really enjoyed him.  

The sometimes prickliness of his voice helped to make him more real for me, and by the end of the book, I felt more like I'd read a memoir than a novel.  Charlie felt that real to me.  And, of course, it helped that the dialogue was very well done, that I loved the secondary characters -- especially Bink and his family -- and that the situations Charlie would find himself in (sometimes through his own doings, sometimes not so much) always seemed within the realm of everyday life. 

By the end of the book, I had to physically restrain myself from cheering for Charlie.  (I was in public.)

--Crossposted at Guys Lit Wire--

Undone -- Brooke Taylor

Perhaps (okay, now that I've actually read it I know now) Totally and completely unfairly, I judged this book by its cover art and the fact that the back copy contained the phrase "dark angel" and assumed that it would be about A Goth Girl Who Is Wicked Messed Up And Crazy And Destructive And Yet Completely Attractive To The Main Character Who Is Either Devastated When Something Bad Happens Or Realizes That She Just Needs To Walk Away From The Situation.  Like I said, totally unfair.  Proof?  Here:

"Over my dead body," she called.

"Stop it with the morbid death and dying stuff, okay?  Leave it to the goth kids; they're more convincing anyway."

"I know you don't mean that!  I'm just as depressing as they are," she called after me, but I was already rounding the corner making my escape.

I will admit it:  I was wrong.  I was pleasantly surprised by Undone.  I LIKE KORI KITZLER, EVEN IF SHE IS A 'DARK ANGEL'.

Serena Moore was just your average eighth grade girl until, one fateful day, she and Kori Kitzler, the subject of almost every rumor at school, became friends.  After that, they were inseparable.

Fast-forward to tenth grade.  Kori is still the outgoing wild child and Serena is still shyer and more subdued.  They are as close as ever, fiercely protective of each other, and now that Serena has dyed her hair, they even look alike except for Serena's blue eyes.  That doesn't mean that things are perfect, of course:  Serena still daydreams about finding her father and she still worries quite a lot about Kori's drug use.

There's more to the story than that, of course, but I feel like it's all very spoiler-y, and I'm going to avoid talking about it -- I felt that the description on the back of my review copy gave too much away.  I just checked the description at Amazon, and I think it does, too.

So.  While I felt that it got very soap operatic by the end (and that the Big Reveal, the reason for the soap opera-i-ness was obvious to me from the beginning) and I had difficulty believing in these characters as high school sophomores, those problems didn't bother me all that much.  Because I cared about the characters*, and I cared about the outcome.  It's a good one about creating family, about courage, grief, and friendship.

____________________________________________________

*Including the secondary characters, actually -- if Brooke Taylor writes a book about another one of the characters, I'll be way into reading it.

The Case of the Missing Marquess: Enola Holmes, #1 -- Nancy Springer

I have a new love.  From The Case of the Missing Marquess:

Dipping the pen into the ink, on the cream-coloured stationary I wrote a few words to the local constabulary, informing them that my mother seemed to have gone astray and requesting them to kindly organise a search for her.

Then I sat thinking: Did I really have to?

Unfortunately, yes.  I could put it off no longer. 

More slowly I wrote another note, one that would soon wing for miles via wire to be printed out by a teletype machine as:

LADY EUDORIA VERNET HOLMES MISSING SINCE YESTERDAY STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP ENOLA HOLMES

I directed this wire to Mycroft Homes, of Pall Mall, in London.

And also, the same message, to Sherlock Holmes, of Baker Street, also in London.

My brothers.

Although I spent the entirety of pages 7 through 72 frustratedly thinking, "HELLO!!  ENOLA!!  Your mother gave you a booklet of ciphers for your birthday!!  Don't you think it might be important??", I loved this book unreservedly.  Once she had her forehead-slap moment, she was off to the races.  Mycroft and Sherlock were as Mycroft-y and Sherlock-y as you could imagine, and Lestrade even played a part.

Enola herself is bright, courageous, stubborn and sees the ridiculousness of the Way Things Are Done* -- all qualities I love in a heroine -- and I'm DYING to read the other books in the series.  Highly recommended to young readers of historical fiction and to grown-up fans of the Holmes brothers, whether it be Doyle's originals or fanfiction like Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series.  GREAT FUN.

______________________________________________

*From the book, while riding her bicycle towards London:  "I met with just another such beige-clad figure upon a gravel wagon track, and we nodded in passing.  She looked all of a glow from the heat and the exercise.  horses sweat, you know, and men perspire, whereas ladies glow.  I am sure I looked all of a glow also.  Indeed, I could feel all-of-a-glow trickling down my sides beneath my corset, the steel ribs of which jabbed me under the arms most annoyingly."  I think Amelia Peabody would QUITE approve of Enola.

Sherman Alexie and Stephen Colbert on pretty much everything BUT The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

I am so incredibly jealous that I can't even stand it.

Holly Black has a hidden library.

(via Colleen)

I knew it looked familiar...

Wandering around the kidlit blogs this morning, I saw* the cover of Courtney Summers' upcoming book:

 

I knew I'd seen something very like it very recently.  With a little sleuthing, I found what I was looking for:

 

Always nice to know that I'm not going bananas.

*At The Story Siren.

Madapple -- Christina Meldrum

Aslaug grew up in almost total isolation.  Her mother homeschooled her, taught her languages, science and botany.  If the Department of Education hadn't required Aslaug to take standardized tests in other sujects, her mother wouldn't have bothered with other subjects: literature, poetry, social studies, fine arts.

Aslaug doesn't have a father.  It isn't just that he isn't around.  From Aslaug's court testimony:

--What was your father's name?
--I don't have a father.
--You don't know who your father is?
--I don't have a father, other than the one we share.
--You mean God in heaven?
--I never said God is in heaven.
--But you mean God, am I right?
--Yes.
--Well, I'm referring to your biological father.  You don't know who he is?
--I don't have a biological father.

And why would she be testifying in court?  Because she's on trial for one count of attempted murder and two counts of murder in the first degree.

Through the transcripts of the trial and Aslaug's first person narration of what came before, we get Aslaug's story.  Madapple is a story not just about a murder trial, but also about family, comparative religion and mythology, science and faith, the past and the future.  It's beautifully written and the story isn't quite like anything else I've run into in the YA section.  It's not an easy-breezy read -- I wouldn't give it to a reluctant reader, for sure -- but teens (and adults) who're interested in exploring the subjects I mentioned shouldn't miss this one.  I was very happy to see that the author included a bibliography.

That isn't to say that I didn't have issues with the book.  One of the issues is my own -- Madapple is set in Maine, and the towns mentioned aren't actual towns, but they sound like actual towns (Hartswell rather than Harpswell, Bethan rather than Bethel), and I found that oddly distracting.  I also thought that the second half of Aslaug's story was pretty over-the-top.  Her voice and the writing both continued to be top-notch, but the plotting itself was a little bit too much for me.  And I wondered [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT] why, during her trial, it was questioned whether or not she'd actually had a baby.  Wouldn't they have examined her?  But it's certainly possible that I missed something there.

It's a strong, thoughtful book, and one that I hope will inspire people to read more -- I know it made me want to at the very least start paying more attention to local flora*, and, if I'm really determined, to start reading more about religion and mythology and science.

__________________________________________________ 

*My father would be so proud.

David Almond on the Skellig opera.

From the Guardian:

When I wrote Skellig - set in the streets of Newcastle - my mind was filled with sounds: the creaking of a dilapidated garage, the scuttlings and scratchings inside, a baby's heartbeats, her breath, the songs of blackbirds, the cheeping of chicks, the hooting of owls, the dawn chorus, the voice of a girl quoting William Blake, the sound of the city beyond a small suburban garden. At the centre of it was Skellig himself: his surly almost-animal squeaks and growls becoming more coherent, turning into a confident human voice. And when the book was published and people began to ask questions about it - about the repetition of certain phrases, for instance, or its rhythms, or its composition as a series of scenes, or its use of Blake's poetry, I often found myself referring to music.

Paper Towns movie!

[Later:  And Crispin Glover has signed on to play the Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland!  That's the first thing that has gotten me remotely excited about the project.  This'll probably get me slapped around in the comments, but Tim Burton's recent movies haven't done much for me.]

Climbing the Stairs -- Padma Venkatraman

Vidya is fifteen and hopes to finish high school and then go on to college -- not at all the common path for for an Indian girl during WWII.  Her father is a progressive man, though, and her dreams will very likely become reality.

When he is struck down during a demonstration against India's British occupiers, life for Vidya changes drastically.  She and her family are forced to move in with her father's family.  She finds life in this much more traditional household chafing, tiring and frustrating -- the only real bright spots are her grandfather's library, her brother Kitta and a young man named Raman. 

I had mixed feelings about Climbing the Stairs.  The major difficulty I had was that it seemed like most of the dialogue in the first fifty or so pages was expository.  It felt that there was a lot of telling rather than showing, and that, for the purpose of passing information on to the reader, the characters said much more in conversation than they would in real life.  Like:

"Amma," I said.  "Why do you look so worried?"

"Do I look worried?" she asked evasively.

"Yes," I said.  Maybe she had a lot left to do before periappa's visit.  "I'll help you as soon as I get back from school tomorrow," I offered.  "I know you have to send the cook away and prepare all the meals yourself because periappa won't eat anything that isn't cooked by Brahmin hands."

Vidya's relationship with her brother was well done, as were her issues with her father's condition and the romance, but most of the minor characters were pretty two-dimensional.  While the romance was nice, I felt that some of the conversation between Vidya and Raman was stilted and forced -- it felt at times like Vidya was being used as a mouthpiece for the author.  I did read a review copy, though, so it's possible that some of that may have changed. 

I loved the setting and the time period -- British-occupied India isn't one I've run across very often in the YA section.  I loved reading about a culture that I haven't read all that much about, and I loved that Padma Venkatraman made the complexities of the time clear:  That for Indians who joined the battle against the Nazis it meant working for and fighting with their own oppressors, and that joining the fight against the Nazis also went against against the principles of nonviolence.

That part of the story, though, was secondary to Vidya's struggles, and Vidya's struggles, for the most part, fell into the Historical-Fiction-About-A-Girl-Raised-in-a-Non-Traditional-Manner-Forced-to-Adapt-to-a-More-Strict-Environment-That-Is-More-In-Keeping-With-The-Time-Period-So-The-Reader-Can-More-Easily-Identify-With-The-Protaganist category.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  It's just a formula I come across quite a lot.  I do think that it would be a decent pick for young fans who enjoy reading about living inother places, times, and cultures, who would like to read about the ins and outs of living with a large extended family, or who would be interested in philosophizing about The Greater Good vs. One's Own Personal Principles.

Paper Towns -- John Green

When Quentin Jacobsen was nine years old, he and his next door neighbor, Margo Roth Speigelman, found a dead man in the park.

Now seniors with only a few weeks until graduation, Q and Margo Roth Speigelman* are friendly, but aren't friends.  Q has been in love with her forever, and really, how could he not be?:

Margo Roth Speigelman, whose stories of epic adventures would blow through school like a summer storm: an old guy living in a broken-down house in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, taught Margo how to play the guitar.  Margo Roth Speigelman, who spent three days traveling with the circus--they thought she had potential on the trapeze.  Margo Roth Speigelman, who drank a cup of herbal tea with the Mallionaires backstage after a concert while they drank whiskey.  Margo Roth Speigelman, who got into that concert by telling the bouncer she was the bassist's girlfriend, and didn't they recognize her, and come on guys seriously, my name is Margo Roth Speigelman and if you go back there and ask the bassist to take one look at me, he will tell you that I either am his girlfriend or he wishes I was, and then the bouncer did so, and then the bassist said "yeah that's my girlfriend let her in the show," and then later the bassist wanted to hook up with her and she rejected the bassist from The Mallionaires.  The stories, when they were shared, inevitably ended with, I mean, can you believe it?  We often could not, but they always proved true."

So, yes -- Q is very surprised when Margo Roth Speigelman shows up at his bedroom window one night and invites him out for a night of epic adventure and revenge.  That she, Margo Roth Speigelman, chooses him, Q.  And of course he goes.  And he wonders, that night, if everything will be different the next day at school.

And it is.  Because Margo Roth Speigelman has disappeared.  But she's left clues behind...

Okay, first of all, thumbs up.  No reservations at all.  I loved Q, I loved Radar and Ben.  Well, Ben drove me crazy but I felt like he was a real person driving me crazy.  I loved Lacey.  Margo Roth Speigelman* was a bit more slippery.  I had mixed-at-best feelings about her, but because Q cared, I cared.  And I cared a lot.  The entire second half of the book had me biting my nails and worried.  Paper Towns is melancholy, laugh-out-loud-funny, downright sad, often hopeful and always thoughtful. 

I did had a hard time separating Paper Towns from Looking for Alaska in my mind.  Q, himself, has quite a bit in common with Looking for Alaska's Pudge (and actually, to a lesser extent, to An Abundance of Katherines' Colin):  he's extremely bright, a bit neurotic, somewhat geeky but still cool, he has excellent friends, and he loves a semi-mysterious, possibly unattainable** girl.  As I love heroes like that, I have no issue with that***.  I loved Pudge and Colin, and now I love Q as well.  But the similarities between Pudge and Q combined with a missing girl who may-or-may-not be alive, for me, created even more tension and made me even more concerned than I think I would have been if I'd never read LfA.  Make sense?

Paper Towns has more depth, I think, than John Green's first two books.  (Which were strong books anyway -- so that's kind of saying a lot.)  The themes that have been revisited are worth revisiting.  Identity vs. image, the real, actual person vs. the idea of the person -- I kept thinking back to that professor of mine in college who told me that sometimes she'd look around the classroom and wonder what was going on behind all those faces.  I think that sometimes people need to be reminded to do that.

John Green, you are three for three.  Good on you.

Note: 

I've thought a lot, since finishing the book, about the effect that Brotherhood 2.0/Vlog Brothers and the Nerdfighter community had on my Paper Towns reading experience.  As I read, I recognized subjects and themes and details that have come up in the videos:  Urban Exploration, puffy hair, real person vs. idea of person, and, of course, over the last year, John Green talked a lot about his process and his progress. 

On one hand, noticing those things was really cool.  It made me feel like I'm (however peripherally) part of... something.  On the other, whenever I noticed one of those things, it pulled me out of the story a bit.  It made me feel sort of like I was on John Green's journey with Q instead of my own journey with Q, if that makes any sense.  (Possibly it doesn't.)  But the awesomeness of the Nerdfighter community far outweighs any piddling reading issues I had, so I'm not complaining. 

____________________________________________________

Previously:

Looking for Alaska
An Abundance of Katherines
SDQ Interview with John Green

____________________________________________________

*She just has one of those names.  You have to use the whole thing every time.

**This last bit doesn't quite jive with An Abundance of Katherines, because in that one Katherine isn't all that mysterious and also Katherine wasn't unattainable because they had dated, but I still felt similarities, so... yeah.

***I've see certain themes and character types show up again and again in Chris Crutcher's novels, and it's never bothered me.

Cybils nominations announced.

The YA list, of course, is of the most interest to me*, with the YA SF/F list coming in at a close second!  (Hey, YA SF/F committee -- Graceling!  GRACELIIIIIIIING!!)

The full list of lists is available here.

_________________________________________________

*Because I have to read as many titles as possible as soon as possible.  Yikes.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I stupidly waited until the last minute to RSVP for the John Green event in Cambridge, and so of course it's totally full with a long waiting list.  I don't know WHAT I was thinking.  As I'd be driving down from Maine, it doesn't really make sense for me to chance it, you know?

I think I'll drown my sorrows by watching Twin Peaks (yes, AGAIN) and re-starting my t-shirt sweatshop.  I'm about to make my first 'Real vampires don't sparkle.' shirt.  YES.  And at least I took today and tomorrow off.  YES.

I guess I'll survive.

Oh, I should probably write about Paper Towns sometime this weekend!  And pick up Mansfield Park again!  And finish the other three books I'm in the middle of!  And do some Cybils reading!  So I'm not going to wallow in the fact that I'M AN IDIOT or anything.

National Book Award Finalists.

As you've probably heard, they've been announced. 

The Young People's Literature finalists are:

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

I've read a whopping one of the contenders.  (And I lurrrrrrrved it!)

Oh, my.

I voted Totally Geeky.

If Cecil Castellucci was modeling it, I'd have voted Geek Chic.  But she's the exception.

Free Alan Gratz!

Have I mentioned lately that I think this trend is really cool?  No?  Well, consider it said.

Alan Gratz's Something Rotten is available* online until November 30th.  He talks about the promotion a bit in this blog post.

I'm thinking I might take advantage of the promotion -- while I KNOW I have a copy of the book somewhere, I also KNOW that it's in a box somewhere as we still haven't unpacked the majority of my books yet.  Heh heh.  We should get all Amish and have an old-fashioned bookshelf building party.  And then a book alphabetizing party.  And then a book reading party.  YES!!

*Did I mention it's free?

Catching up on my RSS feeds.

This article prompted an awesome discussion at the circ desk this morning:

Does YA sell so well simply because teens have more free time? "Certainly teens have more time to read, but they also are less genre-identified," New York Times best-selling YA and SF author Scott Westerfeld says in an e-mail interview. "I've met adults who read only Tom Clancy knockoffs, for example. But teens haven't specialized nearly as much as adults, in reading as in everything else. Quite simply, this means that SF for a YA audience is going to get a larger slice of the population, not just the 10 percent of us who don't mind having a spaceship on the cover at age 30.

"This brings me to another point about sales comparisons: Teens are more networked than adults," Westerfeld adds. "When they really like a book, they make their friends read it and ostracize those who don't. Yay, them."

We at the circ desk heart you, Scott Westerfeld!!

Bwah ha ha ha ha!

The Fug Girls on the Twilight poster:

It's like the people who made the film read the book and got to the approximately 403,328 pages about how flawlessly gorgeous Edward (the fussy vampire boyfriend played by Robert "Cedric Diggory" Pattison here) is and looked at each other and were like, "Let's skip that part." AND WHY? It seems to me that the crux of the attraction of a book/movie about a super hot vampire boyfriend would be THE SUPER HOTNESS. And the other thing is that CEDRIC DIGGORY IS HOT ALREADY! It's like they've DE-HOTTED HIM against ALL REASON.

(via my little sister's Facebook page)

New Twilight trailer.

And it looks AWESOMELY TERRIBLE.  I'm making plans to see it as I type this:

Twilight

Phew.

The baby Renesmee Bella Stephenie story has been updated -- ultimately, the baby ended up with the adoptive parents*, who promptly renamed her.

(via Shayera, who pointed me to Cleolinda, who had the link)

__________________________________________________________

*Maybe after the mother discovered that babies don't age super-fast in real life OR project pictures into our minds by gently and carefully pressing their adorable little hands to our cheeks...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Just go read it.

I am so depressed.

What, no Hermione?

Harry Potter sock yarn.

(Link -- and query -- via the ever-lovely CC.)

More books to add to my TBR list!

The Inkys shortlist.

Twilight Q & A.

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

From the MTV Movie Blog:

Q: "What's it like kissing the most gorgeous man alive, Robert Pattinson?" - Ceejay

Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan): His teeth are pretty sharp. It's great. I like it. It's cool.

MTV: People are also debating whether Edward and Bella will French kiss.

Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen): It's more of a Chilean kiss.

Stewart: What's that?

Pattinson: That just wasn't funny. Whenever we kiss, I just try to kill her all the time.

Stewart: And I love that. She's a total sadomasochist, if you think about it.

Pattinson: And I'm just gay.

Stewart: Or impotent.

(via Operation: Girl)

The Dust of 100 Dogs -- A. S. King

I love the cover art on this one.  It also has a fab website.

From the Prologue*:

“You will see,” he yelled, jumping from the brush, “how true love lasts! You will see how real love spans time and distance we know nothing of!”

He rushed forward then, and shook a small purse toward her. From it, came a fine powder that covered Emer’s hair and face. She reached up and wiped her eyes clear, confused.

“What are you at?” she asked, spitting dust from her lips.

He stood with his arms and face raised to the sky. “I curse you with the power of every Spirit who ever knew love! I curse you to one hundred lives as the bitch you are and hope wild dogs tear your heart into the state you’ve left mine!” he screamed, and then began chanting in a foreign language.

Still brushing dust from her hair, Emer took aim with her gun and fired.

As she watched him fall, she felt a burning prod in her back and stumbled for a second – long enough to see that the Frenchman had not been all dead – and long enough to see he was covered in stray pieces of the strange dust his first mate had thrown at her.

She tried to fall as near to Seanie as possible and managed to get close enough to reach out and grab his cold hand. She took her dying breath lying halfway between her lover and her killer, covered in the dust of one hundred dogs, knowing she was the only person on the planet who knew what was buried beneath the chilly sand ten yards away.

Three hundred years and one hundred lives as a dog later, Emer Morrisey, girl pirate, is finally reincarnated as a human.  And she wants her treasure.

The Dust of 100 Dogs has three major storylines:  Emer's childhood during Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, her true love, her years as a pirate, and, of course, her death; Emer's 1972 reincarnation and life as Saffron Adams; and the story of Fred Livingston, a man who lives in Jamaica.  Interspersed throughout the book are Dog Facts sections, in which Saffron explains different aspects of dog life and psychology.

There's a lot to talk about here, but the book isn't due out until February, so I'm going to tiptoe my way through this spoiler minefield and just mention a few things.  I think, for one, that it would be a super read for book groups -- I have loads of no-right-answer questions.  For instance, I wondered if Emer's perspective would have changed a bit more by the time she became Saffron, considering she'd lived three hundred years between her human lives, but then it occurred to me that living all that time as another species would have maybe made her hold her human qualities and personality all the closer...  I have lots more questions, but they're all very spoiler-y.

My big question, though, is this:  Is this really a YA book?  It seemed to me that if it'd been published as an adult book, it would definitely have been viewed as a crossover, but that it doesn't really have the feel of a teen novel.  It think it's partly because Saffron is never really a teenager -- she is born with her memories intact, so even as a baby, she is an adult.  And Emer, though she dies as a teenager, for all intents and purposes is an adult pretty early on in her life**.  And Fred Livingston is an adult. 

The subject matter doesn't pertain to my YA or not YA question -- there's no topic here that I haven't found in other YA books -- it's the tone and the perspective(s).  Then again, the genre is constantly evolving and expanding.  Maybe in the future the line between YA and adult will get more and more blurred.  I'd like that.  Like I said, once it's available, I'm totally going to try it on my book group kids -- they're almost all older teens who are reading both YA and adult books, and I'm really curious to see what they think.

The Dust of 100 Dogs is entertaining, multi-layered, smart and definitely gripping (sorry if this is TMI, but I had to pee for the better part of the last quarter of the book, but somehow, I just COULD NOT put it down and run for the bathroom).  Though the book begins with Emer's death, I had no idea how she got to that point, and I didn't know what would happen when (or if) Saffron finally made it to Jamaica.  I find it impressive that A. S. King began the book with the death of the main character and still succeeded in writing a suspenseful story.

________________________________________________________

*Read the whole thing here.

**SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

I think the turning point was  the night that she killed her first man and was raped by another.  I thought that scene was quite well done, by the way -- by the time the rape happened, I was in a similar place emotionally as Emer, so dazed by the previous encounter that it... just... happened.

END SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Bill Murray, Saoirse Ronan and Tim Robbins on the City of Ember movie.

From SciFi.com:

The city of Ember itself was built practically for this film. In this era of computer imagery and green screens, what was it like to be immersed in a real world like that?

Ronan: We didn't actually have a lot of green-screen scenes. It was an amazing set that [production designer] Martin Laing had designed. And it was in Belfast. It was in the Titanic quarters: It was actually where the Titanic was built and painted. Or was it where it was painted? No, it wasn't. It was just where it was built. But, so, it was huge. And the whole city ... was actually like a little mini-city. So there wasn't that much green screen at all. ... We didn't really have to imagine what the city would look like.

Murray: Yeah, well, when you walk in and there's a street and an underground city that's 55 or 60 feet high with tunnels underneath it, and there's decaying doors and windows and bricks built as a street and concrete and plaster that's made its walls, real doors that open, real glass and beautiful design work, too, the emblems of the city built into the street and into the fountains in the street, fountains that work, ... it's not so hard to say, "I'm living in a crumbling society" when you walk in for work and there it is. It was so simple. And the costumes as well, ... the best costumes I've ever worn. The most beautiful I've ever seen in any film, by far.

(via SF Signal)

The Graveyard Book tour.

Watch (and listen) to Neil Gaiman read the whole book from the comfort of your own home.

Marked: House of Night, #1 -- P.C. and Kristin Cast

Zoey Montgomery is standing by her locker at school, half-listening to her best friend babble at her and generally minding her own business when a vampyre* appears:

Then the vampyre spoke and his ceremonial words slicked across the space between us, dangerous and seductive, like blood mixed with melted chocolate**.

"Zoey Montgomery!  Night has chosen thee; they death will be thy birth.  Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice.  Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!"

When she wakes up from her faint (because obviously she faints), she has the outline of a blue crescent moon tattooed on her forehead.  She now knows that she is a fledgling vampyre.  And she knows she doesn't have long -- if she doesn't get to the House of Night ASAP, her body will Reject The Change and She Will Die.

So, she runs away from her horrible bigot of a stepfather and downtrodden mother, straight to her loving grandmother's house and then to the House of Night.  Where there is danger and romance and magic and a very mean girl and lots of vampyre class.

Okay.  I read Betrayed, the second book in the series last fall, but apparently I never wrote about it.  I liked it well enough, and actually (to put it very bluntly), I liked it a whole lot more than I liked this one.  Part of the problem, I think, is that everything in Marked was rehashed in Betrayed, so for me, Marked seemed extremely repetitive.  So that was a Problem.

There are a lot of pop culture references thrown in there to (I would assume) hip-ify it, but some of them already seem dated and in some cases, feel extremely forced:

Aphrodite's laugh, followed by her perky, "Of course I'd be happy to show her around!  You know I'm always glad to help you, Neferet," was as fake and cold as Pamela Anderson's humongously huge boobs, but Neferet just nodded in response and then turned to face me.

Also, Zoey's Cherokee heritage is mentioned on what felt like every third page, which got old.  And she is, of course, one of those The One characters, so, you know, some people are jealous and she doesn't know why she's special or what she has to do or why and blah blah blah been there done that. 

Oh, and come on.  She has a bad home life, gets a special mark on her forehead and has to go to a special school?  Yeesh.  At least she gets a cat instead of an owl...

I did think there was decent foreshadowing about the events in Book Two, and there are a bazillion YAs out there who will not have the same issues with this book that I did.  After all, you know, there are vampYres in it.  So I'm sure it'll be popular with quite a lot of readers*** no matter what. 

_________________________________________________________

*No, that's not a misspelling.  That's how they spell it in this series.  Yes, really.

**Um, EWWW.  Is that supposed to be an attractive description?  Because, just... ewww.

***As long as, like, they won't get freaked out by Zoey seeing Aphrodite trying to force oral sex on her ex-boyfriend in the middle of a school hallway (okay, in an alcove just off the hallway) on page fifty-something.  Oh, and the f-bomb gets dropped a few times.  And some people might not like the fact that the only Christian people in the book are super-horrible...