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Slam by Nick Hornby
I didn't get that far in this one before my time ran out. It seems very well written, though.
So I'm done! Kind of nice to have finished while other people are still going -- I can spend some time on other blogs while half my brain isn't elsewhere.
I will write my official finish line post later -- for now I have a really strong desire to water the plants and do the laundry and watch a couple of episodes of "the Big Bang Theory" and eat something other than cashews.
R: 40 minutes
B: n/a
RB: 3 minutes
Stargazer by Claudia Gray. Sequel to Evernight
Aaaaand, here comes the separation and love triangle! I hated it in the "Twilight" series, but it's kind of working for me here. Perhaps because the hero of these books, Lucas, is such a cardboard cut-out I don't have much emotion invested in whether the heroine winds up with him anyway. The other guy is actually a lot more interesting.
This was another engrossing read. The world building isn't spectacular, but there are some interesting supernatural conflicts and moral dilemmas raised and not yet completely answered. And here's a big plus... stuff happens. The characters are actually in a very different place when the story ends than when it began. I will be seriously pissed if the author finds a way to undo that in the next book.
R: 3 hours, 20 minutes
B: 8 minutes
RB: 9 minutes
Evernight by Claudia Gray
From the start, everything about this book -- the title, the structure, the narrator -- simply screamed "I wanna be Twilight!" But there is a twist, and though it's an obvious one, it's also fairly well thought out and effective. The story will never win awards for lyrical writing or strong characterizations, but it's smooth and very absorbing and after awhile I stopped making comparisons and just enjoyed it. Should appeal to most readers who like star-crossed lover stories with a touch of creepy.
R: 3 hours, 6 minutes
B: 14 minutes
RB: 14 minutes
I didn't enjoy this one as much as I hoped I would. The premise is fun, though rather different from what I'd gathered from reviews. I thought it was about an alternate universe in which everyone has a fairy, but in fact, no one really knows if they do for sure or not and some people don't even believe in them. Anyway, what kind of killed it for me was the slang. I am highly allergic to first-person narratives with heavy repetitions of the same slang. Even if it's new, weird slang or maybe Australian slang.
I think I most enjoyed the narrator's horrible school, because she unquestioningly adores it and because everything she does in it is related to sports. History homework is about sports history, statistics homework is about sports statistics... it's like Miss Pym Disposes gone completely mad.
Do you have a fairy? My husband used to have a cat-loving fairy. Strange cats would literally follow him places and wait hours for him to come back out. It was replaced, handily enough, by a can't-get-laid-off fairy. I have an exact measurements fairy. It is vaguely useful, albeit unexciting.
Why yes I am a bit punchy, why do you ask?
R: 1 hour, 54 minutes
B: 10 minutes
RB: 3 minutes
I looked up last years winner and it was 40 hours! The runners up were both 30. Seeing as I have already slept, I guess I will have to settle for a personal best.
Anyone else got a headache?
On the bright side, I just found How to Ditch Your Fairy in my pile. That should be good for a laugh.
(I read half of this book earlier in the day, but am putting all the minutes together now.)
David Inside Out by Lee Bantle
Trying to figure out how to put the moves on a girl for the first time can be hard. "Was I supposed to touch her knee now?... Should I just drop my hand on her? Were you supposed to squeeze?" wonders David. But David has an extra problem... Kick, the girl who pretty clearly wants to be his girlfriend, isn't nearly as attractive to him as someone else -- his track teammate, Sean.
David is determined not to give in to his feelings. "This wasn't me. It couldn't be. Not gay. Anything but that." He makes a list of ways to be more straight, correcting himself with a snap of a rubber band on his wrist whenever he has a wrong feeling. Then Sean invites him to fool around, throwing all his best straight intentions out the window. David is scared of being out to his friends, but ready to be in love--but Sean refuses to admit he likes anything but getting off. "I don't kiss or write love poems... I don't put it in my mouth." Sean, David will find, is far more determined not to be gay than he could ever be.
Fast-paced and plot-focused, this sympathetic coming out story will probably have the most appeal to readers who are also struggling with their sexual identities. I found myself most interested in the characters other than David, whose actions and motivations are something of a puzzle to him, complicating his life. Sean has the private sex rules designed to prove that he's not really gay. Kick betrays his confession to her and then deliberately seduces him, perhaps in a misguided attempt to "cure" him, only to wind up hurt. Only his oldest friend Eddie, who recently came out himself, is really straightforward about who he is and what he wants... an excellent role model for the newly self-aware David.
The story has a small amount of graphic language and quite a few brief, non-explicit but not coy sex scenes. I was bothered that condoms are only mentioned in a heterosexual context, though it would have been quite narratively easy to have the person David talks to at a gay hotline drop a word about safe sex -- considering Sean's secretive, denial-filled approach to sex, he strikes me as a highly risky person to have unprotected encounters with. Recommended for mature readers. (15 & up)
R: 1 hour, 46 minutes
B: 43 minutes
RB: 4 minutes
Can you believe I'm only halfway through this book? They really don't write 'em like they used to.
I have a confession: I've decided to put my all into this. I skipped a social engagement last night and will skip two today. The dishes are piling up on the counter; the laundry is unfolded; I could really use a shower. If my son doesn't get that drawing, well, it won't be for lack of trying.
I sure wish I hadn't decided to go on the spur of the moment though. I have plenty of books, but not much variety; I've been pawing through the piles, desperately trying to find something funny.
R: 1 hour, 25 minutes
B: 5 minutes
RB: 2 minutes
Running Totals:
R: 10 hours, 48 minutes
B: 1 hour, 28 minutes
RB: 16 minutes
The sequel to The Summoning. I didn't like this one enough to want to review it--also, I enjoyed more of it this morning than I did last night, so possibly I was too punchy to do it justice. My overall impression was that it's almost nonstop action, which is surprisingly boring. Chloe's frequent references to movie tropes only highlights the fact that at times it almost feels more like a screenplay than a novel. There are so many twists, most of which don't make much sense or flow plausibly from the previous book. I was interested in the relationship developing between Chloe and Derek, so I might want to continue reading the series to see how that plays out.
R: 2 hours, 23 minutes
B: 7 minutes
RB: 12 minutes
Running Totals:
R: 9 hours, 23 minutes
B: 1 hour, 23 minutes
RB: 14 minutes
What a thoroughly awesome book! It reminded me of a mash up of "Veronica Mars," "Gilmore Girls" and the essay portion of Dorothy Bryant's A Day in San Francisco, as written by Judith Ivory. And more!
I don't dare attempt an actual review, I would still be at it long after the challenge was over. Wish I had the time right now to browse around and see what everyone else has written about it, but that will have to wait til Monday.
R: 2 hr, 25 m
B: 4 m
Running Totals
R: 4 hours, 25 minutes
B: 16 minutes
I won't write much about this, since it won't interest most of the readers of this blog, but my, what a densely written book. Edith Layton was really a master of wordplay and it seems as if almost every line has a double or triple meaning. I keep reading and rereading to make sure I'm getting all the nuances. Add in paragraph-long sentences in the old style and teeny-tiny-eyestraino-vision print and I'm not getting through it very quickly.
Anyway, I will save the rest for tomorrow's gym trip; now on to Frankie!
R: 2 hours
B: 4 min
Running Totals:
R: 2 hours
B: 12 m
GO! Starting 2 p.m. on Friday
I wanted to dive right into the YA pile, but realized I need to go to the gym soon and I don't have any YA small enough to hold in one hand while I exercise. Also, I kind of hate reading a book I might choose to review while exercising, because it could affect the way I perceive the book.
So I'm going to keep reading the adult book I was already reading, The Game of Love, which was chosen in honor of the memory of the wonderful historical romance author, and fellow Georgette Heyer list member, Edith Layton. After the gym, I plan to start on The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, because it came up so many times, in such intriguing ways, during the recent Books Wars.
It was during the first 48 Book Challenge that I realized my son was truly reading.
Last year, during the third, he was inspired by my involvement to try his very first chapter book.
This year, he will probably completely disrupt my reading by playing a prank on me he's learned from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.
What was I thinking, not planning to participate this year? It's such a family tradition.
I just saw the the grand prize for the book challenge is a drawing by the author/illustrator of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Only my son's favorite series! Only books he has TRACED the pictures of for hours on end! (And astonishingly well, too.) I'm so bummed that I don't have a chance in hell of winning. Nobody tell my kid, okay? He will never forgive me.
New challenge for Monday Artday!
Greek Myth
Illustrate the challenge in any media in your own style. The challenge ends February 23, 2009!
wilted plants
basket full of sheets
dry as bone dish sponge
overdue library books
son lacking underwear
Yours?
I feel like a chicken without a head. Not only am I having to catch up on everything I neglected this weekend--and some of my basil is very, very unhappy with me--but I have all this work created by the book challenge. Tearsheets to print, adding other blog reviews, copying reviews into appropriate bibliographies. Reading other people's challenge posts. I've found two books so far that were also read by other people for the challenge, which is oddly thrilling.
I should have started on Friday and allocated all three days for this.
Crossing the finish line now! Technically, I still have almost another 12 hours, but grl2grl utterly did me in. I'm now going to curl up with a favorite Georgette Heyer or something like that as an Existential Alka-Seltzer.
So, totals:
6 books (one more than last year)
reading time: 9 hours, 25 minutes (+25 minutes on books I decided not to finish)
writing time: 4 hours, 53 minutes
total time: 14 hours, 43 minutes (43 minutes more than last year)
pages: 1378 (not counting unfinished books) (115 pages more than last year)
Favorite book: Hmmm. I think the best book was probably This is What I Did, but I most enjoyed reading Wicked Lovely.
Least favorite book: Bucking the Sarge, which was a real disappointment.
I'm pleased that I beat my record; I honestly didn't even expect to break even, what with the craziness of life lately.
So what did I learn? Well, 4 out of my 6 reviews took 55 minutes to write. That's kind of interesting, for whatever it's worth.
I learned I still really do like YA literature. I enjoyed reading all of the books I finished, and several I thought were truly excellent. I think I would have been happier if I'd stocked more of a variety, to break things up a bit, but I did get to finally read some books I've been curious about for ages. I hope having reminded myself of how terrific YA books can be, I'll make more of an effort to read them in the future.
And I learned, again, that my own perfectionism is my worst enemy as a reviewer these days. Doing the challenge, with the permission to just whip things out imperfectly and move on, gets around my tendency to panic and freeze. Now I need to think of some other techniques to accomplish the same thing. Maybe I should set myself a weekly challenge of some kind.
reading: 8:20-9:10, 9:20-9:30 (1 hour) 151 pages
writing: 10:50-11:20 (30 minutes)
So I chose this book because I needed something light after the last few. Hahahahahahahaha.
grl2grl by Julie Anne Peters. Little, Brown, 2007 (978-0-316-01343-7) $11.99 pb
Ten short glimpses into the lives of young lesbians (and one transgendered girl to "boi") make up a thoughtful, compelling and sometimes harrowing book. From the seemingly mundane (daring to strike up a conversation with an intriguing stranger) to the unspeakably awful (living with the brutal sexual abuse of a father), these are sympathetic and emotionally vivid portraits of girls at significant moments in their lives. The level of pain revealed is sometimes intense; even a tender story about unspoken love has a surprise twist that punches the gut. By the time the last story ended happily, I was almost ready to cry with relief.
Peters writes with exquisite attention to language and detail, making each first person narrative feel distinct and individual. The different emotions each girl--and boi--experience all come to vivid life, and it can be hard to let the characters go after just a few pages, especially when some of them have hurt so much within those pages. I would love to see Peters expand some of these stories, especially "Stone Cold Butch" and "Boi," in order to give those characters a chance to move beyond the events told here, and find some happiness. (14 & up)
I probably should have made my days Friday and Saturday. This is the first chance I've had to work on the challenge today
reading: 10:55pm to 11:55pm (1 hour), 157 pages
writing: 4:00 pm to 4:55pm (55 minutes)
This is What I Did: by Ann Dee Ellis. Little, Brown, 2007 (978-0-316-01363-5) $16.99
I'm glad I can show the cover of this book here, because I think it could be considered part of the title--that colon is quite deliberate. A lot of this book is about not saying anything, and how in a way, that is still saying something.
This... is a sort of mystery--it's a little reminiscent of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time in spots--and I have to confess that I read ahead to discover the secret, because the suspenseful slow reveal was just killing me. Once I knew what had actually happened, I was able to settle down and enjoy reading. Narrated by thirteen year old Logan, it is a terse, disturbing story, told in dribs and drabs of statements and reported dialogue, a far bit of which is blank:
Patsy: You must be Logan.
Me:
Patsy: Well, I've got a son your exact age. His name is Bruce.
Me:
Patsy: You are just going to love him. He's a doll.
Me:
Patsy: Are you okay?
Logan
does talk, some of the time, but much of his life is spent not knowing what to do or say; particularly now, when he is burdened both by being a target of severe bullying and by tremendous guilt about a time in his life when he failed to act.
Logan writes in short vignettes, which are separated by small graphics on each page. There's a kicker at the end of almost each one, such as this:
He was sort of riding slower than usual.
I should have guessed then.
I should have known something was going to happen.
Why did it have to happen, Zyler?
That example is one I thought a bit overdone for effect, but mostly the style
is very effective. It feels like we're in someone else's mind, a mind which moves a little differently than ours perhaps.. It works to draw us into an outsider's perspective and create empathy for someone we might otherwise despise a little.
This... is a shocking story at times, and also very sad, but very worth reading. The ending has a triumphant aspect, but is far from pat. Although Logan has no diagnosis (that we are told about, anyway), I think it would be especially interesting to readers looking for stories about special needs kids, and/or about bullying, though it could be enjoyed by most readers just as a suspenseful and emotional read. * (13 & up)
reading: 4:40-6:45 (2 hours, 5 minutes), 259 pages
writing: 7:10-7:40, 8:05-8:30 (55 minutes)
Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis. Wendy Lamb, 2004 (0-385-32307-7) $15.95
This was a rough book to read and may be rougher to evaluate. I seem to be the only person who's read it and ended up feeling sad and confused.
Fifteen year old Luther's life seem great from the outside looking in: he has credit cards, wheels, "a for-real, honest-to-God, straight from the Secretary of State phony driver's license" and a pumped-up college fund. Perhaps the only thing average about him is the oldest condom on earth he keeps in his wallet. But everything comes with a price and Luther's is working eighty hour weeks for a "coldhearted, moneygrubbing, beastly sadist" aka The Sarge, aka his mother. He's not exaggerating--one of his mother's favorite sayings is "It is far better to be feared than loved." Or as one of the residents of the Sarge's Happy Neighbor Group Home puts it, "you're her handyman and housekeeper and chauffeur and nurse and whipping boy all rolled into one tall, skinny, unhappy, unpaid lump."
Luther narrates the episodic, grimly comic story of how his attempt to win the science fair three years running inadvertently puts him where he is most afraid to be--on the Sarge's bad side--and the consequences of that.
Naive and gullible, Luther reminded me of an earlier Curtis character, the protagonist of The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963. I had trouble with this characterization though. It's not implausible for a smart kid to simultaneously be very naive, but Luther is downright stupid at times, and at others he shows flashes of insight that don't mesh; one second he is thrilled because the people in the house he's cleaning out owned almost nothing, making his job easier, the next he is thinking about the little girl who was evicted: "What's hard is knowing that KeeKee may be six or seven now but that in three or four years she'll be thirty."
There are other oddities in the characterization too: Luther's acceptance of, even participation in, casual cruelties, and the way he seemingly accepts his mother's explanations for her crimes--she's a slumlord and a loan shark amongst other things--even while utterly despising her. It's possible that Curtis deliberately intended Luther as a somewhat schizophrenic portrayal because the life he is leaving would make anyone crazy, but it wasn't clear to me that was what he was trying to do. I was left somewhat uneasy about rooting for Luther, particularly at the end; possibly I didn't completely get it, but it seems to me Luther chooses to just protect himself and follow his own ends over potentially truly "bucking the sarge" and I found that very disappointing.
I mostly did enjoy the book until the end though. It's funny in its oddball way--much of the humor comes from Luther's friend's Sparky's attempts to hurt himself and win a lawsuit as a way of getting the hell out of Flint, Michigan--and Luther has a winning way with a phrase. And it is certainly a very different kind of story; you don't get too many children's books about the exploitation of the urban poor by their own community. (12 & up)
My little guy was jealous of my being in a book challenge, so we encouraged him to join in and pick a book from the chapter books I've been saving for him. So Mr. Nonfiction is currently reading The Best Halloween Ever.
reading: 12:15-1:25, 1:55-3:00 (2 hours 15 minutes), 328 pages
writing: 3:10-4:05 pm (55 minutes)
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. HarperTeen, 2007 (978-0-06-121465-3) $16.99
In the world of Faery, Keenan the Summer King has been looking for his Summer Queen for centuries, and the balance of power between Summer King and Winter Queen has become dangerously out of kilter. The last mortal girl to attempt the trial to become Queen, Donia, failed; now she is the Winter Girl, doomed to live frozen and serve as an awful warning until another girl braves the trial for love of Keenan. Keenan's latest choice is high school student Aislinn, and simply by choosing her, he begins the process of turning her from mortal to faery. But there are two important things Keenan doesn't know about Aislinn. She is already in love with someone else, her friend Seth. And she already sees faeries.
Trained by her grandmother since childhood to appear completely unaware of the fey that only they can see, Aislinn knows very well that she has somehow attracted some dangerous attention. And with Seth's help, she begins what seems like an increasingly futile struggle to fight the allure and power of the faeries, and escape what may be her destiny.
The ordinary and the fantastic come together gracefully in this mesmerizing story, with writing that's evocative without being overly lush. Marr skillfully creates the "wicked lovely" alluring differentness of the fey, without making them (most of them) so ammoral that we can't care about them. And the resolution of the story is just stunning, on several levels: without getting into spoilers, it speaks volumes about the power of girls/women to make their own choices even within a framework that seems not to allow choice at all.
There were a few points that bothered me. How on earth can Aislinn, with her background, not know better than to eat or drink faery food? And Seth is perhaps a little too perfect: excitingly pierced and tattooed yet conveniently independently wealthy, an air of danger and bad reputation, but endlessly patient, loving and forgiving with the right girl--truly the stuff of romantic fantasies. But then, this is a romantic fantasy. And a very, very good one. * (14 & up)
reading: 9:30 am to 11 am (1.5 hours), 182 pages
writing: 11 am to 11:53 am, 53 minutes
Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart. Delacorte, 2006 (978-0-385-73282-6)$8.99 pb
Gretchen Yee has problems. She's the ordinary girl in a school full of calculated nonconformists; her art teacher hates her love of stylized, comic book art; her boyfriend dumped her; she's much too shy to talk to Titus, the boy she now likes; her parents are getting divorced and she thinks her dad is fooling around; and she can't even get started reading The Metamorphosis. Then something--an encounter with a gnome? a radioactive celery soda? a strangely grateful fly?--sends Gretchen off on her own metamorphosis, granting her idle wish to be a fly on the wall of the boy's locker room so she can finally figure out what the hell is going on with those alien creatures, boys.
Unable to leave, unable even to close her eyes when she wants to, Gretchen makes some unexpected discoveries about her own, suddenly rampant hormones, how it feels to see people as sex objects, and the surprising ways other kids see her, as well as becoming witness to sexism, bullies, homophobia, secrets--lots and lots of secrets--and the surprising vulnerability of boys.
There are so many interesting themes crammed into this book, but everything meshes so well, it mostly doesn't feel crowded or labored. Gretchen has a distinctive personality and voice, which especially comes through in small, funny details: in a list of action figures she owns, she notes, "Jar Jar Binks (someone gave him to me)." Her feelings about her art come through strongly in descriptions of her work and those of the other students in her class, culminating in a beautiful scene in which she gets to draw Titus: "I forget about the background part of the assignment and concentrate on the dark areas under his eyes, on his long thin nose, his soft lips with the bottom one jutting out as he concentrates, the shadows across his neck and the details of the silver key ring he wear around it. His lovely bony collarbone jutting out of his worn T-shirt." The voice only falters for me because it seems so weird that the only words any kid uses for body parts--and they use them a lot--are "gherkin" and "biscuits," especially when they're not shy about words like "faggot" and "fuck." I got pretty biscuited-out, pretty fast.
Still, this is such a wise and thoughtful and funny book. It makes so much sense to me as an adult--isn't this all the stuff parents are always trying to explain to their kids about other kids?--that I wish I could have the chance to read it from a teenager's perspective, just to see if it sinks in. Um... but if any gnomes or flies or makers of celery soda are reading this, I didn't mean that literally. (14 & up)
By: Rebecca,
on 12/20/2007
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To celebrate the holidays we asked some of our favorite people in publishing what their favorite book was. Let us know in the comments what your favorite book is and be sure to check back throughout the week for more “favorites”.
Noa Wheeler is an assistant editor at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers.
I have never finished reading my favorite book. This may sound incongruous, but the truth is that any time I “finish” Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Words, I simply start it again. For many years, I have always been somewhere in the process of reading this quietly brilliant book. Sartre’s memoir is one of paradox: a dreamer’s stream of consciousness with an underlying strength, a distant narrative voice which ultimately paints an intimate self-portrait. (more…)
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The looking around other blogs without the necessity to keep an eye on the watch does sound nice! I found it hard to stop mentally jiggling for a bit when the 48 hours was up. But I used all my remaining energy reading my LJ flist -- it included news about the new Megan Whalen Turner book though - yay!
Oh, most excellent! Is it part of the Attolia world or is she doing something new?