I decided I did like doing the jacket flap-a-thon after all. 🙂 Though I think it needs a bit of tweaking. I’ll only post my top few (one per reading “category”, perhaps?), and no worst ones, unless there’s one that’s truly horrible.

I think that’s about all the tweaking I’ll do, though… On we go. This month’s three:

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion):
“Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.”

Totally, totally draws the reader in. How could you NOT want to read the book after reading the jacket flap?

Skulduggery Pleasant (Harper Trophy): “Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: Ace detective, snappy dresser, razor-tongued wit, crackerjack sorcerer and walking, talking, fire-throwing skeleton. As well as ally, protector and mentor of Stephanie Edgely, a very unusual and darkly talented twelve-year-old. These two alone must defeat an all-consuming ancient evil. The end of the world? Over his dead body.”

Short, too the point, and very, very clever.

A Year in the World (Broadway Books): “A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes — a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. An ideal travel companion, Frances Mayes brings to the page the curiosity of an intrepid explorer, remarkable insights into the wonder of the everyday, and a compelling narrative style that entertains as it informs. With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, the South of Italy, and North Africa. In Andalucía, she relishes the intersection of cultures. She cooks in Portugal, gathers ideas in the gardens of England and Scotland, takes a literary pilgrimage to Burgundy, discovers an ideal place to live in Mantova, and explores the essential Moroccan city of Fez. She rents houses among ordinary residents, shops at neighborhood markets, wanders the back streets, and everywhere contemplates the concept of home. While in Greece, she follows the classic Homeric voyage across the Aegean, lives in a bougainvillea-draped stone house in Crete, and then drives deep into the Mani. In Turkey with friends, she sails the ancient coast, hiking to archaeological sites and snorkeling over sunken Byzantine towns. Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader. An illuminating and passionate book that will be savored by all who loved Under the Tuscan Sun, A Year in the World is travel writing at its peak.”

This one is so detailed that you almost don’t have to read the book. Still, it does give you a taste of what to expect.

Other books read this month:
Aunt Nancy and the Bothersome Visitors (Candlewick Press)
Chalice (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Paper Towns (Dutton)
The Hunger Games (Scholastic Press)
The Musician’s Daughter (Bloomsbury)
Two Girls of Gettysburg (Bloomsbury)
Wild Magic (Walker Books)
Breathing Out the Ghost (River City Publishing)
Babymouse: Rockstar, Babymouse: Monster Mash (Random House Books For Young Readers)
The Leanin’ Dog (Joanna Colter Books)
Saffy’s Angel(Margaret K. McElderry Books)
Captain Alatriste (Plume Books)
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Candlewick Press)
The Rule of Won (Walker Books)
The Underneath (Atheneum Books)
The Geography of Bliss (Twelve)
Chains (Simon and Schuster)