Month: December 2010

My Best of 2010

8 Comments

By the Numbers:
Middle Grade Fiction: 68
YA Fiction: 60
Graphic Novels: 12
Non-Fiction: 15
Adult Fiction: 27
(Number of those that were fantasy books: 45)
Grand Total: 182

Abandoned: 7
Challenges Completed: 6

And yes, I have to do my awards (you’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?):

Best Adult Fiction: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Best YA book: Marcelo in the Real World

Best Middle-grade book: Out of My Mind

Best Fantasy: Finnikin of the Rock

Best Sci-Fi/Distopian: Academy 7

Best Graphic Novel Amulet, Book 1: The Stonekeeper and Book 2: The Stonekeeper’s Curse

Best Non-Fiction: Open: An Autobiography

Best Romance: A Song for Summer

Best Mystery: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

Best Jacket Flap: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk


And in other categories…

Books I should have read AGES ago: Eat, Pray, Love; The Picture of Dorian Grey; The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

Favorite Reviews: It’s not terribly clever, but I really enjoyed being part of the NerdsHeartYA tournament this year.

Theme(s) that inadvertently manifested themselves: books about the immigrant experience, fantasies that have a historical fiction feel, crazy parents

The Wink-Wink, Nudge-Nudge book: Sugar

Best *swoon* factor: Heist Society, The Demon’s Lexicon/The Demon’s Covenant

Best Interviewee: Varian Johnson (though Wendy Mass has the squee factor)

Favorite Challenge (that wasn’t hosted by Carl): Flashback Challenge: It was fun rereading books this year!

Favorite reread: The Grey King

Woo-hoo, they’re back!: Ring of Solomon, The Lost Hero

Books that I wanted the sequel for as soon as I read them: Incarceron, Starcrossed

Best main characters: Augie, TC and Ale (My Most Excellent Year)

Book for in-person book group I liked best: Girl in Hyacinth Blue

Book for on-line book group I liked best: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Books I finished but didn’t feel the love for: Hachiko Waits, I am Morgan le Fey, Countdown, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance

Number of Shakespeare plays I read: 1 – Much Ado About Nothing (and watched two movie versions of it), and I only saw one (MacBeth, even though the interpretation — the witches were actually space aliens — didn’t really work for me).

Best Sequel (by an Author Who Didn’t Write the Original): Wishing for Tomorrow

Disappointing book by an author I love: The Candymakers (no review, as I chose not to put one up), by Wendy Mass

Books that made me laugh the most: Belly Up; Going Bovine; Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging

Best books with the worst parents: How I Nicky Flynn Get a Life (and a Dog); One Crazy Summer

Best quirky book: The Kneebone Boy

Authors everyone else loves that I discovered I liked: Diana Wynne Jones, Sarah Rees Brennan, Ally Carter

Best book from an author I previously didn’t care for: Penny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder; Going Bovine, by Libba Bray; Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

First-time authors I’d love to see more from: Rob Buyea (Because of Mr. Terupt),

Yay, a local author: Clare Vanderpool (Moon Over Manifest)

Book I read the fastest: Mockingjay

Favorite book from a series: I Shall Wear Midnight, A Conspiracy of Kings

Newbery Books I read: I didn’t read a single one this year. Shame on me.

Books that made me want to go out and do something: Confections of a Closet Master Baker (bake, of course); French Milk, Under a Tuscan Sun, Eat, Pray Love (travel); The Cardturner (play bridge); Bamboo People (help the people in Burma)

What are some of your bests this past year?

December Jacket Flap-a-Thon

2 Comments

As the first round of the Cybils is coming to a close, I’m eagerly anticipating the release of the shortlists. (Ours is very interesting, to say the least.) As a teaser, I’m doing an all-Cybils edition of the Jacket Flap-a-thon this month. (That, and it’s pretty much all I read!)

Mockingbird (Philomel): “In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how. When she reads the definition of closure, she realizes that is what she needs. In her search for it, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white–the world is full of colors–messy and beautiful. Kathryn Erskine has written a must-read gem, one of the most moving novels of the year.”

It’s simple, direct, and intriguing, doing everything a jacket flap should do: it makes you want to read the book.

Wildfire Run (HarperCollins): “The president’s retreat, Camp David, is one of the safest places in the United States. So why can’t the President’s son, Luke, and his friends Theo and Callie stay there without Secret Service agents constantly hovering over them, watching their every move? And yet, when an earthquake sets off a raging wildfire, causing a chain reaction that wreaks havoc at Camp David, they are suddenly on their own. Now Luke needs a plan:

  • To override the security systems
  • To save those who were supposed to save him
  • To get through an impassable gate
  • To escape Camp David

Debut author Dee Garretson delivers a heart-pounding tween thriller—an action-packed adventure with undeniable suspense.”

I like that the jacket flap is as intense as the book. How does he do it? What’s the chain reaction? Tell me, please!

Penny Dreadful (Random House): “What if you were really bored with your life? What would you wish for? Penelope Grey wishes for something—anything!—interesting to happen, and here’s what she gets:

• Her father quits his job.
• Her family runs out of money.
• Her home becomes a pit of despair.

So Penelope makes another wish, and this time the Greys inherit a ramshackle old house in the middle of nowhere. Off they go, leaving the city and their problems behind them. Their new home is full of artists, tiny lions, unusual feasts, and true friends. Almost immediately, their lives are transformed. Penelope’s mother finds an unexpected job, her father discovers a hidden talent, and Penelope changes her name! Penny’s new life feels too magical to be real, too real to be magic. And it may be too good to last . . . unless she can find a way to make magic work just one more time—if it even was magic. Any Which Wall author Laurel Snyder introduces a quirky cast of characters as pleasantly strange as they are deeply real. Abigail Halpin adds to the charm with her distinctive line drawings. Fans of Polly Horvath’s My One Hundred Adventures, Ingrid Law’s Savvy, and Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks will be enchanted by Laurel Snyder’s alternatively humorous and poignant look at small-town life and what it really takes to become a happy family.”
I promise that I really didn’t copy the flap copy when I mentioned The Penderwicks in my review. Still, it’s spot-on, in its book comparisons, and while I think it gives away more than it should (and makes it sound more magical than it is), it’s still very good copy.

Other Books Read This Month:
Crunch
Tortilla Sun
Betti on the High Wire
Moon Over Manifest
The Importance of Being Earnest
Joey Fly, Private Eye in Big Hairy Drama
Jellaby
Enola Holmes: The Case of the Gypsy Goodbye
The Ring of Solomon
Because of Mr. Terupt
Emily’s Fortune
Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley
When Molly Was a Harvey Girl
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

3 Comments

by Carolyn Macker
ages: 14+
First sentence: “Froggy Welsh the Fourth is trying to get up my shirt.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Virginia Shreves is the black sheep in a perfect family. She’s blonde, not brown-haired. She’s chubby (well, fat), in a family that not only is tall and skinny, but that values tall, skinny people over short, not-skinny ones. She’s not even good at French. She’s spent her whole life (all 15 years of it) feeling like she’s an outcast, while worshiping her older siblings, especially her brother Byron.

Then, one phone call sets events into motion, events which make Virginia stand up and reassess her relationship with her family, what she wants out of life, and get some chutzpah. It made me, as a reader, want to stand up and cheer: You go girl!

There were two things that ran through my mind while reading this: 1) if I’m ever a mom like her mom, I will shoot myself. Seriously. Sometimes I wonder if I get the best parenting advice by reading about horrid, awful parents. In this case, Virginia’s mom only validates her efforts to lose weight. She punishes her, whether consciously or unconsciously, for being fat, and refuses to acknowledge her other — scholastic and otherwise — efforts. On top of that, her dad praises and admires skinny women, and only offers to take Virginia shopping for new clothes after she shows some effort at achieving a weight goal. I wanted to smack the parents: this is not the way to raise a healthy girl!

2) It’s a great book on how to get out of being a doormat. It was wonderful seeing Virginia wake up and get a spine and discover what she, herself wants and not what she thinks her parents want. Yes, it takes a drastic event to tumble her family enough so that Virginia can see her family for what they are: manipulative and more than willing to push things under the carpet. But without that drastic event, Virginia might have gone through life letting other people push her around. It helps, I think, that Virginia also has a crew of people around her guiding her in healthy directions: her doctor, Dr. Love; a language arts teacher, Ms. Crowley; and her best friend, Shannon. Unfortunately, Shannon is across the country in Walla Walla, Washington with her parents, but she does come through when Virginia needs her most.

It’s with their help that Virginia takes charge of her life, her weight, and her desires. And that’s enough to make a reader stand up and cheer.

Challenge #6: 2010 Challenge

Leave a comment

I squeaked in at the end of the Twenty Ten Challenge as well… I have to stop doing year-long challenges, because I always procrastinate until the end of the year!

Out of these, there were a lot of good books. I completely bombed on the Charity category; more proof that I’m absolutely horrid picking books for myself. As long as I don’t do that, I’m okay!

Young Adult
1. Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson
2. Marcelo in the Real World, Francisco X. Stork

T.B.R.
1. I am Morgan Le Fay: A Tale from Camelot, Nancy Springer
2. The English American, Alison Larkin

Shiny & New
1. Scarlett Fever, Maureen Johnson
2. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

Bad Bloggers
1. Heist Society, Ally Carter — bad blogger, Liz B, A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy.
2. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, Louise Rennison — bad blogger, Corinne, The Book Nest

Charity
1. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
2. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, by Marina Lewycka

New in 2010
1. The Girl Who Chased the Moon, Sarah Addison Allen
2. Saving Maddie, Varian Johnson

Older Than You
1. Howards End, E. M. Forester
2. Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper

Win! Win!
1. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle
2. Fried Green Tomatoes, Fanny Flagg

Who Are You Again?
1. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, Gail Tsukiyama
2. Dream Factory, Brad Barkley and Heather Helper

Up to You! – I did People of Color
1. Mare’s War, Tanita S. Davis
2. Bamboo People, Mitali Perkins

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

3 Comments

by Marina Lewycka
ages: adult
First sentence: “Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcee.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I really wanted to like this book. I’d heard good things about it, or at the very least okayish things. I picked it up at a Friends of the Library sale back in June, I think, and it’s been languishing on my TBR pile since then. I just really couldn’t get excited by the cover. Or the title. Or the back blurb. In fact, if it hadn’t have been one I’d chosen for the 2010 Challenge, I probably would have passed on it altogether.

As it turns out, I’m pretty much passing on it anyway. After one hundred pages, I was still wondering what the point was. I threw a feeler out on Twitter, and SuziQ at Whimpulsive bit: she said it was weird. And I had to agree.

The basic plot: two sisters, daughters of Ukrainian immigrants, are feuding after their mother’s death. Then their 84-year-old father falls in love (or lust), with a blond, 36-year-old Ukrainian divorcee (perhaps; I never could quite figure out if she really was) who’s using him to gain citizenship to the UK. This, of course, leads to tension between the dad and the daughters, which, interestingly enough, manages, in the end, to bring the family back together. Or, so I gathered.

See, I didn’t finish it really. I read the first 100 pages or so, then flitted about a bit, and then read the last 50. And I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t like the characters, didn’t sympathize with them (differing life situations, and I just wasn’t interested in their whining and moaning), and I was bored by the book. I have wondered, off and on, if too much YA has spoiled me for adult fiction; the pace was glacially slow; I kept wondering how on earth Lerwycka was going to fill 300 pages. Was there really that much story? I’m not sure there was.

But, obviously, I’m missing something here; it’s one of those that was nominated for a Man Booker Prize. And, obviously, I have different expectations from books than those who are on the Man Booker Prize committee.

Can’t say I’m too sorry about that.

2011 POC Challenge

Leave a comment

My place for putting 2011’s POC reading list. I’m aiming high: 25 or more books. Wish me luck…

Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
Forge, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Street Magic, by Tamora Pierce
The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex
King of Bollywood, by Anupama Chopra
India Calling, by Anand Giridharadas
Luv Ya Bunches, by Lauren Myracle
Violet in Bloom, by Lauren Myracle
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Sweet 15, by Emily Adler and Alex Echevarria
Trash, by Andy Mulligan
The Throne of Fire, by Rick Riordan
A Gift From Childhood, by Baba Wague Diakite
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
The Heart of a Samurai, by Margi Preus
8th Grade Superzero, by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich
How Lamar’s Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy, by Crystal Allen
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
What Momma Left Me, by Renee Watson
Inside Out and Back Again, by Thanhha Lai
Year of the Horse, by Justin Allen
The Demon’s Surrender, by Sarah Rees Brennan
The Eternal Smile: Three Stories, by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
Kendra, by Coe Booth
Zazoo, by Richard Mosher
Latasha and the Little Red Tornado, by Michael Scotto
The Latte Rebellion, by Sarah Jamila Stevenson
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
Words in the Dust, by Trent Reedy

2010 Challenge #5: POC Challenge

2 Comments

I had a great time with the POC Reading Challenge. And because of the challenge, I was thinking more about choosing books with people of color, and I read more than I think I have in the past. I made it to level 5, with 22 books. I’m going to sign up again for next year’s challenge, with the same goal: to reach 25 or more books.

My favorite among these? Probably Marcelo in the Real World. But I also thoroughly enjoyed Marching for Freedom and Shine, Coconut Moon and One Crazy Summer and Bamboo People and Shooting Kabul and… well, you get the point.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin
Peace, Locomotion, by Jacqueline Woodson
Shine, Coconut Moon, by Neesha Meminger
Sugar, by Bernice L. McFadden
Marching for Freedom, Elizabeth Partridge
Two Moon Princess, by Carmen Ferrerio-Esteban
Skunk Girl, by Sheba Karim
The Prince of Fenway Park, by Julianna Baggot
A Step from Heaven, by An Na
Mare’s War, by Tanita S. Davis
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose
Girl in Translation, by Jean Kwok
Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork
The Red Umbrella, by Christina Diaz Gonzales
One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia
Zora and Me, by Victoria Bond and T. R. Simon
Bamboo People, by Mitali Perkins
The Lost Hero, by Rick Riordan
Shooting Kabul, by N. H. Senzai
Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper
Tortilla Sun, by Jennifer Cervantes

I also never thanked Ari for sending the prize I won: a copy of Good Fortune, by Noni Carter. I’m looking forward to reading it and counting it towards next year’s challenge!

2010 Challenge #4: GLBT Challenge

2 Comments

So, just under the wire, I finished the GLBT Challenge. I managed to finish the Lambda leve, which is what I was aiming for. But, I almost made it to the Pink Triangle, reading three extra books. I think out of this list, though, my favorite was My Most Excellent Year, with Dorian Gray coming close behind. I’m glad I did this!

My final list:

1. Howards End, E.M. Forester
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
3. My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park, Steve Kluger
4. Fried Green Tomatoes, Fanny Flagg
5. As You Wish, Jackson Pearce
6. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, David Levithan and John Green
7. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

Thanks for hosting, Amanda!

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

2 Comments

by Fannie Flagg
ages: adult
First sentence: “The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I don’t quite know where to start. Perhaps I should say that I saw the movie years and years ago, and while I liked it, I’m not sure it really stuck with me.

But when Cass said the book was one of her favorites, I figured I needed to give the story a second look. And I’m glad I did.

It’s not a book for 20-somethings, though the mystery underlying the vignettes might have some appeal. But that’s not what I got out of the story. In fact, I had a hard time picking out much of a story at all. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. I did. But, it took me a while to realize that the book is a kind of fictionalized oral history. Once I accepted that, then I found I was able to enjoy the book more, taking the stories for what they were: reminiscences of a full life.

That I loved the characters helped as well. I looked as forward to visits with Mrs. Threadgoode as much as Evelyn did. I loved hearing about Whistle Stop, about all the characters — even with all the 1930s area Southern racism — and their antics. It’s a cozy book and a welcoming, homey one, too, one that makes you feel like you are a part of the community. It shows both the positives of small towns (how everyone bonds together in a crisis, the support systems, the community building) and the negatives (nosiness, lack of privacy, prejudice). It doesn’t sugarcoat anything, which, in turn, makes everything resonate more.

And then there’s Evelyn. Ah, the quintessential doormat middle-aged wife and mother. I think I enjoyed her “awakening” most of all. Firstly, because it came through the stories. And secondly, because I think she needed it. To find fire and want and to stop being so dang selfless all the time. Sometimes, it’s okay to do something for yourself, and to be angry at the injustice in the world.

It’s a wonderful book and I’m glad I had a chance to visit with it.