Month: June 2014

48 Hour Book Challenge Finish Line

8 Comments

This year was not one of my better years. I don’t really know why that is. Sure, we had a lot going on this weekend — both Friday and Saturday nights, and some Saturday afternoon — but maybe it was I was reading slower than I usually do. I do know I didn’t stay up as late as I usually do. Ah, the joys of getting older.

So, this year, my stats are way low:

I got 4 1/2 books done from start-to-finish, I started one and abandoned it for later (The Book of Unknown Americans) and finished up one I was already reading (Graceling). I read for 15 1/2 hours (ouch), blogged/did social media 2 1/2 hours, and saw The Fault in Our Stars which I’m counting for 1 hour (Thanks, Pam!) for a grand total of 19 hours. I didn’t even make the 20 minimum. Perhaps next year. (I’ll still donate the $25 to RIF. So there’s that.)

I did enjoy the books I picked to read, especially Everything Leads to You. And I did enjoy focusing on more diverse books, which is a welcome break for me. And I reminder that I need to branch out more.

Thanks, Pam, for hosting this, and for choosing to focus on diversity!

Girl In Reverse

3 Comments

by Barbara Stuber
First sentence: “Say it, Lily.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some mild swearing and kissing. It’s probably a more complicated plot than the Middle Grade section warrants, so it’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Lillian Firestone is an adopted daughter of Chinese heritage. Which makes her a target in Kansas City in 1951, the height of the Korean War. She took the bullying and name-calling when she was younger, but now that she’s 16, she’s taking a stand. Sort of. She walked out of class and school one day, and that act started a domino chain of events that led to the discovery of her birth parents.

There’s art involved and a lot of Chinese culture as Lily goes on this journey.

(I’m tired. Can you tell?)

I wanted to like this book. I love the cover, I love the ideas, the conflict. But I could never connect with Lily. She drove. me. nuts. Completely. And so I started skimming, skipping ahead just to see what happens. And yeah, everything’s tied up in a nice little bow.

It had potential, and I’m sure some readers will really love the art and China elements. But I wasn’t really one of them.

Everything Leads to You

6 Comments

by Nina LaCorr
First sentence: “Five texts are waiting for me when I get out of my English final.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is some swearing, including a half-dozen f-bombs scattered throughout. And a mention of older teen drinking. Plus, it’s really a growing-up story. For those reasons, it’s in the Teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore.

Emi Price is a golden California girl. (Except, for the record, she has a black grandfather and is NOT the blonde thing you see on the cover.) She as loving parents, a cool older brother who has a job as a site scout in a production company, and a fantastic best friend. She has a job as a set-design intern at the same production company as her brother (nepotism works).

She just broke up with her off-again/on-again girlfriend, though, and that’s getting her down. And so, when her brother leaves his posh Venice apartment to Emi and her best friend, Charlotte, for the summer with the one catch — do something amazing here! — she feels hopeless.

Then she and Charlotte discover an old letter written by a famous actor Clyde Jones (think John Wayne) that is a clue to a mystery: he had a daughter. And a grandchild. And so, Emi and Charlotte set out to find them and deliver the letter.

That’s really only the beginning of the book, and perhaps the least important part of it as well. It’s much more about Emi figuring herself out. The letter helps, but it’s also this job on an indie movie that she lands, thanks to her ex-girlfriend. And when they find Clyde’s long-lost granddaughter, that opens up a whole new avenue for Emi.

I loved this book. Wholeheartedly and unabashedly. I loved the peek into the way movies work, the facts behind the fantasy. I loved the way Emi thought about characters and set design. And I loved how sometimes she let fantasy overtake her reality. The characters were so real, so deep, so complex, that I couldn’t help but be drawn into their lives.

An absolutely perfect summer book.

My Basmati Bat Mitzvah

2 Comments

by Paula L. Freedman
First sentence: “When Ben-o came over on Saturday for movie nigt, my dad answered the door wearing gray silk pajama bottoms and his Math Teachers Play by the Numbers T-shirt, an unlit pip clenched between his teeth.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There’s a lot of questions about religion and God in this. Plus some 7th-grade kissing. If we had it at the bookstore I’d probably waffle between putting it in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) and YA (6-8) sections. It could easily go either place.

Tara Feinstein is your typical New York City middle schooler. She has two best friends, Rebecca and Ben-o (thusly named in fourth grade when there was a Ben D., even though he’s since moved away), and is looking forward to 7th grade. She’s been attending Hebrew School for the past few years — her mother, who is Indian, decided that Tara needed to get in touch with her Jewish (from her father) side — and is wondering whether or not to go through with her bat mitzvah in December. And like a typical middle schooler (at least one in my house), she has questions. About whether or not going through a bat mitzvah is somehow denying the Indian side of her. About whether or not there is a god. About why Ben-o is acting so strange and Rebecca seems to be hanging out with a girl that Tara just Doesn’t Like. Typical middle schooler stuff.

There really isn’t much overall conflict in this. Mostly it’s like life: a series of ups and downs. Tara and Rebecca accidentally ruin a priceless heirloom sari that Tara’s been given by her aunt. The new friend Rebecca has turns out to be a bit of a kleptomaniac. Ben-o turns out to like like Tara, but covers it up by hanging out with another girl, which is confusing to say the least. So, there is Drama (which, on the one hand, will make this book imminently relatable to everyone, but I was a bit Done With, only because there’s so much middle school Drama in my own house that it was a bit overkill for me).

What I did enjoy was the melding of the cultures. How Tara’s Indian aunt called Tara’s Jewish grandmother “Ruthie-ji”. Or that the grandmother would bring a matzoh ball soup to a Diwali celebration. Or the way Tara melded the two at her bat mitzvah: wearing a dress made out of the ruined sari and serving Indian food. What better way to celebrate the good things in all cultures and traditions? I also enjoyed her musings about God and the afterlife and religious traditions. It’s that which kept me reading in spite of my Drama overload. And it’s was those elements that made the book good (for me).

I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister

2 Comments

by Amélie Sarn, translated from French by Y. Maudet
First sentence: “The women walk slowly, heads down.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: Augst 5, 2014
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There is violence, some mild swearing, and some teen drinking and smoking. I’ll probably put this in the Teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore, though I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to a 7th- or 8th-grader who is interested.

Sohane Chebli is many things: 18 years old, a daughter, a sister, a scholar, French, and a Muslim. She lives in an apartment complex full of others of  Algerian heritage, and mostly she and her younger sister (by 11 months), Djelila, get along with their neighbors, schoolmates, and each other just fine.

Then, during Sohane’s senior year, a few young Muslim men take it on themselves to start harassing Djelila because she dresses in jeans and tighter shirts. Because she wears makeup. Because she smokes with her friends. And Sohane, whose path has become more conservative — she wears the hijab — doesn’t step in to defend her sister. Partially because Sohane thinks her sister is wrong for following a path away from Islam. And partially because Sohane’s been expelled from school, due to a French law banning all religious symbols, for wearing the hijab.

I’m going to spoil a bit — it’s not too bad, because from the beginning,  you know this — but Djelila is killed by the Muslim boys for her refusal to conform to their expectations. And it’s that paired with the other side of the coin: Sohane’s constant discrimination for wearing the hijab. (Not that I mean to compare murder with discrimination.) But it got me thinking: why do we feel a need to tell others how to behave? Why did these boys feel compelled to not only shame, but eventually kill a girl for not following her/their religion to the letter? Why did people refuse to see Sohane’s hijab wearing as an expression of her religion, instead interpreting it as an act of repression? It’s a thought-provoking book.

And it’s written well, in tight, short chapters. It took a bit for me to catch the rhythm of the book because it’s translated, but once I did, I was hooked. And I wasn’t disappointed, in the end.

Re-read: Graceling

2 Comments

by Kristin Cashore
First sentence: “In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some tasteful sex, a lot of violence, and you need to be somewhat more mature to understand what Leck is capable of in order for it to have its full impact. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore, but I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to an 8th grader who was interested.

For June’s YAcker book, we picked Bitterblue, but one thing led to another, and we ended up making a summer project of reading Cashore’s trilogy. I’m not one for re-reading books, but since I hadn’t picked this one up in 5 years, I thought, in order to be an intelligent participant, I needed to reread it.

And, oh, it was just as wonderful as it was the first time.

I don’t have much more to say (the above link takes you to my initial review) that won’t be said when the YAckers post our discussion. But let me say this: I love Kasta. Her fierceness, her depth of emotion, her contrariness. And I love her with Po. I love their team, I love their relationship. I love how Cashore describes them together.

And I love Bitterblue. I’d forgotten that, not having reread this when Bitterblue came out. But, she’s so small and so fierce, and I love her.

48 Hour Reading Challenge Starting Line

5 Comments

And.. I’m off. I’m aiming for 24 hours, but I’m also going out tonight and going to the roller derby tomorrow and to see The Fault in Our Stars tomorrow night (too bad I can’t count that as “reading”). I’m hopeful, though, that I can get enough reading in between all that.

Here’s my #WeNeedDiverseBooks pile that I’m working from this weekend:

Actually, I’m not reading The Great Greene Heist. I ended up with two copies, so I’m giving one of them away. For anyone who comments on any post this weekend, I’ll put you in a drawing for it. Just make sure I can get ahold of you Sunday night. 🙂

Also: I’m aiming to give $1 for every hour (or $25 whichever is greater) to RIF at the end of this. Just because I’ve been doing that the past few years, and it keeps me motivated to read.

Happy reading!

The Riverman

6 Comments

by Aaron Starmer
First sentence: “Every town has a lost child.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some alcohol usage and talk of murdered children. Also, it feels really adult in its sensibilities. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, but I’m not happy with that. On the other hand, it’ll languish in the YA (grades 6-8) section too, so I might just leave it where it is.

Alistair Cleary  is the kind of kid who blends in. He’s not popular at his middle school, but he’s not reviled, either. His best friend is a gamer — which is quite unusual, since it’s the fall of 1989 — but Alistair has managed to escape certain geek doom. He’s content to slide through life. Until Fiona decides that it’s Alistair who needs to write her sad tale down.

And what a tale: Fiona insists that she’s been going to this imaginary land, Aquavania, which is absolutely real. She’s added months to her life in her trips (which become years later in the book). And that her friends in Aquavania — who also happen to be real people in the Solid World — are disappearing because someone called the Riverman is sucking their souls away.

I had Issues with this book. It compelled me enough to finish it, sure, but it was one of those books that I threw across the room when I was done. I’ve been trying for days to figure out how to write about my issues, and to boil my problems with the book down into a neat, concise package, but I don’t think I can. There will be spoilers.

My initial problems come from the incongruity between the cover and the book itself. The cover screams middle grade, but the content is very… adult. On some level, I feel like Starmer should have gone all the way, made this incredibly dark and sinister, used the metaphor that he was building — that Aquavania is a crutch for Fiona, who uses it to escape horrible things in her life — and made it an adult book.

But, even though that is the set up for most of the book, Starmer doesn’t follow through. He pulls what I have come to think of as a bait-and-switch, a “HA! It’s Really REAL” moment. For which he has given us no basis in the rest of the book. Our narrator, Alistair, believes Fiona is making it up. He believes in the dark understory, so I do too. And so it’s incredibly unsatisfying (for me as an adult; would an older kid?) to have the rug pulled out from underneath you.

I’m sure there I have other complaints (did it really need to be set in 1989? REALLY?), but that’s the main one. Going in, I didn’t know what to expect, but by the end I hoped for a lot more than what I got.

The Geography of You and Me

3 Comments

by Jennifer E. Smith
First sentence: “On the first day of September, the world went dark.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to my boss by the Little, Brown people, and she passed it off to me.
Content: There’s kissing. And a wee bit of swearing. Mostly it’s just sweet. It was in the Teen section (grades 9+) but after finishing it, I moved it to the YA section (grades 6-8) and it fits there just fine.

Lucy is the youngest child of well-off parents, living in an upscale apartment in Manhattan. Owen is the only child of parents who were once drifters, and whose mother recently died in a freak accident. His dad — who isn’t doing so well — is now the superintendent of Lucy’s building. They would have never met, except they were both in the elevator when the power went out. It was a chance meeting, but one that expanded into a night spent wandering a darkened New York City, and then falling asleep on the rooftop.

The next morning, though, Owen is gone when Lucy wakes up, and they never really quite connect again. Lucy’s parents move her to Scotland; Owen’s dad is fired and they’re headed west, looking for jobs. They figure they’ll never see each other again. Except, Owen starts sending her postcards. And so, they start a tentative long-distance relationship. One with its ups and downs.

It’s not a spoiler to say that this one has a hopefully ever after. It’s not happy, per se — Lucy and Owen still live a great distance away — but it’s hopeful that they can make it work. And it’s not a spoiler to say that it’s not a terribly deep book. There’s no issues, really, and no angst. It’s mostly just a sweet journey of two people figuring out they really really like each other.

It’s enjoyable fluff, though. Sweet and charming. And I found that’s exactly what I needed to make me smile.