Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

School Spirits

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by Rachel Hawkins
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Killing a vampire is actually a lot easier than you’d think.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: May 14, 2013
Review copy provided by my place of employment.
(You don’t have to, but you might want to read Hex Hall, Demonglass, and Spell Bound first.)

Izzy Brannick has spent her life fighting monsters. She’s the youngest daughter of the last surviving Brannick, and she’s got fighting spirit. Except, something went wrong, and her older sister has disappeared. Nothing’s quite been the same since then, the least of which is the new tension between Izzy and her mom. For a multitude of reasons, they end up packing up and moving to Ideal, Mississippi, on the trail of a murderous ghost, as Izzy’s first solo mission. 

And as part of that, she gets to go to high school. Surely a Brannick can handle that. Right?

Much like the other Hex Hall novels, this was a lot of fun. It’s not as magical as I was expecting, which is silly of me because Izzy’s not a Prodigium, but rather someone who is able to detect magic. It is also not very creepy (even with a murderous ghost about), which (after Anna Dressed in Blood) is also something
I appreciated.

It is, however, a very simple, very enjoyable love story. The friends — Romy, Dex, and Anderson —  that Izzy makes during her brief sojourn in high school — joining the Paranormal Management Society (the PMSs) — more than make up for the lack of magical adventure. The four together have a great chemistry, and the eventual (probably predictable) pairing off was quite satisfying. (Yes, there is a really hot make out scene in a cave. Not many people can pull that off.)

Is it as good as the Hex Hall series? Probably not. But that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying the fun.

April 2013 Round-Up

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This month, while I read quite a few really good books, there was only one great one. No question.

Dark Triumph

And the rest?

Non-fiction:

Eighty Days

Priceless
What Would Barbara Do?

YA:

Panic (DNF)
Shadow and Bone

Adult:

Fragile Things (audio book)
The Lost Art of Mixing
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

Middle Grade:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (audio) (reread)

The Black Cauldron (audio)
Rump
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made

What was good that you’ve read this month?

Panic

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by Sharon M. Draper
ages: 13+
First sentence: “Hey, dance boy!”

I was looking forward to this one, mostly because I really enjoyed the other book I’ve read by Draper: Out of My Mind. I do have to admit that I knew very little about this one going in: I didn’t take the time to read the jacketflap and even though C pointed out to me that the categories were “kidnapping” and “sexual abuse”, I didn’t think much of it as I opened it up.

The story is of a troupe of teenage dancers. I didn’t get very far into the book, but it seems like there are a lot of issues there: bullying for the one lone male dancer (because it’s so not macho to dance); some kind of dating issue for one of the girls and her boyfriend; general issues of jealousy of other dancers’ abilities. But the panic starts when 15-year-old Diamond, a dancer in the troupe, is kidnapped.

I’ll pause for a moment here: I know Diamond is a victim here, and that the man who kidnapped her (and eventually raped her, multiple times, filming it for the internet — yes I did skim most of the book) is a warped, horrible, evil human being who should be castrated. But that said: what kind of idiot gets suckered in by promises of movie auditions and actually GETS INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGE ADULT MALE AND LEAVES THE MALL WITH HIM??????

Please, please, please let my daughters never be this stupid.

One of my DNF hot buttons is kidnapping of children — though if it’s straight up kidnapping, I might let it play out for a bit, just to see where the author is headed, and I did on this one. Until Diamond woke up from being drugged naked. And then the kidnapper walked into the room with his cameramen and started undressing. The one thing that hits way too close to my anxiety about my children is rape and sexual abuse. I cannot, under any circumstances, read about this. Especially of a 15-year-old girl. Can. Not.

So, as much as I love Draper, she wrote about something I can’t read. Which makes me sad, but that’s the way things roll sometimes.

What Would Barbara Do?

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How Musicals Changed My Life
by Emma Brockes
ages: adult
First sentence: “To give you an idea of the scale of what we are dealing with here, I’d like to begin with an act of superstition.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Emma adores musicals. And that’s not exactly a cool thing for a 20-something English gal. So, she adores them in quiet. (Well, only some of them. The Good ones.) As she’s grown up, she’s discovered that there are two types of people: those who like musicals, and those who don’t Get It.

This little book is basically a memoir framed around musicals. Which wasn’t a bad thing. Brockes has Definite Opinions about musicals (some of which I agreed with; others which I didn’t), and isn’t afraid to own the fact that she adores the whole genre. She’s not an “expert”, but she is an enthusiast, which qualifies her to give her opinion about such things. Right?

Well… actually, that’s kind of what annoyed me about this one. The subtitle gave me the impression that either 1) she really had something new and original to say about musicals, or 2) she had a really crappy life, and somehow musicals pulled her out of it. But, truth be told: it was neither of those things. It was a story about a middle class suburban girl who grew up with a mother who loved musicals and thought they were dorky until she was able to accept the dorkiness and own it. (Oh, and there was actually very little about Barbara Streisand to boot.) And she needed 264 pages to get through that.

In the end, I’m not sure if I disliked this one because of my expectations about it. Or if it was Brockes came off as a pompous twit. And even though I finished it (admittedly skimming the last bits), I don’t think it was worth my time.

Is there any other book about musicals out there that would be a better read than this one?

The Lost Art of Mixing

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by Erica Bauermeister
ages: adult
First sentence: “Lillian stood at the restaurant kitchen counter, considering the empty expanse in front of her.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Sequel to: The School of Essential Ingredients.

When I first saw this one, I thought: “Hey! I like books where food play a part.” And then, “I kind of remember liking School of Essential Ingredients.” And “That’s a happy cover. I think I’ll pick this one up.”

Then I read it.

When I finished, I actually went back and checked my review f Bauermeister’s other book. Two sentences popped out at me:

 “It was more like a series of connected short stories, and because of that, I felt unfulfilled when the story was over.”

and

“It seemed that once their story was done, Bauermeister didn’t quite know what to do with them, and pushed them out of the picture.”

Exactly.

I’m not sure the plot really matters (Lillian is pregnant, there are assorted other Crises and Discoveries), because it’s essentially the same book again. And it’s not that the book was bad. It wasn’t. It was… nice. Good enough to finish, but not good enough to run around saying “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS” to friends.

Which means: I need to do a better job at checking my own reviews before checking books out from the library. That’s why I have this blog, after all!

Marissa Meyer Author Event

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I look like a dork.

Marissa Meyer was in the store last night, and it was a lot of fun. I dragged one of my girls (C, on the far right) and she brought one of her friends (who keeps winning stuff whenever she comes to these things), and we had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Mostly because Marissa is adorable. She talked about how Cinder came to be published (she was super lucky!), was really good about not divulging spoilers, told some pretty awesome fairy tales, and was just a lot of fun.

I hope we can get her back for her next book; I’d definitely go see her again!

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

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by Robin Sloan
ages: adult
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

After graduation from college, Clay Jannon is ready to take on the world. Except it’s a recession, and there aren’t many jobs out there for him. After a stint as a marketing/advertising designer for NewBagels in San Francisco, Clay finds himself unemployed, wandering around looking through Craigslist for a new job. On one of his daily wanderings, he stumbles upon Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, which has an opening for a night clerk. He goes in on a whim, and finds himself not only employed, but immersed in an increasingly strange world.

There are two kinds of customers that frequent Penumbra’s — who is, by all accounts, an odd sort of man — store, especially at 2 a.m.: late-night wanderers who buy some of the normal stock, and those wandering in, bleary-eyed, asking for something off what Clay comes to call the Waybacklist. It’s those customers who pique Clay’s imagination, and get his creative juices flowing: just what is the Waybacklist, and what are these customers doing?

It’s that question that sends Clay into a world of codes and cults, of computers and books (Google plays a huge role and is almost a character in itself), of adventures and immortality. It sounds more magical than it is; there isn’t a drop of magical realism, just good programming and smart people figuring puzzles out. Even so, there’s a whiff of fantasy here: as part of everything, Sloan involves sweeping fantasy trilogies and a Dungeons & Dragons-like game but only as a slight framework in which to lean his story about the relationship between books and technology. (The conclusion? We still need both.)

It was a delightful, charming book (I hesitate to call it that, even though it was. It seems that books like this should be Deep and Edgy), one in which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Priceless

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by Robert K. Wittman
ages: adult
First sentence: “The platinum Rolls-Royce with bulletproof windows glided east onto the Palmetto Expressway toward Miami Beach, six stolen paintings stashed in its armor-plated trunk.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Robbert Wittman spent 20 years in the FBI doing a mostly thankless job (at least for the bureau): recovering artwork. He didn’t do any of the high-profile stuff that makes the movies; in fact, most of the time, he didn’t even get public credit for his work because he spent most of his time under cover, getting dishonest dealers and art thieves to give up their stolen goods.

He talks about a handful of his cases from 1988 to the Big Case — attempting to recover the stolen paintings from the 1990 Boston Gardner Museum heist — and his role in recovering a handful of priceless art and artifacts, as well as talking about the state of Art Crime Recovery in this country (pitiful, to sum up).

On the one hand, this book was fascinating. I’d never heard of most of the heists, let alone the art that was stolen, and Wittman thoughtfully provides historical context and details surrounding each recovery. That was perhaps my favorite part: I learned quite a bit.

But, I have to admit that by the end, Wittman’s voice — and his “I’m AMAZING, aren’t I?” stance, whether intentional or not — grated on me. So much so, that I was actually glad (mild spoiler here) that the Gardner recovery fell through. I know he’s doing the country (and the world, not to mention History) a service by risking his life to recover these priceless things, but still. It got annoying.

Other than that, it was quite enjoyable.

Audiobook: The Black Cauldron

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by Lloyd Alexander
read by James Langton
ages: 7+
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: The Book of Three

I picked this up because I thought the kids would want to listen to it (and they didn’t have Book of Three) on our recent vacation. But, when we put it in, there was much complaining and whining. And a couple of the kids, after listening to the first disc, said they were lost and confused. I guess after Harry Potter, even the simplest of books are boring. Either that, or The Black Cauldron starts out  too slow, and there are too many characters to keep straight. Which does make sense.

The plot is simply this: Taran is still the Assistant Pig Keeper at Caer Dallben, even though he’s fresh from his journey with Gwydion. He’s basically content (though he still longs to do things “men” do), but that changes when Gwydion shows up with a bunch of other lords and military men to hold a council. Their agenda: going after Arawn’s black cauldron and destroy it so that he doesn’t make any more of his undead cauldron born soldiers.

Sounds easy enough: go into Annuvin, get the cauldron, and get out. Except it isn’t that easy: someone has already come in and gotten the cauldron, and now it’s missing. So, the band — including Taran and his faithful friends, Fflewder Fflam (the reader actually said it “Flewdur Flam”! And here I was thinking it was some weird Welsh pronunciation), Princess Eilonwy, and Gurgi — splits up, and sets out looking for the cauldron.

Taran and his bunch get saddled with the most annoying character in the book: Ellidyr. He’s the worst kind of character: and annoying, proud, brat who thinks he’s too good for everything. I wanted to smack him whenever he came around.

Which brings me to the narration. I actually liked the was Langton read the book — he gave Eilonwy a slight Scottish accent, which suited her nicely (and she wasn’t terribly whiny, either), and he made other characters suitably menacing.  And while I thought his Gurgi was off at the beginning, the way Langton portrayed him grew on me over the course of the book.

One more thing: as I listened to the story, it occurred to me just how much Alexander drew on Tolkein’s world to create this little series of books. It’s not just the similarities in names or the magic, but the whole feel of the book. The quest that Taran has to go on. The fact that he’s mostly reactive rather than proactive (much like Frodo). The Big Evil Bad Guy lurking in the background with the Lesser Evil Bad Guy that they have to deal with immediately. It’s not a bad thing that this book felt a lot like Lord of the Rings. It’s just an observation.

I remember these books being some of my favorites as a kid. And while I’m not sure I ever found them brilliant, this one, at least, is still a good, entertaining adventure tale.

Audiobook: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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by J. K. Rowling
read by Jim Dale
ages: 9+ (Listening 6+)
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I could have sworn I had a review of Prisoner of Azkaban on here, but I only found a smallish blurb about the whole series here. But, I guess, I read this before the blog, and I haven’t gotten around to a reread until now.

The reason for picking this particular Harry Potter? Well, we went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for our family vacation a couple of weeks ago, and figured since we were going there, we needed to read a Harry Potter book. And since this is the next one in the series for K to read (her dad’s read her one and two), that’s where we started.

My thoughts, since everyone knows the plot already:

Out of all the books, this one is one of the tightest, I think. As they go on, they become more meandering and Rowling tries to pack so much in.

That said, at the end, when Sirius and Lupin confront Peter Pettigrew, there is an awful lot of monologuing. I know that Rowling needs to give us a whole bunch of information that existed before the story even started, but still. It slows the story down.

I really, really dislike the way Jim Dale reads Hermione. She’s a capable, smart girl, and every time she opens her mouth, Dale makes her sound like a whiny brat.

I adore Lupin as a character. That is all.

Hubby and I got into a discussion about adult figures in middle grade books. It was started because we realized that Dumbledore is a Really Bad Headmaster. He’s terrible at his job. Don’t get me wrong: I adore the character, but think about it: he’s neglectful, he’s bad at enforcing rules, and he plays favorites like no other. But then, if  Dumbledore were good at his job, there wouldn’t have been a story.

I think the lack of Voldemort in the story actually helps the book. It’s not as Dark and Foreboding as some of the others. 

It’s still one of my favorites of the Harry Potter series.

And I’d really like — for comparison’s sake — to hear the Stephen Fry audio versions. I wonder if he can do Hermione any better.