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?

Library Loot 2010-22

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Yeah… restraint? What’s that? (Though I immediately returned two books I checked out because I didn’t “need” them.) I have to get the books. They’re sooo pretty.

Picture Books:
Butterflies for Kiri, by Cathryn Falwell
Grown-Ups Get to Do All the Driving, by William Steig
Nine O’Clock Lullaby, by Marilyn Singer/Illus. by Frane Lessac
Just How Long Can A Long String Be?!, by Keith Baker
Wave, by Suzy Lee

Easy Readers:
Pigs Make Me Sneeze! , by Mo Willems
I Love My New Toy! , by Mo Willems
Sam’s Pet, by Charnan Simon/Illus by Gary Bialke
Play with “e” and “d”, by Jane Belk Moncure

Middle Grade Fiction:
Romeo and Juliet–Together (And Alive!) at Last, by Avi
The Night Fairy, by Laura Amy Schlitz
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling, by Maryrose Wood

YA Fiction:
Carter’s Big Break, by Brent Crawford
In Mike We Trust, by P.E. Ryan

Graphic Novels:
Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel, by Charlotte Bronte/Adapted by Amy Corzine/and drawn by a whole bunch of other people.

Adult Fiction:
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel, by Aimee Bender

The roundup is either at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader or A Striped Armchair. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

Finally

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by Wendy Mass
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I’m a big wisher.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Rory has a problem (and it’s not her name, though she gets “isn’t it a boy’s name?” all that time): she wants to be grown up. She’s been wishing for this for a long time — at least since she was six years old, and started writing down everything she’d get to do (finally!), when she turned 12.

The day before her birthday, she meets an eccentric old lady who tells her that she won’t get what she wants until she sees what she needs. Rory doesn’t pay it any attention… until things start going horribly wrong.

Things go so wrong, in fact, that I was beginning to wonder what else bad could happen. It seems like there’s a catch with everything on Rory’s list: from getting a cell phone (lost the first one; ends up with the same number as a pizza restaurant), to shaving her legs (the most hilarious, pathetic, horrid one), to getting her ears pierced (it would never happen, or so I tell C, who was a bit freaked out by that one), it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. Of course there’s a happily ever after (of sorts), especially after Rory learns what the woman meant, which isn’t really until the very, very end. There’s no real big fireworks, not really any big life-changing moments. Just a series of events that lead Rory to realize that growing up isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

It’s a Wendy Mass book, and so (almost by default), of course I liked it. But… it wasn’t as good as the last couple of her books I’ve read. It’s a sequel of sorts to 11 Birthdays — it took me forever to realize who Leo and Amanda were! — but without all the fancy magic loops and such. It’s more subtle (are the incidents “real” or are they a set up? It could go either way…) and much more realistic than the first book. And, as a result,the book wasn’t quite really, really good. More like just plain good.

It doesn’t help that I wanted to throttle Rory’s parents from nearly page one. (It wasn’t just me: I overheard C saying that she just wanted to strangle the parents.) They give overprotective a bad name. Hovering, helicoptering, annoying… you name it. No wonder Rory wants to grow up so badly; her parents haven’t given her any room to maneuver at all! (*sigh* I guess you don’t want a lecture on my parenting opinions right now.) It made the juxtaposition between what Rory wants to do and her accidents all that more heart-breaking. I just wanted one thing, one little thing, to go right for the poor girl.

Which, I suppose, it does, in the end. It was a fun little book, but nothing grand. Which is a little disappointing, but not too terribly much. It is Wendy Mass, after all.

Two Moon Princess

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by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban
ages: 12+
First sentence: “The arrow knows the way. Just let it free.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Princess Andrea is the fourth daughter in the kingdom of Xaren-Ra, a position she doesn’t exactly relish. She doesn’t feel like a lady, she doesn’t particularly get along with a couple of her older sisters. She would rather be off riding her horse or training to be a squire. Her mother has different ideas for her, and so Andrea runs away. She finds an arch, a doorway, that her uncle Tio Romero, has mentioned off-hand, and decides to see where it leads.

And discovers 20th century California.

It’s a bit of a leap, there, to go from a princess fantasy book, to an immigrant immersion experience, but for some reason, it works. Andrea’s experience with college life — what they speak in Xaren-Ra is similar to Spanish, and she picks up English fairly well, and so they’re passing her off as a semester-exchange student — is intriguing. There’s a twist to the immigrant experience: Andrea is discovering things like phones and electricity on top of other, more cultural, differences. But, she finds a way to bloom, even falling in love with a fellow student, John.

Then she and John fall through the arch, back into Xaren-Ra, and inadvertently start a war. Which means, it’s up to Andrea — who has an idea about how to avoid too much bloodshed — to fix the whole mess. Which involves a whole slew of things, including saving the life of Don Julian, the enemy king.

If there is one complaint about this book, it’s that it tries to do too much. Is it a fantasy? Yes, and it works fairly well as a historical-type fantasy; the premise is unique, but even though the ending feels a bit forced, it’s generally fairly good. Is it an immigrant story? Yes, and while it doesn’t work as well as that, it’s still an interesting aspect to the overall story. Is it a romance? Yes, and this is the part that ultimately fails; it’s not that it’s unbelievable — though it is to a certain extent — it’s that there is really no chemistry between Andrea and either of the men she falls for. Add it all together and it’s just one too many elements to the story. It’s not that it’s a bad story, or even badly written: it’s neither of those things. There are some parts that flow well, and it’s a good first effort by the author. It’s just that it needed a bit more focus, something to pull it a bit tighter together, perhaps do a bit less with the plot and the characters to make it a truly good book.

But, all that said, it really wasn’t bad at all. And that’s a good thing.

Much Ado About Nothing

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by William Shakespeare
ages: adult
First sentence: “I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

What does one say about this Shakespeare play? Good question.

How about…

It’s got some of the best bantering passages ever written in the dialogue between Beatrice and Benedick. One of my favorites, near the end:

Benedick: And I pray the now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
Beatrice: For them all together, which maintain’d so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
Benedick: Suffer love! a good epithite! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.
Beatrice: In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart, if you spite it for my sake, I will spitie it for yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates.
Benedick: Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.

It’s a silly play, but not nearly as silly as some of Shakespeare’s other plays. Hubby’s always said Shakespeare had about 45 minutes of good material, and then had to write a play around that.

It’s pretty accessible as a play — and for reading a play, it wasn’t half-bad either — I watched a BBC version (I know: I adore the Branagh version, too, but I watched that separate from reading it), and by the end, both M and C were curious about what was going on.

The men in the play are infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. I was yelling at the book/movie at one point. I mean really: Hero’s own father didn’t believe that she was set up??

Don Juan is a thankless character. (Especially when Keanu plays him.) I don’t understand his motivations, and what he does is really low-brow rather than vindictive. A pox on him.

That said, it’s a fun play, an enjoyable play, and one definitely worth reading/seeing. Especially in the summertime.

A Song for Summer

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by Eva Ibbotson
ages: adult
First sentence: “In a way they were born to be aunts.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

There is so much to absolutely love about this book. It’s a World War II story, yes, but it’s so much more than that. It’s lyrical. It’s evocative. It’s earthy and soaring at the same time. It’s a simple, yet poignant, love story.

It’s practically perfect in nearly every way.

Ellen is the product of some very intimidating women. Charlotte (Ellen’s mother), Phyllis and Annie are strong women, suffragettes, unafraid, and they expect grand things from their clever little girl. Except, Ellen grows up adoring her grandfather’s housekeeper, the Austrian Henny, and ends up more interested in cooking and cleaning than philosophy and being clever. She eventually bags going to University altogether, and instead graduates from the Lucy Hatton School of Cookery and heads off to Austria to become the matron at a boarding school there.

This is the story of her summer.

It’s a magical summer: not magical in the sense of magic, or even magical realism; no, it’s just magical in the sense that everything falls into place. Ellen works wonders on the children — each unique in their own way — and the staff — again, unique — in her small, subtle, and infinitely wonderful ways. She weaves her way into their lives and makes everything… better. It’s also a love story, for she meets Marek, the groundsman with a secret. And as the secret unfolds, we are taken on a musical journey that literally soars. Sure, it’s all make-believe, but Ibbotson’s writing is so tactile, you can almost hear the concerts, listening to the music float off the page.

While the war is in the background in part one, it does play more of a role in part two. Thankfully, it’s not as long as part one, even though it covers more time. It’s almost anti-climatic, though part one ends in such a cliffhanger that it feels necessary to finish the tale. And even though the second part is not as strong or as lyrical as part one, it does make the book come full circle, and ends it in a very lovely place.

And, really, you can’t get much better than that.

Sunday Salon: Books and Movies

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So, driving around town a week or so ago, I saw this sign:


And my first reaction was “ARGH!! REALLY??” But then I got to thinking about it… we, for the most part, like our kids (and I hold this to myself, generally speaking) to read the book before they see the movie. That’s how we got C to actually read the Harry Potter series; she saw Goblet of Fire and said (honestly), “Why do I need to read the book now?” So we made her read Order of the Phoenix first before she could see the movie. (She’s now determined to make it through the next two before November so she can see Deathly Hallows in the Theater.) But, I’ve been wondering: is that rule worth it? Is is really that important that one read the book before they see the movie? (Or — brace yourself — even read the book at all?)

See, books and movies are different beasts, and I’m wondering if it’s silly to get so attached to the book and then disappointed in the movie. Sometimes — not always, but sometimes — the movie can do things better than the book. But, either way, is it really important that we experience the book first?

What do you think? Book, movie, both: and which should come first?

Library Loot 2010-21

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It was an odd week for books. I didn’t get any, mostly because no holds came in and I’m trying to exercise restraint (what’s that?) and not check out more books until I actually get through some of the ones that are sitting on my shelf. (I had to turn two back in today because I didn’t get to read them before they were due and I couldn’t renew them because there were holds. Obviously, I’ve checked out too many.) So, with that said, here is what we brought home:

Picture Books:
King Bidgood’s In The Bathtub, by Audrey Wood/Illus. by Don Wood
Piggies, by Audrey Wood/Illus by Don Wood
Weird Parents, by Audrey Wood
The Wing Shop, by Elvira Woodruff/Illus by Stephen Gammell
Over The Moon, by Rachel Vail/Illus. by Scott Nash

Easy Readers:
A Friend for Sam, by Mary Labbatt/Illus by Marison Sarrazin
Sam Gets Lost , by Mary Labatt/Illus. by Marisol Sarrazin
Sam Goes to School , by Mary Labatt/Illus by Marison Sarrazin
A Trip to the Doctor , by Deborah Lock
First Day at Gymnastics, by Anita Ganeri
Dance, Annie, by Dawn Friedman/Illus by Nicole in den Bosch

Non-Fiction:
The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t–and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger, by Daniel Gardner
DNA: The Secret of Life, by James D. Watson
Introduction to Psychology (Collins College Outlines), by Joseph G. Johnson

The roundup is either at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader or A Striped Armchair. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

2010 Challenge #1: Once Upon a Time IV

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So, I managed to finish a challenge this year. It’s about bloody time, too! And so, for the Once Upon a Time Challenge I read:

1. Fantasy: A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner
Timekeeper’s Moon, by Joni Sensel
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman

2. Folklore: I am Morgan le Fay, Nancy Springer

3. Mythology: Radiant Darkness, Emily Whitman

4. Fairy Tale: Princess of Glass, Jessica Day George
The Wide-Awake Princess, E. D. Baker

5. Midsummer Night’s Dream, via Manga Shakespeare

My favorites: A Conspiracy of Kings and Neverwhere. Both excellent. And as always, it was an amazingly fun challenge.

The School of Essential Ingredients

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by Erica Bauermeister
ages: adult
First sentence: “Lillian loved best the moment before she turned on the lights.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

The food book — whether it be a novel or a memoir (or whatever other category that food books falls into — can be a truly wonderful experience. If you get a writer that is evocative enough, descriptive enough, then you can be transported away to another place, another time, and delight in the feast for the senses. It’s the best kind of escapism, and when you combine the essence of food with a mystical magical power, there is the possibility of truly getting carried away.

Which is why, I think, I had high hopes for this one. The cover is gorgeous, the title inviting. The story, simple enough to let the food shine. Lillian, is a master chef who never works with recipes, preferring, instead, to find her own combinations, unique to the day, the person, the mood she wants to evoke. She runs a cooking school, teaching these essential principles: smell, savor, enjoy. Each chapter is a profile of a different student in the session, which is both a plus and a minus. Plus, because we get to know each person individually, their histories, their reactions to the different food. Minus, because it detracts from an overarching story. It was more like a series of connected short stories, and because of that, I felt unfulfilled when the story was over. It was kind of like The Jane Austen Book Club, in that way; except, I think that book handled the balance between the individual stories and an overarching plot better. I did come to like some of of the characters — the new mother Claire, or the Italian Antonia, or the geeky Ian — but 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.

But, all that would have been forgiven if the food had been worth it. And sometimes it was. Sometimes, like in the spaghetti chapter, I could almost smell the food, longing to taste it and savor the experience. Other times, like the white cake chapter, I felt like the person’s story overwhelmed the food, and I came away wanting more. More savoring, more magic, more experience. More food. There can never be enough food.

But then, sometimes even the best food can leave one unsatisfied.

Princess of Glass

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by Jessica Day George
ages: 11+
First sentence: “‘Perfect,’, the Corley said, lips stretched wide in a smile.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.

Ah, fairy tale adaptations. Round whatever. In one corner: Cinderella. In the other corner: Jessica Day George’s newest. And how does the new book hold up against the original? Surprisingly, quite well.

It helps, I think, that this is a sequel, of sorts, to Princess of the Midnight Ball. Our main character is Princess Poppy, one of the sisters forced to dance through the night for the evil King Under Stone. In the aftermath of that, the various countries relations are falling apart, and Poppy’s father and King Rupert of Briton devise an exchange program. Poppy is sent to Breton, but not to stay in the castle. Instead Rupert invites Prince Christian of Danelaw to stay in the castle. And, then becomes obsessed about getting him married off, preferably to a Breton.

Poppy is a delightful character: not your typical princess (it’s best when they’re not, you know): she prefers to play cards and talk rather than dance, for obvious reasons. It makes going to balls uncomfortable, so she doesn’t have much opportunity to meet people. But meet Christian she does, and they fall into a nice, happy, casual relationship.

Enter Ellen. She was once nobility, but then her father got in over his head with gambling debts, her mother died, and then her father sold off everything and died himself. Left alone, she was force into being a maid in the house Poppy’s staying at. Which she was absolutely horrible at. Then The Corley contacted her, told her she was Ellen’s godmother, and offered to make her wishes come true. This is where the story takes some interesting twists; instead of wicked stepsisters, the readers dislike the Cinderella figure, especially as Ellen goes to the balls, upstaging both Poppy and her cousin Marianne. The only problem, I think, is that as Ellen goes in, under enchantment, to steal and get Christian to marry her, there isn’t much reason to not let her. Sure, Poppy and Christian are friends, but there’s not enough of an attachment to make the reader terribly worried.

On the other hand, one of the more interesting parts is watching Poppy — with the aid of some family friends — unravel The Corley’s enchantment, while finally coming to terms with the after-affects of her own. She’s singularly determined to make it work, and while the ending is a bit rushed, it does work.

Which is to say, this is one fairy tale adaptation that does its job quite well.