Summer Book Bingo

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So, the bookstore staff is doing the Books on the Nightstand Summer Book Bingo again this year. I “won” — bragging rights, no actual prizes — last year, so I have Restrictions this year, one of which is no middle grade books. That does make it a bit harder. As does this card:

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There’s so much on there that I don’t usually read. So, instead of a list this week, I’m asking for help! I need suggestions of good books that will fill squares (well, except for debut author, photograph, TV show, gifted to me, and one-word title). Anything and everything will be considered.

Help a reader out?

Ms. Bixby’s Last Day

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msbixbyby John David Anderson
First sentence: “Rebecca Roundabush has cooties.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: It’s about sixth graders, and it’s a little more mature in content for the younger set. That said, it’s in the Middle Grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore.

Everyone has one elementary teacher (I hope) that they remember fondly, that made school a fantastic experience. Mine was my 5th grade teacher, Ms. Westenskow, who cross-country skied to school one winter day, who  made the Revolutionary War interactive, for whom we would all do anything for. I don’t know what’s happened to her over the years (we moved after 5th grade and I started over), but I still remember fifth grade fondly.

Ms. Bixby is that teacher, the one who believes in the potential of each child, the one who reads cool books, the one who is cool, and who makes learning fun. And friends Topher, Steven, and Brand are among those three. So, when Ms. Bixby gets diagnosed with pancreatic cancer it devastates them (and the class, but these guys are our narrators) and after she leaves before the class-planned party, these three boys decide to take Ms. Bixby’s last day to her.

And thus begins our adventure. Skipping school on a Friday, the boys head out to get Ms. Bixby the things they think she needs: a good book, an excellent cheesecake, wine, and McDonald’s french fries. None of them are easy to get, but that’s part of the fun of this book.  It’s one part adventure, one part reminiscing as we get to know Topher, Steve, and Brand through the chapters they narrate, and it’s one part love story to the power of a great educator.

And, yes, I cried. But I felt that the book earned those tears, which is always a good thing.

Excellent.

Audio book: The Last Original Wife

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lastoriginalwifeby Dorothea Benton Frank
Read by: Robin Miles
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s a lot of mild swearing and a couple of f-bombs. And some off-screen sex. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

Leslie Carter is the last original wife among her husband Wesley’s super successful Atlanta set. One was gone to divorce, another to death. And their husbands — Wesley’s friends — are marrying girls half their age. And Lesley has had enough. Actually, the “Barbies” are just a catalyst for what Leslie has been suspecting for a while: Wesley doesn’t really love her, he’s just still married to her because it’s easy and convenient. So, after a brawl in the club dining room between two of the new wives, Leslie up and leaves Wesley. She heads back to her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina and her brother — who, because Wesley’s a homophobe, she hasn’t seen in years — and takes up with an old high school flame, and learns that by discovering her roots, she finds herself again.

So. I wanted to like this one. And I did at first. Wesley was such a hideous character, so sexist and clueless, right from the start that it was easy to hate him and root for Leslie to leave him. But, that said, I got really tired really fast of all the descriptions of what they ate and drank (I really don’t care which wine is good with which meal) and what they wore (so she chose a red dress for the wedding of her best friend’s daughter, so what?). I got really tired of the ending — after Leslie decided to leave Wesley and they went through therapy, the book went on for another few hours. What was the point? (She needed a Happily Ever After with a Good Man). And it was so slut-shaming. I want to read the book from Cornelia’s– she’s the second wife of one of Wesley’s friends — point of view; she was so much a caricature that I couldn’t take her seriously. (And I got so very tired of Leslie’s judgement. She wasn’t perfect either.) I won’t even start on the whole Canadian-izing of the Southern accent. No Southerner says hoose for house (it’s hOWse). (The Canadian/Upper Midwest came out with out and about too…) Drove me nuts. Oh, and then there’s the math: Leslie was turning 60 and she’d been married for 30 years (it was a shotgun wedding, and her oldest was almost 30). HOWEVER, she got pregnant in college and had to drop out before she graduated. WTH? The math doesn’t add up.

The thing it did have going for it? A great sense of place. Frank knows Charleston and knows how to write about the town in a way that made me want to go. I could picture the warm, lazy summer, and the walks down the roads. I almost wanted to see it for myself. And I’ll admit that I didn’t bail on this one; I did want to see Leslie’s story all the way through, even if I did get impatient with it.

So, while it was annoying, it wasn’t awful.

Summer Days and Summer Nights

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summerdaysedited by Stephanie Perkins
First sentence: “There were a lot of stories about Annalee Saperstein an d why she came to Little Spindle, but Gracie’s favorite was the heat wave.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Some stories are sweary (including f-bombs), some have drinking. I don’t think there’s any sex (maybe some references to it, but none actual.) It’s in the teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Short story collections are hard books to talk about. Do you talk about the theme as a whole — ah, swoony summer romance, how wonderful it is? Or do you talk about individual stories, and how they resonate with you? (And how hard it is to actually read short stories? You get going and settled in the story and then it ends. *sigh*)

I did love that the stories by authors I knew absolutely fit them: Libba Bray of course would write a story about a haunted classic movie. Stephanie Perkins’, Nina LaCour’s, and Jennifer Smith’s stories felt like their books. Cassandra Clare’s was kind of lame (it was supernatural, sure, but underdeveloped). Some were definitely better than others: I really like Brandy Colbert’s story as well as Lev Grossman’s.  And surprisingly, Veronica Roth’s story made me tear up.

Is it something I’m going to come back to over and over again? No. But that’s the nature of short stories: they’re there, and they disappear as quickly as they come. But, I did enjoy the time I spent with it.

State of the TBR Pile: June 2016

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I’m off to the ABA Children’s Institute next week, and I’m super excited. A lot of great authors will be there (including MO WILLEMS! *fangirls*) and the sessions sound pretty great (I’m even on a panel)! So this month’s TBR pile is featuring what I’m planning to read on the plane (at least there, if not there and back again; I love flying alone for the uninterrupted reading time!) and at the beach (I extended my stay for a day so I could go to New Smyrna Beach. I’m really looking forward to that!

So, this is what I’m taking:

IMG_7045The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
The Crimson Skew by S. E. Grove
The Secret Keepers by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Adventurer’s Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White
Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley

I’m sure I’ll have a pile of books to read on the way home!

What’s on your TBR Pile?

Unicorn vs. Goblins

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unicornvgoblinsby Dana Simpson
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Phoebe and her Unicorn, Unicorn on a Roll
Content: Simple, fun, colorful, and funny, these are perfect for kids in 3-5th grade. They are also perfect for anyone who likes a little silliness in their life.

I’m still finding this series seriously charming. In this one, Phoebe heads off to a summer music camp, meets Marigold’s sister (Florence Unfortunate Nostrils), makes new friends at school, and helps her frenemy fight goblins. It’s hilarious, sweet, adorable, funny, and OH so much fun.

I love handing this one to kids (it’s seriously funny, kids!) but I also love this one on its own merits. Marigold is hilarious, Phoebe is charming, and I adore her parents and friends. It’s really a modern-day Calvin and Hobbes, and for that I adore this series.

When Friendship Followed Me Home

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whenfriendshipby Paul Griffin
First sentence: “You’d have to be nuts to trust a magician.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: It’s not a difficult read, and there’s nothing objectionable, but the subject matter is probably more serious than your average 8- or 9-year-old will want. That said, if they’re interested, I’d give it to them. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Ben has had a rough life. He was dropped off at a group home when he was a baby, abandoned by his mother. He made friends, but one of them died after an accident. That lead to him meeting a social worker, an older woman whose partner had died, and him being adopted by her. Everything was looking up, especially after he found a stray dog (who ended up being the dog of a woman who had recently become homeless) and met a new friend, Halley, who is in remission from a rare cancer.

If you’ve read ANY middle grade/YA books, you know where this one is headed.

On some level, I wanted to be annoyed with this book. I felt like Griffin employed every single cliche out there: Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Dead Parents, Bad Parents, Cancer Book, it’s all in there. I wanted to be annoyed at it. I was a little frustrated when I realized the direction it was taken. But… I didn’t hate it. I didn’t.

Partially, it’s because it’s self-aware. There’s one quote, early on when Ben and Halley are talking about a story they’re writing, where Halley says, “Well, you have to get rid of [parents] somehow, and that is the most merciful yet expeditious way. Otherwise how do you turn her into an orphan? This is a middle grade story, for like ages ten to fourteen, and the rule is you need an orphan.”

I laughed, and as the book went on, I realized that Griffin knew what he was doing. He was Making Points, but subtly, and I didn’t hate him for his messages. I liked Ben and Halley and Flip the dog, among other characters, so I could get past the messages. And even though I wasn’t Moved by the book, I did enjoy reading the stories. And it was, in fact, written well.

So, I’m torn. I didn’t Love it like I wanted, but I didn’t loathe it either.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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charlieandthechocolatefactoryby Roald Dahl
First sentence: “These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s one swear word (which caught me off guard!), but other than that, it’s okay. It’s pretty basic and is in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read this; I’m not entirely sure when the last time I opened this one. Sure, I know the story, but I don’t know when I’ve interacted with the words last.

It’s weird. And kind of mean, if you think about it. Dahl sets up such an extreme: Charlie is beyond dirt poor and the others are so well off comparatively. Are Violet, Veruca, Augustus, and Mike spoiled, really? Or are they spoiled BECAUSE Charlie is their foil? He was such a crank, and that comes through loud and clear. The kids that aren’t Charlie are constantly in need of smacking, and Willy Wonka is downright rude to Mike Teavee often. Maybe he deserves it, and maybe it’s for humorous effect, but I was unsettled by it.

And what is Dahl trying to achieve here? Is he just telling a fantastical, weird story? Or does he have a POINT? (Maybe Mike Teavee’s song is the point:

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks —
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start — oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts.”)

Did I like it? Some of it, sure. I like that Dahl has a Seussian way with language, not letting non-existent words get in his way. But, I’m not sure I really care for this one (and the movies are both quite… weird) very much at all.

My book group discussion was pretty great. I had nine kids, the youngest was 5 (his mother was reading the books aloud to him; she came with as well) and the oldest were a couple of 10 year old boys who were almost too cool at first, but by the end were participating. We had a fun talk about favorite characters and themes and songs and what kind of candy they’d make (ones that looked like broccoli but tasted like candy!). And we designed our own golden tickets as we taste-tested chocolate.

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It was fun! Next up: Matilda.

First Sunday Daughter Reviews: June 2016

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It’s summer! And I’ve lost all track of time.  Which is why, at 2 p.m., I realized I hadn’t done this month’s First Sunday Daughter Reviews. (It’s a first Sunday? What?)  And thankfully, there is some reading being done around here.

M is devouring everything I give her. Most recently, this:

darkershade

She’s loving it. (Previously read: Scorpio Races and The Golem and the Djinni) It’s nice not having to read for school!

E and C have joined me in the Chaos Walking book group at work and are reading this:

knifeofnever

We’re all really enjoying it. It’s so different.

A has a pile of books that she wants to read, but she went down the Raven Cycle rabbit hole, and is currently on this:

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Raven King is still on back order (WHEN will it be in again? I DON’T KNOW.) and she doesn’t know what she’ll do when she finishes Blue Lily.

And K has taken to going to the library on her own, to pick up books. The latest haul included this:

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Which she already had Hubby read to her, but is enjoying reading on her own.

What are your kids reading?

The Museum of Heartbreak

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museumofheartbreakby Meg Leder
First sentence: “In her junior year of high school, Penelope Madeira Marx, age sixteen going on seventeen, experienced for the first time in her young life the devastating, lonely-making, ass-kicking phenomenon known as heartbreak.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: Lots and lots of swearing. So much that it landed itself in the teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore.

Penelope has been friends with Audrey and Eph for forever. They’ve been a trio, with traditions and in-jokes, and Penelope loves it that way. She loves the consistency, the predictability, the comfort of it all. Except, in their junior year, things aren’t right. Audrey has been going off with another girl, one who is mean to Penelope, and Eph is, well , increasingly distant. Things just aren’t the same.

The best thing about this book (well, aside from Pen and Eph; they’re both fantastic characters) is the format. Every chapter starts with an “artifact” from Pen’s friendship history. A sweatshirt, a piece of paper, a toy. A memory, a connection. It’s very much a book about things falling apart, about changes that are spiraling out of control. The format fit the theme of the book, which I found wonderfully delightful.  (Even the douchebag characters who totally deserved everything.)

In fact, I found the whole thing delightful. A perfect summer read.