Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between

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hellogoodbyeby Jennifer E. Smith
First sentence: “When Aidan  opens the door, Clare rises onto her tiptoes to kiss him, and for a moment, it feels like any other night.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC piles at work.
Content: There’s some illusions to teenage drinking and sex, but it’s all tasteful and way off screen. If there is swearing (and now that I think about it, I’m not sure there is…), it’s all mild. It’s in the YA (grades 6-8) section of the bookstore.

Clare and Aidan have been a couple for the past two years of high school. They’ve been super happy and content in their relationship. But, it’s the night before they leave for college and they aren’t going the same place. Clare is headed to Dartmouth and Aidan for the opposite coast and UCLA. So, they’re going out this last night with one goal in mind (at least Clare’s mind): to break up. It’s a logical decision: they need to go away and be able to experience college fully, to not be constantly wondering if the other is being “faithful”. It makes sense.

Clare’s plan is to recreate memorable moments from their relationship, from where they first met through their first kiss and beyond. Except the evening doesn’t go as planned, and perhaps through the twists and turns that the evening throws at them, they can figure out exactly what to do with their relationship.

I love Smith’s romances. They’re generally sweet and simple, kind of like Baby Bear’s porridge: just right.  This one was a bit more angsty than the others I’ve read, but understandably so. I appreciated that Clare was the “logical” one and that Aidan was the more emotional center in the book; it’s a nice twist to have the girl pushing to break up and the boy wanting to stay together. And the adventures over the course of the night were fun as well. It was an interesting take on relationships as well: usually, books either deal with the falling in love part, or the ending part but I don’t know if I’ve read one where there was a “conscious uncoupling” and Gwyneth Paltrow so eloquently put it. I found that difference to be a nice change.

But while it was all nice and comfy and sweet, that’s really all it was. While it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t anything I totally fell in love with. (Ha!) Still: a good book.

The Key to Extraordinary

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keytoextraordinaryby Natalie Lloyd
First sentence: “It is a known fact that the most extraordinary moments in a person’s life come disguised as ordinary days.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Release date: February 23, 2016
Content: It’s short(ish) and the words aren’t too terribly difficult, but there’s kind of a little romance, so maybe it’s not for the 3rd graders? It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

The women in Emma’s family have had a long history of doing Extraordinary things. They have a dream, which they call their Blue Wildflower dream, and in that dream they are Shown Their Path, the way in which they’ll be extraordinary. At almost 13, Emma’s convinced that in spite of all this, her life won’t be that special. She lives in a smallish town in Tennessee, and while she loves her Grandma Blue and the cafe she runs, where Emma’s older brother is the baker, there really isn’t much else.

Then Emma gets her wildflower dream, and it doesn’t make sense.  Then developers start sniffing around the cafe, wanting to buy it, and suddenly maybe Emma can piece together some lost history and save the cafe while filling her destiny.

I liked Snicker of Magic quite a bit, and I like Southern Quirky (as Ms. Yingling calls it), but this one didn’t work for me.  I’m not sure I can pinpoint why, though. Maybe it’s a bit of a reading slump (I tossed aside about four books partially read before I settled on this one), maybe it’s that I’m a bit under the weather. Either way, Emma and her plight didn’t sit with me. It even had a Nice Moral at the end: follow your dreams and expectations and don’t let the accomplishments of the past make you intimidated (or at least I think that’s the message), but I kind of just shrugged and said, “Meh.”

Which is too bad. I did want to like this one more.

Audiobook: School for Brides

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schoolforbridesby Patrice Kindl
Read by Bianca Amato
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Keeping the Castle
Content: Nothing objectionable, but a working knowledge of Regeny manners is helpful. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Set a year after Keeping the Castle (but you don’t need to read that one first), the Winthrop Hopkins Female Academy has one purpose: to educate young ladies to make smashing matches. The problem, however, is that in Lesser Hoo, Yorkshire, there is exactly one bachelor, who isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of eligible. How are eight young women supposed to find their matches if there isn’t any eligible young men around?

Thus begins the very charming A School for Brides (which was a delight to listen to). Things begin to look up when a young man breaks his leg while in the country and is put up at the school to heal. His friends come calling, and suddenly everything is looking a lot more complicated. Several of the girls are simply delightful (plus the instructor, Miss Quince; I adored her), being that excellent cross between feminist and historical, saucy and authentic. There were so many delightful characters (though sometimes I wished I was reading it so I could keep track of who was who) doing so many delightful things. There were also ones to loathe, so it wasn’t a perfect froth.

As I was reading, I realized it’s a homage to Jane Austen’s work, but it’s also a parody. That feeling kind of increased when I did some looking at how to spell the names and discovered that Miss Foll-ee-ut (which is how the reader was pronouncing it) is spelled Pffolliott. Definitely a send up to the silliness that goes on in historical England. (Leave it to Psmith, anyone?)

Amato was also delightful, capturing the spirit of the book in her narration as well as the essence of each character, which is a trick since there’s so many. It’s definitely a fun read.

State of the TBR Pile: February 2016

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Happy Valentine’s Day, if you celebrate it. More to the point: Happy Cybils Day!! There are an incredible slate of winners this year (including one I nominated!! *happy dance*)! Do, go check them out. And if you haven’t read them, you should. Also, stay tuned: as one of the blog editors, I’m going to try and get interviews with the winners. It should be fun!

As for my TBR pile, it’s changed a little. I’ve looked at the books on my pile and haven’t had any desire to read them, so I’ve tossed a few and thrown a few new ones on. I’m not really in a slump, but I haven’t really felt like reading lately. We’ll see how many of these I actually read.

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Nocturnals: The Mysterious Abductions, by Tracy Hecht
Completely Clementine, by Sarah Pennypacker
Booked, by Kwame Alexander
Wolf Hollow, by Lauren Holk
The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge
Passenger, by Alexanddra Bracken
50 Unbelievable Women, by Saundra Mitchell
Seven Ways We Lie, by Riley Redgate
His Right Hand, by Mette Ivie Harrison
The Passion of Dolssa, by Julie Berry

What are you looking forward to on your TBR list?

Radioactive!

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radioactiveby Winifred Conkling
First sentence: “Their moment had finally arrived.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s some science terms and such in this, but they’re explained pretty well. It’s a bit on a higher grade level, but I think 5th graders and up could handle it.  It’s in the kids’ biography section at the bookstore.

I’m a sucker for biographies highlighting people or things I don’t know much about. And this one definitely fits the bill. Conkling highlights two physicists doing research in the 1920s and 1930s, ones that I didn’t know anything about.

Irene Curie was the daughter of the more-famous Marie, but was a stellar physicist in her own right. Along with her husband, Frederic Joliot, she discovered artificial radiation. This opened up many avenues in the scientific world. And while she got credit, no one (well, not us non-scientists anyway) remember her for this. The other scientist Conkling highlights — and in some ways, the more interesting story — is Leisl Meitner. She, along with several other scientists, discovered nuclear fission. The rub, though, is that because Leisl was considered a Jew in Nazi Germany (her grandparents were Jewish), she had to flee to Sweden. Then her partner (and friend?!), Otto Hahn, completely wrote her out of the research. He said he did this all on his own, mostly because he was afraid of the Nazis.

It’s a fascinating story, and Conkling does a good job of explaining the science (there’s some helpful tables, etc. throughout the book) as well as making both of these fascinating women come to life. There’s a bit about their history, their relationship with the scientific community (which was incredibly sexist, no surprise), as well as a lot on their contributions to the advancement of physics.

It’s fascinating and well worth the read.

The Road to Little Dribbling

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littledribblingby Bill Bryson
First sentence: “One of the things that happens when you get older is that you discover lots of new ways to hurt yourself.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s a bunch (a dozen or so?) of f-bombs scattered throughout, and it’s a bit old-n-cranky for the younger set. But if you’re interested in that sort of thing (plus England), then it’s in the Creative Non-Fiction section of the bookstore.

It’s been 20 years since Notes from a Small Island, and Bryson’s publisher thought it’d be an interesting thing for Bryson to go back and revisit places. Well, he decided not to do that. Partially because he’s not one to do things exactly the same way, and partially because he applied for British citizenship and one of the questions asked what were the two farthest cities in Great Britain, he drew a line down the middle of the country and decided to loosely follow it, visiting places.

It doesn’t sound like much to hang a book on, but this is Bill Bryson after all. It’s been a while since he’s done a travel book, and I was more than happy that he got back to it. I was much more willing to read this one than I was Notes (I didn’t “get it”. I wonder what that means now.) and I thoroughly enjoyed traveling to all these small, out of the way, strange little English places with him.

But what really struck me is that Bryson is a bit of a crank. A lovable, affable, hilarious crank, but a crank nonetheless. He’s one of those people who think that it Used To Be Better back when he was younger, and that the world — or, more particularly, Great Britain — is going to pot. And yet, the affection he has for his adopted country is obvious. He adores Great Britain, not just with all his faults but because of them. In spite of his occasional crankiness (or maybe because of it?) I had a hilarious, fun, and sometimes insightful (his throw-away comments on U. S. gun control in the last chapter are spot-on) time traveling England with him.

First Sunday Daughter Reviews: February 2016

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Ever since we switched to morning church last month (we switch back and forth every year), I’ve found that this post is a bit more challenging to get out. Currently, it’s 6:30 a.m., the house is quiet (except for the dog; did I tell y’all that we got a dog? We did. An adorable, if somewhat not-chill, pointer mix. We love her to death.), and I’m trying to remember everything that the girls read this past month.

We’ll see how I do.

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M has discovered the Arden Shakespeare editions, and has decided that she adores the text notes and that it makes Shakespeare that much more interesting. It makes her SO VERY happy. (As an aside: I really like it when she sends be bookish texts as well. It’s so much fun to hear what she has to say.)

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This one came out a couple weeks ago, and C spent a Saturday afternoon/evening reading it. She stayed up way too late but it was WORTH IT.  She’s a huge fan of Kiera Cass.

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E got this for Christmas, but finally got around to starting it yesterday. It’s such a delightful mix of WEIRD and elegant, that she’s in love. She kept reading me passages and is insisting that I need to read it when she’s done. (I think I might opt for the audio version of this one though.)

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A picked this one up when she lost a different book she was reading. She said it’s NOTHING like what she usually reads (it’s about a cosmetology student and a fashion contest) but she’s super invested and has opinions about the characters and the plot. It’s great to branch out!

9781619632653And K has been reading this with Hubby in preparation for Jessica Day George’s visit this week. I used my powers as Children’s Event Coordinator and sent her to K’s school, which has K over the moon excited. She loves the story, she thinks Celie and the family are great, but her favorite “character” is the castle.

What are your kids reading?

I am Princess X

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iamprincessxby Cherie Priest
First sentence: “Libby Deaton and May Harper invented Princess X in fifth grade, when Libby’s leg was in a cast, and May had a doctor’s note saying she couldn’t run around the track anymore because her asthma would totally kill her.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s a bit intense at times and there is some mild swearing. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Libby died three years ago in a car accident. May knows this. She’s moved on (sort of). But, when she’s back in Seattle the summer before she’s 17, she starts seeing stickers around town. Ones of a princess in a pink dress, red Chucks, and wielding a katana sword. The spitting image of the comic that Libby and May created in fifth grade. At first, it seems like a coincidence: maybe someone got a hold of all the pages Libby left when she died. Or, maybe — just maybe — Libby’s still alive.

After reading the webcomic, May is convinced of the latter. She’s convinced that Libby’s mom was murdered, that Libby was kidnapped, and that she’s the only one who can find Libby. She enlists the help of a recently-graduated computer geek (with a bit of a dark side), Patrick, and together they follow the clues May says are left. The thing is: what started out as an innocent investigation becomes increasingly more dangerous the further they get involved.

Ohmygosh! I don’t know why this took me too long to read this!

Seriously though, people: it’s a tight, interesting thriller, one that kept me guessing along as May and Patrick figure out and follow the clues. It gets intense at times and it definitely kept me turning pages.  THIS is what a good YA mystery is about. No extra lame love story. Cool characters. A fantastic mix of graphic and prose. So, so very good.

Can you tell I liked it?

Audio book: Wild

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wildby Cheryl Strayed
Read by Bernadette Dunne
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Drug use, sex, drinking, yeah: it’s all in here. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

I was wandering around, looking for a new audio book, and stumbled on this one. I figured so many people have raved about it that it couldn’t be terrible. So, I picked it up.

If you’ve been under a rock, it’s Cheryl’s personal story of her redemption, of sorts, after her mother died and her marriage fell apart (due to her infidelities and drug addiction). She decides that what she needs to do is hike the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Washington (actually, Oregon came later, after she discovered that the Sierras were snowed in) alone. She has no experience, she has no idea what’s in store for her. And yet, you have to admire her for going through with it, even when — especially when — the going gets hard.

But I couldn’t get past the “poor me” vibe that I felt was under the whole book. Maybe it’s because Cheryl didn’t narrate her own book and I never really got past that. Or maybe I’m just too judgmental (which I am, unfortunately). But while I really enjoyed the moments when Cheryl was battling against the trail, and mostly succeeding, I didn’t have much patience for Cheryl herself. (Now that I write this, it sounds really judgmental. Maybe it’s just wrong time wrong book?) I was talking to someone who had a similar experience with Eat, Pray, Love (which I really liked). Perhaps we’re more apt to judge women who travel because their lives are broken than those (men?) who just up and leave (I’m looking at you, Bill Bryson) to go experience the world.

I don’t know. I just know that I didn’t connect with this one as much as I hoped it would.

Salt to the Sea

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salttotheseaby Ruta Sepetys
First sentence: “Guilt is a hunter.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There are some disturbing elements — it is the horrors of WWII, after all — including violence and rape, though none of it is graphic. It’s in the Teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore, but I’d give it to an interested 7th- or 8th-grader.

One of the things I really admire about Sepetys is her willingness to tell the untold story. The story that’s been buried or neglected because of the way history has been told. The story that’s difficult to face or bear. She looks at them unflinchingly, and compels us to bear this hard history with her. It’s a difficult thing, but she does it so eloquently we just can’t look away.

This time around she tackles the sinking of the Willhelm Gustloff, a Nazi ship that was carrying 10,000+ refugees that was sunk by the Soviets near the end of the war. We follow four young adults (they range in age from 15 to 21) — Emelia, a pregnant Polish refugee; Florian, a Prussian who’s on the run with a stolen secret; Joana, a Lithuanian nurse who’s been able to repatriate into Germany, and who’s searching for her mother; and Alfred a young Nazi recruit who is a bit… off — as they head toward the ship in the dead of winter. The chapters are short, almost poetic, and they intertwine in compelling ways. It propels you forward, in spite of the horrors (perhaps because of them?). The minor characters — the orphan boy Joana finds, as well as the shoemaker they travel with, among others — are just as fleshed out and real as the main characters. Sepetys didn’t cut corners, and I appreciated that.

It’s exactly what I’ve come to expect from her. And that’s the best thing.