The Martian

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by Andy Weir
First sentence: “I’m pretty much f***ed.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: As you can tell from the first sentence, the big content issue with this book is LANGUAGE. If you have problems with that, then this book isn’t for you. It’s in the science fiction section of the bookstore.

Mark Watney was one of six astronauts sent to Mars as part of an exploratory and scientific mission. He’s a botanist and was trained to be the fix-it guy, and he was expecting to spend 31 days on the planet with his crewmates and then head home. Then, six days in, a storm kicked up, and an accident happened and he was considered dead. So, the captain made the decision to leave him. Turns out, though, that he wasn’t dead.

Thus starts 368 pages of the best problem solving novel I’ve ever read. Seriously. Weir throws all sorts of things — most of them being normal, every day sorts of things; there’s not many super extreme situations here — at Watney and has him figure out how to survive. You wouldn’t think it would make for a fascinating, gripping novel but it does. Part of this is because Watney is a hilarious (if foul) narrator. He’s SO snarky, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, which helps diffuse the tension in the novel. It also makes it a very practical book, which makes me wonder how much of it is actually accurate science. (I gather, from the author notes at the end, quite a lot.) I kept turning the pages (and staying up late) wondering just what the heck was going to happen next.

I don’t usually go in for books that have a lot of hype or even a movie coming out, but this one is definitely worth all the buzz surrounding it.

The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

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by Katherine Howe
First sentence: “The cafe in the basement of Tisch, the art and film school at New York University, was redecorated this year.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There’s talk of teenage drinking (and some actual), plus drug use. There’s also one almost-sex scene. It’s in the Teen (grades 9+) section at the bookstore.

There is no way to write this, I think, without spoiling the premise. If you choose to go into this without knowing what it is, then you should probably stop reading now.

Wes is at NYU for the summer film workshop for a reason: he wants to transfer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to NYU because Madison is, well, small. Constricting. The Same. He needs something different, and he Knows he can find it in New York City. (Well, can’t we all?) He’s out helping one of his friends, Tyler, film an art film at a seance when his life really changes: he meets Annie and Maddie. They’re edgy, they’re different, they are most definitely not from Wisconsin. And as Annie pulls Wes into her story (and he gets more tangled up with Maddie), he discovers that maybe the life-changing event he thought New York would offer him isn’t going to be in film school.

I’m going to say it, even though Howe danced around it: this is a ghost story. And, as such, it’s quite good. I liked not knowing that Annie was a ghost for a while — it took the whole first section for me to figure it out, though there’s a pretty big clue at the end of the prologue. I liked Wes’s discovering of her story, and how Annie flitted back and forth in time. I liked Howe’s historical detail; it’s most definitely something she excels at. And I thought the love triangle-ish thing between Wes, Annie, and Maddie was unique as well.

The only thing that really bothered me was that Howe refused to call a spade a spade. She never, once, admitted, in words, that Annie was a Ghost. She was a Rip Van Winkle. Every time it came up, they dodged the bullet. It got old. Just say she’s a ghost, please.

But, other than that, it was an intriguing weaving between past and present, and a unique way to look at ghost stories.

First Sunday Daughter Reviews: October 2015

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I got distracted this morning and forgot to put this up partially because Hubby was gone and I didn’t sleep well and partially because I was busy making cinnamon rolls. Because that’s what you do when your husband is gone.

I did eventually remember… better late than never, right?

Also: it’s October! Which means Cybils time. I’m hoping to hold my own on the Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category. I think if I read half the books, I’ll be doing good. BUT, we need your nominations!  You don’t have to be a blogger to nominate. You just have to have read a book that was published in the past year (from October 16, 2014 to October 15, 2015). Please take 15 minutes and give us some good books to read!

Onto the kids… K and Hubby started reading this:

Which makes my heart happy. K loves Batty (I knew she would) and even Hubby’s enjoying the story line.

A picked up this on a whim (I think M recommended it to her ages ago):

She loved it. She kept saying it was really hard to explain to all her friends how INTENSE it was. It seems I’ve got another Shannon Hale fan in the house.

I threw this at E

and she says it’s really good so far. Reminds her of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

And C is inbetween books because of being in the school musical (which is FAME this year. And if you didn’t sing “I’m gonna live forever” I will be sad). But she’s really looking forward to the poetry unit in her language arts class. They started with this slam poem, which she really thought was intriguing.

What are you reading?

Honor Girl

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by Maggie Thrash
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s about a half-dozen f-bombs scattered throughout the book. It’s in the teen graphic novel section of the bookstore.

It’s the summer of 2000, and Maggie is 15. She’s been going to the same summer camp in Kentucky — Camp Bellflower — since she was little, the same camp her mother and grandmother both went to. There was a lot of tradition in the camp, including that of Honor Girl: the one senior camper that was supposed to embody all the Tradition of the camp.

There are very few books, I think, that truly capture what a 15-year-old girl is really like, in all her angst and insecurity. And Thrash’s graphic memoir hits the nail on the head. It’s spot-on. From the drama between her and another girl over who will get their shooting D.E. (a mark of excellence) first to the rumors that fly around the camp about anyone and everyone. But, for Maggie, her summer is wrapped up in a crush she has on one of the counselors, Erin. Does she like Maggie back? Is Maggie even supposed to like one of the counselors? What does it all mean?

The answer is, ultimately and honestly, that she doesn’t know. There is no grand Coming Out moment. There are some moments when I wanted to smack those running the camp, when they discriminated against Maggie for exploring who she is. But, mostly, it was just one slice of a moment in time, when a girl fell in love and didn’t really know what to do about that. And that was something I found I could relate to.

I’m glad Thrash decided that her story needed to be told.

September 2015 Wrap-Up

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I honestly forgot that today is the end of September. Seriously. No idea what day it is, beyond the day of the week.

Except that tomorrow is the Official Start of Cybils Season! Which means, I really should be keeping track of the days. This year, I’m back on round one of Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, which makes me happy. It seems that our panel is full of very intelligent, chatty people, which also makes me happy.

I’m also hoping for (another) bout of insomnia tonight, so I can be up when the nomination form goes live and can get my favorites in right away. If I don’t, it won’t happen until I’m off work, and by then it might be too late. But then, I’m obsessive that way….

My favorite this month? Not an EMGSF book (though this may be the last month for that), but rather this:

Walk on Earth a Stranger

So good.

As for the rest:

Middle Grade

The Blackthorn Key
Crenshaw
Full Cicada Moon
Switch
The Thing About Jellyfish

Adult Fiction

How To Be Both (audio book)
My Brilliant Friend (audio book)
A Room With a View
Siddhartha

YA:

Husky 
Zeroes

What was your favorite this month?

Audiobook: How to Be Both

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by Ali Smith
Read by John Banks
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s probably six or so f-bombs spread through the whole book. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

I knew very little about this book before picking it up, only that it made for an excellent book group discussion in one of the book groups at the store, and that a couple people on staff really loved it. It was enough for me to use my last audiobooks.com credit to get the audio. The other thing I knew was that this book is two novellas in one, and that half the books printed have one first, and the other half are reversed. You don’t know, previous to picking it up, whose story you will get first.

The two stories are interconnected looks at art and perception. One is contemporary, the story of a mother-daughter relationship. The other is a stream-of-consciousness from the perspective of an Italian Renaissance painter in the 1400s. I really don’t want to say much more than that, except I read it Camera-Eyes, and I thoroughly enjoyed the way the two stories weaved together. It gave me much to think about.

Also, once I got used to the narrator (and the book), I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this one. I enjoyed his style, and that he didn’t try to do falsetto female voices. Everything was pretty matter-of-fact, which took a bit to fall into the groove with, but once I did, was quite lovely.

An excellent read.

Zeroes

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by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, Deborah Biancotti
First sentence: “More coffee?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC piles at my place of employment.
Content: There’s some talk of drug use (none of it by teens), a smattering of mild swearing, and one (unnecessary, misplaced, and kind of glaring) f-bomb.

Who are the Zeroes?

They are six teenagers, all born in the year 2000, who have discovered, over the years that they have extra-ordinary powers. Bellwether can charm a crowd of people into believing whatever he wants them to. Crash is bothered by electronics, and she can make entire systems, well, crash. Flicker is blind, and yet she can see through every one else’s eyes. Anon isn’t invisible, but he is easily forgettable; his parents once forgot that he was deathly ill and left him (to die) in the hospital. Scam has this voice inside him that can talk anyone into anything he wants, which is what gets all the Zeroes into trouble.

With Mob, who can control a crowd’s mood, and her father, who is in deep with the Russian mob.

The question is: will the Zeroes be able to help them? Or are they just going to make things… worse?

It’s kind of hard to juggle multiple points of view in a book, and in this one they tackle six of them. Some of them — Anon, Flicker, Scam, and Mob come out with the best story arcs in the book — are really well developed. Others — Bellwether and Crash — aren’t so much. But, for the most part, the flipping between people helped push the story forward, and I found that I didn’t mind seeing the action from different perspectives.

And the story was pretty seamless, considering there were three authors writing. I was worried that it would be choppy, but whatever they did — editing, lots and lots of rewriting — worked.

It’s definitely a ton of fun.

Walk on Earth a Stranger

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by Rae Carson
First sentence: “I hear the deer before I see him, though he makes less noise than a squirrel — the gentle crunch of snow, a snapping twig, the soft whuff as he roots around for dead grass.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy picked up at Children’s Institute and signed by the author (who I fangirled over).
Content: There’s some violence, including a few deaths, and some talk about sex (but none actual). It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Leah Westfall has a talent for finding gold. Well, maybe more than a talent: she can magically sense gold out in the wilderness. But, in northern Georgia in 1849, gold is getting pretty scarce. Even so, she and her parents get by. She’s fairly content. Then, her parents are brutally murdered by a man wants to control her “talent”, so she disguises herself as a man, runs away and head for the place where gold is most plentiful: California.

That’s basically the premise, as this book is primarily concerned with Leah’s — Lee’s — journey getting to California. It’s full of action and suspense, but it’s ordinary action and suspense. Robbers, rough rivers, threats from the known and unknown. It doesn’t seem like much, but it kept me turning pages.

This book deviates from Carson’s other works in that it’s more of a historical fiction piece and less of a magical one. Sure, Lee has magical abilities. But (so far), that’s the only magic. The rest of it, from the inherent sexism and racism to the trials they face while crossing the plains is historical. Even though I like Carson’s magic, I think I enjoyed this one more because the magic was so understated. It did help Lee out, on occasion. But for the most part, she was making her own way on her own terms. Which was awesome.

The other thing is that this is the first of a projected trilogy, but I have no idea where Carson is heading. Sure, the Big Bad isn’t taken care of, but he wasn’t a real threat in this novel either. I was actually content with the way this one ended: Lee survived the journey, she got to California, she can live happily ever after. However, I will follow Carson down whatever road she wants to take, and I wouldn’t mind reading more of Lee’s story at all.

Crenshaw

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by Karherine Applegate
First sentence: “I noticed several weird things about the surfboarding cat.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There’s some difficult things for the younger set to handle, but Applegate handles them at an age-appropriate level. There’s larger print, a lot of white space, and illustrations as well. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Jackson has had a bumpy life. His parents are musicians, which isn’t the most stable job, and his dad has MS. They’ve managed okay, mostly; though there was the one time when they were living in their van for a few months. It was during this time that Jackson’s imaginary friend, a huge cat named Crenshaw, showed up.

For the past few years, though, they’ve been pretty stable. Except things are going downhill again. How does Jackson know? Crenshaw has showed up again.

The question is: what can Jackson do about the piling bills, and the growing sense of helplessness that he feels. The answer may lie with Crenshaw.

I wanted to love this one. I really did. I adored The One and Only Ivan, loved Applegate’s simplicity in relating a story. But this one kind of fell flat. It wasn’t Jackson’s story: I feel that his story, the one of good people who just can’t make ends meet, is one that needs to be told. But I never could quite figure out what Crenshaw was doing there. Or why he was necessary. To add a bit of levity? To help Jackson? It never quite felt right, felt seamless to me.

That said, Applegate does know how to tell a story; it wasn’t so bad that I didn’t finish it. It just felt a little… off.. to me. Which, in the end, was disappointing.

The Thing About Jellyfish

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by Ali Benjamin
First sentence: “During the first three weeks of seventh grade, I’d learned one thing above all else: A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: September 22, 2015
Content: It’s longish, but there’s nothing questionable for younger kids. It is a bit on the depressing side, so maybe super-sensitive ones wouldn’t want to read. That said, the science is pretty cool. It’ll be in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, though the 6-8th grader would like it as well.

Suzy Swanson knows why Franny Jackson died. Sure, everyone has been telling her that it was “just one of those things” when her former best friend drowned in the ocean, but Suzy is convinced that there Needs to be a Scientific Explanation. And she knows she’s figured out what it is: deadly jellyfish stings. So, Suzy sets out to research that, and even plans a trip to Australia in order to come to terms with her best friends’ death. And Suzy’s guilt about what happened between them before.

There’s a LOT going on in this book: dead friend, grief, friends growing apart, bullying, science, divorce…. it was almost too much for me. I ended up focusing on the science aspect of it, which was really pretty cool. I really liked all the jellyfish facts, and the research that Suzy ended up doing on them. I liked that she had a fantastic science teacher (my girls’ 7th grade science teacher was really pretty awesome too) who inspired kids to want to learn.

But other than that, it was just drama and more Drama. Middle school kids are mean, and Benjamin caught that perfectly. I felt copious amounts of pity for Suzy; such an awkward girl, and no one (hardly) had any compassion for her. No wonder she stopped talking.

That said, while the resolution was done well, I never really wholly enjoyed this book. Too much being made uncomfortable by Suzy’s awkwardness and the bullying of the kids around her.

But then, maybe that was the point?