State of the TBR Pile: KidlitCon Edition

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So, I told myself I wouldn’t bring/take home that many books to KidlitCon. Obviously, I didn’t listen to myself. This pile contains ones I brought (some of which I’ve already read) and a bunch which I picked up to bring home. My eyes are definitely bigger than my reading ability.

The Nest, Kenneth Oppel
The Life of Zarf: The Troll Who Cried Wolf by Rob Harrell
The Hollow Boy, Jonathan Stroud
The Curious Tale of the In-Between by Lauren DeStefano
Nerd Camp 2.0 by Elissa Wasserman (bought to have it signed because I forgot my copy of Nerd Camp.)
Cut Both Ways by Carrie Mesrobian
The Temple of Doubt by Anne Levy
Sword and Verse by Kathy MacMillan
The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
To Catch a Cheat by Varian Johnson
Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas
Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash (I bought to have it signed. She’s my new favorite.)
Dragons Beware and Giants Beware by Rafael Rosado and Jorge Aguirre (which I brought so they would sign them for K)

I promise to do a wrap-up post (even though I didn’t really take that many pictures) about the con sometime within the next week (though it might not be until next Sunday). I do want to mention, however, that I (perhaps foolishly) offered to head it up next year, and it’ll be in Wichita. That will definitely be a different KidlitCon experience. (Is it safe to say that I’m intimidated?)

What’s on your TBR pile?

Jinx’s Fire

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by Sage Blackwood
First sentence: “Sticking to the path won’t always take you where you need to go.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Jinx, Jinx’s Magic
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There are some scary moments, but mostly it’s good for the fourth-grade and up crowd. It’s in the middle grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore.

Things aren’t looking good for Jinx and his friends. The Urwald is surrounded by warring armies — one of which is headed up by Jinx’s former friend, Reven. The Bonemaster is up to something, but Jinx doesn’t know what. And Simon is still trapped in goo, and it’s not looking good. The question is: how will Jinx solve everything and keep the Urwald (and the trees) safe, especially when he’s not very good at diplomacy?

Sometimes, an ending comes along that is just. so. perfect. that you have to love it. While it took me a bit to get into this one (being quite a long time since I’d read the other two), once I did, I fell again into loving the world that Blackwood created. I love Jinx and his grumpy demeanor. I love his friends, especially Elfwyn. I love the adventures that Jinx went on and the way Blackwood had him solve the problems he created. I adore the magic and the way Blackwood used it.

But, mostly I loved how Blackwood wrapped everything up, satisfyingly but not so neatly that it was implausible.

This series is definitely worth reading.

 

The Odds of Getting Even

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by Sheila Turnage
First sentence: “Mr. Macon Johnson’s kidnapping trial snatched Tupelo Landing inside out sharp as Miss Rose snaps a pillowcase before she pins it to her wash line.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at the bookstore.
Others in the series: Three Times Lucky, The Ghost of Tupelo Landing
Content: There’s some intense situations, but nothing too scary (and only mildly life-threatening). It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Mo and Dale are back again! I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. (I adore Tupelo Landing and want to live there.)

Dale’s no-good daddy is on trial for kidnapping (and other charges), when he disappears from the jail on the way to the trial. If that’s not bad enough, things start happening — break-ins, vandalism, attempted murder — in Tupelo Landing, and everyone (including Mo) is blaming it on Macon. Dale’s the only one who knows his daddy well enough to think that he’s being framed. And it’s up to him (and Mo and Harm) to figure it all out.

First, I’m glad this is solidly back in realistic mystery territory. No more ghosts, thank you. Secondly: the charm of these books is much less the mystery (I kind of figured it out, though not completely) and much more the, well, charm of the characters. Mo’s delightful. Dale’s sweet. Harm even grew on me. There was much less Miss Lana and the Colonel than I would like, but the kids were so delightful that I really didn’t care.

I am completely infatuated with this series and I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.

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.