The Truth Commission

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by Susan Juby
First sentence: “First let me say that this will not be an easy tale to tell, so I’ll warm up with an author’s note.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There’s some discussion of rape and bullying and a character doing drugs, but there’s no swearing, etc. It’s currently in the Teen section (grades 9-12), but I’d give it to a 7th or 8th grader.

This is going to be quick since I need to head to work. The basic story: Normandy Pale (she’s a girl) goes to an elite art school on an island off the coast of British Columbia. Her claim to fame? Her older sister immortalized a very awful version of their family in a cult popular graphic novel.

Normandy has never been happy with this, but when her sister shows back up into their lives (having suddenly left a prestigious art college in California), she’s really not happy. Add to that her friends Neil and Dusk (her name is really Dawn, but her personality is more Dusk-like) deciding that what they need to do is elicit Truth from people who aren’t fully honest with themselves, Normandy’s a bit of a mess.

Told as a work of “creative non-fiction” (complete with footnotes), this is really a delightful read. Juby’s exploring things like perception and truth, and whether or not it’s good to be honest with each other and with ourselves. It has a messy ending (being “true to life”), and some bumps along the way (the parents were particularly milquetoast) but in the end, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

48 HBC Check-in

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I’m probably going to read a bit more tonight, but since I’m not putting up another review for the book I just finished (a reread of Batman: the Dark Knight Returns for my graphic novel book group), I thought I’d check in.

I got about 4 1/2 hours of reading done in between everything else today, Which isn’t great, but isn’t too shabby, either.

Then again: we went and saw Inside Out today. It was fantastic. And then we had a crisis we had to take care of. And I’m single parenting for the weekend. So, all things considered: an okay start.

If you’re participating, how are you doing?

The Marvels

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by Brian Selznick
First sentence (which comes about 400 pages in): “Joseph was lost.”
Support your local bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: September 15, 2015
Content: It’s a huge book, which will be daunting. But 2/3 of it is pictures. And the text section may be a big confusing for younger readers. There is some smoking by adults, but other than that, there’s nothing that would stop me from giving this to a precocious 9- or 10-year-old. It will be in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

I don’t usually like to write about books months before they come out. But, since this is the first one I finished for the 48 hour book challenge, I figured it was okay.

I’m also going to be coy and not tell you too much about the book. I knew very little about it going in, and I think that’s the best way to experience it.

That said, I liked this one nearly as much as Hugo. It’s about the theater and family and truth in storytelling. Selznick’s art is gorgeous, as always, and even though the text section starts out a bit confusing, stick with it. It’s completely worth it at the end. Oh: and read the afterword. It makes everything that much better.

There’s really not much else to say, except: I can’t wait to share it with everyone else.

Deadly Design

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by Debra Dockter
First sentence: “I was five years old when I found out that my older brother wasn’t just my brother.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy downloaded from Edelweiss.
Content: There was a LOT of swearing in this (including quite a few f-bombs) plus some off-screen sex. That puts this squarely in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

I didn’t quite know what to expect out of this one, when I first picked it up. It’s billed as a sci-fi thriller, but I don’t quite think that fits. It’s not really futuristic, though it is dealing with gene splicing and genetic manipulation. And it wasn’t really thriller-y, except for a bit near the end. So, I came to think of it more as a medical drama, and on that level it worked for me.

Kyle McAdams is the younger son of a couple who had problems conceiving and bearing children. The one they did have died fairly young. So, they went to a doctor who promised them that he could “create” healthy children for them: one egg, one sperm, some genetic manipulation and they’ll have a healthy kid. Except, in the petri dish, the egg splt, and suddenly they had two children. They chose to have one at a time, and so Connor was born two years before Kyle. The catch: they were identical, pretty much in every way.

So, Kyle spent most of his life (in small-town Kansas, outside of Wichita. Yes, the author is local(ish).) in the shadow of his older, perfect brother. Connor was into sports, the Valedictorian, had the perfect girlfriend. Kyle was… not. Even so, when Connor drops dead right before his 18th birthday, Kyle is shaken: they share the same genes, does this mean he’ll die, as well?

When Kyle starts going down the rabbit hole of his origin, what he finds out gets creepier and creepier. He and his brother aren’t the only genetically modified humans out there, and they all seem do die right before their 18th birthday. The question is: why?

I’ll be up front: Kyle is a bit of a moody jerk. (A bit is an understatement.) That makes it hard to connect with him. And so, what kept me reading at the beginning was the novelty factor: I love a good Kansas book that gets Kansas right, as opposed to being just a “nowhere” place. I loved that she got the feel of small town right. Or the visits they made to Wichita. Or the weather. It was lovely. And I loved her ruthlessness: she was killing people off right and left in the first third of the book. It’s always refreshing to have an author write like that.

It also helped that Kyle became less sulky and annoying as the book went on. I began to care about his plight, though I never really felt a sense of urgency about his death. I don’t know why that was; Dockter showed herself willing to kill everyone off, and they told me that Kyle was going to die. Therefore, there should have been tension, but I just didn’t feel it. I came to care about the people Kyle interacted with, and when the twist happened, I was pretty shocked. (No, I didn’t see it coming; then again, I never do.)

That said, I do have one major complaint: Kyle didn’t DO much of anything. He went to doctors who told him stuff, and people helped him, and doctors solved his problems (mostly). But he was more a reactor than an actor in his life. I wanted Kyle to be brilliant and find a solution to save his life, but no. Mostly he had other people do the work while he waited around for them.

But, that said, I did enjoy the science and the drama of it. It’s a solid debut novel and I am interested to see what Dockter writes next.

The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak

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by Brian Katcher
First sentence: “Zak!”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some swearing, and one (brief) naked scene (which was alluded to), as well as passing references to drug use and drinking. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

I can sum up this book in one sentence: Hermione and Michael Cera spend a crazy action-filled night at Seattle ComicCon and fall strongly in like.

It sounds simplistic, and like I didn’t care for the book, neither of which is true. The book may not be tackling the deepest subjects ever, but it’s not all fluff. And I found myself — in spite of the improbable situations that Ana and Zak found themselves in — thoroughly enjoying their adventure.

Ana is the daughter of super strict parents. Seriously: she believes that she makes one mistake — like her older sister, Nicole, did — and she’s kicked out of the house. So, she does everything right, from following her parents’ (insane) rules to letting them choose her college for her.

Zak’s father died a few years back and his mother recently remarried a guy Zak — uber geek extraordinaire — has nothing in common with. So, he spends his time being the slacker, failing health (by turning in a paper copied from Wikepedia, hyperlinks and everything. Who does that?), and having no desire to even go to college when he graduates in the spring.

They come together one fateful night, when the health teacher (who also happens to be the quiz bowl coach), um, encourages Zak to come to a tournament (by telling him she’ll waive his plagiarized paper and allow him to pass the class) instead of going to his favorite con, Washingcon, that happens to be in Seattle the same weekend as the tournament. Ana is loathe to have him on her team, especially since her first impression of him was terrible. Zak is loathe to be on the team, mostly because he finds Ana rigid and cold and because he’d much rather be AT the con rather than just near it. So, of course, they spend the entire night together at the con, looking for Ana’s younger brother who snuck out to attend.

The con itself was my favorite part (good thing it was most of the book); having never been to one before (shock! It’s on my bucket list, if only to people watch), I thoroughly enjoyed the con atmosphere Katcher painted. I don’t know if it was realistic; there were bullies and gay weddings and gaming tournaments and singing and Zak being some sort of geek god, but I ate it up. If that’s what a con is, then heck yeah, I want to go.

No, it wasn’t perfect: the ending took a turn for the weird when they ran into trouble with a drug runner, and the confrontation with Ana’s mom (when it came out that they were lying about where they were) was pretty unsatisfying (especially since I has just spent the whole book hating her). But, for the most part, it was a thoroughly enjoyable geeky adventure.

And you really can’t ask for much more than that.

State of the TBR Pile: June 2015

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A couple of items of business first: 1) Pam at Mother Reader is doing her 48 hour Book Challenge again this year. It starts THIS coming Friday and runs through Sunday. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to participate, mostly since I’m going to be single-mom-ing this week. I may be able to get some in. If YOU can, however, I highly recommend it. It’s a blast! (And a good way to knock down the TBR pile…)

2) KidlitCon Registration is OPEN! Woot! (I haven’t registered yet; the early bird registration is good through August 24th, though, so I have some time.) If you haven’t had the chance to go to this Con yet, you should. It’s the best. (Granted, it’s really the only con I go to, so I’m kinda biased.)

My TBR Pile is more out of control than usual. (No surprise.) In fact, this is what it looks like:

The small stack on the left is what I’m actually reading right now. The books on the right are ones I’m looking at, considering for a work initiative thingy we’ve been doing. I need a YA book for July, and nothing’s grabbing me. The graphic novels on the right are ones for my book group (which no one showed up to last time. Sadness.)

And the big stack in the back? That’s the pile I actually try to choose from when I need a new book to read:

Trouble is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromley (Publisher rep recommendation)
Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson (Because I liked the Fire and Thorns trilogy)
The Wand and Sea by Claire Caterer (An author event coming up)
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (People at work are raving about this one)
Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly (It looked cute)
Lois Lane: Fallout by Gwenda Bond (Been getting some good buzz)
How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner (Publisher rep recommendation)
Husky by J. E. Sayre (Publisher rep recommendation)
Spelled by Betsy Schow (Because it’s Wizard of Oz and looks fun)
The Cage by Megan Shepherd
Truth Commission by Susan Juby
Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles

What’s on your TBR pile?

Magonia

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by Maria Dahvana Headley
First sentence: “I breathe in.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s a bunch of swearing, including several f-bombs. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) but I wouldn’t be adverse to giving it to an 8th grader as long as they knew about the language going in.

Aza Ray has spent the nearly sixteen years of her life struggling to breathe. It’s a miracle she’s even lived this long, since she’s got a weird disease (named after her, unfortunately) that basically renders her allergic to air. She’s managed okay, with the help of her family, and her BFF, Jason. But, now, on the eve of her 16th birthday, things are getting weird. Jason maybe wants to be more than BFFs. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. And weirdest of all? She’s seeing ships in the sky.

There are spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned. Because, for better or for worse, this is about to get REALLY trippy.

See: Aza Ray is seeing ships in the sky because there’s a country of bird people up there, called Magonia. And Aza is one of them. (Which is, duh, why she’s having trouble breathing regular earth air.) She was kidnapped as a baby and placed in a human home; whether it’s to punish her mother (according to her mother) or to save her (according to the bird-person who kidnapped her) remains to be seen. It’s really because Aza has this super-singing power that will either save Magonia or destroy the world. Or both. The problem is that she just can’t give up her human life (even though she DIED), and she just can’t quite kill off the humans.

I didn’t really know what to expect going into this, except that there’s a bit quote from Neil Gaiman on the cover and that everyone (at least on Edelweiss) is loving it. I completely — pun intended — missed the boat on this one. Seriously. I thought the premise was at best a drug-induced fantasy and at worst stupid. I thought the conversation was trying to hard to be John Green-esque and it sounded forced. I thought the plot was lame, even though it wrapped up nicely, and that the romance between Jason and Aza was forced. And even though I love fantasy, this just was NOT my thing.

But, as I said: it’s getting tons of love, so that may just be me not getting it.

Avengers: Rage of Ultron

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by Rick Remender, Jerome Opena, Pepe Larraz, Mark Morales
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s geared toward adults, but I could see a teen who was interested in the Avengers being okay with reading this. It’s in the Graphic Novel section of the bookstore.

I am running a Graphic Novel book group for teens (really, for whomever comes) this summer, and I wanted a Marvel Avengers one to start the group off (because of the movie). I did a lot of asking and digging to figure out if there was a stand-alone that those who aren’t into the universe (read: me) and who have only seen the movies (again: me) could understand. In the end, I settled on this one.

And on many levels I was right: it was a stand-alone (mostly; the ending was a bit ambiguous) and it gave me enough information to understand the story on its own terms, even if I didn’t know how it fit into the larger Marvel universe.

But: these are not your movie Avengers. And that was the biggest hurdle for me.

It’s a similar story to Age of Ultron: a robot was created by Hank Pym, and then when homicidal, deciding that humanity was worthless and needed to be exterminated. One of my favorite panels in this GN was the opening one: a “voice over” (what does one call it when it’s in book form?) of Ultron declaring humanity worthless while Captain America rushes around saving people from Ultron’s destruction. It’s intense and nicely done.

The Avengers beat Ultron, of course, and send him out into space. Then the story fast-forwards to sometime in the future, where Ultron has taken over the moon of Titan, enslaving the people there, and Starfox (Hubby had to explain about the Titans; good thing I have him around) comes back to a new group of Avengers, who are arguing about whether or not Artificial Intelligence counts as “life”. Some, like The Vision, argue that it is; that turning them “off” is tantamount to killing them. But AI like Ultron prove Pym’s point: they can’t be trusted. (I actually really liked the whole discussion of artificial intelligence and found it fascinating.) Ultron follows Starfox back and starts a big fight, one that eventually consumes all of the Avengers.

What I found most interesting were the underlying themes running through the GN: should AI be considered alive and be granted the same rights? To what point should the creator be responsible if the AI goes, well, crazy? I found it interesting that Pym called Ultron his “son” and felt, ultimately, responsible for Ultron’s actions, though I think he took it a bit too far.

The art was fantastic, with strong lines and bold colors. And there were some panels — the one I’ve mentioned at the beginning as well as one near the end of the book — that were simply amazing.

I don’t know if this is going to catapult me into reading other Avengers (or Marvel, aside from Ms. Marvel) GNs, but I really did enjoy reading this one.

Bone Gap

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by Laura Ruby
First sentence: “The people of Bone Gap called Finn a lot of things, but none of them was his name.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some intense situations, some creepiness, and some on-screen, tasteful sex. It’s also pretty mature in its themes. For those reasons, it’s in the Teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore.

Bone Gap is one of those places that everyone knows everyone else’s business and opinions once formed aren’t so easily changed. So, everyone knows that the Rudes are hopeless and mean. That Charlie Valentine is just plain weird. And that Priscilaa — who insists upon being called Petey — is homely. And that Sam and Finn are okay without their mom, who ran off, but they could be better. And that the strange newcomer, Roza, is the most beautiful girl ever.

They also know that Finn’s not the most reliable person; he’s kind of spacey, like his mom, and so when he says some guy in a black SUV took Roza, no one believes him. They chalk it up to “women are always leaving those boys”. They assume that Roza wants to go. But Finn? Finn knows different. So, he sets about trying to find Roza, not because he loves her but because his brother does and his brother can’t quite bring himself to find her. Little does Finn know that looking for Roza will change everything.

I have been sitting here, staring at the screen, trying to figure out what to say about this book. It’s not that I didn’t like it; I did. But I didn’t love it like I felt I should.

My favorite part?  The women. I loved them. I loved Roza and her desire to be Seen for herself and not for her beauty. I loved Petey and her fierceness. I wished there were more women to love, because Ruby knows how to write them whole and complex, people rather than stereotypes.  I liked that they saved themselves, even though the men weren’t worthless louts or even helpless. It was something that was just Done, that they rose up and just did that. They were my kind of women. I also loved the idea that what we assume about other isn’t always the Truth. That there’s more to people than what we see.

But aside from that, I didn’t really love it. Maybe it was the whole magical realism thing; that genre and I have never really quite gotten along. I think I prefer my magic overt: if there’s going to be something strange going on, then give me magic with Rules. I didn’t understand what was going on until the book was nearly done, and that left me feeling, well, stupid.

So, I didn’t enjoy it as much as others on the interwebs, but I still think it’s a novel worth reading.