The Spectacular Now

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by Tim Tharp
ages: 14+
First sentence: “So, it’s a little before ten a.m. and I’m just starting to get a good buzz going.”
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I want to start this with: “Sutter Keely is an alcoholic.” Because, by saying he’s the “life of the party” (which is true) or “running away from his problems” (which is also true) seems to underscore the gravity of the problem. Sutter drinks — whisky, mostly — all. the. time. He can’t function without alcohol in his system. And it’s going to be his downfall.

Or, at least at the start of the book, that’s what  you think. His “beautiful fat” girlfriend, Cassidy, breaks up with him (no surprise; Sutter can’t keep a girlfriend) and he wakes up with a hangover on some girl’s — Aimee’s, as it turns out — front lawn. Here’s his chance at redemption: he’s going to take this socially awkward girl under his wing and reform her.

Except, he doesn’t. Sure, he shows her acceptance and she shows him love, but in the end there is no Defining Moment (though Tharp came close a couple of times), no Growth, no, well, nothing. And in the moment of reading, I was royally pissed at that. I don’t care if I don’t like a character (Sutter was bordering on destructive, and my mom-instincts — yes, they are kind of like a Spidey-sense — kicked in), I want there to be some sort of growth arc, some sort of conflict and resolution. But for Sutter, he was his own conflict, and there was no resolution. Sitting back after a couple of days, I can see how a firm resolution fits Sutter’s character: he’s all Live In The Now, which I thought was very Dude of him at first, but after a while just seemed a pathetic excuse not to do anything. There’s no growth arc because Sutter is beyond growing, and it’s not just because he lives in the now and embraces the weird. It’s not deep, though, it’s just lame.

And Aimee? While I’m not sure I wanted her to be Strong and Rescue Sutter, I did want something more from her than to roll over (literally sometimes) and let Sutter have his way. Perhaps it’s because she’s emotionally abused, perhaps it’s because she’s shy, but she was beyond pathetic as a character. And that’s just sad.

So,  I’m not quite sure what to think of this one. It had the potential to be brilliant, but only ended up as kind of meh.

The Life of Ty: Penguin Problems

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by Lauren Myracle
ages: 7-9
First sentence: “Today, my big sister Sandra is taking me to school.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I know: I don’t usually do beginning chapter books on here, but I had a book talk last week to do (picture and beginning chapter books) and I thought I’d take a few minutes to read this one so I could talk about it.

First off: will it turn off the boys if I say this is adorable?? Because it IS. So. Freaking. Adorable.

Seven-year-old Ty is in second grade. He’s got two older sisters — one old enough to drive — and a brand-new three-month-old baby sister (and I thought I spread my kids out). He’s been the baby of the family for so long, that he’s not taking to the new addition very well. And that’s putting it mildly.

He does okay at school, though his best friend is in the hospital recovering from a bout of leukemia, and his second best friend is a girl, Lexie, that’s a bit wild. (She brings rubber bands to school because she wants to play “shooting people”. Ty doesn’t want to.) Then they go on a field trip to a local aquarium. Lexie breaks the rules and gets away with it. Ty breaks the rules — he wanders off — and gets in a ton of trouble. It’s not fair.

It does have a happily-ever-after type of ending; Ty does figure things out, with the help of his older sisters, and things do come right in the end. But there’s this moment, when he’s in trouble and his mom is lecturing him that Myracle got spot-on from both the mother and child’s point of view. It was actually the relationship between Ty and his mom that won the book over for me. It was a delightful little story with an absolutely adorable boy as it’s focus.

Worth handing to your first or second grader.

(Not Quite) 10 Questions For Elissa Brent Weissman

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I first encountered Elissa a couple of years ago when I was on the Cybils Middle Grade second round panel. Nerd Camp was on our shortlist, and we ended up picking it as our winner. I’ve had a special place in my heart for it ever since, and as a result, chose it as one of my 3-5th grade book club summer picks. The kids liked it too, and we thought it’d be fun to ask Elissa some questions (they came up with all the questions).

How do you come up with book ideas?
EW: Some ideas spark from things that happen to me or I hear about in real life. I decided to write Nerd Camp, for instance, after teaching at a summer camp for smart kids.  My students were so fun and clever and funny and warm, I just had to try to capture that atmosphere.  The idea for The Short Seller came to me when I discovered the fast-moving, exciting fluctuations in stock prices from one minute to the next.  But none of these experiences translate directly into books; I usually take something real and begin stretching the situation with my imagination, asking myself, “What if…”  Following those “what ifs” leads me to characters, and, from there, to their stories.

In Nerd Camp, why did you choose to write from a boy’s point of view? Was it hard?
EW: I started Nerd Camp with a setting (a summer camp for smart kids) rather than a character, and I attempted to write the book with many different characters—mostly boys, but some girls too— before hitting upon Gabe.  I fell in love with Gabe the moment I started writing about him, and I just knew that his story was the one that was going to work.  Also, there’s just something about a boy yearning to be liked by his new stepbrother that is so endearing and honest, it just makes the central conflict more compelling than if it were a girl wanting the same. It wasn’t too difficult to write from Gabe’s point of view, though perhaps that’s because he’s such a nerd, and I am too.  In Nerd Camp 2.0 (due out May 2014!), I also write from Zack’s perspective, and he’s so cool it was harder to do!

How did you come up with the idea of SCGE? Is it a real place?
EW: SCGE is not a real place, but it’s based on one: the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY).  I taught at CTY for four summers, but only at day sites, so the campers didn’t stay overnight.  (CTY does have sleepaway camps as well, on college campuses.)  Apart from the idea, the type of kids you find there, and to some degree the structure of each day,  SCGE is entirely fictional.  Wouldn’t it be fun if it were real, though?  I’d love to go!

What do you think a NERD is? Do you think everyone has a cool side, too?
EW: What a great question!  I think nerds are people who love to learn.  The stereotype is that nerds are good at school but awkward in social situations, which is why they could be perceived as uncool.  In an environment where it’s cool to not care, nerds, of course, would be ultimately uncool.  But at a place like SCGE, where everyone loves learning and cares a great deal about school, being cool is defined differently.  The key is to embrace what you love and resist the pressure to conform to someone else’s concept of what’s cool.  (Which, let’s admit, is no easy task!)  If we think about nerds as being people who are passionate about something, not only does everyone have a cool side, but even the coolest people have a nerdy side, too.

Tell us about your new book. What’s it about?
EW: The Short Seller is the story of seventh grader Lindy Sachs, who’s stuck at home with mononucleosis and bored, bored, bored—until she discovers she’s got a knack for trading stocks online.  Her parents give her $100 in her own account to  invest as she sees fit, and before long, she’s a stock-trading whiz, doubling her money and then some.  It’s when she decides to start trading with her parents’ money too that she finds herself in some risky business—and some major trouble.  I could tell you more about the plot, but it’s more fun to watch this short book
trailer.

Thanks so much to Elissa for her time, and to my book group kids for coming up with the questions!

The Golem and the Jinni

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by Helene Wecker
ages: adult
First sentence: “The Golem’s life began in the hold of a steamship.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I have sat here for a good while, trying to figure out how to start this off. All I knew about it, going in, was that it was turn-of-the-century New York City immigrants. And that the main characters were a golem — Jewish mysticism — and a jinni — Arabic mythology. Everything else in the story was a mystery left to unfold.

Know what? I loved it that way. I loved not knowing what was going to happen next, discovering connections and twists and turns as they came.

I will tell you this: it’s a fantastic debut novel. Wecker’s writing is lyrical and magical, and she captures the essence of not only her human characters, but the fantastical ones as well. The sturdiness of the Golem and her need to fill desire; the flightiness of the Jinni. One of the things that impressed me (aside from her melding historical details with fantasy) is she managed to have both the Golem and the Jinni grow in their respective ways. And not always together. It’s simultaneously both their separate stories and their intertwining ones.

Which brings me to the end. There are some elements of the book that I wondered how they fit in. Flashback and stories that seemed out of place for much of the book. But the ENDING. Oh, wow. Wecker is a master storyteller that I didn’t even suspect how all the pieces fit together until it was upon me (or maybe I’m just not a careful reader), and the ending blew. me. away. It was amazing and perfect and totally and completely satisfying.

If all adult books were like this, I’d probably read more of them.

Hollow Earth

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by John Barrowman & Carole E. Barrowman
ages: 9+
First sentence: “The book the old monk was illuminating began with these words:
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Twelve-year-old twins Matt and Em Calder don’t really think there’s anything weird about their drawing abilities. Okay, so sometimes they can fall into their pictures and sometimes their pictures come alive, but there’s nothing unusual about that.

Well, of course they’re wrong, and they find out in a big way when something happens at London’s National Gallery and they and their mother find themselves on the run to Scotland, to live with a grandfather they’ve never met.

Once in Scotland, they find they’re a part of this group of artists/magicians called Animare, people who can bring their art to life. It’s not all fun and games though: there are splits in this group, factions who believe that they myth of Hollow Earth — that there’s a portal to the center of the earth where all the demons are — is real, and those who want to stop. Matt and Em find themselves caught in between these feuding adults, not quite sure which side to believe.

At least, I think that’s what the plot is.

See, while I really liked the idea of melding art and magic — Animare actually have to draw things on paper (or the ground, or skin) in order for their magic to work — I’m not sure this was the best story. (An aside: I only picked this up because A raved about it. So, it does have the kid appeal.) Granted, it’s the first in a series, so there’s really just a lot of set-up going on. Even though there’s an adventure on the island off the coast of Scotland full of danger for our fair heroes, it just all felt kind of by-the-numbers. Which means while it isn’t bad, it isn’t brilliant either.

A says the second one in the series isn’t as good, though it left her on a cliffhanger, so she, at least, will keep going in the series. I’m glad I gave it a try, at least.

What I Did for My Birthday

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Iwas going to pack my minivan full of people and drive to Oklahoma City to see this movie:

BUT, a miracle occurred, and we didn’t have to! It came to Wichita. So, I took a whole group of people out to lunch (at a Mexican restaurant, because that’s what you eat before seeing a silly movie set in England):

And then we infiltrated stormed (seriously: we were basically the only ones in the theater. What is it with Wichitans???) went to the theater and had a grand old time! (Seriously: the movie was HILARIOUS, and had everyone — from the teenagers on up — guffawing. A LOT.)

I also bought these books:

Rose Under Fire, because ELIZABETH WEIN. I mean, how could I not??
Deadly Heat (which came out today) (remember my guilty pleasures from last year?)
Dream Thieves (which also came out today) because I had to own it. And because I sent my ARC along to some fellow YAckers so they could gush about it, too.

I call that a good way to celebrate 41 years on this planet.

High Ho, High Ho, Off to read (Middle Grade Speculative Fiction) I go!

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It’s Cybils panel announcement time! And I find myself with a host of other really cool bloggers on the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction (aka Science Fiction/Fantasy) panel. To say I’m excited about reading 120+ MG SF books is like saying that the sky is blue. Or that I like cake.

The other (awesome, amazing, really cool) panelists I’ll be working with are:

Kristen Harvey
The Book Monsters
@bookgoil
Allie Jones
In Bed With Books
@wearedevilcow
Cecelia Larsen
The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia 
@celialarsen
Brandy Painter
Random Musings of a Bibliophile
@brandymuses
Charlotte Taylor
Charlotte‘s Library
@charlotteslib
Stephanie Whalen
Views from the Tesseract  

You can see who made it on the other panels here. Hooray for Cybils season!

State of the TBR Pile: September 2013

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I am going to stop complaining about my TBR pile being out of control. It is what it is. I did, however, mean to not have library books on there, mostly because I REALLY need to get through the ones I already have sitting around my room. I have said, on occasion, that what I really need is to fly somewhere again. Not really because I want to go anywhere, but more because I want the six hours (each way) of uninterrupted (forced) reading time. I could plow through a bunch of books, then. Which would be enormously helpful. It would also help if I could get past the “ooh shiny” reaction I have to new books and stop picking them up…. But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.

So. On my current TBR pile:

Nerd Do Well, by Simon Pegg (because M was showing me some videos about him — his pranks from the Star Trek movie filming — and I remembered that he’d written a book I was interested in reading a while back.)
The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud (One: it’s Jonathan Stroud! Two: it’s getting great buzz.)
Heaven  is Paved with Oreos, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (I saw somewhere that she’d written a new Dairy Queen novel. Sold.)
Texitng the Underworld, by Ellen Booraem (I have to admit that the title turned me off, but Charlotte said it was good. Now I’m curious.)
What We Found in the Sofa and How it Saved the World, by Henry Clark (C said it was trippy. I’m interested.)
Tumble & Fall, by Alexandra Coutts (Our MPS rep at work raved about this one.)
Quintana of Charyn, by Melina Marchetta (I’ve wanted to get to this for awhile, but things got in the way. But M recently devoured it — in one sitting, practically — and RAVED about it.)
The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion (It’s getting good buzz at work.)
Keeper of the Lost Cities: Exile, by Shannon Messenger (I’ll be honest: I wasn’t going to read this one. BUT we’ve got an author event scheduled with her, so I feel like I need to. Who knows? I may like it.)
My Basmati Bat Mitzvah, by Paula Freedman (An Indian/Jewish book? Sounds fascinating.)
Wild Awake, by Hilary T. Smith (If I don’t get to it soon, it’s going to fall off the pile.)
Shadows, by Robin McKinley (From last month. I do need to get to it..)

What’s on your TBR pile?

Treasure Hunters

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by James Patterson, Chris Grabenstein, and Mark Shulman; illustrated by Juliana Neufeld
ages: 8+
First sentence: “Let me tell you about the last time I saw my dad.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.

The Kidd family — parents and children (in order) Tommy, Storm, and twins Bick and Beck — are treasure hunters. Which means, they go around the world looking for, and mostly retrieving, sunken treasure. Think of them as the Indiana Jones of the sea. Then one fateful day, in a Perfect Storm, Dad goes missing. Mom was already missing — kidnapped in Cyprus — which left the four kids on their own. To figure out what their father was doing, and how to get their mom back. All while figuring out whom to trust. And that’s not even mentioning the ninja-surfer-pirates.

On the one hand, this was non-stop action. Starting with the storm, we get pirates, sharks, creepy underworld antiques dealers, more pirates, CIA agents, more pirates, creepy underworld antiques dealers, and the Pirate King. It’s a packed book. (It also comes in at 450 pages, but the type is big and it’s liberally littered with illustrations.) While it was fun enough, sometimes I felt like the three men who wrote this just sent texts back and forth:

JP: “I think there should be pirates.”
CG: “Yeah. But they should be surfer pirates. The kids would really go for that.”
MS: “How about NINJA surfer pirates. THAT would be AWESOME.” (Okay, so MS is about 10 in my imagination.)
JP and CG: “Yeah. Totally rad.”

It was so over the top that it felt hackneyed to me. And on some level it made me sad: this isn’t really a book. (And to be honest, I only picked it up because I loved Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library so much. I tend to avoid Mr. Patterson’s collaborations.) It’s a movie script. It a pile of events one on top of the other that tries to be a book. Sure, there’s a plot (of sorts), and characters (I did kind of like the twins, but the stereotypical “fat, but she’s smart so we don’t mind her weight” Storm grated on me). But it lacked any kind of… elegance that it needed to be a book.

Either that, or I’m just WAY too old for this.

Dream Thieves

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by Maggie Stiefvater
ages: 14+
First sentence: “Theoretically, Blue Sargent was probably going to kill one of these boys.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at work.
Others in the series: The Raven Boys
Release date: September 17, 2013

I’m not quite sure where to start off on this one. Sure, I could always start with the plot, but in some ways, that’s mostly immaterial in this book. Yes, yes, Things Do Happen — it’s mostly Ronan Lynch’s story: about who and what he is, about his family, about how he got to be who he is — but that’s really a side effect to everything else that is going on in the book.

First off: because it’s about Ronan, it’s not a happy, or a light book. No, this is threaded throughout with all sorts of Darkness and Violence. Ronan is not a nice person. No, that’s not true: there are people in this book that are truly Not Nice, and Ronan isn’t one of them. But he’s not a carefree, happy-go-lucky person (well, none of them are), or at least an immediately likable and charismatic one (like Gansey, whom I decided I really liked by the end). No: you have to work to understand Ronan (I won’t say like, because I’m not sure I did), and spending so much time in his head isn’t easy.

But, it is worth it.

This time it’s worth it for the words. For the “furiously red tie” or the “sanguine, pleasant air of either a nun or a pothead” or the “all food eaten in anticipation of a kiss is delicious.” This book is full of gems like this. Stiefvater’s descriptions, casual throw-away lines littering the book, left me literally in awe and aching for more. I couldn’t read this one fast enough (and considering I had to put it down for days while I read a couple others, that was only magnified): it was mesmerizing in its terribleness, in its rawness.

And the end? How it wrapped things up, but gave us a new mystery to solve, while weaving everything that happened in both of these books together? Perfect.

Seriously.