Katy, Charlotte, and I at our panel. Thanks Rosemond.
With Holly, Rosemond, Maria, and Jennifer.
More when I get home.
Audiobook: I am America (And So Can You)
by Stephen Colbert
read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I picked this up on a whim because I needed something short, and I was in the mood for something funny. And, even though I’m not a fan of his show, I had hopes Colbert would be both.
Well. It was short, anyway.
As for the funny, sometimes it was. There were moments — I can’t remember them now, though — when I did chuckle, guffaw, and few when I snorted. But, mostly I had to constantly remind myself that he doesn’t mean any of this. I’m not quite sure if this was a parody of or a commentary on conservative thinking, but either way, I spent a good part of the time thinking “What’s the point?”
If his point was commentary, then sometimes it was brilliant. Sometimes, he went on rants that I thought worked if you heard (in this case) them ironically. And sometimes, I thought that it was a terrific parody of conservative culture. But — perhaps like all good parodists (is that a word?) — it was uneven. Sometimes it worked. Mostly, though (and this is because humor is really subjective), it didn’t work for me. Every time I found myself ticked off or agreeing with something Colbert said, I had to remind myself he doesn’t mean ANY of it. Or if he does, it’s so hard to filter what’s “real” and what isn’t that I just gave up.
I did come to one conclusion, though: give me Jon Stewart and I’m a happy person.
The Neptune Project
by Polly Holyoke
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I wake to an urgent tap at my window.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Nere Hanson (a terrible name, that, as A pointed out) has never understood why she felt more at home in the sea, with the dolphins. Her parents are scientists who study the ocean, but that’s not the whole picture. Nere has problems breathing on land, and it’s just getting worse. Then the government of the Western Collective (roughly some futuristic dictatorship that came out of the US; this is set along the Pacific coast) demands that everyone who lives by the ocean move inland, to help with “food production.” So, Nere’s mom pushes forward her plans, breaking the news to Nere and her friends Robry and Lena that the reason why they struggle to live on land is that they’re genetically altered to survive — like breathe seawater and everything — under the ocean.
I’m going to stop here for a minute. I’ve read books about exploring the ocean as an option for when global warming takes over and turns this planet into one gigantic mass of water, and I’ve read books that deal with genetic mutation of people (and I think I’ve read one that combines the two in some search for Atlantis, now that I think about it), but this one struck me as unique. Holyoke has done her research and this one felt, well, authentic. I appreciated that. I also enjoyed her use of dolphins; they weren’t props, but rather their own characters, which added another interesting layer to the story.
After they make the change, and get away from the Marine Guard (read government thugs), Nere, Robry, and Lena have to figure out how to survive in their new environment. They meet up with another group of kids who have had this change done to them — Nere is resentful for a good part of the book because her mother did this to her, without her consent, and didn’t give her the time to adjust to this. I love Bad Mom Decisions in Middle Grade books — and set out for the rendezvous point. From there, they head north to Vancouver to the colony that Nere’s father is setting up.
Even though it’s a first in a series — I really would love a stand-alone speculative middle grade fiction book sometime — and it’s just an elaborate set-up, Holyoke does a fantastic job creating her world. And I liked the dynamics she created in the group. It wasn’t as middle school-ish as the jacket flap led me to believe, but a genuine portrayal of kids thrown in a new situation and forced to survive. And Holyoke isn’t afraid to kill characters off or have characters betray one another. It was complex, and I enjoyed that.
I only wish I had more of a sense of closure with this one; I’m not sure I’m all excited to read further adventures of Neve and the Neptune Project. But this one was definitely enjoyable.
(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)
Guys Read: Other Worlds
edited by Jon Scieszka
ages: 10+
First sentence: “What would happen if invading warlords from another planet landed on your school’s basketball court?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I have off and on luck with short stories; sometimes I am really entertained by them. Others, not so much. This collection, however, worked for me. Not all of the stories worked equally well, but overall, it was a good collection.
It may have something to do with my fondness for Ray Bradbury stories.
Scieszka was nice enough to include a Bradbury short story that I hadn’t read (or at least don’t remember reading) as the last one in this collection. And it was a joy to read the weird, wonderfulness that was Bradbury. This time it was about a planet where, due to the radiation from the sun, humans only lived for 8 days. And one boy’s determination to make it off the planet. Brilliant, and by far my favorite story.
The others weren’t bad, either. I liked Tom Angleberger’s “Rise of the RoboShoes” (with illustrations), and found “The Klack Bros. Museum,” by KEnneth Oppel to be delightfully creepy. “Plan B,” by Rebecca Stead had a great twist on the end, and both “Bouncing the Grinning Goat,” by Shannon Hale and “A Day in the Life” by Shaun Tan were delightful.
Sure, I think Rick Riordan phoned it in for his short story, but it was still cool to read about a Percy/Grover adventure, since it’d been quite a while since I’d read about those two together. There were some that didn’t work for me — most notably “The Scout” by D. J. MacHale — but I guess that’s a side-effect of a collection of stories by multiple authors. There are some you like; there are some that fall flat.
There’s a little something for everyone. But get it for the Bradbury story.
(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)
The Books of Elsewhere: The Strangers
by Jacqueline West
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Houses are good at keeping secrets.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series:The Shadows, Spellbound, The Second Spy
I’m going to be honest. At this point in the series, if it hadn’t been nominated for the Cybils panel I’m on, I wouldn’t have read it. Because I feel like the series is kind of dragging on. Just how many more times can Olive go up against Annabelle McMartin in order to save the house? How many threads can not be wrapped up by the end of a book? Why can’t they find Morton’s parents? And how completely dense are Olive’s?
In this one, some neighbors show up: a Brilliant Professor married to a Slightly Batty Medium (it’s too bad she wasn’t a Small Medium at Large), and an Incompetent Apprentice. They weasel their way into Olive’s life when her parents get kidnapped on Halloween. The main focus of this one is figuring out where Olive’s parents are and getting them back, while still protecting the house from Nasty Annabelle. As far as that goes, I called who the Bad (or Misguided) Guys were early on, and so it was just a matter of time until Olive caught up to what I already knew.
It’s not that it was a poorly written book — it wasn’t. It’s just that the premise is getting old by book 4, and even the talking cats that were so much fun in book one aren’t making me laugh. And to be totally, completely honest: I skimmed this one, mostly, because I just wasn’t interested in Olive anymore.
(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)
First Sunday Daughter Reviews: November 2013
Fall is upon us in full force, with the trees turning lovely colors (well, as much as they can in Kansas), and schoolwork piling on. Still, the girls manage to find time to squeeze in reading books for pleasure.
C decided that, in anticipation of the movie, she would reread this:
It’s her favorite of the series (“It’s like i, but better because you know what’s going to happen, and it’s not as scary!”) and she plowed through it in just a couple of days. And then she watched the final trailer:
and got even more excited: “They included that!! AWESOME!” Guess what we’ll be doing on November 22? (I think I probably should pick up tickets now, huh?)
A is up to her eyeballs in books. She’s reading The View From Saturday (which she is often confused by), Hoot (for our book group; she likes it and wishes she had more time to read it), and a Christmas book at school (for a book report; I don’t remember which one it is). But a couple days ago, C convinced A to read this one:
and A is hooked. Forget about everything else: THIS is the book she wants to devote her time to. She’s enthralled.
K has gone through the first two Great Brain books with Hubby, and enjoyed them quite a bit. But she decided she wanted a break from that and has gone back to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In addition she and I are reading this:
There’s a lot of difficult words in there for a 7-year-old, but I help her through those, mostly. She does get what’s going on, and she remembers things that I forget. She loves the action, and thinks Rapunzel is pretty cool. In other words: she looks forward to reading with me every night. And a parent can’t ask for anything more than that!
I’ll be in Austin for KidlitCon next weekend (YAY!!). I hope to see a bunch of you there!
A Grimm Conlcusion
by Adam Gidwitz
ages: 11+
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: A Tale Dark and Grimm, In a Glass Grimmly
If you’ve read the other two books, you pretty know what to expect with this one. Some pretty grisly awesome bloody violence, a winding fairy tale-inspired story, with a very snarky narrator. This time, it’s twins Jorinda (YOUR-inda) and Joringle (YOUR-ingle) whose story we follow.
I should say up front that if C’s language arts teacher last year hadn’t been insistent on her students learning some of the more obscure Grimm tales, I wouldn’t have believed that this one was really based on a real fairy tale. But it is, and it’s one of the more, um, gross ones. See, the twins’ stepfather doesn’t like them, and so he kills off Joringle, makes Jorinda feel like it’s her fault, and then cooks Joringle and serves him to his mother. Seriously. Ew.
But, since that one is not enough, Gidwitz smashes it up with the real Cinderella (actually, the narrator’s side notes on the meaning of Cinderella — or, rather Ashputtle — is quite hilarious), Sleeping Beauty, and several tales I don’t even know. It’s all very gruesome, all very weird.
In the middle, however, this one turned… well… odd. Gidwitz went meta on me, and Jorinda and Joringle left the story world, and actually started interacting with the narrator, who turned out to be an elementary school teacher named Adam. He read the characters A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly in order to help them solve their current crisis. Additionally, the narrator/Adam got all moralistic on us. He had Lessons that Needed to Be Taught, and was actually — surprisingly — heavy-handed with them. And, for the first time in this series, I got pulled out of the story. The intrusive narrator was no longer funny and witty, but rather truly intrusive. And it bothered me. I didn’t mind how the story resolved itself; Jorinda and Joringle were actually good Middle Grade Heroes and did what they needed to do to resolve the story happily. But, after the point where they met the narrator, I wasn’t that interested in how the story resolved itself.
Which is too bad. Because, for the most part, this is a really good series. And I do like the way Gidwitz plays with the Grimm tales. I just wish he could have gotten there without bringing the narrator fully into the story.
(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)
October 2013 Wrap Up
Happy Halloween!! And because it’s Halloween (and I’m working today), I give you our jack-o-lanterns:
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| From left: A, K (which I helped with), Hubby, and C |
And my favorite book this month (it was hard to choose) was:
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| Boxers & Saints |
I thought about picking Quintana, since I really did love that one, but I decided I’m ALWAYS picking the YA fantasy, and I really did love Boxers & Saints, too.
Next month will be Middle Grade Speculative Fiction heavy. You’ll have to bear with me. Oh, and I cheated a little this month. I reread two books for various book groups, but when I went back and checked my old reviews, I realized I didn’t have anything new to say. So I just linked to the old reviews. Feel free to go back and read them, back when we were actually commenting on blog posts. 😀 Now, for the rest:
YA:
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| All the Truth That’s in Me |
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| The Beginning of Everything |
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| The Clockwork Scarab (DNF) |
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| Quintana of Charyn |
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| The House of Hades |
Middle Grade:
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| 11 Birthdays (reread) (2009 review) |
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| Exile |
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| Flora & Ulysses |
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| Heaven is Paved with Oreos |
Adult:
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| Deadly Heat |
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| The Lowland (audio) |
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| Persuasion (audio) |
Non-fiction:
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| Totto-Chan The Little Girl at the Window (reread) (2008 review) |
What were your favorites this month?
Audiobook: The Lowland
by Jjumpa Lahirir
read by: Sunil Malhotra
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I admit that I picked this up solely because M is currently in the part of India where this is set. I thought: Kolkata, Bengali… I should see if I could learn a little more of where M is staying for the next school year. Other than that, I really had no expectations.
It’s a much more political work than I was expecting. While, nominally it’s the story of the relationship between two brothers, Shubash and Udayan Mitra, Lahriri uses the background of the political unrest and Communist movement in India as a backdrop. The two brothers, who were close as children, grow apart as Udayan (the younger) gets involved with the Naxalite movement and Shubash heads to Rhode Island to pursue a PhD. Udayan gets married to Gauri (which Malhotra alternately pronounced Godi and Gori, so I had to check on the spelling) and then ends up killed by the police. When Shubash comes back for the funeral, he takes pity on Gauri, mostly because she’s pregnant, and marries her, bringing her back to the US.
That is the first third of the book. At which point, I was left wondering: What on earth is Lahiri going to do with the rest of the novel? Well, much like Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed, Lahiri explores the ramifications of those decisions. We follow Shubash and Gauri, and later Gauri’s biological daughter, through the years to present day (when Shubash is 70, and Gauri s in her mid-60s), and experience the fallout. Because there is fallout, and it’s not pleasant.
As I mentioned to people that I was reading this, their first question was “Do you like it?” Well…. no. And yes. It wasn’t bad enough to abandon. Malhotra was a delightful reader, capturing both Indian and American accents well. Perhaps it was him who kept my interest in the book going, because I was constantly annoyed at the characters. Gauri could never get past her dead love and move on with her life. And right up to the end, she never thought about the consequences for her actions, acting impulsively. But the thing that really infuriated me was Shubash’s insistence that because he wasn’t the sperm donor for Gauri and Udayan’s daughter, that he wasn’t her father. He. Raised. The. Girl. He was there for her when her mother abandons her, and yet he still questions whether or not he’s her father. *grumble* Biology isn’t what being a parent is about.
Maybe that was Lahiri’s point, in the end. Because, after finishing the last disc (a very unsatisfying ending, by the way), that’s what I got out of it. Family is what you make, and loving and caring for other people is the way to happiness.
So maybe it was a good book after all?
All the Truth That’s in Me
by Julie Berry
ages: 13+
First sentence: “We came here by ship, you and I.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at work.
Two girls go missing. One turns up dead, floating in the stream. Two years later, the other one returns to the small town, intact, but with her tongue cut out. The villagers — from the preacher to her own mother — call her cursed, and shun her.
I’ve tried to sum up what goes on in the rest of the book, but I’ve found that I don’t really want to give too much away. Because much of the pleasure I got from reading this (in one sitting!) was not knowing that much about it. I will tell you this: at first, I thought it was a fantasy setting, because I think that’s what I was expecting. It’s not. Even though it’s not explicitly stated, it’s a Puritan setting, somewhere on the east coast. And the religion and mores that those communities set out play a major role in the book. And, even though it’s a story about kidnapping and murder, and you fear the worst for Judith, I will tell you that, as the story unfolds, it’s not the worst. It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as it gets.
The meat of the story is Judith — she’s the girl that returns — and her road to healing. For, in spite of everything that the village (and her mother) heaps on her, she does need to heal. It’s this process that is the true story. How Judith salvages her life from her trauma and reclaims her own sense of self. How she finds friends in the face of all the opposition in the town. How she even finds love. It’s a testament to the power of truth, to the power of the human spirit.
Remarkable.
The Book Nut 