The Crown of Embers

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by Rae Carson
ages: 13+
First sentence: “My entourage of guards struggles to keep pace as I fly down the coridors of my palace.”
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Others in the series: The Girl of Fire and Thorns

(Obviously, slight spoilers for the first one. You really should read that first.)

On the heels of the war with the Inviernos and the death of her husband, the king, seventeen-year-old Elisa has taken over ruling the country of Joya d’Arena. This is no easy task: attempts on her life are made, members of her Quorum (the ruling council) are plotting her overthrow behind her back, and the only person she can truly trust is Lord Hector, the commander of the Royal Guard.

Most of this book is taken up with Elisa trying to figure out how to be a ruler. She was never really given instruction on court politics, and she makes some (dangerous) missteps along the way. Even so, Carson manages to keep the action going (it helps that she comes up with an assassination attempt every 50 pages or so), and the court politics interesting. Also: for the detractors for the first book, there is a lovely, lovely romance in this one. *swoon*

It turns out that Elisa has more to do than just figure out how to rule a country on her own: being the bearer of the Godstone, she needs to figure out how to harness its power, and that involves a trip to the southern islands, to find the zafira: the source of all power.

Much like the first book, the thing I liked best was that Elisa was a strong character, and yet she’s incredibly vulnerable. She is human — she has weaknesses and makes bad decisions — and yet she is admirable: constantly finding depths in herself that she didn’t know existed, finding ways to handle situations she didn’t think she could. I loved the way Carson wove religion through the book, without making it seem hokey or preachy.

And, because it ends at a point where I was sitting on the edge of my seat, I can’t wait to read the final book in the trilogy.

The Wednesdays

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by Julie Bourbeau (Illustrated by Jason Beene)
ages: 8+
First sentence: “There was nothing in particular about the boy standing in teh open window to indicate that he was anything other than perfectly ordinary.”
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In a small village  halfway up Mount Tibidabo, more than a fair share of strange things happen. But only on Wednesdays.

It’s not anything big: cars won’t start, garbage cans tip over, paint spills, and the like. But it’s enough that pretty much everyone locks the doors, shutters the windows, and stays indoors from Tuesday at midnight to Thursday morning. Except for Max.

Max hates being stuck inside, so one day he badgers his mother enough to let him go out, and so he does. And he discovers the wednesdays.

No, I didn’t forget to capitalize: the wendesdays are goblin-like creatures (all boys, a point which becomes relevant near the end of the book) who create the mischief and havoc on Wednesday. There are ninety-nine of them, and they have chosen Max to be Next.

It’s an odd little book, but not a bad one, per se. Max doesn’t want to be turned into a wednesday, so his big challenge is figuring out not only how that change happens, but why, and how to stop it. To do this, he needs help from two trusty sidekicks, and a cantankerous old man (who happens to be immune to the wednesdays). The wednesdays are a clever enough creation, mischievous but not malevolent (well, except for number Two. He’s pretty mean). Even though how they came to be was never explained, and the disappearance of the girls never quite resolved, it was interesting to see how Max figured out to beat the system.

I’m not sure there’s a “moral” to this one (Don’t go outside when your parents tell you not to?), and it wasn’t anyone going on a Quest to Save Someone (a type of story that, at this point in the Cybils, is starting to grate on me), and so I can heartily recommend this strange little tale.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing.

(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.)

Caught

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by Margaret Peterson Haddix
ages: 11+
First sentence: “Jonah Skidmore was in science class when time stopped.”
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To start, this is the fifth book in the Missing series. I haven’t read a single one of the others, but because I like Haddix, and because this was nominated for the Cybils, I picked this up. And to be honest: I probably missed some nuances for not having read the others, but it was a pretty good stand alone book.

Jonah and his sister Katherine are time travelers. They’ve been in and out of time before (in the previous books, of course), and managed to do so without disturbing time much. So, they are caught completely off guard when their present time freezes, and then they’re hurtled back to 1903, to the apartment of Albert and Mileva Einstein. Somehow, the botched job of returning their (illegitimate) daughter Lieserl to the past has damaged time.

Somehow, Mileva figures out what Jonah and Katherine are up to, and she ends up being intimately involved in not only returning Lieserl to her proper time, but in getting Jonah and Katherine back to theirs.

There’s much to recommend about this one: Haddix is a fine writer; Jonah and Katherine are interesting, resourceful characters who have a good brother-sister relationship; and Haddix uses history in fascinating ways. (I kind of felt it was the Magic Tree House books taken up a notch. And that’s not a derogatory statement.) I’m not sure if I’m going to run out and get the rest of the series to see for myself, but I won’t hesitate to recommend these to kids with an interest in history who are looking for something, well, different.

(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.)

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

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by Katherine Boo
ages: adult
First sentence: “Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father.”
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I don’t know if I’m the last person to read this one, but I do know that it was its nomination for the 2012 National Book Award that finally spurred me into picking it up. (You would think it was M’s desire to go to India for a year. But, no.)

For the twelve of us who haven’t read the book yet, this is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Boo’s foray into the world of Mumbai’s underbelly. She spent several years (from November 2007 to March 2011) in the Annawadi slum, near the Mumbai airport, getting to know the residents. She followed their ups and downs, painting a portrait of people who were desperately poor, and their attempts to do something about it, whether for good or ill.

It’s a desperate story, gritty and harsh, and yet it’s an incredible work of journalism. Boo’s affection for these people come through, and she manages to get them — individuals who have no qualms in lying to each other as well as police and the government — to tell an honest story. It’s one that made me think: about class, about globalism, about corruption, about India as a country.

Several quotes that struck me:

An aside in a larger discussion about the sections in Annawadi (yes, even the poor in India have classes): “In the Indian caste system, the most artfully oppressive division of labor ever devised, Dalits — once termed untouchables — were at the bottom of the heap.” (p. 42)

The parliamentarian who would represent Annawadians was hardly in doubt. It would be the incumbent from the Congress Party, Priya Dutt, a kind, unassuming woman who personified two historical weaknesses of the Indian electorate: for flimi people and for legacies.” (p. 230)

And what I think is at the heart of this book:

What was unfolding in Mumbai was unfolding elsewhere, too. In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn’t unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached, The politicians held forth on the middle class. The poor took down one another, and the world’s great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace.

Fascinating and thought-provoking.

Eight (!) Years (Plus a Giveaway!)

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First: for the Americans out there, Happy Thanksgiving!! (For the Canadians, I’m sorry I missed your Thanksgiving. Know that I thought of you back in October.)

As of yesterday, I have been blogging at Book Nut for EIGHT years. I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I feel OLD and slightly out of date. With Twitter (which I use mainly to stalk celebrities *cough*NathanFillion*cough*) and Tumblr (yeah I have one, but I don’t use it) and video blogs (no, you don’t EVER want to see me do one of those) and everything else out there, I feel kind of like a dinosaur chugging away over her on the blog. I do know I’m a lot less involved in the community than I was a couple years ago, and I do regret that my life has gotten busy enough to the point where I can’t participate in everything that I would like to.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine life without my blog any more. Not just from a personal standpoint: I still mainly use my blog as a reference for everything I read (and yeah, I go back and read past reviews to remind myself sometimes). But, also for the sheer number of people I have met, authors I’ve interacted with, and the cool things — like the Cybils and KidlitCon and this awesome new venture called PopCircle (not to mention my very cool job at the bookstore) — I’ve been involved with over the years.

Because I am that sort of person, I thought it’d be fun to look at the numbers from my first year (2005, since I only blogged for two months in 2004) compared to this year (so far).

In 2005, I read:

14 Middle Grade books
11 YA sci-fi/fantasy books
11 Middle Grade sci-fi/fantasy books
3 YA books
20 Non-fiction books
19 Adult books
0 Graphic Novels
For a grand total of 78 books. (It took me until May 25, 2006 to read 100 total. I was so proud.)

And this year, I’ve read:
29 Middle Grade books
26 YA sci-fi/fantasy books
43 Middle Grade scie-fi/fantasy
18 YA books
16 Non-fiction books
24 Adult books
8 Graphic Novels
For a grand total of 164 books.

It’s interesting to see how much 8 years of blogging can change one’s reading habits. Some things are still the same: I read more MG than YA, I read more fantasy than regular. My adult and non-fiction haven’t changed. But the numbers have ticked up, mostly because, I think, I am no longer wandering the library/bookstore looking for the things that are good. I’ve got a whole reader full of bloggers I love and trust who point me in the direction of What’s Good, and because of that, I’m tossing fewer books back, and enjoying more books more. (The downside is that my TBR pile is always out of control.)

In short: eight years in, I’m extremely  happy that my husband encouraged me to start this little corner of the internet.

To thank you all for your part (and for being loyal readers, whether it’s been for all eight years — Amira! Is there anyone else? — or two months), I’m hosting a little giveaway: one book (of your choice), plus some assorted odds and ends I feel like throwing in  (candy, journal, pens, maybe a magnet or two) that I can find at Watermark Books. Just fill out the little form, and considered yourself entered. The giveaway will close December 1.

And now, I’m off to White Lotus for the weekend, to enjoy the amazing yoga retreat that my husband and friends gave me for my 40th birthday.

Namaste!

Anne of Green Gables

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by L. M. Montgomery
ages: 12+ (read aloud 8+)
First sentence: “Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in teh woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run pass Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out of the whys and wherefores thereof.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

(Wow. That’s a long first sentence.)

You all know the story, right? Of Anne, the impetuous orphan girl who comes to stay on Prince Edward Island with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, winning her way into their hearts and getting into scrapes as she grows older. It’s one of those classics that everyone loves.

I picked it up for the first time in a very long time to read it aloud to A. And we had a wonderful time. Although some of the language was hard for her to grasp, and she kept wondering about all the late 19th-century references. But, for the most part, she fell as much in love with Anne as the rest of us have over time. And as a little bonus, every time M or C would wander by, they would stop and listen for a bit, and often say, “Oh, I love Anne.”

It really is a wonderful  novel.

Mr. Terupt Falls Again

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by Rob Buyea
ages: 11+
First sentence: “It was one of those farts that stunk so back you could taste it.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at work.
Others in the series: Because of Mr. Terupt

Mr. Terupt is back with his class — including our narrators Peter, Alexia, Luke, Jessica, Anna, Danielle, and Jeffrey — for a sixth grade year. Like last year, there are small conflicts within the class. Alexia is on the verge of running wild, wanting to act older than her age. Jeffrey finds an abandoned baby by the side of the road. Peter is dealing with pressure from his parents to attend a private junior high and high school, something that he doesn’t want to do. Danielle’s family is dealing with some sort of external lawsuits, and her period starts. In addition, Mr. Terupt hasn’t fully recovered from his accident last year. And he asks Ms. Newberry to marry him, turning the wedding plans over to his class.

In short: it’s another eventful year for Mr. Terupt and his class.

Much like the first one, this is a good novel. There are a lot of discussion points, the use of the mulitple narrators gives a unique voice to the story, and I appreciated Buyea’s use of classic middle grade books. However, I think the biggest drawback to this one is that while all the elements of the first book are there, it really seems been there, done that. Mr. Terupt is still a great teacher, caring immensely for his students. The conflicts are still small ones, and the kids are still learning how to be grown up. In short: it’s pretty much the same book all over again.

I’m with Ms. Yingling on this one: we need more wrestling stories and fewer about wonderful teachers and their classes.

Railsea

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by China Miéville
ages: 13+
First sentence: “This is the story of a bloodstained boy.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I first saw Railsea when it came into the store sometime in late April, early May. I checked our distributor to see where I should shelve it, and they said it was middle grade, ages 9-11. So, I stuck it there, and didn’t really think of it again. Then Cybils time came around, and it got nominated in the YA category. I thought that was a bit odd, so I figured I needed to read it. I put it on hold at the library, and when I got it, I noticed something weird: it was labeled as Adult sci-fi.

All of this is a roundabout way of me saying that I mostly picked up this one because I was fundamentally curious as to the target age group: where does it belong?

And after reading it, my answer would have to be… Yes. All of the above.

It is, briefly, a post-apocolyptic/dystopian retelling of Moby Dick with trains and mutant rodents instead of boats and whales. Our main character is a boy of indeterminate age, Sham Yes ap Soorap, who signs on to the moletrain — kind of like a whaling boat: it’s a train that rides the complex “sea” of rails, hunting the mutant moles for meat and skin to sell — as a doctor’s assistant. Their captain, Captain Naphi, has a “philosophy”: she lost an arm to a huge white mole rat, Mocker-Jack, and is determined to hunt it down. But, that’s not all: they find a wreck of a train, with an unusual picture on a digital camera: of a single rail line headed into the horizon. Sham heads on his own personal mission (or “philosophy”) to hunt down the owner of the camera, which turns out belongs to the children of a couple of adventurers. It turns out that the government, loosely speaking, is after these children because their parents discovered something they shouldn’t have: the path to Heaven.

Yes, this is all really convoluted. It’s not just you.

There is nothing in this book that a 9-year-old couldn’t read. I’m not sure they’d “get” it though. It’s very stylized (Miéville loves to use ampersands, even when they start sentences. & that’s very distracting.), and I came to realize through the course of the book that the more you know Moby Dick, the better this one is. It’s quite the faithful retelling, I think. (I’ve never read it, though I know enough about it to get the gist of what Miéville was trying to do). So, I’d give it to a teen or adult whose interested in dystopian who has also read Moby Dick. They’ll be better equipped to understand Railsea.

Was it good? I’m not sure. I was impressed with the feat Miéville was undertaking more than  I enjoyed the story. I respected this one, but I don’t think I liked it very much. So, take that for what it’s worth.

At any rate, I’ve read it now, so I can begin to figure out where it belongs.

The Drowned Vault

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by N. D. Wilson
ages: 10+
First sentence: “The man in the pink shirt stopped outside his house.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: The Dragon’s Tooth

I’ve been looking for quite some time for that book to give kids who love the Percy Jackson series. Something fantasy, of course. But with a bit of mythology, a gripping story, a bit of humor, fast-paced, and likeable characters as well.

I’ve found my series.

I read this one out of order: The Drowned Vault is the second in The Ashtown Burials series. But, honestly? It didn’t matter. Yeah, there was some stuff that I didn’t fully  understand because I haven’t read the first one (yet), but it was such a fun, interesting, cool world that Wilson developed it didn’t really matter.

From what I can gather: there are immortals abroad, and there’s a team of mortals — called the Order of Brendan — that basically keep the immortals in check. Brother-sister team Cyrus and Antigone Smith are recent inductees into this Order (I’m assuming all this comes down in Book 1), and they have let something called the Dragon’s Tooth (Ah! The name of the first book) — which can kill immortals — fall into the hands of the Bad Guy, Phoenix. This puts them a bit on the outs with both the immortals and the O of B (as it’s often referred to), so the main goal of this book is to get the Dragon’s Tooth back from Phoenix. This is not as easy as it sounds (it sounded easy?). Especially since the immortals are banding with another Big Baddie, the brother of one of the Vlads (you know, as in Vlad the Impaler), Radu Bey, who is head of the Dracul order, which (obviously) wants to Take Over. So, not only do they need to stop Phoenix from raising an army of dead people, they need to stop Radu as well. And this means they need to raise the Buried. (Don’t ask. It’s much too complicated for here.)

I know that didn’t make much sense (moral: read the first one first!), but it really is a lot of fun. There’s humor, action-packed battle scenes, the girls are as awesome as the guys (Antigone reminds me a lot of Annabeth and Hermione, and there’s this really kick-butt older girl, Diana Boone), and Wilson mixes world mythology with American history, for a really unique world feel.

So, yeah: I’ve found a new series to be a fan of. I’ve already bought the first one and I can’t wait for the next. Bring it on!

(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.)

Beswitched

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by Kate Saunders
ages: 9+
First sentence: “At least look at the picture!” Flora’s dad begged.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Flora Fox is a spoiled brat.

That’s putting it mildly.

As an only child of older parents, she always gets her way. In everything. So, it’s beyond her capability to understand why her parents would want to send her to boarding school (of all places!) while they go to Italy to fetch Flora’s grandmother (the old bat) and build a flat for her in the garage of Flora’s Wimbledon home. It’s just. not. fair.

I’m going to stop here a minute and say that I found Flora to be Insufferable. So much so, that I thought quite seriously about putting the book down (or at the very least throwing it across the room. Or slapping Flora on the behind). I’m glad I didn’t.

On the train to her boarding school, Something Happens, and when Flora wakes up, she’s no longer in the 21st century, she’s in 1935.

(Yay for time travel!)

She has to adjust to the whole all-girl boarding school thing, the 1935 thing, the sharing a room with other people thing, the making friends thing, and the fact that Flora may be stuck in 1935, unless the three girls who summoned her there — Pete (short for Daphne Peterson), Pogo (Cecelia Lawrence), and Dulcie  — can figure out a way to send her back.

As I mentioned, the beginning was rough because Flora was so unlikeable. Once it hit 1935, Flora was still unlikeable, but it was more understandable: I am giving Saunders full points (or ponys as they’re called in the book) for making Flora have a difficult time adjusting. I would have hated it if Flora had hit the ground running, finding transitioning to 1935 a breeze. Rather, it was difficult and jarring for Flora to adjust, which made the whole experience that much more interesting for me.

And, to be fair, Flora made a remarkable improvement over the course of the book. (I was quite grateful for that!) In the end, I thought that Saunders wrote a great fish-out-of-water story, with some lovely lessons (and  yet wasn’t too heavy-handed!), and I found the book to be wonderfully 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.)