And Now… A Giveaway!!

3 Comments

I feel kind of silly doing this for a couple of reasons. 1) Because I haven’t read the book. Yet. And 2) Because I won the opportunity to do this from the Little, Brown Publicity department… not that there’s anything wrong with them (*waves*), it’s just that I’ve never done a publisher-sponsored giveaway before.

BUT.

I do adore Wendy Mass (*waves*), I love her writing, and I’m willing to support anything she does (within reason. I mean, if she wanted to sell my children, I may have issues with that.)

That said: I have the lovely opportunity to give away this:

and this:

Cool, no?

To enter: fill out this form anytime between now and Sunday, March 11th. I’ll have random.org select a winner and let you know. Unfortunately, it’s open to U.S. residents only.

Audiobook: The Spellman Files

1 Comment

by Lisa Lutz
Read by Ari Graynor
ages: adult
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I first heard about the Spellmans through Jen Robinson who blogged about them a few years ago. She mentioned that they’re for people who love quirky characters, and since I’m all for that, I stuck it on my TBR list and let it sit.

One of the things I’m doing through my audiobook listening is going back through my age-old lists and finding ones that have been sitting there forever to listen to. This one definitely qualifies.

Twenty-eight year old Isabel Spellman grew up working in her parent’s PI buisness. Which means that she’s excellent at stakeouts, can pick a lock with the best of them, and has absolutely no respect for the privacy of others (yes, she really did run a credit check on ex-boyfriend #6). However, when she meets Daniel (ex-boyfriend #9), things get a little, well, sticky. After he breaks up with her, she decides she’s had Enough. But, before she’s allowed to quit the family buisness, her parents give her a 12-year-old cold case to “solve”. And, before that’s solved, a case closer to home pops up, one that may be the most important of Isabel’s life.

Okay, that makes it sound all dark and dangerous, and honestly: it’s not. This book is mostly an introduction to the Spellmans and all their quirkiness (why, yes, Mom does hire out someone to stake out Isabel, not to mention bugging her apartment). Mom and Dad don’t really play much of a role (except as ominous yet loveable background players); the more important figures in Isabel’s life are her lawyer brother David, her Uncle Ray, and her teenage sister Rae. Between the four of them — and the back-and-forthing they do — they drive what plot there is.

And there really isn’t much of one. It didn’t seem to matter, though: I was captivated by Isabel’s voice (and Graynor’s reading of her), her observations of her ex-boyfriends, the cases, and her family. It was a lot of fun to listen to.

That said, there is one glitch: I didn’t realize until the very end (when the credits said “adapted by”) that this was an abridged novel. Nooooo! Now I’m going to have to get the book and read it: I want to know what I missed!

In spite of that, it was quite an entertaining way to spend my time.

Anya’s Ghost

3 Comments

by Vera Brosgol
ages: 14+
First sentence: “What’s for breakfast?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

When you pickup a graphic novel that has a blurb from Neil Gaiman on the front (“A Masterpiece!”) and has been getting a lot of buzz, you invariably have high expectations.

And in many ways this graphic novel lived up to my expectations. Dealing with issues of inclusion, it tells the story of teenage Russian immigrant Anya Borzakovskaya, . Sure, she’s been here since she’s 5, and sure, she doesn’t have much of an accent, but she does have the baggage that many children of immigrants have: parents who can’t speak English well, traditions that are held over from the old country, a funny last name that she’s embarrassed about. She’s struggling at her private school; her mom wants her to be friends with the other Russian kid, Dima, who’s just the world’s biggest nerd. All she wants to do is skip and hang out with her one friend, Siobhan, and smoke.

Then she falls down a hole and meets a ghost. Not just any ghost, but one that wants to stay with Anya, and help her, and experience life. Creepy, no?

Well, yes. It’s a ghost story after all. Which is what disappointed me. I wanted more creepyness. I wanted to be scared out of my skin, and while I got a little bit of my wish near the end, I was disappointed that it wasn’t as scary as, say, Coraline.

That’s not to say it doesn’t work: it does, as one of those good-girl-at-heart-finds-her-way-back-into-the-fold books. Just not as a ghost story.

At least, not for me.

2012: February Wrap-Up

1 Comment

Happy #ExtraMagicBonusHappyLeapYearDay (as per @neilhimself)! If you could take any author out to dinner, who would it be? (Me? I’d have Maureen Johnson, John Green, Mo Willems, Varian Johnson, Maggie Stiefvater and Jackson Pearce over for a party.)

My favorite book this past month:

Ready Player One

Hands down. I still smile over it… not the “best” book, but really: the most fun.

The Cybils Middle Grade shortlist:

Nerd Camp

The Friendship Doll

Kirby Larson commented on this post! I still get a little *squee* moment when that happens!

Ghetto Cowboy

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu
Warp Speed

Audiobooks:

Bossypants

Everything else:

Breadcrumbs

Why We Broke Up

Kat Incorrigible 

Midnight in Austenland
Outcasts United

Kat, Incorrigible

4 Comments

by Stephanie Burgis
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I was twelve years of age when I chopped off my hair, dressed as a boy, and set off to save my family from impending ruin.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Before I get started, I ask you: how can a first sentence be more perfect than that? It doesn’t.

What it does, however, is give you high expectations that this book will be 1) charming and 2) have some adventure in it. Throw in a little bit (or a lot at times) of magic, and you’ve got a pretty good winner.

It’s Regency-ish time (never really got a date, but it felt Jane Austen-y to me), and Kat’s family is in a pickle: her older brother, Charles, has been sent home from Oxford in disgrace due to gambling debts that their father, a mere country clergyman, can’t pay off. So, one of Kat’s older sisters, Elissa or Angeline, is going to have to do the noble thing and marry for money (to save the family). Unfortunately: that means one of them will have to marry (the dastardly) Sir Neville, who is rich, yes, but around whom rumors of his first wife’s death swirl.

I promised a bit of magic, didn’t I? Well, it seems that Kat’s mother was a witch, something which Angeline has taken up (to find her True Love, of course), and something which Kat is becoming increasingly curious about. See, Kat’s mother died when she was a baby, and it’s always been her sisters’ policy to Protect Kat from Things. Except that Kat’s 12 now, and she’s no longer a baby.

Which means that she can take Things into her very capable hands.

That, in fact, what my favorite part of this book. Although it seemed to have a lot of set-up for not very much pay-off, the pay-off was brilliant. If you ever want a book where there’s a kid who takes control (and believable, capable control) of a situation to bring it to its Right and Proper end, this is it. Kat is a great character: fun, smart, and stubborn in all the right ways. This one made me eager (now that the background work is done) to have more adventures with Kat.

I can only hope there is more.

Sunday Salon: The State of the TBR Pile 5

12 Comments

We’re doing inventory at the store this weekend, and because of that I don’t have much time to read. (Not to mention the Oscars tonight! We finally have TV, so I’ll be watching.)

As it is, I’m in a bit of a reading slump. I have a huge pile…. and I don’t know what to read. I threw it out on Facebook and Twitter on Friday, but didn’t get much response, so I’m throwing it out again. What should I read next?

Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver (because I ought to read something else by her)
Goliath, by Scott Westerfeld (because it’s about time)
Clementine and the Family Meeting, by Sarah Pennypacker (because I love Clementine)
Drop Dead Healthy, by A. J. Jacobs (ARC I begged for from work)
The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore(I wanted a mystery)
Kill You Last, by Tod Strasser (ditto)
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, by Umi Krishnaswami (a MG book with an India connection)
A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness (because it’s in the brackets for SLJ’s Battle of the Books)
The Floating Islands, by Rachel Neumeier (because I’ve heard good things about it, and it finally came in at the library)
Huntress, by Malinda Lo (because it sounded good)
Stupid Fast, by Geoff Herbach (because it won the Cybils YA Fiction this year)
Blood Red Road, by Moira Young (because it won the Cybils YA SFF this year)

What’s on your TBR pile?

Ghetto Cowboy

1 Comment

by G. Neri/Illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson
ages: 9+
First sentence: “We drivin’ into the sunset, the car burning up from the heat.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Living in Detroit, twelve-year-old Cole and his mom are scraping by. Sure, he doesn’t go to school that often, but he’s okay. Until the day he gets caught, his mom flips, and drives him to Philadelphia to live with a father Cole has never met.

Once he gets to Philly, angry about being abandoned (as he sees it), by his mom, he decides he will have nothing to do with his father, or the stables he runs in North Philly.

This is where you do a double take: horse stables, in the middle of the ghetto? Based on a true fact — there really are horses in inner-city Philadelphia — Ghetto Cowboy looks at how providing something for kids to do, something as simple as caring for an animal, can give that life a meaning. At the same time, it explores a blossoming relationship bewteen a boy and his father.

There are many good things about this book: that it’s a non-girly horse book; that it’s written in dialect, but not hard to read; that there are gorgeous illustrations. In many ways, it’s trite, yes: just how many stories of bad kid making good can we read? But, I love that there is something different — Cole’s connection not only with his father, but with his father’s livelihood as well — to make this one better than all the other inner-city bad kids books.

In other words: it’s worth picking up.

Warp Speed

1 Comment

by Lisa Yee
ages: 11+
First sentence: “Marley was dead, to begin with.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Marley Sandelski is invisible. No, not really: it’s a straight-up middle grade fiction book, not science fiction. But, that’s the way he feels. He plugs through middle school, getting beat up by the kids he calls the “Gorn” (Marley’s a huge Star Trek Original Series fan), getting mostly good grades (except for P.E.), and hanging out with his fellow geeky friends in AV Club (now a class called Technical Services). After school, he hangs out in the basement of the Rialto Theater, a historical landmark that specializes in old movies that his parents run. It’s not a great existence, but it is one.

Then things start to change. It’s a bumpy ride, but maybe… just maybe… things will change for the better?

The best thing about this book, I think, is that there is honest-to-goodness conflict in it. Marley is dealing with bullies — both physical and emotional. On top of that, he’s dealing with all the regular middle school boy stuff: trying to fit in, liking girls out of your league, not giving up on friends, being “cool”. It’s a good story, and you really root for Marley to make it all work out, and still not give up on who he really is.

My only complaint is that Lisa Yee, whose blog I adore, is not nearly as funny in book form as she is in blog form. But that’s a minor complaint in an otherwise good book.

Nerd Camp

4 Comments

by Elissa Brent Weissman
ages: 9+
First sentence: “It was so late that it was almost tomorrow.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Gabe is a nerd. Seriously. He’s smart, he loves math and poetry and reading, and he’s just been accepted into the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment — a six-week sleepaway camp that you have to take a test to get into.

He’s okay with all this — well, in fact, it’s more than okay: he’s really, really excited — until he meets his soon-to-be stepbrother, Zach. Who is not a nerd. In fact, he is disdainful of all things nerdy. Gabe doesn’t quite know how to react to that: he really, really wants to get along with his new brother (he’s always longed for a sibling), but he doesn’t want to give up all the things he loves.

Thankfully, there’s SCGE camp to help him out: are the adventures he has over the course of the summer negated by their nerdiness, or cool in their own right?

I adored this book. Seriously. Perhaps it’s because I’m a mother of nerds, and one myself, but I thought Weissman just got the whole nerd kid culture — not  to mention that wonderful awkwardness of being 10-years-old — spot-on. Every little thing, from the awkwardness around new girls to the learning pi to the 20th digit, was adorable. (Perhaps I shouldn’t call a boy book adorable. It’d turn the boys off. But seriously, it was.) I loved Gabe from the get-go, and it didn’t take long for his camp friends Wesley and Nikhil to grow on me, either. I also really, really wanted to go to the camp. I’m not much into logic proofs, but Weissman made them seem really, really cool.

The only down side was that I felt Zach was a little shallow: all “cool” kids aren’t down on reading or horrible at spelling. (There’s also the side issue of why everything has to be either/or: do we really have to be smart OR cool? Maybe in 5th grade, yes…) But, because Zach was hardly a character, it didn’t bring the awesomeness level of this one down.

I suppose the question, in the end, is: will the boy nerds read this one? I hope so. Really.

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

Leave a comment

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang
ages: 10+
First sentence: “There is a Chinese story that goes like this:”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Lucy is:

  • the youngest of three children in a Chinese-American family. 
  • almost twelve years old.
  • more American than Chinese, preferring lasagna to Chinese food.
  • fanatic about basketball, and pretty good too.
  • about to share her room with Yi Po, the long-lost sister of her recently deceased grandmother.

All Lucy wants is to have the best year ever, but that seems doomed not to happen, especially since Yi Po and her strange Chinese ways have moved in everything seems to be going wrong. Somehow, though, between Chinese school, a bully at school, and having to share a room, Lucy finds that maybe the year isn’t as bad as she thought it might be.

This was a good, solid, fun read. Nothing spectacular or earth-shattering, but I really enjoyed the time spent with Lucy and her struggles to find a balance between her wants and interests and her heritage. She’s an enjoyable character, and the time which we spend with her is fun and interesting. I liked the way Shang handled the Chinese language and culture, mixing a bit of history and folklore along with the food and traditions seamlessly into the novel. It gave the book some heart, and I felt like I was learning without being preached to.

A good book.