Sunday Salon: Authors from A to Z

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It’s been forever and a year since I’ve done a Weekly Geeks, but this one, on this Easter Sunday (Happy Easter! I hope you’re enjoying the day.), sounded right up my alley. It’s a list of authors — whatever category you choose — in ABC order.

I’m picking my favorites (with the book I really liked) from the past few years:

A – Kathi Appelt (Keeper)
B – Sarah Rees Brennan (The Demon’s Lexicon/The Demon’s Covenant)
C – Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising series)
D – Frances O’Roark Dowell (Falling Up, among others)
E – Stephen Edmond (Happyface)
F – Catherine Fisher (Incarceron/Sapphique)
G – Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere)
H – Shannon Hale (Forest Born)
I – Eva Ibbotson (A Song for Summer)
J – Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle)
K – Steve Kluger (My Most Excellent Year)
L – Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon)
M – Hilary McKay (Wishing for Tomorrow)
N – An Na (A Step from Heaven)
O – Anne Osterlund (Exile)
P – Terry Pratchett (I Shall Wear Midnight)
Q –
R – Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero)
S – Francisco X. Stork (Marcelo in the Real World)
T – Megan Whalen Turner (A Conspiracy of Kings)
U –
V – Claire Vanderpool (Moon Over Manifest)
W – Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan)
X –
Y – Lisa Yee (Bobby the Brave)
Z –

I’m only missing four letters in the past two years; not bad. What are some of your favorites?

One Hundred Years of Solitude

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by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
ages: adult
First sentence: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distand afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

The short story? Magical realism and I just don’t get along. I don’t know what it is; you’d think with all the fantasy books I read that I’d love the subtle of play between reality and magic, but it just doesn’t work for me. I find it grating and somewhat annoying and confusing and just plain irritating.

Also: I really don’t trust books that were part of the Oprah Book Club.

The long story? I’ve heard about Gabriel Garcia Marquez for years and years, and always figured, since he was so highly acclaimed, that I ought to read him. So, when I finally got the opportunity, I was quite interested. And yet, it didn’t take me long to realize that this book is completely incomprehensible (to me). It was flipping between time and memory and the plot was utterly confusing. I wasn’t getting much out of the lives of the characters.

So, halfway through when I couldn’t see a way out of this muddle that Marquez had gotten me into, I bailed. Without a backward glance.

Because magical realism and I are just not friends. At all.

Zita the Spacegirl

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by Ben Hatke
ages: 9+ (though I read it aloud to my 5 year old)
First sentence: “Finders keepers!”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

What kid doesn’t want to go on an adventure? Excitement! Different worlds! Being the hero!

I’m not sure if Zita ever felt that way, but she got thrown into it one day, when she and her friend Joseph discovered a device with a button. Zita must be one of those curious types: she pushed the button… which opened a portal, and both she and Joseph got pulled through.

And thus the adventure begins. Joseph gets captured by an evil-looking tentacled beast, and Zita goes after him to save him. While he’s been tied up by the Scriptorians (on this unnamed planet), being expected to save the world from certain doom — an asteroid is headed their way — Zita experiences the world, meeting all kinds of unusual friends: a giant mouse, a robot named One who has delusions of grandeur; a nervous robot named Robby, who’s been hiding in the wastes; a beast named Strong Strong; and a man with magical tools named Piper. All who help her get to the Scriptorians’ castle to rescue Joseph.

It’s quite the adventure, one with clever drawings and story. It’s funny and sweet and adventurous. We couldn’t get enough of it; my girls and I were completely captivated are already clamoring for the next installment.

You can’t get better than that, I think.

Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie

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by Jordan Sonnenblick
ages: 11+
First sentence: “There’s a beautiful girl to my left, another to my right.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This is a cancer book. Just to get that out of the way.

Steven is in eighth grade and on his way to being a wicked-good jazz drummer (being one of two eighth graders in the All-City Jazz Band). He has had a crush on Renee since third grade, and she still doesn’t know he exists. And his best friend, Annette, has been acting a little weird lately.

Steven also has a younger brother. Jeffrey is five, and annoying in the way five year olds can be. And while Steven doesn’t mind his younger brother, he often feels like he’s competing with Jeffrey for his parent’s affection. And who can win out against a very cute five-year-old?

Steven starts the year complaining about everything, but in October, things change. That’s when Jeffrey’s diagnosed with leukemia, and Steven’s — well, the entire family’s, really — whole world is turned upside down. It’s heartbreaking and tough to deal with, as we witness this crumbling. And yet, it’s not a downer of a book. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s endearing. Steven’s a good kid, and while he struggles and is resentful, he means well. By the end you’ve grown to love both him, and Jeffrey (whom you couldn’t help but love), and understand and empathize with them. It’s an excellent example of showing: while we get Steven’s perspective, we’re never pummeled over the head with anything.

Which makes it the best kind of cancer book, I think.

A Natural History of the Senses

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by Diane Ackerman

ages: adult
First sentence: “Nothing is more memorable than a smell.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Going into this book, I didn’t quite know what I’d be getting from a “natural history” of the senses. It’s such a broad term; and how does one actually provide a history of something that’s been part of the human experience since the beginning of time?

What I got was one part history, one part science, and one part poetry. Ackerman divided the book into five sections, one for each of the senses. She started with smell, then worked through touch, taste, hearing and vision. I had a hard time at first, getting used to the style of the book, which seemed haphazard and disorganized. It seemed like it was a series of short essays cobbled together without much sense and flow. But, after the smell section — which was the worst for the disjointedness — it settled into a rhythm, a little bit of poetic description, a bit of science (most of which I wondered if still was “correct”, since the book was written in 1990), a bit of social history. Much of it was fascinating. Her descriptions (passages of which I would love to copy down, but are much, much too long), especially about how the senses work in relationships, were elegant and poetic. But, in the end, it wasn’t enough. I wanted something less thrown together, something that flowed more, something that was less disjointed.

Because when it was good, it was very good. I just wanted more goodness.

Sunday Salon: Geeky Goodness

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I spent all of yesterday deep cleaning my kitchen, and I’m beat. Literally; I can barely move this morning. Then I dreamed last night that I was hanging out in Amsterdam with John Green, which only makes me want to throw a dinner party for all my favorite geeky, nerdy, fun, weird famous people (including, but not limited to: John Green, Mo Willems, Maureen Johnson and, of course, Nathan Fillion). Which means, today’s Salon needs to be nerdy-geeky weird. Right? (Check this out, first. Just so we’re all on the same page.)

Hank Green’s vlogbrothers video this week was 31 Nerd Jokes, some of which are had me spitting milk through my nose:

And Thursday, I think it was, Hubby came to me and said I needed to watch something that will change my life. (I asked if it had Nathan Fillion in it.) He blogged about it here… and while it doesn’t have Nathan Fillion, I am quite excited for this. It really is worth the 10 minutes.

Also, if you haven’t read Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue envelopes yet, and you have an e-reader, you’re in luck! She’s offering it for two weeks for FREE. See here for details.

And I know it’s not geeky, but I was amused by this. I’m currently reading one of Rick Riordan‘s adult mysteries, The Last King of Texas. It’s not bad, as far as books go, but there was this one line that got me curious: “Tell any San Antonian, “Meet me at the Boots,” and they’ll instantly know what you mean.” Not being from San Antonio, I didn’t. So I Googled it, and got this.


You gotta love Texas.

I’m sure there’s more geeky stuff out there, but I’m currently distracted by listening to this interview with Mo Willems. Have a great Sunday!

Audiobook: Falling In

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by Frances O’Roark Dowell
ages: 9+
Read by Jessica Almasy
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I love me some Frances O’Roark Dowell. I first discovered her a couple years ago when Shooting the Moon was nominated for a Cybils. I absolutely fell in love with her books, her writing style, her storytelling. There’s something simple about her books, and yet her stories are actually quite sophisticated, with subtle dark undertones.

This book is pretty much all that I’ve come to expect from Dowell. It was simple: the story of a somewhat neglected girl — Isabel Bean, age 10 — with an aura of the otherworldly about her. She doesn’t really have friends, and while she’s not a bad student or child, she doesn’t really seem to fit in at all. Her mother isn’t very motherly, and Isabel drowns that neglect in a sea of books, especially fairy tales.

It’s all fine and good, I suppose, until one day when Isabel hears this buzz coming from the floor of her school. She gets sent to the principal’s office (because hearing a buzz isn’t exactly normal school behavior), and on the way there gets sidetracked and fell into a closet into the nurse’s office.

Into where, you may ask?

Well, into another world. One which, in Jessica Almasy’s capable hands, was slightly British. Definitely old-fashioned, and most definitely fairy-tale-ish. With a magic, of sorts, a witch that’s terrorizing the county of five villages. Isabel has to help defeat the witch, of course, but it’s not really about that. It’s about making friends, and learning to be a friend. Simple, yet elegant.

And Almasy’s narration was spot-on. Her voice was slightly irritating to begin with, but after a while it became Isabel. And it helped that she had different voices for the characters, ones in which you could picture the character just from their voice. It’s also a book that worked better as an audio — there were lots of interruptions by the narrator, making the book more of a story to be heard rather than read. I’m not sure I would have liked it as much as I did had I read it. (Though it is Frances O’Roark Dowell.) But it was a fabulous listen.

Sweet 15

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by Emily Adler and Alex Echevarria
ages: 13+
First sentence: “Here’s how it went down, the beginning of The End.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.

Destiny Lozada is about to turn 15. And because she’s the daughter of Puerto Ricans, this means she must have a quinceañera. (You know what that is, right? The coming-of-age party/religious rite for Latina girls? Good.) Well, her mother really, really wants to throw Destiny a huge party, even though they really can’t afford it. And Destiny’s older sister, America, is thoroughly against that idea. Destiny, who doesn’t want to rock any boats, is trapped in the middle, watching her sister rant, her mother rack up costs, and her father try and work enough to pay for them.

She doesn’t want any of it. But no one’s asking her.

She spends the first few weeks of high school being buffeted this way and that by her mother, her best friend Omar (who Destiny’s mother has recruited), and her sister. It’s frustrating and humiliating, all made worse by the crush she has on a former friend’s cousin. Thankfully, even though the book meanders a bit, it finally comes to a head, in which everything turns out both a little bit predictably and just as it should.

The best thing about this book, however, was not the writing (okay) or the plotting (a bit on the slow side). It was the fact that in these pages there is a stable, hardworking immigrant family, with men who are neither into gangs or drugs, who hold jobs and work hard and are smart. It’s so nice to see Latin@s being portrayed that way; too often they are reduced to stereotypes: the women work hard and love their lazy, good-for-nothing, gang member men. Bah! I loved the family relationship here, for even though Mama and America were overbearing and not listening to Destiny, it’s quite evident that they love her and really do want what’s best. And her father, even though he doesn’t play an active role in the conflict, is a quiet pillar of strength and love. It’s amazing.

And that’s a lovely, lovely thing to see.

Olympians, the Graphic Novels

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by George O’Connor
Zeus: King of the Gods
First sentence: “In the time before time, there was nothing, Kaos.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess
First sentence: “My sisters and I are the Moirae, also known as the Fates.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I don’t remember where I saw these two reviewed, but it sounded like an interesting approach to the stories of Greek mythology. So, as part of the Once Upon a Time challenge, I thought I’d give them a try.

To start with, these are beautifully drawn books. O’Connor imagines the gods in a way that’s both human and divine. They are larger than life — especially the Titans — but also very accessible. Zeus tells the story of the Titans, and Kronos (and I still can’t type these names without thinking of Percy Jackson!) as well as how Zeus came to be. The books aren’t interested in thinking about motivation of why they do things. It’s just the Gods, and they do things because they do.

Athena was the more interesting of the two books, however. Perhaps because Athena’s story is more interesting than Zeus’s? The book is framed as the Fates telling stories about Athena, including her origin story, which was fascinating (okay, it’s not one that I knew), as well as one about her fight with Pallas, the Aegis that she wears, and her quarrel with Arachne. No book on Athena would be complete without the Perseus and Medusa story, as well. The stories succinct without being choppy, and while it doesn’t give Athena a well-rounded personality, it does explain many of her different personality traits.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the books are the fact sheets at the back. They tell, playing card style, facts about the gods (which day of the week, which planet, Greek and Roman names, etc.). Fascinating stuff. O’Connor also provides a reading list, places to go to find out more information about the gods as well as Greek and Roman culture.

Well worth the time.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

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by Zora Neale Hurston
ages: adult
First sentence: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I really didn’t know what to expect when I started this book. Honestly. I hadn’t heard much about it, and I only knew Zora Hurston from Zora and Me which I read last fall.

So, my impressions…

Shall I get the negative over with? The dialect dialogue drove me nuts. Random sample: “Dat’s jealousy and malice. Some uh dem very mens wants tuh do whut dey claim deys skeered Tea Cake is doin’.” Not too bad on it’s own, but pages and pages of it pulled me out of the flow of the novel. Every single time. I do have a couple prejudices when going into novels, and dialect is one of them. (Present tense in the other.) However, I am proud of myself: I kept going in spite of being pulled out of the novel.

Mostly because the writing (when it was in English and not Southern) was so gorgeous. Random sample:

“So, gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired.”

So simple and yet so evocative. The whole book — the narration, anyway — was like that. Simply gorgeous, poetic. And the story about a woman coming into her own, finding her own path to happiness in the face of expectations and overbearing/abusive husbands. It’s a testament to the resilience of women, the inner strength a woman has when faced with Life.

And for that, the book is more than worth reading.