10 Questions for Lauren Mechling

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Sometimes, you meet an author — whether by email or in person — who is just so incredibly cool that you know that hanging out with them would be incredibly fun. Lauren Mechling is one of those authors. I want to go to New York City and just hang out with her for a day. I suppose it helps that I liked her two books, Dream Girl and Dream Life, too. At any rate, I was tickled that she agreed to answer my 10 questions.

MF: So, I’m curious: what was the initial inspiration for Claire and the Dream books?
LM:The inspiration came when I went with a very dear friend to visit her grandmother. She’s a former socialite who now lives in a hotel with a lot of other former socialites, and she has an opinion on every little thing. Her granddaughter is the apple of her eye and I was so amused watching the two of them relate to each other I wanted to play around with this relationship. I also wanted to write a series that was action-packed and funny. Not enough of those these days, in my humble opinion.

MF:I’ve only been to NYC once and didn’t explore much, so I couldn’t help but wondering: how much of Claire’s physical world is real and how much is made up?
LM: It’s entirely real! The only made-up part is how quickly she can get around.

MF: Seriously? You ought to give Claire Voyante tours. I’d sign up for one! Fashion plays a big part in Claire’s life, from Kiki’s vintage clothing (love that!) to current trends… is that something you came up solely for the character or the book, or is fashion something you personally are interested in? (I’m not sure that’s the best way to phrase this question, but hopefully you get what I’m trying to say….)
LM: I DO get what you’re trying to say. And yes, guilty as charged: I’m a sucker for clothes. I especially like the way Claire and the other girls use clothes–not to dress up for boys or to show the world how cool they are because they have 56 pairs of Juicy sweatpants. They use clothes as a way to stand out and be unique and, in Claire’s case, to connect to her family history. By wearing her grandmother’s old frocks, she’s closer to her grandmother. And speaking of her grandmother, one of the things Kiki teaches Claire is it’s worth it to make the effort, even when the same old T-shirt-and-yoga-pants combo seems tempting. I think it affects your mood and the mood of those around you. Walking out of the house in a vintage dress and fun pair of flats is a small way of saying, “Hello, world! I care!”

MF: I totally loved Ian in this book: I actually felt bad that he and Claire are just friends. (I suppose I just have a soft spot for the geeky guys.) Do you have a favorite character or scene?
LM: Oh, that’s so funny that you heart Ian. I have to say, I’m a little in love with Louis Ibbits, the latchkey kid who’s Claire’s old best friend and whose wit is even drier than Claire’s. Plus I love his tortoiseshell glasses.

MF: If you had a magic dream-inhancing necklace, what would you want to see?
LM: I’d want to see all the good and bad things the people I know are up to. I just wouldn’t want to hear them talking about me. That would be too much to bear.

MF: What are the differences between co-writing a book, and solo-writing? Pros/cons?
LM: Writing a book on your own is harder and the ultimate feeling of accomplishment is bigger. That said, I LOVE co-writing. Laura [my 10th Grade Social Climber series co-writer] and I are actually in the middle of a collaboration and it’s so fun. I love having a personal trainer to praise you when you hit a good note and to breathe down your neck and make you write every morning.

MF: You’ve written for newspapers, magazines and novels… do you have a favorite format to write in?
LM: Oh, it’s all really fun and it all fits together. Writing a book is a MAJOR undertaking. And writing an article, be it for a newspaper or a magazine, is so fast and short in comparison. Sometimes you need the instant gratification. and sometimes you want to be playful and expansive or you just don’t want to have to worry about being “accurate.” I can honestly say that doing each makes me appreciate all the upsides of the other format.

MF: Who or what inspires you to write?
LM: Me. I get very unhappy when I don’t write.

MF: Are there five books you think everyone should read?
LM: How about five authors I adore: Barbara Pym, Laurie Colwin, Dorothy Parker, Kate Atkinson and Sarah Waters. I realize these are not YA authors, so I’ll toss in: Norma Klein.

MF: I’m remiss: I’ve only heard of Dorothy Parker. Something to rectify in the future. If you don’t mind telling us, what’s up next for you? (More Claire?)
LM: Well, I’m working on that above mentioned project with Laura. And yes, I’d really like to write a third Claire book. Se’s really come into her own — she’s so much wiser and less insecure than she was in her first book. I’m dying to know how she’s holding up!

Sunday Salon: Odds and Ends

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Some bookish and non-bookish musings this Sunday morning.

My email program’s spell check, for some reason, has decided that I speak French. It’s actually quite frustrating that I can’t figure out how to convince it that I don’t actually speak French. And now Firefox is acting up. (So far I’ve misspelled: spell, some, reason, that, speak, quite, and now…. go figure.a)

In case you haven’t heard, Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations has come up with a list of The Best Young Adult Books of 2009, as inpsired by Kelly at YAnnabe’s Unsung YA list. Full disclosure: somehow I was asked to participate on this list, and I did send a book in. It’s still a quite brilliant list, though. And stick around to check out the site a bit.

Quite a few people have signed up for our Catcher in the Rye read along which starts next Sunday. Here’s a list of the people who’ll be participating so far:

Amanda at The Zen Leaf
Heather at Tales of a Capricious Reader
Jackie at Farmlane Books
Rob at Books are Like Candy Corn
Nan’s Corner of the Web
Rmlrhonda
Beth at Thinking of Thinking
Kim at Page After Page
Suko at Suko’s Notebook
Bree at The Things We Read
Jill at Fizzy Thoughts
Corinne at The Book Nest

You know you want to join in!

Want to know what C, M and I are all excited for this Friday? The Lightning Thief opens! Squee! Here’s a bit of a teaser…

Oh, and while you’re waiting, why not find out your demigod power? (Me, I’m the child of Grover. Kind of odd, but I think I like it.)

What’s on your mind today?

A Wind in the Door

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by Madeline L’Engle
ages: 9+
First sentence: “There are dragons in the twins’ vegetable garden.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I always remembered this one, from when I read it as a kid, as my “favorite”. Though, if you had asked me, I don’t think I could have pinpointed why. So, I was quite curious to reread the book: maybe I would love it as much as I remembered loving it. And maybe I could finally pinpoint the elusive why.

So. Charles Wallace is having problems. He’s not adapting to school particularly well, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the precocious child that he is. On top of that, something more fundamental is wrong: he’s sick, down in his very cells. Meg, Calvin and Mr. Jenkins (the school principal) together with the cheribum Proginoskes have to work together to battle the evil that’s invading the world and save Charles.

Honestly? I liked the book well enough, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it was my favorite. It was less overtly religious than Wrinkle in Time was, but there were still overtones of the Ultimate Battle. There was a lot about Hate and war and instant gratification versus Doing Ones’ Duty. Maybe that was it: the fact that Duty wins out over Fun and Frivolity. Perhaps I just wanted justification for my innate personality quirks?

I was disappointed in Meg; while she was still the heroine and she still did the most work, she just wasn’t as engaging a character as I felt she was in Wrinkle. That, and I just didn’t get much out of the plot: it seemed to be spinning in circles. Perhaps it was me, but I felt it just had too much narration and not enough action.

Then again, I may just be nitpicking. My 11-year-old self adored this book. And I might just be content to let it stay that way.

The Undaunted

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by Gerald N. Lund
ages: adult
First sentence: “David Dickinson’s eyes were wide open.”
Review copy sent to me by someone at By Common Consent because I volunteered for this torture.

Five ways to ruin a historical novel:

5. Write in dialect: “It be joost fur me, Dah?” If I have to read it aloud to understand it, it’s not worth my time.

4. Too much historical detail, not enough plot. “These full-sized coal carts were four feet wide and eight feet long and could hold the contents of six of the small coal tubs. That was about four tons of coal each. The carts had wheels and axles formed from a single piece of steel. This meant the two wheels did not turn independently, nor did they have an independent braking system. This was where the spraggers come in. If a car got rolling too fast down a grade, it would jump the tracks and smash into the wall.” I really don’t care that much about mining practices in England in the mid-19th century anyway. I swear about 500 pages of this book could have been axed. (Granted, I only made it through the first 50, but I’m just sayin’.)

3. Too much narrative exposition, not enough action. “David still hesitated. He liked Albert Beames, or Bertie, as most of the trappers called him. He was a bit odd looking, with freckles hidden beneath the layers of coal dust, and teeth that were prominent enough that some of the older boys called him Beaver Beames. Bertie was a year older than David and about a stone heaver* [yep, that was footnoted] He was totally devoid of ambition and was baffled by David’s continual talk of becoming a hurrier.” Three words for you: Show. Don’t tell.

2. Having a Message. Okay: I get it. They were Brave and Noble and Faithful. It’d be nice if they were interesting characters, too.

And the number one way to kill a historical novel:

1. Footnotes and endnotes. Puh-lease. It’s fiction, not a textbook. If I really cared what Yorkshire Pudding or Turkish Delight was I’d Google it.

I knew there was a reason I never read LDS fiction.

Library Loot 2010-05

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Finally, back to normal. We went, we got all sorts of books, picked up holds (addressed the problem of a lost book — oops!), went to storytime, and I even got my prize for finishing the local reading challenge (a very nice mug full of all sorts of goodies). Happy day!

This week’s loot:

Picture Books:
The Frogs and Toads All Sang, by Arnold Loebel/Color by Adrianne Lobel
Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes, by Margie Palatini/Illus. by Barry Moser
My Forever Dress, by Harriet Ziefert/Illus by Liz Murphy
Sugar Would Not Eat It, by Emily Jenkins and Giselle Potter

Middle Grade books:
The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales , by Dawn Casey and Anne Wilson
Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom, by Eric Wright

YA books:
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, by Louise Rennison
The Demon’s Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood, by Tony Lee, Sam Hart, Artur Fujita
The China Garden, by Liz Berry

Adult Fiction:
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger

The roundup is either at Reading Adventures or A Striped Armchair. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

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by Grace Lin
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Far away from here, following the Jade River, there was once a black mountain that cut into the sky like a jagged piece of rough metal.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Sometimes, what you really need in life is good traditional fairy tale. No bells and whistles, nothing super-fantabulous-exciting. Just a quiet, original fairy tale with all the traditional elements: a good-hearted (but not flawless) heroine, an adventure, a budding friendship, a lesson learned. Stick it in China, and you’ve got something magical.

Minli and her family live in the valley of the Fruitless Mountain, working hard every day to scrape by. Her mother is disgruntled, especially when Minli’s father spends the evenings telling her stories about the Jade Dragon and the Old Man of the Moon. Then one day, Minli discovers that the stories may not be impossible after all, and sets out to ask the Old Man of the Moon how her family can make their fortune. Along the way, she will have adventures, make friends (with a dragon, among others), and learn a few things about herself.

The charm in this book is really in its simplicity. On the one hand, there’s nothing grandiose and it’s very traditional to the point of being predictable. But on the other hand, there were no wasted words, and the plot clipped along at a very quick pace. I realized at one point that this book would make an excellent read aloud: the words just cried out to be spoken aloud. That, and I think the pacing of the book works better as a story told rather than read. Not that I didn’t enjoy reading it — it wasn’t edge-of-the-seat gripping, but it was charming, and I did want to know what happened next. But, to read it aloud to my girls, to give it that added suspension of seeing what will happen next, tomorrow night? I think that would have added a lot to the book.

As it was, though, it’s a story well worth reading.

Dream Life

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by Lauren Mechling
ages: 12+
First sentence: “You could say I was running behind schedule, though that would be putting an optimistic spin on it.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.

Things are looking up for our girl, Claire. She managed to save her friend Becca’s family — the Shuttleworths of Soul Sauce fame — from the doom and gloom in the last adventure through her snazzy black-and-white dreams. She managed to snag a super cool college boyfriend, Andy (though they’re keeping it hush-hush for now). All while managing to take down the snitty bad girls at Hudson High. (End previous book plot summary.)

So, what could get in her way?

Well, lots, actually. Claire’s up and down with her boyfriend. Becca has taken to hanging out with her old prep-school friends, and doesn’t have as much time for Claire anymore. She hasn’t even had any decent dreams of late. Everything seems to be falling apart. But then, Claire is initiated into this super-secret New York club, the Blue Moons, and suddenly everything picks up again. A mystery to solve! Black and white dreams! Socialites! Protests! Murder mystery parties!

Dream Life was much like Dream Girl, but better. Perhaps it was because I knew what to expect out of it — lots of fluff, a bit of action, great clothes and happening hot-spots — but, while I enjoyed the first, found this one to be a lot more fun. I especially loved the minor characters: Hallie, a goth foodie that’s also inducted into the Blue Moons (why couldn’t she have more to do?); Ian, Claire’s geeky comic book side-kick from Hudson (felt like he totally had a thing for Claire… why couldn’t she get the geeky guy rather than the uber-cool college one?); and Louis, Claire’s friend from her former high school, who has a thing for Becca. The three of them made book fun for me. But, beyond that, it’s a book with a winning combination of fashion, mystery and fun.

Can’t lose with that.

Sunday Salon: Catcher in the Rye Read-a-long

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This past Thursday, J. D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye, passed away. As I was watching people’s reactions on Twitter, I realized something: I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye. Somehow, for some reason (actually many reasons, some of which I can actually recall but won’t go into here), I managed to completely miss this book.

Which is why Amanda, Heather and Jackie at Farmlanebooks put our heads together (metaphorically, of course), and came up with an idea to have a Catcher in the Rye read-a-long. It’s going to be pretty easy-going. We’re planning on starting Sunday, February 14th and wrapping up around the end of the month. I’ll make sure there are posts after February 14th where you can leave your spoiler comments, questions, and discussion points.

I’m not going to do anything formal with signing up and all that, but if you’re interested in reading along with us — either for the first time or the 20th — please leave a comment and let us know!

I’m quite curious to see what all the fuss is about.

(Oh, and many thanks to Amanda and Jason for the lovely button.)

January 2010 Jacket Flap-a-thon

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It’s the end of January (finally). It wasn’t a bad month, reading wise. It started out slow, but picked up near the end, I think. And that’s a good thing. On a side note: do y’all like my commentary on the jacket flaps or not? Sometimes, I don’t know what to say and so I’m wondering if I should just leave them to speak for themselves. Something to think about, anyway.

My three favorite jacket flaps from the books I picked up this month:

Odd and the Frost Giants (Harper): “In this inventive, short, yet perfectly formed novel inspired by traditional Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman takes readers on a wild and magical trip to the land of giants and gods and back. In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he’s had some very bad luck: His father perished in a Viking expedition; a tree fell on and shattered his leg; the endless freezing winter is making villagers dangerously grumpy. Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle — three creatures with a strange story to tell. Now Odd is forced on a stranger journey than he had imagined — a journey to save Asgard, city of the gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it. It’s going to take a very special kind of twelve-year-old boy to outwit the Frost Giants, restore peace to the city of gods, and end the long winter. Someone cheerful and infuriating and clever… Someone just like Odd…”

The Year My Son and I Were Born (GPP Life): “With six other children at home, Kathryn Lynard Soper was prepared for the challenges another newborn would bring. But after Thomas’s complicated birth, his diagnosis—Down syndrome—forced her to face her deepest fears and weaknesses, her ignorance and prejudice, and her limitations as a mother and as a human being. Her struggle, coupled with the demands of caring for a fragile baby and juggling her family’s needs, sparked the worst episode of depression she’d experienced in decades. The Year My Son and I Were Born is Kathryn’s brutally honest yet beautiful account of how she escaped a downward spiral of despair and emerged with newfound peace. Antidepressant therapy restored her equilibrium, and interactions with friends and family brought needed perspective. But the most profound change came through her growing relationship with Thomas. His radiant presence shone through her outer layers of self, where fear and guilt festered, and reached the center of her very being—where love, acceptance, and gratitude blossomed in abundance.”

My Most Excellent Year (Dial Books):
“TCKeller: What’s ‘flap copy’ anyway?
AugieHwong: It’s what they put on a book jacket to tell you what’s inside, you rock-head. We can use the one from Liza Minnelli’s bio as a template.
TCKeller: Or not.
AlePerez: This is positively mortifying. They were just supposed to be classroom essays! I can’t believe the entire world is about to find out how I played Anthony like a violin for five months.
TCKeller: I let you do that. Hey, why don’t we open the flap with a quote about the 1918 Red Sox–
AugieHwong: No way, dude. If you’re looking for a warm-up act, we open /with Bette Davis in All About Eve.
AlePerez: Hello? Jacqueline Kennedy would be a far more appealing, not to mention intelligent, choice. Besides, I outrank both of you.
TCKeller: Oh, yeah? I have a Carlton Fisk rookie card.
AugieHwong: I have Angela Lansbury’s autograph.
AlePerez: I have a Secret Service agent.
TCKeller: Guys! Why don’t we just forget the flap copy and start at the very beginning?
AugieHwong: A very good place to start….”

Other books read this month:
Calamity Jack
Dream Girl
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
Saving Maddie
Wrinkle in Time
Front and Center
Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart
Unfinished Angel
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Carter Finally Gets It

Running Total: 13
Adult fiction: 2
YA: 5
MG: 3
Non-fiction: 2
Graphic Novel: 1

Carter Finally Gets It

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by Brent Crawford
ages: 13+
First sentence: “In the back room of the Pizza Barn, with only two weeks before the start of high school, my boys and I are at the Freshman Mixer.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Carter is not exactly what you’d call a suave person. He’s got ADD, and he has a stuttering problem, especially around girls he’s attracted to. He rides a bike. He can’t quite do a gainer off the diving board. He’s on the football team, but in one of the less glamorous positions. And yet, here he is, starting high school, hoping it’ll be all that he’s ever wanted: (in his horny 14-year-old boy case) sex, preferably with a hot chick.

The book chronicles Carter’s ups (such as they are) and downs (and, hoo-boy, are they spectacular) over the course of his freshman year as he tries (and tries again) to figure out how to go about this whole high school business. I have to say that as a mom, I cringed: if 14-year-olds are anything like Carter (and they probably are), then why am I letting my daughter out among them? But, as a reader? As a reader, I found myself warming to Carter and his doofishness. He’s so adorably clueless that I think you can’t help but love him (eventually) and cheer for him. It helps that Crawford is a captivating writer; he got 14-year-olds spot-on (which is part of the reason I’m anxious about my daughters….), and he treats his characters (all of them: from Carter’s “boys”, to his older sister and parents, to the upperclassmen that Carter interacts with) with intelligence, affection, and, most of all, humor.

Because, whatever else this book is (a coming-of-age story, a high school book, a guy book), it’s funny. Carter, mostly inadvertently, is hilarious. It’s a combination of things: Carter, the character; the situations he gets himself into; and the way Crawford writes about it all.

At any rate, I grew to really like Carter. I still may not let my daughter go to high school, though.