On a YA lit listserv I mostly lurk on, someone expressed great dismay and anger that One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke got a Printz honor this year while Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks did not. Now, I have not read One Whole and Perfect Day so I have no opinion on it whatsoever, but I'll tell you the reason why I think the Printz committee shut out Mistik Lake:

It's because Mistik Lake is a seriously flawed book in many, many ways.

First, the writing is very thin and overly ambitious. The author introduces a lot of characters but never fully develops any of them. The...I guess you'd call her the main character, Odella, has a lot of the markings of a Mary Sue: She has an unusual but never explained name, she is always heroic in the face of tragedy, everyone seems to love her. Brooks gets so busy explaining the effect of Odella's mother's life on everyone that no one character's reaction ever really comes to fruition. I have absolutely no problem with books where the life of a character who never appears on screen affects everyone who appears on-screen. In fact, I find those books fascinating if they're done well. Here, Sally's (the mother's) tragedy affects everyone in the book, but everyone around her is such a saint that she's always viewed as poor, poor Sally. Sally packs up when Odella is a teenager, moves to Iceland to be with her lover, later husband, and dies in a car accident a few years later. At the end of the book (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) the reader learns that Sally and her husband (whose name I can't remember because I borrowed the book and had to return it, sorry) had a baby. That almost made me throw the book across the room.

Tinhattery to follow.

First, Odella and her sisters Janelle and Sarah were supposed to love this little baby they'd never met, who was flown from Iceland to Canada not long after her mother's death. Because everyone knows that babies have the magic power to bring destroyed families together. Second, because Sally had a baby I really believe that the author wanted us to see her as a Truly Good Person, because you can't speak ill of a dead mother. Third, the introduction of the baby in the very final pages seemed to send a message to the reader that Sally must have found True Love, because having a baby with someone else must mean it's True Love and you have a Forever Bond. Because Sally found True Love, Odella has to forgive her for her abandonment. Not forgiving her for the abandonment might hurt the baby, because Baby can't think bad thoughts about her mother.

I'm not saying that Sally didn't truly love her new husband. That's entirely possible, but you'll never know because the book doesn't cover it. I guess the reader is just supposed to understand all that because of the presence of the baby. But the message I really think Odella got in the end? Mommy loves the baby more than she loves you.

The secondary plotline (and oh yes, there was a tertiary plotline, too) about Odella's great-aunt Gloria being a lesbian was nice, but the book could have survived just as well without it. I know there are supposed to be parallels between Odella's falling in love and Gloria's falling in love with a woman named Violet, but it's an apples-and-pineapples comparison. Gloria was a pretty cool person, probably the one person in the book with any idea of what it means to love, but she couldn't save the underdeveloped, melodramatic, whiny disasters that were all the other characters.

In short, a book where the setting is the best character in the book does not deserve an award. It'll probably get a spot on BBYA for reasons I'll never understand, but it was rightfully shut out of the Printz.

Another big complaint I've seen centers on Shaun Tan's The Arrival being shut out for the Printz. To that I reply, Well DUH. Maybe I'm a snob who doesn't understand the truly progressive nature of the graphic novel but The Arrival, as beautiful and moving as it is, is not literary because it's got no words in it. Graphic works that incorporate words can certainly be literary, because the words and pictures depend on each other to move the story along (see American Born Chinese). But because there are no words in The Arrival, it misses the chance to paint its picture for the reader in words. I'm sorry it wasn't eligible for the Caldecott because it certainly could have given ...Hugo Cabret a run for its money. It's a fascinating book I'd recommend to those who love graphic works, but again, it's not literary and didn't deserve to be honored at the Printz.

I have a headache that makes me want to rip half my brain out, so the Happy Galley Post of Midwinter 2008 will have to wait. I will say, though, that I'm really looking forward to reading a lot of what I picked up.

Tags: 2007, books, ya
126: discontent

Sometimes a book has to be written about. The books I like to write about are one of two extremes: Either they're incredible or I can't imagine how they got past an author, an agent, and at least one editor. Today's book, which I can't ignore writing about any longer, is the former.

Boy Toy by Barry Lyga.

Barry Lyga likes to do the Sarah Dessen & Lara Zeises thing and set all of his novels in the same place, and have characters from novel X show up in novel Y. I kind of like this, because it's a fun thing for current readers to play along with but new readers don't notice any sort of break in the text. As he did with his first novel, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl (which I did love), Lyga sets Boy Toy at South Brook High School in Brookdale, MD. The protagonist of BT is senior Josh Mendel, a star student and athlete who is also the school pariah. Five years before the book begins, Josh was in a closet with Rachel, the girl he liked. Their seven minutes in heaven was cut short by Josh's behavior: He not only kissed Rachel, but he ripped her panties and touched a little more of her than she wanted. She broke away from him and things have been nothing short of embarrassing and stilted between Josh and Rachel ever since. That is, when his careful plan of avoiding Rachel goes awry.

What no one knew at the time of the panty incident was that Josh was sleeping wtih his history teacher, Eve. He was behaving towards Rachel in ways that Eve taught him. And now, just months before Josh's high school graduation, Eve is out of prison having served five years of her fifteen-year sentence. Reading about Eve's release stirs feelings in Josh that he thought he'd shelved. He thought he'd become used to the strange looks, knowing that everyone knew he was the one who slept with his teacher even though his name never hit the papers. In a cathartic turn of events for Josh, he sees he's not the only one who was affected long-term by his relationship with Eve. Rachel's got some loose ends to tie up with Josh before they both graduate and decide where to go on to college, and if there's anyone Josh could never hide from, it's the only girl he's ever known who could strike him out.

I've read a lot of books recently by YA authors who like to pile on the issues: abuse, divorce, dysfunctional families, sex, drugs, rock and roll, what have you. Most of these books have one sad thread in common, that they are so focused on getting these issues on the page that there's little to no development, or the reader gets to the end of the book and feels like she's the one that needs therapy, not the main character. Now, I like a good book full of issues as much as the next reader, but the problem is that too many of them are handled by writers who, although they know how to handle the issues carefully, aren't that great at what they do. The results are anything from novels where you get to the last page and say, "Hey, what about X?" to novels where the entire plot happens in the last 15 pages. I was glad to see that Boy Toy fell into neither of these traps. On the whole the book is incredibly well paced, suspenseful, and full of characters you actually come to care about. Everyone in this book has dimension. Some of my colleagues have said that Josh's flashback telling of the growth of his relationship with Eve was distracting, but I don't see a better way it could have been done. Had Lyga chosen to tell the story as it happened, starting with Josh as a seventh-grader and ending just before high school graduation, the reader would not get the sense of growth and perspective that Josh has (somewhat stubbornly) gained over the years. The book would be completely different, and not in a good way. And if your soul doesn't drop through your knees during chapter 24, then you probably don't have one.

Read more of Lyga's thoughts on "issue" books at his blog.

I am NOT lending this galley. It is staying right in my office next to some of my favorites from last year. :P

Tags: 2007, books
126: intimidated
780: I talk about something you can sure understand

Ever since ALA I have been feeling tired and achy all the time. The achy is the same achy I've had for the past year and a half or so, which means I really need to get in gear and call my doctor for that specialist referral. But that's neither here nor there.

ALA! It was fun! I felt like I was so much busier at this conference than at others, though. Lots of meetings, discussions, dinners, and the ultrafabulous Printz lectures. Things I learned/did in DC:

1. Markus Zusak is hot, but much shorter than I imagined he would be. I'm 5'4", and when I was talking to him I was wearing 4" heels and we were just about eye to eye. Still, he thinks Henry is adorable, all asleep next to my copy of The Book Thief.

2. OMG I have a lot of work to do this year. But if all my projects go as planned 2008 will be fabulous.

3. The exhibits were a little disappointing with regards to how many books they had, but I could deal because I picked up most everything I wanted at Book Expo. Best Exhibitor of the Conference Award (which is just my personal thing, not anything official), given previously to Hyperion (BEA 2007) and Little, Brown (ALA Midwinter 2007) goes to Penguin, whose rep said to me as I looked at books: "Are you on our book mailing list?" When I replied that I would like to be, she said, "Give me your card, and we'll get you going." YAY FREE BOOKS FROM PENGUIN, and specifically from Razorbill, which is one of my favorite all-around imprints. THANK YOU.

4. DC: Not really a walking city in terms of placement of hotels in relation to the convention center, but I needed the walking anyway.

5. Nick Hornby has a YA novel out this fall. I got a galley and am excited to read it.

6. Two of the four Printz honor books this year are tied into the theme of difficult times and choices in history. I remember this girl I knew in high school who was convinced that had she lived during, say, the eighteenth century or so, that she would be different from all those doormat women who just cooked and cleaned and had babies. She would have stood up for everyone's rights, she declared, and been thoroughly modern. I couldn't help but think at the time, though I didn't say to her, "No, you probably would have just been like everyone else. A relatively small percentage of people, and smaller now that the earth's population is so large, ever make history. Had you really been as outspoken as you think you would have been, your chances of being beheaded or at least sedated were much higher than you'd like to think. And also, you probably wouldn't have been educated enough to stand out in the way you'd like to. Sad but true."

This idea high-schoolers get, that they would have been different somehow during the times chronicled in The Book Thief and Octavian Nothing, is common. It's easy to understand why they would think this way: They've never known a time before the Equal Rights Amendment, before Title IX, before Brown vs. Board, etc., and they've always been taught that these decisions led to more equality, a more enlightened way of public education, if you will. It's completely obvious to them that slavery was wrong, that people are all human regardless of color (Octavian Nothing), and that the Holocaust and more specifically, the Hitler Youth (Book Thief) were also wrong. Reading their history books, most of them would have no problem saying without much thought, "I would never have joined the Hitler Youth." And you know what? I don't fault them for it. Most of them don't have the perspective presented in Octavian Nothing and The Book Thief, both of which show that standing against a hostile, pervasive regime is not as easy as it looks. Liesel joins the Bund Deutscher Mädel in The Book Thief not because she's anti-Semetic or even agrees with Hitler's political ideals, but because that was simply what girls did and a girl could not risk the kind of ostracism that would come from not joining the BDM. When her foster father resists joining the Nazi Party, life gets very difficult for the family in their small German town. No one thought to say to the Novanglian College of Lucidity, "Hey, stop your experiments on Octavian because we're all human and he's not a science project!" because at the time Octavian Nothing takes place African people were not considered equal to whites. It's how things were. This idea, of "that's how things were" is something not explored much in today's high school history classes (at least, not the ones I know of, though I don't doubt there are fabulous history teachers out there who are making an effort to do more than just have students memorize names and dates and places), and I'm so, so very glad that Octavian Nothing and The Book Thief, two books that don't apologize for history but instead make the reader take a critical look at it through the use of authentic language and sympathetic characters, were honored this year.

7. Oh, and I really liked Gene Yang's Printz acceptance speech, too. He took the best potshot at the moron MySpace users who felt qualified to say that his book was bigoted and should be burned without actually having read it. American Born Chinese was not the book I would have chosen for the Printz (that would be Octavian Nothing), but I do think it's wonderful and Yang's speech, with some visual history of the depictions of Asian-Americans in comics and popular culture, gave me a deeper appreciation for the book.

Seven is enough for now.

Books: Finished Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. It seems that every year there's one YA novel that gets incredibly polarized reviews. Half of the reviews say things like "stunning" or "one of the best books this year" and half say, "deplorable," "lacking," etc. In 2005 this book was Doing It by Melvin Burgess, and in 2006 it was King Dork by Frank Portman (oddly, both are books I feel sort of "meh" about). This year's book seems to be Wicked Lovely, which...wasn't. I have to say I mostly side with the 2Q 2P it got in VOYA. Well, I definitely side with the 2Q, but I would have given it a 4P. I know I'm not much of a fantasy reader, but I don't think my problems with this book have to do much with my liking or disliking fantasy. The whole book was...let's compare it to a road trip from Pittsburgh to New York. Stay with me here. You set out from Pittsburgh on the Penn Turnpike, but there are so many things along the Turnpike to distract you. You get off in Hershey to eat chocolate and get a manicure, and in Reading to go outlet shopping, and in King of Prussia for the mall, and Philadelphia for some cheesesteaks and to see the Liberty Bell. By the time you get to New Jersey you've already deviated from your trip several times to look in detail at shiny things. You stay for a while on the New Jersey Turnpike because there's not a lot to look at, but you do get off around exit 7 for Six Flags. That was fun, yes? Back on the Turnpike, things are pretty boring for a while until OMG THERE'S AN IKEA IN ELIZABETH. Now you're loaded down with Swedish furniture and glass candleholders and back on the road, and...

Hey, where are we going again? And what's all this stuff in the car? We don't need all this stuff! And I feel kind of bloated from the cheesesteaks.

Wicked Lovely suffers from this road-trip problem of too many distractions, not to mention the completely unbelievable dialogue, the predictable ending, and the up-and-down temperature obsessions (cold things are not sexy, as much as I hate summer). The author often leads the reader off the road into something shiny and then says, "No, wait, back to the story!" I got tired of a hundred pages of "Aislinn can see faeries but can't let anyone know." I understood that very well by page ten. I didn't find the Summer King the least bit alluring, and Beira, the Winter Queen, was evil-overlord laughable, not frightening. Urban fantasy is the hot new thing in YA (and also dead or dying main characters) and I have no doubt this book will have an enthusiastic audience, hence why I would have given it a 4P, but although it's not the worst book I've read this year it pales in comparison to a lot of other YA.

Current favorite distraction: reversathon.

Running career: Not going well. Ow ow ow my left shin has been hurting for WEEKS. Must find different route that does not have me running downhill on concrete.

Life in general: Busy. Ask me in September.

Tags: 2007, books
126: distracted
780: it's so contagious, I cannot get it out of my mind

Everyone I know has a to-read list/pile/stack of post-its/folder of del.icio.us tags. Book descriptions come our way...well, mine at least...and I think, "I'll read that as soon as I'm done writing this review, or reading this stuff for a work project, or whatever." Between having a life and being a librarian, my to-read pile never has fewer than twenty books in it. Yesterday, however, I finished one of the books in my to-read pile, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

To write a short review in the style of the book: Holy FUCK this book was fucking great! It's like about this straight bassist in a queercore punkish band, Nick, who just broke up with his ho-beast girlfriend, Tris. Only Tris fucking won't not come to his gigs in NYC and so when he sees her at one of his gigs one night he grabs Norah and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes. I didn't know stream of consciousness writing could be so damn good until I read this. The book takes place over one night where Nick and Norah kiss, fight, break up, get back together, fight again, get back together again, and play out one of the hottest non-sex sex scenes in teen literature (right up there with Order of the Poison Oak).

And then I read Crackback by John Coy, which suffered the fatal disease of Too Many Plots, Not Enough Character Development and the world looked a little less shiny. But such is life as a reader.

Off to move Naomi and Ely's No-Kiss List to the top of my non-required-reading pile.

Tags: 2007, books, ya
126: determined

Ow migraine can bite me. Stupid hormones. Migraines are why I learned to touch-type; I can't see the keyboard properly. Also this is the second day this week I've forgotten my Sidekick.

( Book Expo recap. Includes kitten picture. )

Winner of the Best Conference Vendor award: Hyperion Children's, for their neverending supply of large tote bags. And also for Angus, who is always made of win.

Time to go read. Book reviews due!

Tags: 2007, books
126: tired
780: I hate you why are guys so lame

The good: Mr. Cedar and I did not have water in our apartment yesterday. We're fine. The cats are fine. My coworkers are fine, except for two who had water in their basements.

The bad: I got back from my run last night (I forgot gloves. How do I do these things? I was so freakin' cold.) to find that I had no heat or hot water. It's 48F degrees out. Temperatures here will not reach 60F until Saturday, which is about when we expect to have our heat and hot water back. So I smell and I'm shivering because I don't have a shower at work, nor do I belong to a gym. Sorry. The story from the apartment office is that fuel lines are backed up all over the town, and our entire complex is out, and I did see workers in a spot where I usually don't see them this morning.

More bad: Many libraries in my system had to close yesterday due to flooded parking lots. One library had a flood in its children's section and that library is closed. I don't know what the damage is like, but I do know that that particular library's children's section is in the basement, so it can't be good. Another library's children's section flooded, but even though they had much damage to their carpeting, 98% of their books are still intact. My coworker took pictures of his neighborhood, which also flooded, but since they're not public I'll leave you with this picture of Bound Brook and this one of New Milford. Part of the road I have to take to get to a meeting this afternoon is flooded.

Currently reading: Does my Head Look Big in This by Randa Abdel-Fattah. Pakistani-Australian Muslim private school student Amal has been inspired by Jennifer Aniston to wear the hijab full time. It's a decision she makes confidently and with the support of her closest friends and family. She's also the only Muslim girl at her school, and is met with opposition from mean girls and less-than-tolerant faculty. It is funny and witty if a little heavy-handed at times, and definitely worth a read. Randa Abdel-Fattah, if you ever read this, THANK YOU for writing this book. Not only is it something we desperately need in the YA world, but you handled it so beautifully, with a warm, charming main character who will inspire readers to be not only tolerant, but confident.

Currently watching: Flavor of Love Charm School. Pure comedy gold, but it works best if you've seen both seasons of Flavor of Love. You just KNOW that the person who said, "Hey, we should totally get Flavor Flav to do The Surreal Life" that fateful day at a conference table now has the corner office and his/her own personal secretary, and probably lunch delivered from Spago every day. I'm not sure who to put money on just yet, but I'm leaning towards Toasteee and Goldie. Scuse me. Jennifer and Courtney.

Currently annoyed by: Reviewers, writers, publishers, librarians, readers, etc. who cite every dogdamn children's and YA fantasy book or series as "The next Harry Potter" or "The ______ Harry Potter." I'm SICK of it. CAPSLOCK SICK OF IT. I don't want to hear about your dragon rider!Harry Potter or your black!Harry Potter or your green!Harry Potter or your time-and-space-travel!Harry Potter or your girl!Harry Potter. Yes, yes, readalikes, blah blah blah, but none of this "It's the next Harry Potter" actually tells me anything about the quality or content of the book. I don't want to hear how your book is leikomg So Much Better than Harry Potter, because in some ways it might be and in some ways it might not. Eragon certainly wasn't. Stephen King said it best: Harry Potter is Harry Potter, you dolts. Believe me, I appreciate what Harry Potter has done for the publishing industry, plus I love the books. But calling so much fantasy "the next Harry Potter" is akin to calling every chick lit YA book "the next Gossip Girl" or every GLBTQ book "the next Boy Meets Boy." Some of the stories are similar, yes. Pendragon and Harry Potter both use elements of the hero's journey and both have megalomaniac, melodramatic villains. But comparing D.J. MacHale's writing style to J.K. Rowling's is comparing apples and pineapples. She writes better emotions, and he writes better action sequences. Where she has maybe 3 multidimensional peripheral recurring characters, he's got about 7 or 8, and that's on a much smaller scale. Bobby Pendragon is not "the next Harry Potter," he's just Bobby Pendragon. And I like that on its own. So reviewers, writers, publishers, librarians, readers, etc., please do tell me about your really cool upcoming fantasy series about Native American time-traveling gnome hunters. I want to at least take a look at it. But please don't tell me it's the next Harry Potter, because it probably isn't.

Tags: 2007, books, rants, tv
126: thirsty
780: everybody's talking all this stuff about me, why don't they just let me live

1. I am not signing up for this year's percy_ficathon because I am still writing the fic I was supposed to turn in for last year's percy_ficathon. I also did not tell the mods I needed someone to pinch-hit for me. This, my friends, is how NOT to be a good member of the fandom. That is, in fact, a really good way to make people hate you and if the ficathon mods ban me forever, I deserve it. I still feel horrendously guilty about it. That's the only ficathon fic I've ever signed up to finish and didn't, even though I thought I would. Someday I'll finish the fic I owe. loupnoir even did a really terrific beta for it. Lately I've just had a hard time facing fandom. I feel like I've come to a standstill. I don't feel like working on my fics, and I can't work on Morality... until after Phoenix Rising anyway. And anyway, I promised myself I would only sign up for two fic fests this year: Remix and Smutmas. I think fandom is fun. I think fandomers are a great group of people. But I'm feeling burned out.

Some of this, I'm sure, has to do with my job. The job I took last year has about ten times the responsibility and demands of the job I had for three years before that, three years in which I produced some pretty good fic but couldn't get that far in my career. Now I have an amazingly cool job and am making a little progress, career-wise, but fandom has taken a far back seat. I don't want to leave. I've been here nearly 5 years and it's important to me. I LIKE writing fanfic. It's fun and for the most part relaxing. Most of what I know about writing and reading I've learned in fandom. Because of fandom, I'm a better book reviewer. Right now, however, it feels like One More Thing To Do. My burnout is leading me to fade away.

2. Speaking of Job, if you've been IMing me during the day for the past few weeks and I haven't responded, it's because Job has eaten my brain. I have a huge presentation to do on Thursday, and I had only about a month to get all the prep work done and the handouts printed. I haven't seen the surface of my desk since January. So most of what I've been reading for the past month have been the books on the summer reading program. I have, however, read Devilish by Maureen Johnson (fun read, delightful concept, fabulous characters, but took much too long to get to the point) and Beastly by Alex Flinn (urban retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with just the right use of melodramatic fairy tale language against the New York backdrop). Now that I'm done with Big Project #1, I have to work on Big Project #2 and then do a reading sprint to get everything read that I need to have read by June.

3. I continue to run according to my training program but I don't seem to continue to get any better at it. I continue to eat less and exercise more, but my scale does not move (although I do have more muscle definition and look a little better than I have). As Georgia Nicolson would say, it is Vair Vair Frustrating. If I had shower facilities at work or a gym closer than six miles from said work, I would start working out on my lunch break, too.

4. Henry chipped one of his front teeth. His adult teeth are in but his head is still kitten-size, so he looks like a little gray-and-white spotted vampire. He's going to the vet on Monday.

5. I saw Blades of Glory because Mr. Cedar wanted to and, well, it was better than The Phantom Menace. It was not as good as the Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean trailers that came before it.

6. Team Brittany! (Also teams Natasha and Jael.) Team Anyone-But-Renee.

7. Are praetorianguard and I the only ones watching the Pussycat Dolls: Search for the Next Doll? Have the idiot judges complaining about Anastascia's "weight gain" noticed that she's about five inches taller than all the other girls? That aside, I want a pink feather boa.

8. If I wanted to get someone a custom-lettered t-shirt, what's a good website to purchase it from?

9. All my reading enthusiasm are belong to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. SOMEONE has the latest Gossip Girl book AND a preview of the upcoming prequel, plus some other books that look pretty fantastic. But someone DOES NOT have an advance of Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer and there will be a separate post on that.

10. I have these in green and I now want them in brown and black. Because you know what they say: If the shoe fits, buy it in three colors.

Tags: 2007, books, fandom, tv

Trying very hard not to crack up from all the stuff going on with work and writing and fandom and reading and attempting to have a life.

( What I've been reading! Reviews in 10 words or fewer )

Writing: Working on remix_redux fic, horrible horrible fic for Paintbrush & Quill at Phoenix Rising, also presentations for same. To say that I have felt less than inspired to write fic these days is somewhat of an understatement.

Work: Writing twenty booktalks, twenty sets of discussion questions, stuff for the upcoming countywide summer reading program. I put together 120 forms with "please return to me by Friday, March 29th" and this year, March 29th is a Thursday so now I have to reprint them all ARGH.

Thank you: To those who wished me a happy birthday last month. I did have a very happy birthday except for the getting-older-and-have-accomplished-nothing-in-life part. Mr. Cedar took me for a day of shopping and dinner and bought me, among other things, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel.

Oh, damn, I had new pictures of Henry to post and I forgot to upload them. Next time.

Tags: 2007, angsting, books
126: anxious
780: tell me baby, what's your story, where you come from and where you gonna go this time

Release date of Harry Potter 7, yadda yadda yadda.

In the squeeing over the release date, I noticed this: The retail price on this book (hardcover edition, not the deluxe, afaik) will be $34.99.

Compare this to the cover price of HBP: $29.99.

Compare those to Eldest by Christopher Paolini, which is 704 pages and retails for $21.00

This could mean several things:

1. The books will have a supershiny cover, be printed on some kind of special paper, maybe have the edges done the way the Series of Unfortunate Events is, or have other decoration that drives up the price.

2. We get some kind of goodie with it. A CD, perhaps, or a pen? I love pens.

3. These are going to be the biggest books any of us have ever seen short of the OED.

I'm off to the gym. I'm going to need to step up my weight training regime if I'm going to be schlepping that thing around. Who wants to join me?

Tags: 2007, books, harry potter
126: intimidated
780: there's a lot of honey in this world

First, *hugs friendslist*. Thanks for the funny. I needed it. I may need it more when I have to come up with the insurance deductible, and then pay my premiums for the rest of the year. I swear, when I retire I'm going to move to New York City where I don't have to own a car.

Second, I got to thinking about the members of YALSA's Best Books For Young Adults committee, and how they have to read, on average, one book per day. I think I might like to try that. Maybe not one book a day, but five books a week. I could do it, right? As long as not too many authors get Aidan-Chambers-inspired to put out 800-page tomes. (And I'm STILL on page 250 of that book.)

So far this week, I've read:

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins. I don't know why I can't get into Ellen Hopkins's work. She's certainly a great writer who really has a handle on what word to use when (always important when you're writing a novel in verse), but I always leave her books feeling sort of beaten down. Her books are always long and packed full of teen issues, and I LIKE long books full of issues, but...meh. Impulse centers on three teens at a mental health facility. Each has attempted suicide, and each is harboring a lot of damaging secrets: Tony is a drug addict who did six years in juvenile detention, Connor is cracking under the pressure from his perfect parents to be more like his perfect sister, and Vanessa, a cutter, is bipolar but hasn't told anyone about her symptoms. Together, they form a supportive relationship and work with doctors to learn coping skills for when they return to the real world. The ending, like the ending of Burned, is a shocker.

Stuck in the '70's by D.L. Garfinkle (dlgarfinkle). Shay, your average California teen in 2006, appears naked in Tyler's bathtub...in 1978. She's beautiful and instantly popular, and she and Tyler strike a deal: If Tyler uses his knowledge of physics to transport her back to 2006, she'll give him a makeover and all the keys to the popularity he's always wanted. Lots of fun, with alternating guy/girl viewpoints. It reminded me of Pleasantville, which is a very good thing because I love that movie, and it made me think about how the times we live in affect who we are. I've known more than one person who believed they belonged in another time, and I wonder how being transported could affect your life choices. (I know I would look really good in poodle skirts and sweater sets but I think I'd still want to go to college.)

Fix by Leslie Margolis. Cameron changes her life through plastic surgery, and Cameron's little sister Allie is about to do the same. But Allie, star soccer player and average student (as opposed to A-student not-so-athletic Cameron) isn't sure that a nose job will change her life for the better. Their mother, a former actress and model, is not immune to beauty standards, either. There's a lot in here, about beauty, self-esteem, aging, and self-confidence, but the book is a fast read, almost too fast. I think it could generate a lot of excellent discussion in something like a mother-daughter book group, even though the book itself is a little too jam-packed with Topics that don't all get their full development. Still, not a bad read at all.

The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci (castellucci) and Jim Rugg. This is the first book in the Minx imprint, and I can only hope that all the other books Minx puts out are even HALF as good as this one. Jane's family moves from Metro City to Suburbia, and Jane is convinced she's landed in Hell. She finds a home among the "rejects," three girls named Jane who are smart, dramatic, and almost athletic. Together, they form P.L.A.I.N.: People Loving Art in Neighborhoods, in which they find sneaky ways to bring art to their sleepy suburb. Not everyone appreciates their efforts, however, and Jane has to wonder: Is art really enough to save someone? The writing and art are both fabulous, though I can only go into detail on the writing because what I know about art could fit into, um, something really, really small. Jane is someone I wished I could be in high school: Artistic, determined to pursue art even through her setbacks, and intent on pursuing happiness even if it costs her popularity. I can't wait to see what the Janes will art up next.

And I'm going to finish, because I should finish what I start:

-Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky (adultolescent)
-Hex Education by Emily Gould and Zareen Jaffery
-The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan (how much do I love this series? SO VERY MUCH!)
-Flush by Carl Hiaasen

and then the ones next in the pile that I haven't started:

-Crazy in Love by Dandi Daley Mackall
-Do Not Pass Go by Kirkpatrick Hill
-Your Own, Sylvia by Stephanie Hemphill (this one is getting a lot of good buzz)

My Large Box O' Galleys arrived yesterday, and ( here are the highlights of what I picked up )

So much to read and write, and so little...

Tags: 2007, books read, ya
126: determined
780: a bit of a shout and a bit of an angry snout