Booooooks

24. Graceling, Kristen Cashore
Some day I will read fantasy written for adults again, but honestly, right now the best stuff is getting written for the YA crowd.  Graceling is super fun high fantasy, without poorly written magic getting in the way - it takes place in a fictional kingdom, in a roughly medieval time setting, and the biggest fantasy conceit is that some people in this world are born with a "grace."  A grace is a natural talent that you do more naturally and better than anyone else, and if you've got one, your eyes are two different colors.  I thought Cashore did a good job showing how that talent discrepancy (between the "haves" and the "have-nots") affects the population, and how the gracelings are discriminated and basically made to be a lower class of citizen.  There's some interesting political stuff going on, and Katsa, the heroine, kicks so much ass I can barely stand it.  There's a strong romantic element (of course) but it contributes to rather than distracting from the story.  I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

25. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
It took me a bit to get into The Book Thief; I would say until about halfway through.  It's a ballsy book of Zusak to have written, and I appreciate the risks he takes with style and storytelling.  I also deeply appreciate the fact that while this is a book about World War II, Zusak has some new things to say about it - the primary narrator of this story is Death, so even though Liesel, a young German girl, is the main character, we get her story in the context of all the horrible things happening in Germany in the early 1940's from a particularly poetic viewpoint.  The Book Thief is beautiful and stark and gut-wrenching, and ultimately worth the effort it took to get through it.

26. Revolver, Marcus Sedgwick
What a gloriously claustrophobic, tense little novel.  Revolver isn't very long, but it packs a big punch - it takes place in a cabin, isolated in the woods, in the middle of winter, in the Arctic circle.  Shortly after Sig's father dies (seriously, like an hour after they pull his body out of the ice) some huge dude barges into the cabin claiming the dad owes him a shitton of gold and he's going to start shooting people if he doesn't get it.  Interlaced with that fun time are flashbacks to Einar, the father, working in Alaska during the gold rush.  It's tight, exciting, and jumpy, and I recommend it.

Some books I read for class

21. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
A charming fantasy adventure I read for my children's literature class.  A poor Chinese girl seeks out the Old Man in the Moon to ask for a change in fortune for her family - she meets a dragon who can't fly, a talking goldfish, and helps a king, all while collecting folktales from the people she meets.  A lovely chapter book for advanced grade school readers, and a nice diversion for me.  Plus I like dragons and spunky heroines.

22. Simon Bloom, the Gravity Keeper, Michael Riseman
Another class read, this one is also a fun little book but with fewer dragons and more messing around with physics.  When teachers or parents talk about a good "boy book" this is the kind of thing they mean - plot- rather than character-oriented, lots of action, lots of breaking rules (of physics).  The nice part about Gravity Keeper, though, is that the characters have to learn the formulas and the rules before they can break them, so there are actually some good teachable moments in here.  It was fun but not quite enough for me to want to read the rest of the series (it was way more juvenile than, say, Percy Jackson or Artemis Fowl, similarly flavored and for a similar age group but both of those are more complex stories).

23. When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
Writers of adult sci-fi need to read this book, because THIS IS HOW TO WRITE ABOUT TIME TRAVEL.  This is EXTREMELY soft sci-fi, which I can only really call it because of the time travel ideas, but it's a lovely book about the connections we make as people and the impact our actions can have.  Especially good for kids, who tend to couch their relationships in very black and white terms - When You Reach Me vividly illustrates that not only is there more going on between people than we might perceive, but also that it's worth it to untangle the relationships you have with people.