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.

More Books in March

18.  Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
I don't know, you guys.  My issues with Pretties are actually quite similar to the ones I had when I read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - in both cases it felt like the author was basically rehashing the first book in the series with some superficial plot changes.  I'm also struggling with the likability factor of the main character; I find Tally kind of...tiresome?  Plus Westerfeld is failing to really convince me that his dystopia is a terrible thing.  I mean, OBVIOUSLY the world has some problems, but they never seem...totally evil, I guess.  I also feel like the divisions between the novels are kind of arbitrary - like, Westerfeld sat down and wrote one EPICALLY LONG story and split it into four even pieces, and then tidied up the ends so they'd have their own individual story arcs (except they don't really).  IN SUMMARY: I AM NOT CONVINCED.

I'm taking a break from these for a while so I can read Behemoth.


19.  Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool
My Children's Literature class is doing historical fiction this week, and this was the last book I read for the unit - getting myself to read it was like pulling teeth for reasons I don't really understand.  I don't know why, but I was incredibly resistant to reading it (even though it's required reading) but once I started I packed it in pretty quick.  It's a fun, tangled knot of a book, about Abilene Tucker, a young girl, coming to the small town of Manifest, Iowa, to wait for her dad.  It takes place in (I believe) the early 1940's, and while Abilene is stranded in Manifest she starts unearthing the town's recent past.  The town, everyone who lives there, her father, a mysterious boy named Jinx that Abilene reads about in a handful of letters, and the town fortune teller, Miss Sadie, make up that knot I mentioned, and unraveling it with Abilene was more enjoyable than I anticipated.  It's a solid young YA or older children's novel.

20.  Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld
More fun alternate history lessons with Westerfeld.  It was weird to read a couple of the Uglies books in between Leviathan and this one, because the Leviathan books are SO MUCH BETTER.  Like, it was hard for me to hear Westerfeld's voice in Uglies.  I think the Uglies books came out before Leviathan?  I think that's right.  So maybe Westerfeld's just getting better the more that he writes.  But I'm itching to read Goliath now, and I honestly don't know if I care to bother with Specials and Extras.  But anyway:  Behemoth continues into World War I with our heroes from the previous novel.  There's a gigantic genetically engineered squid that eats ships, a Tesla cannon, some robot elephants, and a loris that imitates human speech.  Also an anarchist rebellion in Turkey.  Love it.

March, pt. 1

15.  The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
This book was rough, you guys.  But extremely well-written and well put together.  I think what I appreciated about it most was that nothing is easy, especially for the main character - Amir, a native of Afghanistan who is forced to emigrate to the United States with his father after the Russian occupation, is not a likable guy and he does some pretty awful things, especially to Hassan, the servant's son who grows up with Amir.  The bulk of the story is about Amir making things right and atoning for the sins of his childhood.  I admit to not knowing very much about Afghanistan, the horrible violence that happened (and continues to happen) there, and the politics of it all, and this novel deals with it in an emotional, sensitive, raw, and ultimately satisfying way.

16.  Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes, Chris Crutcher
We read Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher in my YA lit class last semester and it was a truly quality literary experience.  Then Crutcher spoke at a literary conference I went to about advocating for young adults' rights to choose what they read and to combat censorship and book banning.  And it was a deeply moving experience.  Crutcher worked for a long time as a child therapist, who worked mainly (I think only?) with children from broken and abusive homes.  He's seen almost every tragedy that can happen to a child, and brings the weight of that knowledge to his work.  His books are serious meditations on the lives of teenagers, on what they deal with that adults can't remember or imagine, and addresses real problems (Sarah Byrnes deals with everything from bullying, child abuse, religion in schools, parental pressure, and being on the swim team).  His books are illuminating and his dialogue is inspiring.  Please read, if not Sarah Byrnes, SOMETHING by this man.

17.  Uglies, Scott Westerfeld
The first of my Westerfeld party!  I REGRET NOTHING.  I read this one before Behemoth because it was in the library when Behemoth was not (I'm waiting for my interlibrary loan RIGHT NOW) and because you can't be involved in the YA lit scene and NOT have heard about the Uglies books.  It was...ok.  Leviathan is better written, and more interesting in my opinion - Uglies is pretty standard dystopian fare (Equilibrium + Brave New World x Libba Bray = Tally and Uglies).  There's a huge point of convenience at the end that I actually kind of hated, but it's the set-up for the sequel so maybe after I read Pretties I'll hate it less.

Still looking forward to Behemoth (and then Goliath), though.

February, part 2

12. The Man In the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Very cerebral and kind of a downer, but since I've read Philip K. Dick before I kind of knew what to expect.  This book showcases pretty excellently how Dick excels at world-building; not only is his alternate reality where the U.S. lost World War II fully realized, but so is the alternate-alternate reality of the book-within-a-book, where the U.S. won the war (but not with the fallout we're familiar with).  And if that made sense to you, you should probably read this book.

13. White Cat, Holly Black
Holly Black is super fun - way darker and grittier than Melissa Marr, while still maintaining that thread of wish fulfillment that's kind of the hallmark of supernatural YA.  I found this one a little predictable, but still quite exciting; in this particular fantasy world, certain people have natural abilities to work magic on others (called "curse workers," or just "workers") and they come in different flavors - some can work luck, some emotion, some death, and so on.  Cassel, the main character, comes from an entirely worker family - except for him.  There's mobsters, con artists, and assassins, and the whole thing is pretty delightful.  (Except it's written in present tense, RAWR.  At least this one is first person.)

14.  The Reapers, John Connolly
I like John Connolly a whole lot.  He writes mostly crime noir, about a private detective named Charlie Parker (the first Parker book is Dark Hollow - I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who likes crime fiction or gritty supernatural stuff); his stories are typically gripping and suspenseful, he has a nice subtle supernatural element, and his side characters are entertaining and rich.  But I had trouble with this one.  It focuses on Parker's two most notorious cohorts, Angel and Louis, who typically provide a nice dose of banter while being ruthless killers.  Having a whole book focused on them (mostly on Louis, the professional assassin) might be too much of a good thing.

February, part 1

9.  Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett
Can't stop, won't stop.  Tiffany Aching is one of Pratchett's most likable characters and I'm going to be sad when I've finished everything that he's put out about her.

10.  The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi
This is a good book that I ultimately didn't care for.  Part of the issue is how nihilistic it is - and if I'd known that going in, I would have been better prepared for it.  It's pretty seriously depressing, which in and of itself isn't a deal breaker for me - but that combined with other elements that didn't work for me (3rd person, present tense narration, a seriously chaotic prose style) added up to a final product I wasn't crazy about.  It's a seriously dystopian story about the dying days of a city, and there's a lot to like here (if Bacigalupi had introduced his epidemic subplot sooner I would have been more on board, I do love a good disease story) but it wasn't for me.

11.  The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor
This was a whole lot of MEH.  It's kind of an interesting concept - a retelling of the Alice in Wonderland story, where Alice (or Alyss) is a princess of Wonderland and heir to the throne, ousted by her evil aunt Redd and escaped into our world for a time.  The second half involves Alyss returning to Wonderland to lead a rebel army against Redd and reclaim her throne in the name of White (good, as opposed to the evil Black) Imagination.  But the writing is not good, you guys.  All the exciting moments, of which there are many: assassination attempts, chase scenes, epic battles; they all fall flat due to a lack of description.  Apparently this is the first book of a trilogy, but I won't be reading the others.

January, part 2

6.  French Milk, Luck Knisley
A cute little travelogue about the author's six weeks spent in France during college.  It's a graphic novel, and the art is totally charming, but I wish there had been more introspection involved - it parses down to a lot of lists ("I ate these things, I bought these things") without much analysis or reflection.  The moments that are there, such as Knisely recalling an argument with her mother, are touching and emotionally connective.  The book could have used more of those.

7.  A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett
If you like Terry Pratchett, you should probably be reading the adventures of Tiffany Aching, which starts in Wee Free Men.  These books are pitched more toward the YA crowd (Tiffany is nine years old in the first book, and is eleven in this), but Pratchett doesn't tone down his wit or wordplay. 

8.  Kraken, China Mieville
Whoo, this was a doozy of a book.  It's incredibly dense and chaotic, but totally enrapturing, especially because I find religion and weird shit to be totally fascinating.  If you thought about Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, re-imagined by HP Lovecraft, with a guest appearance by a Stephen King villain, you'd be close to this book.