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.