The Heart is a Lonely Reader

The towering intimidation of the "To Be Read" pile

2010-01-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

Some advice given to those of us let go from the bookstore was to use the unexpected free time to work through our individual to-be-read piles. Working at a bookstore, you're reading amidst a constant tide of newly released books and upcoming releases, so it's easy to get distracted from a reading list in favor of the first new item that catches your attention. Add to that daily recommendations from different critical sources - New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, etc - plus recommendations from fellow booksellers, regular customers, and, if you're a fan of book blogs, a never-ending stream of books to consider.

Needless to say, any avid reader's to-be-read pile is going to be fairly staggering after a few months of working around those influences. In a way, not being under pressure to keep up with all the new releases, both kids' and adults, is a relief...

Sort of.

As nice as it is to be able to read freely, it's also time to face the to-be-read pile, and that's a daunting task. I coasted into my unexpected vacation about halfway through Street Gang, went on to devour Maureen recommendation, I am the Messenger (excellent), and then spent a few days hemming and hawing around a few recent issues of The New Yorker. Last Thursday and Friday were spent reading a total of forty pages of Denis Johnson's huge and National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke... but I stalled out. It's captivating, heavy stuff, but possibly just a wrong fit for my mood.

At home most of the day on Sunday, I decided to postpone Tree of Smoke in favor of another book at the top of my pile, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, the 2009 Man Booker Winner. The novel tells the story of the tumultuous reign of Henry VIII through the rise of Thomas Cromwell, Henry's historically maligned and vilified chief minister. At seventy-some pages in, I'm loving Mantel's careful balance of accuracy and intimate portrait and gossipy historical drama.

Still, my attention is a bit shot. I'm having trouble focusing on reading without a clear path to follow. Though the pile looms, it seems having so much to get through is stalling out my current progress. I'm having difficulty sticking with a single book when there are many to consider.

It seems that the pile is psyching me out. I need to mentally dismantle the to-be-read list - Sidebar question: Does anyone keep an actual written to-be-read list? If so, how do you prefer to keep yours? Written? Online database, such as LibraryThing? - if I want to proceed reading freely.

Or should I simply reevaluate the to-be-read pile? Perhaps dismantling is futile. There will always be books that pique my interest, and in doing so, they will get mentally added to waiting pile. No matter what I do, there will always be books in line. So trying to resist the urge to mentally take note of these would ultimately do no good.

I haven't come to any conclusion at the moment. Perhaps I am simply burned out a bit on all reading matters, and that the stress of starting and finishing new books should be left behind with my old job. I am not paid to keep up anymore. I should just read at my own pace and try to enjoy every moment of reading that I am doing for myself.

Keeping the television off also helps.

How do you handle your to-be-read pile?

Shelf Discovery Reading Challenge: Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

2010-01-24T09:12:00.000-08:00

Two down. Four to go.

I got more than expected from my re-reading of A Wrinkle in Time, but truth be told, I wasn't prepared for the emotional pummeling I received from Summer of My German Soldier. Like I wrote when I picked it for my challenge line-up, I have read a fair amount of books this past year that were in someway linked - thematically, plot, era, etc - to this book, but for as much as I've heard of it over the years, I've never had much interest in picking it up.

But Lizzie Skurnick piqued my interest with her look at the novel. Also, I'm always interested in older books, especially YA books, and how they deal with their chosen historical period. Written in 1973, Summer of My German Soldier covers a summer amidst WWII, and it's interesting to see what further distance from a time period does to a particular era's perspective.

So how does Summer of My German Soldier hold up?

Wonderfully, and somewhat alarmingly, well. Wonderful, because Greene's Patty Bergen remains a fresh, interesting, lovable (even if frustrating) protagonist. The unlikely alliance between Jewish Patty and Frederick Anton Reiker, a Nazi POW imprisoned near Patty's town, stands for more than a simple message of tolerance. Or, rather, it complicates the issue of tolerance, in that it becomes not a question of "should have shown such tolerance in this situation" but "What should be intolerable?"

If you break it down, there's every reason that Patty would find herself allied with Anton. He shows her interest and humor and genuine appreciation. He is impressed with her intellectual acumen and not put off by rambling, hyperbolic conversation. She sympathizes with his backstory, even envies his close relationship with his family. His family seemed to value intellect and despise the Nazi regime, yet they are weak to its control. The Bergens, on the other hand, seem to value purely money and social status, and they are very much in-line with the problems rooted deep into their town's society, including both institutional and outward racism, sexism, and a dedication to purely surface understanding.

While Patty can forgive Anton's participation as a Nazi soldier for being a smart boy from a good family in the wrong circumstances, she cannot come to terms with the disappointment that is her parents. Her father's simmering rage covered by sneering indifference. Her mother's near constant verbal abuse and put-downs. It's no wonder that Patty lies as much as she does: She'd do almost anything to win their approval, and approval from any of the town's adults, and that includes telling self-inflating falsehoods.

With Anton, Patty doesn't have to lie or fear reprimands for being herself. For a moment after admitting to Anton that she is Jewish, she is convinced he is going to go cold with hatred, but he just laughs in disbelief. A Jewish-American girl helping a German POW. He marvels at the situation.

Greene could be faulted for not giving Patty a more conflicted conscience or by not having Patty challenge Anton's innocence - I mean, yes, he had to go, so despite his family's good standing and intellectual nature, he is still a boy making a choice to go along with the regime in power - but far enough into the novel is the realization that Anton will never be an absolute real person with real faults and difficult things to swallow. Patty is a twelve year old in desperate need of someone who can find the good in her. Anton, in doing so, allows Patty to find nothing but good in him. He is like the cheap glass "diamond" broach that he uses to bribe a guard to escape prison. His outward self is something unseemly and undesirable, but he becomes so much more valuable in his active, useful form. The Anton that Patty feeds and shelters and protects from harm is a more realized form of the Anton that is led off a train to a prison for being a German soldier.

Patty never gets to the next level of Anton, the one that exists in tandem and outside these circumstances, the one that has to account for all that he has done and not simply for the good, respectable parts. But his friendship is enough for her, and long after her actions are discovered, and she is sent to a reformatory school, she is reminded to hold onto the memories of his feelings for her. She found someone to value her for the very traits that her parents either dismissed or became enraged about, and that surpassed any preconceptions about him, that surpassed blind hatred and disgust.

A! L! A! Awards Awards Awards!

2010-01-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

Have I told you lately that I love award season? Because I do. I'm a gambler by nature, and this year's bets were surprisingly on the mark. Let's go through the major categories, and I'll tell you what I predicted and the actual outcome. (No cheating by doctoring my bets, I promise.)

Caldecott Medal - The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney.

Whereas last year's winner, The House in the Night, was an utter surprise - and let me tell you, there is nothing like teachers and librarians desperately racing to grab copies of a book that has just won a prestigious award, but that they did not, at present time, carry, especially when that book goes into temporary back order because its publishing company didn't expect it to win said prestigious award either... but that's another story - this year's winner, The Lion and the Mouse, was a near shoo-in. What it lacks in dialogue, it makes up for in illustrations that transport you to the locale, pictures that draw the eyes in, reading illustration, reading lines of color and depth. I had this book on the "New Picture Books" display for months, because, with its striking gold-touched cover of the titular lion, it never failed to grab the passerby's attention.

My bet: Truly, this was one that I predicted, because the ALA love folk stories told anew, and when its done with caliber of artistry, there's really not much else in the way of competition. Not to say that other picture book authors haven't been doing a great job of giving folk tales and stories new contemporary life (my personal favorite is Rachel Isadora's The Ugly Duckling). But Pinkney has made a picture book that feels like it should have been around forever. And there's a reason why books like that are around forever - because they stick with you from childhood into adulthood into parenthood and the hands and eyes of more children.

However, Caldecott Honor book, All the World by Marla Frazee (illus.) and Liz Garton Scanlon, was another one of my top picks for this year. I love Frazee's illustrations, where every natural and non-natural thing in the world is brought into vibrant realization, and Scanlon's text ties it into such a pure, simply beauty. The JB Kids teams overall loved this book, and despite it being a difficult storytime read, we all tried to force it onto our audiences.

Michael L. Printz Award: Going Bovine by Libba Bray.

Let me say that I was underwhelmed with this one, but I'm still happy that it was selected for the Printz award. The Printz Award has been kind of dodgy in the past, and while I do really enjoy a lot of the books previously honored in this category, I've been largely disappointed by the standard set. Last year's winner, Jellicoe Road, really didn't deliver to expectations, and for every book they choose that is more than a coming-of-age story, they pick a book that is really just another coming-of-age story...

So I'm satisfied by Going Bovine, where a unrepentant slacker discovers that he has Mad Cow disease and goes on a crazy, mystical journey to find the cure and save the world. I felt uneasy about the book by the end - it felt kind of like stuffing your face with every kind of awesome food at once. There was so much stuff there, mostly appealing ideas, but it was difficult to keep it all straight while the book raced to its inevitable stark conclusion. I felt like it unraveled a bit, and what Bray needed to do was keep it as tight as possible.

But you have to give her proper credit that she didn't just write another paranormal, fantastical romance. She could have followed up the Gemma Doyle Trilogy with something along the same lines, but she stepped outside of her own box, and for that, I am glad that she has been properly recognized.

My Bet: I wasn't surprised to see two of the National Book Award for Young Readers nominees on the Honored list. Claudette Colvin and Charles and Emma both rightly deserved their places, and I admit that Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes has long been on my to-be-read pile. And I'm always glad to see Adam Rapp get some proper attention, even if I didn't care to immediately pick up Punkzilla.

Still, I read a lot of YA this year that will never get recognized by the Printz Award, especially since it seems to ignore anything too fantastic or in the realm of sci-fi. Kristin Cashore, Suzanne Collins, Scott Westerfield, etc... they all wrote fantastic YA novels this year, and yet no credit given to the fantasy kids.

Also, didn't anyone else read A Brief History of Montmaray?!?!? Why am I the seemingly sole champion of this book?

And finally...

The John Newbery Medal: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

I'm happy with this.

Seriously.

Look, my girl, Jacqueline Kelly, got a Newbery Honors, and that's no slight matter.

She's a terrific debut author who will have many accolades coming her way in the future.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is bound to hit school reading lists, library reading lists, and be a longtime favorite of teachers, librarians, and fans of children's literature for decades to come.

So I'm not sad.

Although it would have been cool to have met the 2010 Newbery winner before she was the 2010 Newbery winner.

But enough of that. When You Reach Me is absolutely fantastic, and moreover, it's a book that kids are liable to want to read and read again. It's a coming-of-age story, a mystery, a time travel story, an ode to A Wrinkle in Time, and that rarest of era-specific novels, relevant and true for the kids it has been written for. In this slim novel, every word and character detail counts, from the seemingly tossaway dialogue between characters through the minute details of their streets and buildings and the beings that inhabit those surroundings. The nuance, the slight changes in voice and tone, and a narrator who is as full realized as she is likable.

Miranda's predicament is both absolutely common for kids her age - her best friend inexplicably stops talking to her, forcing her to find a new grounding amongst her sixth grade peers - and utterly fantastic - someone is sending her messages indicating that it is up to her to prevent a tragedy from happening, and that someone may or may not have traveled in time to do so. The book rewards its readers for their attention to detail, and on a second reading, the rewards are twice over.

I think it's a good step for the Newbery, and I'm glad that it has been given its due.

My Bet:

Oh, shut up.

Like I said, Newbery Honors! Come on! That's still fantastic!

On a personal note, I met Jacqueline Kelly last October, and she's fabulous. Her and her husband are the exact type of person I would like to be, once I've fully formed and gotten through this single-cell stage I seemed to be stagnated in. She was warm, funny, and her comments about her work were thought-provoking and introspective. It's wonderful to meet a fairly new author who has managed to strike gold in their own genius and talent.

Early on, when I had reviewed the book before it came out, I got a lovely email from her, thanking me for the kind words and offering to pay a visit to the store for an author event. If I could manage to get in touch with her now, I'd offer her my congratulations. Sadly, given the circumstances of my work redundancy, I did not have time to grab any of the email addresses for the wonderful array of authors, publishing reps, and children's book enthusiasts of all types that I had been fortunate to meet during my brief time running the Kids Department.

But, as multiple people have pointed out to me, there's no sense in crying over spilled milk or lost email addresses, especially not in a time where people are easy to access, through blogs, websites, other people's websites, professional profile websites, etc. And so, I will make a better effort.

But that does bring me to a greater point - It is high time we start interacting with our authors intellectually, and that is why I love the blogging community, because they seem to be dedicated to just that. Shortly before we were laid off, I had communicated to Maureen (our former marketing director) my wish to begin interviews for the Joseph-Beth blog and my own.

I need to begin this, because I do not wish my removal from bookstore life to mean that I am less engaged with the greater book life. I want the next stage of my life to be characterized by a proactive engagement with the books and authors that I adore.

And so... yeah... that's what I'm working on now.

For more information on the American Library Association 2010 Media Awards, just click the link.

On my way to where the air is sweet...

2010-01-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

I've been filling up my unemployed days with a mix of activities, ranging from job hunting to errands to sleeping late to listless empty staring at the walls. I received sound advice early on into this experience to set up a pile of books and set to work on it. Having a TBR pile that could roughly fill up a five shelf bookcase, that pile of time-consuming reading has been waiting for an opportunity like this.

What I was reading around the same time of my redundancy - I prefer the British term to "laid off" as I feel it is a closer approximation of an employer's perspective, therefore being just a tad less bullshit than other sugar-coated terms, such as "let go" - was Street Gang by Michael Davis, a really wonderful little history of Sesame Street. In the mid-60s, intellectual chatter at a social dinner gathering laid the foundation for the program that would become an absolute staple not only of children's television, but also of public television and the very idea of educational programming and family-friendly entertainment.

Forty years! Forty years this program has been on air. Davis not only follows the program from its social engagement conversational conception to the formation of the core team and through the high-profile, bumpy, but largely successful first two years, he also goes back to the first stirrings of children's television, examining in intriguing and often hilarious detail the career backgrounds of Joan Ganz Cooney, Jon Stone, Sam Gibbon, and, of course, Jim Henson and the many colorful members of what would become the Henson Muppet brands.

I tend to sink into these kind of histories. A couple of months ago, I fell head over heels in love with Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris, a similarly engrossing (if perhaps a bit more expansive) look at the 1968 Academy Award nominees for Best Picture and how they represented the division ranks and turning point for Hollywood. Street Gang makes its own fair share of larger points. The Sesame Street phenomenon was more than a calculated risk at proving television a viable option for providing a reaching education to kids (and specifically urban youth). It was a small revolution, or rather, a revolution for the small - a new vision of children's entertainment that blended a modern realism with brightly colored surreal fantasy. The use of the commercial form for teaching basic lessons, something that really did find its potential with the SS writers. The use of actors portraying fictional but realistic neighborhood characters interacting with different versions of children in the form of Henson's sometimes motley, sometimes outlandish, but always lovable Muppets. The songs and the sounds, the sights, the scene.

The people behind Sesame Street were a varied lot of entertainers, creatives, behind-the-scenes veterans, a few academics, and one woman with an extensive, but varied communications resume and little early childhood education. I finished this book in awe of everyone - and even with a renewed respect for Henson, one of my longtime heroes - but Davis made me fall in love with Joan Ganz Cooney a bit. Her ability to keep in line the varied creative forces that made the program the powerhouse that it became (and mostly remains), not to mention the fact that by showing how invaluable she was to the project from the start, she was able to secure her leadership position. Imagining the show spearheaded by anyone else is to imagine a failure in place of the success.

One more thought about Street Gang: I'm in constant envy when I read tales of any cultural entity's beginnings. How I wish I could go back forty years and find a place in the ground floor of Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop. I would happily write banter for Bert and Ernie, irritated monologues for Oscar, and wide-eyed expressions of wonder for Big Bird. If I had been in my twenties around the time of the creation of CTW, there would have been nothing stopping me from desperately trying to be a part of this promising new beginning for children's television.

Despite my envy, Street Gang was a very pleasurable way to spend my reading time and a nice way to melt away my real-life sorrows in exchange for the tale of a bunch of smart schemers and dreamers, and the plan that has blossomed from dinner talk to a forty-year-strong symbol of all that can be when creativity and intelligence marry the perspective and imagination of children.

the heart is an unemployed reader

2010-01-11T23:04:00.001-08:00

Last Monday, I was laid off from my wonderful job at the bookstore.

My reading as of late has been fairly sporadic, but while filing for unemployment, job hunting, and just generally trying to accept fate, I've been thoroughly enjoying Street Gange, Michael Davis's well-researched, entertaining, and enlightening history of Sesame Street. Davis had spoken to our (former) marketing director about a month ago, and Penguin was nice enough to send over some copies for our perusal. I hope he still makes a stop in town. I'd love to meet him and hear what he has to say about this terrific little history of children's television and, in some ways, the growth of public television into a relevant force in the lives of everyday television watchers.

Before that, I had continued on my Shelf Discovery Reading Challenge quest by reading the excellent (and surprisingly relevant) Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene. I will say that the day I was let go, I had been espousing the joys of this book to my general manager and book manager, each seeming to be on opposite ends of opinion with the book. More on that soon.

I also recently read Kristin Cashore's phenomenal Graceling, a medieval tale set in a land of kingdoms where some people are born with inherent talents, or graces. Known as Gracelings, these people live in exulted, but often ostracized distance from the normal people. Katsa, graced with a talent for killing, is used by her uncle, King Randa, as no more than a menacing thug, performing acts of violence out of intimidation or vengeance. A mystery, an unlikely romance, an adventure story, this novel really has almost something for every reader. I found myself reading slower and slower, as if to savor every word. Speaking of Kristin Cashore...

In a post-firing haze this weekend, I found myself perusing the pickings at a local Waldenbooks that is going out of business. I have grown up to respect larger, infinitely better-stocked bookstore chains likes Barnes & Noble, only second to wonderful idiosyncratic independent bookstores, but I admit, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Waldenbooks. Before the big stores came to my suburban area, there was B Dalton in one mall and a Waldens in the other, and if you wanted to buy a book - and I often, very often, did - you went to one of those bookstores in one of those malls.

The selection was fairly limited, and the layouts were uninspired, wretched mazes. Kids books were relegated to the very back shelves, usually with dismal inventory. Wanted specific volumes of a series you were reading? Tough. You took what you could get. The Bethel Park Public Library was where I would go for specific things - they had a kids' section that my heart aches for to this day - but Waldens was for stuff that you hadn't picked up yet.

This past Saturday, while my two friends browsed the leftovers of the adult books, I made a beeline to the kids' section and was richly rewarded. New release books were 50% off, and bargain books were 40% off their sticker price (for YA books, that's usually $3.99). I found, among other things:

- Kristin Cashore's follow-up to Graceling, Fire.

- Scott Westerfield's latest, the WWII-era steampunk Leviathan.

- David Levithan's The Realm of Possibility.

- Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande

- Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks of Gardam Street

- The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

- Rebecca Stead's first novel First Light - I loved When You Reach Me, so I can't wait to pick this one up

- Maureen's favorite Marcus Zusak's I Am the Messenger

I got most of these for almost nothing, which is quite nice, I suppose. Still, I am sorry to see Waldenbooks go. That mall now houses a Barnes & Noble, so I suppose the reading happy children of the South Hills area will still have a place to buy their books. So all is not lost...

But if they close the Borders down the street, I will probably cry. The last half of my high school years was spent in the same nightly routine - we'd go to Borders, kill as much time as possible, then go to the Eat'n'Park down the street for coffee, cigarettes, and occasionally food. Sometimes we would go to the E'n'P first, go to Borders, then back to the restaurant. Oh, the rituals of teenagers with nowhere better to be on any given night.

Review: Horns by Joe Hill

2009-12-19T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'm not usually one to get swept up in a frenzy bandwagon read, but the last time I followed the recommendations of my fellow TLs at the bookstore, I ended up reading the terrific (and now critically overlooked) The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

The six of us have fairly diverse tastes, and because we're always picking up new stuff, it's rare for any two of us to be reading the same thing around the same time, let alone three or four of us. Sure, there's always new books we're talking up, and each of us is almost always lobbying the others to read something so fantastic, so well-written, so thrilling, so entertaining, so funny.... etc. When a book takes the manager staff by storm, it deserves a little attention.

When Chris, our general manager, received several advanced copies of the upcoming Joe Hill book, she was ecstatic to hand them out to us. I took a copy not because I'm a huge Joe Hill fan - I haven't read Heart-Shaped Box, though I have enjoyed the few of his short stories I've read - but because I'm almost always willing to read anything having to do with the Devil. Also, I figured I might want to read it before Hill's appearance at our store in March. And Chris couldn't stop raving about it, so I thought it was worth having a copy on hand if the buzz continued to build.

And it did. But truthfully, being as awash in the upcoming 2010 kids' books coming out, I never would have been able to get to this book before March had it not been for one very priming factor:

I'm burned out on kids' books.

Sad but true. Finishing up the must-reads of 2009 while simultaneously tackling the first of the must-reads for 2010, as well as trying to keep up with the reading for my store-sponsored kids' book clubs and the ever pressing Shelf Awareness Reading Challenge, I've been covered in an avalanche of kids and young adult reading... and I'm still nowhere near where I want to be.

I've read so many terrific kids' books. Books entertaining, silly, sad, moving, thrilling, even frightening. I've had moments of reading this past year that have remained with me since their conception. Even now, reading a little piece of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate or When You Reach Me or Catching Fire will send my body into pulses of goosebumps. The other day, while pitching the positives of Kate DiCamillo's latest, The Magician's Elephant, I realized that every element I attributed to the text - beauty, profound and lovely, but also equally comprised of cold and of loneliness - was absolutely true, and that this was truly a book that any reader could fall in love with.

But trying to keep up with an ever-growing supply of new, hot titles to read has numbed me a bit to the subtle charms of the recent kids' books I've picked up, and that has made me hesitant to start new reads until I recharge my enthusiasm.

I also suffer a little bit of deprivation having to do with the lack of darkness in so much of kids' lit. Every once in a while, a YA book can surprise you with its demons - The Hunger Games or The Chaos Walking Trilogy or The Graveyard Book - but mostly it steers clear of really dangerous ideas and plotlines. Sometimes what I want to read is the literary equivalent of a punch to the gut, and that doesn't happen to often in books meant for a younger audience.

Hence, Horns. Now that you've read my life story, you're probably wondering why I'd bother going into such detail about the whys of reading this fantastic new book.

Well, if I wanted a punch to the gut, I received it and more. A promising first chapter got me thinking that this would be one of those "you've just got to read this" books, in the effect that Hill could pull off a premise whose directions could vary wildly in scope, tone, and quality.

Ig Perrish wakes up with a raging hangover and a pair of horns growing out of his head. A night of hard drinking to console himself about the anniversary of his girlfriend's unsolved murder remains a mystery, as does the appearance of the horns and his sudden strange effect ont he people he comes into contact with. After a series of odd interactions where complete strangers tell him the deepest and darkest of their secret actions and desires, Ig makes a trip to his parents' house where he encounters surprising and unexpected truths from his family, including the identity of his girlfriend's murderer.

Just as every culture has their own way of understanding and interpreting "The Devil," Hill creates his own version, this one with a compassionate streak, an affinity and affection for the serpents who seek him out, a snarky sense of humor and rock'n'roll soundtrack. Hill also effectively withholds actually coming to the devil conclusion until long after his readers have made that decision for themselves, which is nice because it doesn't make the issue a forgone conclusion - after a while it would be easy to take for granted Ig's condition, but Hill's a better author than that.

What he does give us is a complex main character whose previous virtues as a human being were both innate and coincidental. It's a conclusion that doesn't come up much in high concept mysteries and thrillers - how people are as much defined by the evil they don't do, and how the line between what a person is capable of doing is never fixed, never permanent, and almost always dissolving in the murky waters of doubt, confusion and anger.

Hill pulls off his big concept, although not without faults. The book is divided into sections each following their own narrative thought - a section telling the story of Ig as a fifteen year-old, meeting his best friend, Lee, and his future girlfriend, Merrin, as well as exploring the relationship between him and his older brother, Terry. A later section changes course entirely, inhabiting the mind and memories of another character, and it is in this section that Hill gets some of his best and slowest moments - while it is key to telling the story, the section drags, especially as placed so close to the concluding action of the primary plot. I found myself fighting the urge to skim longer paragraphs of description, as if they represented walls of distraction obstructing the course to the answers and actions I wanted most to reach.

Of course this is, truly, a minor complaint. If a storyteller has so captivated you to the point of irritation in not being delivered answers straight away, then he's obviously doing many, many things right. Hill gets points for using explicit violence and language effectively, naturally enough to be the part of everyday vernacular and extraordinary circumstances, but not so much as to be distractingly crass or off-puttingly vulgar. One could be off put by the rampant misogyny, but in a tale exploring the hidden natures of good and evil lying within everyone, issues between genders are inevitably going to occur, and in volatile expressions of hate, disgust, and desire.

It's a relief to read a thriller about morality that doesn't pretend to fully comprehend or espouse its theories. Notions of good and evil are just that - elements of thought, some layered one upon another upon another, roughly resembling something like religion, spirituality, morality, evilness or goodness.

While my co-worker, Maureen, said it gave her nightmares, I didn't find the text dauntingly frightening. It messes with you, certainly - any good fantastical tale of good and evil really should screw with your mind - but I see this more as a potboiler with thriller elements than a straightforward horror. Or perhaps a horror for mystery lovers. Or a horror for those who love religious metaphors and themes.

Whether it's a horror, mystery, thriller, religious parable, I like mine dark humored, violent, and more than a little gritty. I needed to get my reading hands a little dirty, and this novel did the trick.

The Heart is a Lazy Blogger

2009-12-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

To any and all loyal readers, please excuse my recent blog negligence. To explain:
1. I work in retail at a large independent bookseller.
2. I manage the children's department of said bookstore. In addition to the wide array of books we carry, we also feature a huge variety of toys and merchandise for babies to teenagers.
3. It's the holiday season.

So please forgive me if I'm a bit slow to update the page. I promise, I'll be adding a bunch of posts late this week/early next week, especially as things slow down at work.

But right now, I admit, I'm a little booked out. I need to recharge my reading buzz, refuel my writing tanks, then I'll be back full blast. Hopefully my metaphors will improve as well!

Read recently:
- Lips Touch:Three Times by Laini Taylor
-Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
- Horns by Joe Hill (long awaiting follow-up to Heart-Shaped Box, out in February)

It's hard to turn the page when your fingers are frozen...

2009-12-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

We have held off turning our heat on, fearing overwhelming gas bills in addition to the large electricity tab running every month. But the cold has proved itself a constant, and our efforts to stave off the chill in our apartment have gone largely unrewarded. This morning, the space heater, which I have taken to snuggling like a romantic partner, broke down.

So it's me, a heating pad, a sea of blankets, and an effort to read without exposing my fingers. Maybe the Snuggie people have it right - I am having trouble moving my arms without losing some of the blanket's protection. Still, I will not pay twenty bucks to wear a robe backwards, even if it means reading underneath the blanket... and missing out on a cool and useful complimentary booklight.

This week has been a fairly good one for reading. I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go last weekend, followed it up with the surprising The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, Francisco Stork's follow-up to this year's acclaimed Marcelo in the Real World. I'm now a bit more than halfway through Michael Adams' funny and brisk year-long quest to find the worst movie ever made, Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies. Adams' doesn't have the innate charm of other year chroniclers, notably AJ Jacobs, and the heart of the text doesn't completely make-up for the format's limitations, but still, it's an easygoing, even compelling study of what makes a "bad" film and what makes a truly terrible film, told with enthusiasm by the likable Adams.

If I don't freeze to death, I'll finish that one today. Then it's back on kids' upcoming releases. There's a new one coming out by Esperanza Rising author Pam Munoz Ryan that I've got to check out, and several from Random House that look great. I also might give Scott Westerfield's Leviathan a shot. I've been in a bit of a steampunk mood, ever since discovering this fantastic Etsy shop, but because I'd have to finish The Court of the Air to read its just released follow-up, maybe I'll stick with the new Westerfield.

And of course, there's always book #2 in the Shelf Discovery Reading Challenge. Oh, and I have to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid before Mother-Daughter Book Club on Thursday.

So much to read, so little time, so little heat. Let's hope that gets fixed soon.

Review: Split by Swati Avasthi

2009-12-02T19:23:00.001-08:00

No matter how much young adult literature I read, it's still sometimes difficult to deal with the matter of expectations. I'm not of the mindset that you have to lower your expectations when reading children's literature. Actually, I often experience the opposite: I appreciate a well written adult book, but when a work of literature intended for a young audience really works, I find myself even more inspired by it than its possible adult counterparts.

Maybe it's because so many people underestimate the intelligence of young readers, underestimate their abilities to discern quality from what they read, that when a children's book holds such complexities and depth of story and character, I'm relieved that not only was the writer talented and creative enough of a storyteller to give a young audience something it really deserves, something it really needs, but that there was a publisher that saw the potential in the book, that there were other people behind the book, pushing it forward, paving the road to its eventual audience. I'm relieved that there are people out there that really give a damn about what children are reading and want to provide them with the very best that kids' lit can offer.

But expectations... they can still be trouble. Whereas my expectations as far as quality of writing hardly ever differ between literature intended for adults or literature intended for children, sometimes I have to accept that the way information is conveyed to an audience may depend on the age of the target demographic. When young adult books focus on a serious topic, there must be some acceptance of the fact that this will probably be handled in a way that is going to teach a lesson. It's just a matter of fact in YA lit. But serious topics are usually met with eventual preachiness or life-building, lesson learning coming-of-age.

There are sophisticated ways that this is done, of course. I recently had the joy of reading Sherman Alexie's excellent, National Book Award - winning YA book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and I was really impressed by how well Alexie works in the life lessons learned by Arnold Spirit. The way the book weaves flooring moments of crushing reality with exuberant bursts of friendship, love, hope, and humor, so much humor, often all of it within pages of another, and yet, nothing feels disconnected or haltingly incongruous. And yes, the main character learns life lessons. A lot of them, actually. But the novel doesn't seem to screech to halt every time Arnold has an epiphany of one kind or another.

Split by Swati Avasthi is not quite as skillfully handled. The story of two brothers, reconnecting after years of separation due to the physical and emotional abuse inflicted upon them by their father, never goes into full on After-School Special mode, but it also falls flat on its mild attempts at wryness or humor. Jace, the younger brother, is kicked out of his house after physically challenging his father, and he gets into his car and drives thousands of miles to his brother's apartment in Albuquerque. He's carrying with him almost nothing except the address to his brother's place, the little bit of money his mother could sneak him, and the revolving wheel of tormenting memories, recollections of his father's abuse on him, his mother, his older brother, and Jace's subsequent destructive relationship with his high school girlfriend, Lauren.

Jace's older brother hesitantly welcomes him, and from then on, it's the slow-moving transformation between an almost-man, desperately trying to ignore what he ran away from, and his teenage brother who can't shake lose what he only just left behind.

To the credit of the author: So many YA books about abuse border on exploitive. It's something I deplore so much about these books that purport to be doing something cautionary, even important, but are simultaneously reveling in the "how bad it can be" scenario. Split never gets overly graphic or needlessly specific. It doesn't overwhelm with the dirty details. Avasthi allows the small details to compensate in the large spans where there are no major revelations, and this allows the reader to process the information gradually, in the same way Jace reluctantly allows himself to remember or dwell on the memories of his life back in Chicago. His brother is even slower to admit to certain details, but as the siblings go beyond living civilly together, they allow themselves to divulge long-hidden details of the abuse and subsequent escapes.

Avasthi also does well in examining how a family's tradition of abuse can lead to long-term problems with physical violence and aggression in the children of the abusers. Jace is running from this violence, but it lives within him, and the prospect of him becoming his father is even more terrifying than the original monster himself.

What drags the novel down are stretches of stiff dialogue. The awkward tension between Jace and his brother is understandable, expected, and natural in its restrictiveness... but it makes for some fairly dull passages. The problem recurs in almost every conversation in the book, whether it's between Jace and his brother, Jace and his brother's girlfriend, social worker/teacher/den mother Miriam, or Jace and his would-be love interest, Dakota. Whether he's talking through his problems, actively avoiding talking about his problems, or even flirting with a girl he likes, Avasthi never really gives Jace a credible voice. For how interesting his inner thought process can be, Jace, personality-wise, is a bit flat. He's good at soccer. He's naturally charming with girls. He's intelligent, seemingly, likes to take photos... He's a lot of details with a big backstory, something overbearingly awful to overcome. As much as find out about the character, he never quite comes alive.

Because these characters never quite go beyond the archetypes they're inhabiting - victim, survivor, caretaker, motivating beautiful girl -any emotional catharsis is reached in a series of almost maddeningly stiff dialogue. It seems to be Avasthi's limitation as a storyteller and not necessarily the limitations of the story chosen to tell - there is a wealth of interest in Split, but it's mishandled in a series of slight ways, all of which add up to an imperfect, but readable, piece of debut YA fiction.

Shelf Discovery Reading Challenge - Five to Go!

2009-11-24T09:36:00.000-08:00

Well, that's one down. Two weeks ago, I spent a few pleasurable days with Madeline L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time. Now comes the question - how does one write about these books for the Shelf Discovery Challenge? Whereas this one was an easy read because I a) have already read through it once, and b) already own it, I feel like it's the more challenging to write about because my opinions on it are already well formed, not to mention that Ms. Skurnick does a really fine job of writing A Wrinkle in Time, so good and spunky and true that it's almost a disservice to try to add anything to the topic, at least as far as Shelf Discovery goes...

The other books I chose deliberately because I had not read them, but in one way or another, I've always felt compelled to, either because they are long-staying YA classics or because their impact can be felt in great YA books of today or because there was something about them that sticks out so sharply, I could not ignore my interest (I'm looking at you, My Darling, My Hamburger). But A Wrinkle in Time I picked for a different reason, mostly out of sentiment, but not for the book itself. Rather, what the book has always reminded me of, what it has always been a symbol of, other than what is actually contained in the story, has been my mother's continual support and interest in my love of reading.

I've always been an avid reader - cliched, out-of-date slang insults for me could include bookworm, booknerd, etc. - but not necessarily of particularly distinguished taste. A lot of the stuff I read as an intermediate-level reader - ages six through 10 - were your common variety kids' junk read, maybe with some Boxcar Children or Roald Dahl or Lowis Lowry mixed in. I read a lot of The Babysitters Club. I read thin little paperbacks with sixth grade kids getting into mild trouble with their friends/family/school but nothing dire, nothing tragic, nothing impactful. I read some mysteries, mostly pointless stuff. I'm not completely deriding what I read at that age, but I didn't have an emphasis in anything classic. My mother tried to get me interested in Nancy Drew, but it seemed too old fashioned. I read the same first half of Little Women in the same green, hardbacked copy from the library, but never moved beyond the "little women's" childhood. I read a lot of books twice, three times, four times over. I thought about what I was reading, but not really beyond what I thought of the main character, what I thought of her/his family, what I thought of his/her friends. I was a greedy reader, but superficial in my understanding.

I don't look at my reading from then and think totally dismissively, or even that "ugh, look at all the crap I read then compared to the stuff I read now!" - if I'm honest, my taste has never been to pure classics or the upper echelon of literary fiction or the driest and most researched of contemporary non-fiction. I have certain basic requirements in what I read as an adult, and I hold these standards to everything I read, whether it be the children's books that are my professional life, or the occasional adult read that I use as valued breaks from the sometimes monotony of reading for the same demographics over and over again. But my basic requirements are just that - basic: I don't like stuff that is preachy, or wears its morals as some kind of necessary endorsement for the value of the book. I can't read books with stilted or unnatural dialogue, unless there is virtually none in the book. I don't like heavyhanded metaphors or blown up simile. I tend not to read too many books about beautiful women having trouble finding "Prince Charming" because there's only so much of that I can stomach. Etc.

But I digress. Anyway, from the start, my mother was really, really happy that I was a reader. She's a reader. She reads fairly mainstream stuff, mostly mystery stuff (usually of the Janet Evanovich variation), but she reads a lot. It was her who influenced me to never go anywhere without something to read - which is why I've ended up in Disney World ride queues, nose-deep in a book while slowly making the way to the top of the line for Splash Mountain, and which is why if I ever finish a book midway through my commute home, I'm at a loss with what to do with myself on public transportation. She was one of those parents who never hesitated to buy me a book (still doesn't, if we're in a bookstore together, although that has fallen off considerably since I've worked at a bookstore). She was one of those parents that didn't mind that sometimes I was caught reading a book in class, when I should have been doing something - probably anything - else. When I got older, and she didn't have an audio book for long car rides, I'd read aloud to her.

She was very proud of my love of reading, and of that fact that I was a fairly advanced reader for my age, but I think she always had a little trouble with what I was reading. Scratch that - Maybe it was just that she wanted to share books with me, but I was resistant. Like with Nancy Drew - At nine, her smoothness and old fashioned propriety seemed to be exceptionally counter to the rough-hewn kidness that was me at that age. It seemed like Nancy Drew went alongside of my mother's concern that I didn't play with enough girls, or that I wasn't girly enough. It seemed like Nancy Drew was just another plot in trying to get me to act a certain way, and who wants to act to their mom's preference at nine years old?

So stubborn was I that I failed even to admit a resemblance to the main character of A Wrinkle in Time, another read my mother consistently championed to me. If I had read it then, I would have learned exactly what I know now - that Meg Murry, in her stubborn, mousy, outcast glory, was the best side of what could have been commonly perceived as the worst traits in a young woman. And [spoiler alert] she saves the day! She's a heroine, but not in attractive blouses and skirts, not ladylike, really, at all. Her strength lies beyond posturing, outward appearance, beyond superficial notions of being a girl.

Her strength lies in the vulnerability that makes her so susceptible to fits of rage toward her teachers and peers. The fierce protectiveness of those that she loves prompts her to hit a boy for insulting her brother, Charles Wallace, but it also prompts her to face the strongest of evils, the overwhelming darkness. It allows her to walk into the face of danger itself and succeed where the "stronger" males around her failed.

On the simplest level, my mother wanted me to read a book that she knew and cared for, and hoped that her book-happy daughter would feel the same. If I were to go a bit deeper, and who knows, there might not be any truth to this, but let's give my mom bigger interests for the sake of a good story, maybe what my mother really wanted to do was give me a book that told me that deep down inside, she wanted me to be who I was, be the child and the girl and the young woman that I was. Maybe her pushing this book on me was an easier way for her say to her only daughter, "I love you as you are."

That's conjecture, of course. But she was so right to want me to read this book, that how could I ever look back on my childhood and not think that my mother understood me perfectly?

Giveaway!!!

2009-11-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's giveaway time again!

This time, I'm giving away a little pair of books that would be a great gift for the young or young-at-heart in your life. They were both kindly donated by Workman Publishing, who other than being top-notch at publishing fun and offbeat kids items, are also high in the promotional package ranking. When a Workman box comes in, it's all grabby hands and exclamations.

Waddle.

Up for grabs: Rufus Seder's "Scanimation" titles Gallop and Wallop. For those of you who aren't familiar, "Scanimation" is an animated book page. As you flip through the book, the pictures on the page move in near continuous flow. Both Gallop and Waddle are about the way animals move, so there is a moving animal to accompany the text.

It's kind of hard to explain. How about Mr. Seder explains his craft:

Clear things up? Basically these books are really, really neat, and super fun to read to children.

How to win this awesome pair? Simple:
1. Enter by December 10th
2. Enter by leaving a comment on this post with your email and the answer to this question: If you could be any animal (other than human) what would you be and why.

Okay, you only have until December 10th, so enter now!

As to the question at hand, I'd be a domesticated bear. Like being a dog, but with better perks.

Not a review: Stitches by David Small

2009-11-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

Since it was announced as a National Book Award finalist for Young People's Literature, Stitches has undergone excessive scrutinizing, mostly from the people best at scrutinizing children's literature: teachers and librarians. And believe me, no one dissects a book's "appropriateness" like this group. It's not because they're conservatives or prudes or have a collective stick up their collected behinds (although some of them do). Unlike critics, who can rest soundly on their superiority-stuffed pillows, teachers and librarians have to answer for the critical decisions they make. You give a sixth grader a book that causes them to ask certain questions or stay up all night terrified or even commit a particular indiscretion, and you're not going to be able to fall back on the argument, "But it's a good book!" Parents are always going to be concerned with what their kids are reading, even if they're simply thankful that their kids are reading in the first place. And teachers and librarians are the primary sources of said reading material.

The NBA for young readers isn't as susceptible to contradiction from this group as say, the Newberry Award, which has always seem to play it safe for this very reason. As many librarians that support the Newberrys getting a bit edgier with their choices, there are parents ready to complain that despite a book being an award-winning, critically merited, valued piece of children's literature, it is just not age-appropriate for a child. A Newberry medal sticker on a book gives it a certain elevated presence that makes it acceptable in classrooms, libraries, booklists, etc, which makes those paying the most attention all the more careful about what might get the attention of parents and children.

The NBA doesn't have the exact same problem, because 1) it usually concerns reading material for young adults, not intermediate-level readers, and 2) because it's a fairly green award (it's only been around since 1996). Also, the National Book Awards are not typically thought of as an academic award, meaning that while readers of all types (casual, academic, otherwise) should take note of this specific piece of literature, the books don't often make an easy case for themselves as classroom curriculum.

Still, any award that specifically classifies itself as for "Young People's Literature" is going to come under some scrutiny when it comes to age-appropriate finalists. David Small's Stitches was never going to pass through unscathed.

There is little negative I can say about this work, aside from that I desperately wish there was more of his story. David Small grew up in a tension-filled household filled with people desperately repressing the anger that seemed to define their relationships to each other. His remote mother would quickly go from steely silence to banging cabinet doors in the kitchen, seemingly possessed by rage while unable to communicate her feelings to her family. His father and brother each had their own respective outlets, but Small's only display of vulnerability was in a near constant stream of sickness, tracing from birth to sinus problems in his early childhood. His father, a radiologist, treated them with home X-Rays.

Even as a very young child, Small's outlet lay in the rich imaginary life that both fulfilled and haunted him. Dressing up as the titular character of Alice in Wonderland, obsessing over the fetus in a jar that he came across at his father's hospital, ceaselessly escaping into his drawing (something often portrayed literally in the book).

There's endless dysfunction to the household: his mother's erratic behavior is eclipsed by her mother's even more abusive and dangerous reactions to childish imperfection and inquisitiveness. His father willfully endangers his son's life without thought to the consequences of his action, not to mention remaining oblivious to inner turmoil of his wife and sons. Then a growth is discovered on David's neck, and his parents take considerable time to have it dealt with (nearly four years) keeping the cancer a secret until well after the surgeries that would leave their son with a large scar running up his neck and without the ability to speak.

The graphic novel works as a slow burn to what becomes a fairly quick redemption, but that is not to say that it wraps up neatly or in any half-cocked fashion. Small, a gifted picture book author, knows how to layout a story to achieve the best momentum. Odd as it might seem, there's so much tension in the first half of the book, that by the time David undergoes the surgeries, loses his voice, and finds out that he had cancer all along, it's almost a relief to have these very deep family problems come to the surface, albeit in a horrifying way.

Panel after panel, page after page, the rendering is pitch perfect. Some panels are crystal clear, but most are drawn in a slightly distorted perspective, the marriage of the child's perspective and the man's uneven memories. The voiceless extension of pain and confusion echoes in the pages-long spreads of wordless visuals.

In theme and tone, Stitches inhabits a place shared by Fun Home and Persepolis - not simply graphic memoirs, but graphic memoirs of such specific, private tragedy, intimate in how closely the reader is brought into the story, but universal in the themes of pain, disillusionment, alienation, and the deepest cuts of family ties. Also like its kin works, Stitches is about a young man's redemption through art, through the ability to express what one may not be able to say, to give sound into the void, sight into the dark. Art allowed Small to free his anger, free his confusion and hurt, and free himself from the toxic environment that was his reality and pervaded into his dreamlife.

No question, this is one of the best books I've read this year. So the real the concern: Should this book be eligible for an award meant to celebrate "Young People's Literature." First off, I'll say that everywhere I've been, Stitches can be found in the adult section. We have a kids' graphic novel collection at my store, but this book can be found on display in the adult comics/graphic novel section. Would it appeal to a young audience?

Yes, it is mostly about an adolescent, but the family history is dark, painful and darkly confusing. And while the intended demographic of YA literature is teenagers, most kids regularly shopping the YA section are under the age of sixteen. Avid readers above a certain age are going to leave the YA section behind (unfortunate, but true) in favor of adult reading, which means that most kids browsing in the YA section are probably too young for Stitches. I would gladly hand this book to an avid reader seventeen and up, if I knew enough about their reading history. But to the average young shopper in my section, I'd probably sooner hand over Persepolis, because as heavy as Sartrapi's story is, a culture's history is explained in its impact on the young life of a one woman is going to be less terrifying than plain childhood abuse and negligence. Also, Small's visual exploration can be quite graphic and disturbing. I wouldn't hand this to the average young reader, just as I wouldn't hand a dozen classic contemporary titles to the average young reader. But not just because of what their parents might say - my mother let me have free run on what I read, and I still believe that was mostly the right strategy - but because I wouldn't expect a young reader to fully enjoy the depth and nuance of this story. If a teen were to ask for a graphic novel suggestion in my YA department, something specifically offbeat, I would offer them Shaun Tan's The Arrival or Tales From Outer Suburbia. They aren't better than Stitches, just possibly more accessible.

The real problem I have with Stitches being among the finalists for this award is that it renders meaningless the categorical separation between what is meant for adult readers and what is meant for young readers. There are a ton of adult books that would well serve older teenage readers, but the importance of awards for children's literature is how well it publicize worthy literature that has been strictly categorized as for "children." Among finalists that are actually children's lit, Stitches has the undeniable advantage of being the more sophisticated read. It's a challenge for a young reader, a worthy challenge, but not necessarily fair competition.

The book is starting to make appearances on "Best of 2009" lists, and every one of them has placed it squarely in the adult books category. This is true enough - while this book can, and most certainly will, be enjoyed by older teenage readers, this is undoubtedly a book that adults are going to gravitate to: the dark subject matter, no matter how much redemption lie at the end, will surely alienate many teens used to reading the lighter graphic novels meant for young readers.

If winning the National Book Award for Young People's Literature will help bring Stitches to a young audience, that's fantastic. But there are other worthy children's books that deserve the same attention.

Friday Finds!

2009-11-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Not too many finds this week. My roommate keeps making Half-Price Books runs without me, so he's been doing far better than I in the "finds" area. Still, it seems like I can't get through a week without my shelves bulging just a bit more. Here's the few books that I rounded up this week:

- Stolen by Lucy Christopher
An upcoming Spring release from Scholastic, this one came wrapped in black paper with a orange butterfly sticker, mimicking the simple, stark cover design. I don't know what to expect with this one - a story written as a letter from a kidnapped girl to her captor, these kind of books can be really engrossing, but also borderline exploitative and titillating. There will always be this trend in YA literature, as girls never seem to tire of stories that both demonstrate extreme survival and the ultimate lesson of "some girls have it way worse."

And I received two very nice paperbacks from the wonderful people at Harper Perennial:

-More of This World or Maybe Another by Barb Johnson
I have a galley of this book that I read last May, but I'm so glad to have a published copy. I loved this book - the craftsman-like detailing that Johnson does really creates this vivid community that serves as the focus of these interwoven stories. A multi-character portrait of a rundown New Orleans community, this is a great book for people who don't usually read short story collections because it works as both story collection and collective novel.

- Girl Trouble by Holly Goddard Jones
Of the short story collections I've devoured this past year, I've yet to dig into a collection lengthy or dense, but I think Girl Trouble might fill that void. Another sure to be wonderful collection of stories from Harper Perennial, this one came out this past September. Also, this is another Southern-touched collection, and it seems that there is no end to my fascination with the landscape and character described from the various perspectives of Midwest and Southern culture. I plan on getting into this one as soon as I can make room for an adult read.

Shelf Discovery Challenge!

2009-11-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

You can't throw a stone in blogville without hitting a reading challenge, but I finally stumbled upon one that I think I can manage. Courtesy Booking Mama, the "Shelf Discovery Challenge" asks its readers to choose six books featured in the the book Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick, read them in the next six months, a report on each one.

About Shelf Discovery:

Launched from her regular feature column Fines Lines for Jezebel.com, this spastically composed, frequently hilarious omnibus of meditations on favorite YA novels dwells mostly among the old-school titles from the late '60s to the early '80s much beloved by now grown-up ladies. This was the era, notes the bibliomaniacal Skurnick in her brief introduction, when books for young girls moved from being wholesome and entertaining (e.g., The Secret Garden and the Nancy Drew series) to dealing with real-life, painful issues affecting adolescence as depicted by Beverly Cleary, Lois Duncan, Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle and Norma Klein. Skurnick groups her eruptive essays around themes, for example, books that feature a particularly memorable, fun or challenging narrator (e.g., Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy); girls on the verge, such as Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret or danger girls such as Duncan's Daughters of Eve; novels that deal with dying protagonists and other tragedies like child abuse (Willo Davis Roberts's Don't Hurt Laurie!); and, unavoidably, heroines gifted with a paranormal penchant, among other categories. Skurnick is particularly effective at spotlighting an undervalued classic (e.g., Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) and offers titles featuring troubled boys as well. Her suggestions will prove superhelpful (not to mention wildly entertaining) for educators, librarians and parents.

Maureen, the lovely marketing director at my bookstore, was nice enough to hand me a galley copy of this book last Spring, and I have periodically read through bits and pieces of it. It's that perfect kind of browsing book - you can pick it up, read a few entries, put it down, and repeat.

The real joy of Shelf Discovery is discovering and re-discovering books that, while ultimately intended for young readers, continue to leave lasting impressions on women who later went to create lasting works of writing themselves. Nothing quite like authors gushing about books to pique my interest.

As an excuse to read some vintage YA literature, this challenge is perfect for me, but it's also going to be fun to re-explore books that I read at the proper demographic, ones that I may remember fondly or unhappily or hardly at all.

The challenge asks you to read six of the books featured in the text in six months, but I'm thinking about attempting to double that number. We'll see how I fare. For now, here are my six books:

- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
Why: This was the book that my mom kept insisting that I try as a kid, but I never bothered to follow her advice... until I randomly picked this up the summer before college. Having read When You Reach Me this past summer, I've been wanting to re-read this classic that I only embraced late into my teens.

-Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Green
Why: This past year, I've read two books that have been cited as inspired by this 1973 work by Bette Green, concerning a Jewish girl who harbors a Nazi escapee from a POW labor camp during the close of World War II. But I've never read this one, so now's the time.

-The Grounding of Group 6 Julian F. Thompson
Why: I have never heard of this book, but it's from the tail end of the first YA wave, and its premise - six teenagers are sent to an academy where there parents have paid for them to be "poisoned and thrown into deep crevasses" - sounds promising enough. Skurnick, writing about this book, calls into focus the prevalence of bad parents in this wave of young adult fiction, something that, while not completely absent from today's YA, has long since been the trend. "So, as ascends Gilmore Girls, so dies a golden YA trope - the parent who deserves to die."

-My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel
Why: Because 1)It's Paul Zindel, and I still consider The Pigman one of my all-time favorites, 2) I've known of this book for a long time but never even knew what it was about, and 3)Um... the title. Yeah, I'm that simple.

-The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Spears
Why: One of those books that seems fundamental to a YA reading history, and yet, I haven't read it. I had many, many friends who read it, so I suppose I never felt it necessary to read it too, a mindset I'm all to liable to fall into still.

-Blubber by Judy Blume
Why: Judy Blume is the Queen of YA. The first wave would never have broken quite as hard without her books. As a teenager, I didn't read most of the Blume classics. I read Summer Sisters, her comeback, for adults title while I was in high school, but I haven't read any Blume since then. This one's a short fix, so I should be able to get to it in an afternoon. Mean girl politics, especially those at a pre-teen age, are nothing like what you commonly see on television now.

Okay... fingers crossed that I stay with this one. I'll be making periodic updates to my progress. If you're interested in joining the challenge, check out Booking Mama for more information.

A New Winner!

2009-11-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Pricilla! She has won a copy of Rhoda Janzen's Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.

Make sure to visit Pricilla's excellent blog Broken Teepee and send her congratulations.

No worries, friends - If you didn't win this time, I'll be posting another giveaway soon. Thanks to all who entered and special thanks to West of Mars for posting this giveaway and helping to get this fun book into welcoming hands.

Review: If You Follow Me

2009-10-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

While I was really underwhelmed by the one upcoming Perennial title, Everything Here is the Best Ever, that I picked up at Pub Rep several weeks back, my time has been redeemed: the wasted hour and a half spent with the short story collection has been exchanged by the splendid several hours of reading I had with Malena Watrous's upcoming debut novel, If You Follow Me. So, Harper Perennial, good work. You're still my favorite paperback line from one of my favorite publishers.

A year after her father's suicide, following graduation from college, Marina follows her girlfriend, Carolyn, to Japan to teach English to the students of Shika, a rural Japanese town. Expecting the cliches of urban Japanese life, the two women are surprised by the positives and negatives of living in a Japanese small town. Much of the book is framed around Marina (and Carolyn) consistently failing to follow gomi law, or Japanese garbage law. After each garbage slight against their neighborhood, Marina receives notes from her supervisor, Hiro Miyoshi, who despite his disappointment in her failure to quickly acclimate to the rules of the village, understands her need for defiance and companionship. As the relationship between Marina and Caroyln evolves, collapses, and falls apart, the forces of a foreign land lay their claims to both women, and the culture that was locked out of their two-person house encampment becomes a refuge for Marina, a chance to come to terms with the recent past, the troubling present, and the unknown future.

Whenever I pick up a book about Westerners in Japan, I am usually prepared to put it back down. These "fish out of water" stories are so often flimsy excuses for cultural prejudice and gleaning laughs out of foreign cliche. Japan is the biggest target of them all - it seems that the more vivid a culture, the more likely it is to be skewered and parodied by the Western world. There is, of course, nasty historical reasons why the Japanese have so often been caricatured for American and European nations: mean-spirited propaganda dressed up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon was considered a point scored for Uncle Sam.

I get the historical reasons why such horrible representations exist, but the fact that it so often appears in present day Western pop culture is abhorrent. I was not the only one made uncomfortable by the race relations of Lost in Translation, where one of the protagonists is a recently graduated intellectual American girl, in Japan for an extended stay while her photographer husband travels around for work. Marina and Charlotte (of the movie) have a bit in common - they are similar strangers in similar strange land, except that Marina's perspective on Japan is of a small, rural village, while Lost in Translation bombards its characters with all that is bright and strange and frenzied of Tokyo urban life. I suppose encountering an after-school karaoke club and learning the many terms of gomi law is not quite as an exuberant as what urban Japan would offer, but the real difference between perspectives is that Marina, while striving to do better and frustrated when she does worse, lacks the malaised contempt that seems to drive the characters in Lost in Translastion. While they are careful to be separate entities - the Westerners in Tokyo, Americans traveling abroad - Marina and Carolyn face a a cultural challenge with a genuine attempt at fitting in.

The novel doesn't make easy jokes of its foreign subjects. Marina, quietly giggling at a superior's English pronunciation, still reminds herself that after all the time she's spent in Japan, "I shouldn't still think this is funny."

Gomi law becomes much more than an obstacle for Marina to overcome. It becomes the overwhelming point of her year in Japan - What is to be thrown away? What is to be kept? Where do you put your discarded things? Why do we put them there? What should we do with what is no longer of use to us?

I can recommend If You Follow Me for both its coming of age story and its cultural fairness. I don't strive to make political correctness a requirement in what I read, but in this case, being fair helps to elevate what could have been an episodic tale of Americans in Japan into a heartfelt document of a young woman attempting to get the most out of the new world around her.

Yes, I'm Behind the Times. Anyhoo, National Book Award Finalists!

2009-10-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here in Lonely Reader land, news comes through so frequently, that often times, I'm unable to report on it till the perfect storm of updates dies down. And this being award season, it's difficult to keep up with all the award winners, nominees, finalists, lifetime achievement awards, pie eating contests, etc.

But I'm trying, because as I've written before, I'm a nut for awards stuff. If I can really get to know this year's kids contenders, I would like to start some kind of gambling ring around the Newberry and Caldicott awards. Any librarians/ booksellers/ children's lit enthusiasts out there? Let's start betting now! We don't even have to bet money. Let's bet baked goods. I bet a dozen brownies that
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is at least a Newberry Honors book. Anyone want to take me on?

The National Book Award Finalists have been announced and, surprise surprise, I haven't read any of the nominated books. Bummer. Not that I read a lot of prestige adult books, but I had read most of last year's finalists for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Unlike the somewhat predictable, somewhat mundane choices of the Printz awards and the unreliable quality of the Newberrys - they have to be commended for recognizing Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book last year, but they've made a lot of sketchy choices in the past - the National Book Award for Young People's Literature consistently pays focus to books that get ignored elsewhere. Of course, this is really just a personal preference for the award's track record. If you compare last year's National Book Award finalists with this past year's Printz Award finalists, you'll see that both awards have token categories that need to be filled.

These were the 2008 finalists:
- What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell (winner)
- The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
- Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
- The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
- The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks E. Lockhart

Printz 2009 finalists:
- Jellicoe Road by Malina Marchetta (winner
- The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation Volume II by MT Anderson
- The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
- Nation by Terry Pratchett
- Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Each award seems to reserve a spot for a slave narrative, a book focused on black history, or a story of contemporary black culture. There is usually at least one coming of age book. There's usually a survivor tale. There's usually one book written in a non-contemporary time period.

I just think that the National Book Award for Young People's LIterature makes more ecclectic choices, especially with the winner. The Printz nominees from this year were all well, but I don't understand how you pass up four of those contenders for Jellicoe Road, an okay coming-of-age with a distorted narrative that just doesn't work.

In comparison, the NBA from 2008, What I Saw and How I Lied, is that rare WWII book that brings new wealth to an exhausted topic and setting. Blundell was an underdog, due to both her use of period slang and vernacular within text and because this was her first book published under her own name. She had done her time writing Star Wars series novels for kids, and then with the first book that she could really call her own, she wins the National Book Award. You kind of have to love a story like that.

Here is the complete list of National Book Award Finalists - all of them. Believe it or not, I do care about adult literature. I just never have time to read the big books of each year. I'm able to pick up story collections here and there, the odd bit of non-fiction, and occasionally a full novel, but to sit down with expansive, award-geared lit asks too much time than I am capable of giving.

Fiction
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)
Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction
David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)
T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf)

Poetry
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin)
Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

Young People’s Literature
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

Old Giveaway Winner! New Giveaway! Yay!

2009-10-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

My work schedule has been crazy, so I have not been able to regularly post. I'm trying to squish blogging time into each day, but it's been difficult, what with being tired and being at work and then being tired and then being at work and tired... But I've still been reading! When I can, which is mostly on public transportation to and from work, on the treadmill at the gym, a little bit in between bites of lunch/dinner, and for the few minutes before my eyes slam shut at night.

Not a whole lot of time to devote, really, which is a shame because there are a ton of great recently released and upcoming books. This morning, I got up early to finish Michelle Cooper's excellent A Brief History of Montmaray, which, given my exhausted self, should tell you something about this book. It's fantastic, perfect for any age - really, I probably say that a lot, and as a devoted reader of children's lit, my credibility is questionable as to recommendations for adult readers, but this one is seriously that good. It's another one of those children's titles that feels instantly classic, like something I would have read in school or from my aimless wanderings through the stacks of my local library. This is a book I would have sprawled with on the library floor or tucked away in one of the cool reading boxes they had in the kids/YA area. Anyway, it made me feel like a twelve year old reader again, and that's a really good feeling.

Anyhoo, the real heart of this post: The winner for the first "Heart is a Lonely Reader" Giveaway. Haley Mathiot has won a copy of Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline and a copy of Songs for the Butcher's Daughter by Peter Manseau. Congratulations, Haley!

They will be sent to her by chariot pulled by a quartet of handsome stallions.

...Or, you know, by padded envelope via the US Postal Service.

And thus ends the first giveaway. But don't despair, those who did not win, because I have an all-new giveaway.

Announcing the second Heart is a Lonely Giveaway! Because it's only for one book, this one will run just until the start of November. As of Nov. 1, there will be a winner declared.

Okay, so up for grabs:

Rhoda Janzen's thoughtful and hilarious Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home. This hardback copy was generously donated by Melissa Weisberg of Macmillan. (As stated in the pub rep edition of my Friday Finds, I love Melissa and think she's just the bee's knees.)

About Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, from Publisher's Weekly:

At first, the worst week of Janzen's life—she gets into a debilitating car wreck right after her husband leaves her for a guy he met on the Internet and saddles her with a mortgage she can't afford—seems to come out of nowhere, but the disaster's long buildup becomes clearer as she opens herself up. Her 15-year relationship with Nick had always been punctuated by manic outbursts and verbally abusive behavior, so recognizing her co-dependent role in their marriage becomes an important part of Janzen's recovery (even as she tweaks the 12 steps just a bit). The healing is further assisted by her decision to move back in with her Mennonite parents, prompting her to look at her childhood religion with fresh, twinkling eyes. (She provides an appendix for those unfamiliar with Mennonite culture, as well as a list of “shame-based foods” from hot potato salad to borscht.) Janzen is always ready to gently turn the humor back on herself, though, and women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating honesty with which she describes the efforts of friends and family to help her re-establish her emotional well-being.

As a side note, several booksellers at the store have read this one, and they have all been similarly engaged with the book. Mainly it's been described for fans of Elizabeth Gilber, Jen Lancaster, etc. That's not much my thing, but this one is a standout in the crowd.

Rules: Just leave a comment, by November 1st, with your name and an email address.

Enter now!

Thanks to West of Mars for helping to promote this giveaway. She's hip, she's cool, and she's local (well, my area local), so check out her site if you haven't already.

Review: A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper

2009-10-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Preface: I don't usually gush like this, but I am a) a bit sleep deprived, and b) totally and completely in love with this book.

I’m trying to be literate about this book, but it’s very difficult. My enthusiasm keeps reducing me to babble. Suffice to say, I loved A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper. Rather, I fell in love with the book. Last night, with about thirty pages to go, I inadvertently fell asleep mid-page. When my early alarm went off, I sprung awake and instantly grabbed for the book to finish. I was late leaving for work, but it was absolutely worth it.

It’s the kind of book that seems so effortless, it could have only come from an immense writing talent. Sophie’s voice is rendered in such exquisite simplicity – she is both incredibly naïve and extremely observant, and the reader is rewarded for following her train of thought by moments of pure epiphany, when the truth of things is suddenly apparent to her young mind.

The evolving adolescent mind is the center of this novel. Sophie starts off the novel a romantic, reading Bronte and Austen and Shakespeare, quick to take to flights of fancy, dramatic and, at times, contradictory. She confesses her crush on the housekeeper’s son, Simon, while also reminding herself that he is not of royal class, and therefore, she should not feel so intimidated being around him. The dynamic between Sophie and her intellectual cousin, Veronica, is the perfect propulsive binary – Sophie’s open minded naïveté mixes well with Veronica’s weary academic perspective as the story has important uses for both mindsets. While it is Sophie’s coming-of-age, every character is shaped by the turn of events, and by the end of the book, no character is left formed quite the same that they were at the beginning of Sophie’s chronicles.

The mysteries of the novel unfold with such remarkable timing – minor details return as echoes in major revelations. A muddled family history becomes less confusing, but much, much more complicated. At times, the book read as a true history of a royal family, complete with betrayals, disappearances, love affairs, and even murder. How these factors tie into the present-day context of the book is the true revelation – somehow events that have long been in the shadows reveal their true significance in the face of present dangers, deepening the truth of both the now and the then.

I wanted to follow the book right off the page and into the world of the characters. What will become of their beloved island? Who will ascend to the throne, and does that even matter? What will become of Veronica and her brilliant mind? And Sophie, dear Sophie, whose voice became like a sister’s in my mind. I read so much, it is unusual to really absorb the thoughts of a character, even when that character is the narrator and protagonist. But I liked her so much, and Cooper instills so much intimacy in the way Sophie writes to her journal and, by extension, us, the readers, that what can we do but claim her as our own?

Nancy Siscoe, who sent me A Brief History of Montmaray, called the book “a gift” to us booksellers, and I cannot disagree. I feel incredibly rewarded having been given this book to read, to spend time with, to absorb, to wake up with by my side, and of course, to lend (with caution, of course, as I naturally do not want to lose my copy) to other book lovers who I know will have all the same feelings for this book that I felt.

Friday Finds - Pub Rep Edition!

2009-10-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

Oh, the magic of entry settings. A post written late Tuesday/ early Wednesday can appear to have been there since mid-day Friday. I need to start logging these "Find" posts as the week progresses and scheduling them to post on the actual Friday of intention... Otherwise, I will always be playing a week-long game of catch-up.

Anyway, this past week was a great week for finds, mostly due to the pub rep breakfast we had Wednesday morning at work. Twice a year, several reps from major publishers come to our store armed with handouts, information on upcoming books, and many copies of released and to-be-released books. It's an early morning (starts at 8:00 am), but in exchange for a time and caffeinated, bleary-eyed attention, we are given the skinny on the prominent new and upcoming books and given copious amounts of free titles.

The free books are a nice incentive, but we really do LOVE our reps. We have a core three: I heard wonderful upon wonderful things about our HarperCollins rep, Kate McCune, months before I actually had the pleasure of meeting her. Kate could sell me a blank book, she's that persuasive. Melissa Weisburg from Macmillan is another personal favorite, because she's super enthusiastic and specializes in Macmillan's children's titles. Mary Ann Buehler, from Penguin, always has a ton of information for us and really makes an effort to remember individual tastes and interests.

Eileen and Randy (from Random House and Hachette, respectively) were great additions to this recent breakfast, and I hope we will see more of them. I'd feel like this was all kissing up to the reps, but honestly, they deserve it. Spending time with the publishing reps, you really get an understanding as to why they have the jobs that they do. They are tirelessly enthusiastic about books, know everything there is to know about the titles they are promoting, and really attempt to put the books into the hands of people who will want to read them. The ultimate kids in the candy store, you can tell they love their jobs... or at least, they're so good at their jobs, they've got to love what they do.

We have a Fall breakfast and a Spring breakfast, but the Fall one usually emphasizes titles that have either come out recently or will come out very soon - mostly to promote titles that are being pushed for the Christmas buying season. Fine by me - last year, I was pleasantly rewarded with a copy of Prince's then-recently released book 21 Nights, among other fantastic freebies.

This year didn't feature any "big ticket" books, but a lot of high quality books in hardback copies and a smattering of galleys for exciting Winter titles. Of the lot, I'm most excited about what I picked up from Harper and Macmillan. I'll go on about that in a bit.

The finds!

From the lovely Melissa at Macmillan:

- Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou; With art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna
A graphic novel about Bertrand Russell, described as "a historical novel and an accessible introduction to some of the biggest ideas of mathematics and modern philosophy." There's a great series of books that put philosophers and ideologies into graphic novel forms, but this is a cut above those in quality and scope. Next day off I have, I plan to devour this one.

-Justice by Michael J. Sandel
A book form of Sandel's acclaimed Harvard course, this has been one of the big buzz titles floating around for the past several weeks. My reading attention is usually absorbed by children's titles, but when I'm really hungry for some intellectual stimulation, this is bound to blow my mind. I can't wait to pass this along to my law school friends.

-Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children's Book edited by Anita Silvey
The kind of coffee table book that you would find in my apartment, this is a compendium of essays from famous people (writers, politicians, rich people, actors, etc.) about the classic children's titles that inspired them. That alone would be interesting enough, but maybe not the stuff of an oversized hardback volume, but wait, there's also sidebars of the book's history, and full-page excerpts from the works themselves. It's lovingly laid out and presented, and I find myself paging through it everytime I need a little pick me up.

From the mighty Kate McCune at HarperCollins

- To Hell on a Fast Horse by Mark Lee Gardner
Oh, I'm a sucker for Wild West stories and get-the-bad-guy stories, so this is right up my alley. The story of the "epic chase" of Billy the Kid.

-The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter
I loved Walter's Citizen Vince. This one, following the week-long exploits of a man trying to repair his career, marriage, and financial state, is perfectly apt for the times. I'm just wondering how its timeliness is going to affect its lasting factors and vice versa. Hopefully, I will find out sooner rather than later.

I swear by the Harper Perennial line - two of their 2009 releases, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and More of This World or Maybe Another are in my top reads of the year - and I managed to get two upcoming release galleys from Kate:
- If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous
Marina travels to Japan to learn the language and culture of another country, but also to escape from her grief over of her father's suicide. I'm normally wary of fish-out-of-water stories (especially ones having to do with Americans in Asian cultures, as they so often devolve into explorations of Westerner misconceptions and Eastern culture hijinks), but like I said before, Kate can sell me on just about anything, and if it has her seal of approval, I'll give it a try.

- Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor
An author's debut short story collection, I'm about three-fourths through this one, and admittedly, it's leaving me a bit cold. The problem isn't the writing - the prose is spare, but introspective, - but in the character building. Taylor's emphasized the detachment of his characters without giving the reader much to hook onto, and little character evolutions go a long way in short stories. I may end up completely rethinking this one... I'll let this go for now, update on the rest later. It's not bad, by any means, just... underwhelming from what I was expecting.

Thanks Eileen from Random House!
- That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
Despite hearing nothing but great things about all of his titles, I've only read the hilarious and disarmingly affecting Straight Man. This is another intellectual in crisis, but Russo is so good at crafting that voice, as well as dysfunctionally functional family and personal relations, and I'm fairly sure I will enjoy this one.

Thank you Randy from Hachette!
Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr
I've heard lots of great things about Zarr, but I haven't gotten around to either Sweethearts or Story of a Girl. She's making an appearance at the JB in Cincinnati, so it seemed like a good idea to grab the new book. There are several YA titles coming out this winter that have to do with religion in a family and social context, used in a variety of ways, from coming of age to murder mystery. I'm interested in what Zarr is going to do with the subject matter. Sam is a pastor's daughter, but after her mother enters rehab and a young girl from her town is kidnapped, she begins to have a crisis of faith.

Wag by Patrick McDonnell
The creator of Mutts releases another picture book, about a dog's favorite thing - his tail. What makes Earl's tail wag?

Connected by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler
Two scientists interrogate the connections between people, in both social and technological ways, and lay out their theory of the "Three Degrees of Influence Rule: we influence and are influenced by people up to three degrees removed from us, most of whom we do not even know." I enjoy these social theory in motion type books, at least as much as the average reader (yes, I read Gladwell, and while you can't always swear by his theories, you have to admit, he's a great writer with a real understanding of how to relate sometimes difficult ideas in an accessible, digestible way), and if this is half as interesting as its jacket blurb is, it will be time well spent.

Guess who came to the bookstore last night...

2009-10-07T13:45:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's me and Michael Chabon.

The Michael Chabon. Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers to promote the release of his newest book, Manhood for Amateurs

Ha, yes, well I can assure you it was quite the event-filled night of hobnobbing with a famous author. Not really. A few of us were called in to help out with the event, so I mostly stood at the front of the signing line taking line tickets and making awkward conversation with a variety of Chabon enthusiasts, from the older intellectual couples to the lit. majors with baby faces and serious chips on their shoulders.

Ah, college. Being an English major means going to author signings and asking things like, "While you admit to providing a form of literary escapism, do you attempt to provoke social change with your work?" and "While [insert early work long out of print] was clearly written from a post-modern perspective, your later work seems to hold much in debt to early modernism. What elements in your work really mark that turning point?" It's intellectual curiosity... sort of. It's also a way to show off how much you really get the author, how much you really get literature in general. Basically, you're a smarty pants when it comes to literature, and you don't mind letting everyone know, especially any author you would bother going to see.

This is the second time Michael Chabon has made an appearance here at JB's, and as much of a fan of his work I am, I am even fonder of his occasional appearances in Pittsburgh and this bookstore specifically. I've begun to think of the author somewhat sentimentally, which is never how I choose to read an author, but in this case, the sentiment is somewhat deserved.

The last time Michael Chabon came to the store, I had just started at the bookstore as a bookseller. I mean just started. It was the end of my second week that I experienced what a big author signing is like at our store, and it at first blew my mind.

First of all, right there, in my store, was going to be an author whose work had profoundly affected me as a reader, writer, thinker. It affected the way I interacted with other readers and with the educators who put books into my hands. My mind is both bigger and fuller because of this author. And there he/she is.

Second, there's a ton of people. I was still getting used to basic register functions at this point, and I've never really been known for my grace under fire. But I'm the new girl, and I desperately want to make a decent impression. But you can see the terror right under the surface. Eyes widened toward a sea of enthusiastic readers with a purpose, books curled under arms, bags full of backlist titles, vouchers out to claim books reserved, money out to acquire others... I played it as cool as possible, but it would have been obvious to even the most obtuse observer that I was slightly in over my head.

Third, there's the careful balancing of being a worker and spectator. I know how to do this now, but then? Not so much. I'm listening in more than I'm paying attention. Instead of steadily watching for new customers entering the store, I'm craning my neck to catch a glimpse of Michael Chabon at the podium. It was my luck not to get caught gawking by my bosses. It would have been unfortunate to prove myself unreliable only a second week into the job, and for something fairly ridiculous, like trying to watch an author read.

This is not to undersell the lure of an author appearance, but there is not really anything inherently interesting in going to listen to an author read from his/her new work. A few are very entertaining readers, most are adequate, and some are just terrible (although my personal experience with this third group has been minimal), but what most, if not all, attendees are coming for is the after-reading Q&A, a barbaric literary ritual where audience members grasp for something to say to someone whose work they've spent considerable time with. I say barbaric only because these sessions often make or break the whole event. A good mixed crowd can yield a fantastic Q&A, as long as the author gets into the ritual and tries as hard as his/her audience is, but sometimes, not even the best questions can save a tongue-tied author whose strong point isn't answering direct, impromptu questions.

Barbaric, also, since most post-signing Q&As go on with little to no organizational methods aside from hand-raising. The author, confronted with a sea of hands, must do his/her best to pick from the avid nameless, and it's a crapshoot as to whether or not he picks worthwhile questioners with worthwhile questions. Last night, for example, there were several thoughtful questions, some mediocre redundant inquiries (some authors are magnets for the same questions over and over again, and that's just the nature of being known for your creative work and the obvious details of your personal life), and maybe only two or three clunkers. Early on in the Q&A, an older lady asked Mr. Chabon what he thought of the events of G20 and it being set here in Pittsburgh.

A somewhat confused Chabon asked her to clarify what she was asking, and she replied, "Well, our town was overrun with fascists!" She went on, but she kind of lost me there, as well as most people in the audience. The author, to his credit, was very kind and deftly navigated a tricky question that was, in a way, a guaranteed ideological trap.

Anyway... I'm much more adept at author appearances than I used to be. As starstruck as I can get, I rarely lose my cool in front of the author anymore, or at least I keep wrapped under a slightly awkward, but not-as-awkward-as-babbling veneer of silence. And it works out for both of us - awesome author gets to remain relatively unscathed, and I usually get a book signed and/or a photograph. [See above.]

What do you think of author appearances? Any particular favorites or memorable experiences stick out in your mind? What's the best and worst author event you've ever been to?

Friday Finds!

2009-10-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Hey there, gloomy Friday! So rainy and gray and cold... A great way to usher in October, wouldn't you say?

I can't stop yawning. This weather makes it nearly impossible for me to do anything but cuddle up on the couch and read. Lucky for me, I've had a fairly good week of finds. Most of these were purchased from my store, via the bargain kids section (we have a fabulous and tough to beat kids bargain section).

Why I keep buying picture books, I don't understand. I need my close friends to start having children so I can put these books to good use.

- Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems
Anything Mo Willems that goes on bargain, I'm quick to grab. This one is cute, admittedly not in my top tier favorites, but still, I love Willems' play on true and false, real and imaginary, and what can happen when a character calls another character out on being fictional. He's not afraid to go meta with his kids books, but they're so funny and fun, kids don't even notice the ironic humor adults so love about his books.

John, Paul, George and Benby Lane Smith
History lessons were never funnier. A really clever picture book about the Founding Fathers, Smith goes from funny, but true to funny and not true to funny and maybe true, to just plain and absolute funny. Smith's illustrative style really works here, as the historical characters are simplified enough to echo the appearance of their young readers.

That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brownby Cressida Cowell, illus. by Neal Layton
Emily Brown has an extraordinary rabbit, so perfect a companion that the selfish Queen Gloriana first offers (hopelessly) to buy the rabbit, then resorts to stealing it for herself. Emily must save her bunnywunny and possibly teach the Queen how to get the most out of her own playthings. The illustrations and sly humor are terrific. This makes a great storytime companion to Mo Willems' Knuffle Bunny.

As far as non-picture book finds...

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin
I loved her latest book, Impossible, so when I saw the hardback of one of her older titles, and for $3.50 nonetheless, I snatched it up immediately. Judging from its online presence, this is her most popular title - an abuse story written in the form of a letter from a boy to his younger sister. Because it's a backlist, I probably won't get to it for a while, but I'm glad to add more of Werlin to my library.

Monster and Amiri and Odette by Walter Dean Myers
Myers won a Printz Award and was a National Book Award finalist for Monster, about a boy being charged as an accomplice to a murder. To process and control his fears about his situation, he imagines the trial as a movie script.

Amiri and Odette is a Romeo and Juliet-esque tale, told in equal parts illustrations and texts. Got both of these in the bargain section, before the teachers came in and wiped out the stock.

How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
After reading the Boston Bibliophile's review, I'm fairly certain I wasted my money. Oh well, wouldn't be the first time. At least now I can lend it out to serious-minded friends who want to try it out. I'm still fairly curious about it, so I may still try to give it a go.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray
For those unfamiliar, Libba Bray is the author of the Gemma Doyle trilogy, a popular fantasy series whose last book, The Sweet Far Thing, came out in paperback last Spring. This is Bray's first book outside the series, a madcap road adventure with a sixteen year old boy suffering from Mad Cow's disease, a dwarf, and a lawn gnome. Not sure how this is going to do with the teen reading audience, as both the title and the cover are not exactly the type of thing that lures Bray's typical demographic. I'm considering it currently being read, but really, it just lies unopened in my bag while I polish off Pictures at a Revolution.

PEN USA 2009 Literary Award Winners

2009-10-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

I'm a nut for award season. I don't really care all that much about reading the big award books - it is especially the case in kids' lit that a lot of the best stuff never gets recognized by the established, prestigious award groups - but, like one would keep track of the general top teams of the a current sports season, I like to stay aware of what's making the grade and getting those classy gold stickers.

The PEN USA Literary Awards are little more expansive than your run-of-the-mill accolades. Of course, they have major winners for fiction, two distinct lines of non-fiction, poetry, childrens, etc. But they also name winners for teleplay and screenplay, both categories delivering wins to very deserving works this time around
[though, of the two AMC programs, Mad Men is my favored].

Visit the website for more information on the 2009 Lit Awards.

PEN USA 2009 Winners:
Fiction - KIM BARNES • A Country Called Home (Alfred A. Knopf)
Creative Nonfiction - STEVE LOPEZ • The Soloist (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Research Nonfiction - LESLIE T. CHANG • Factory Girls (Spiegel & Grau)
Poetry - SEIDO RAY RONCI • The Skeleton of the Crow (Ausable Press)
Children’s Literature - KATHI APPELT • The Underneath (Atheneum Books for Young
Readers)
Translation - MAXINE CHERNOFF & PAUL HOOVER • Selected Poems of
Friedrich Hölderlin (Omnidawn Publishing)
Journalism - KAREN OLSSON • Before and After (Texas Monthly)
Drama - MARISELA TREVINO ORTA • Braided Sorrow (El Centro Su
Teatro)
Teleplay - GEORGE MASTRAS • Breaking Bad: "Crazy Handful of Nothin’"
(Sony/Gran Via/Highbridge)
Screenplay - DUSTIN LANCE BLACK • Milk (Newmarket Press)

As far as awards go, my quick favorites are the Man Booker, Newberry, the Pen/Faulkner, and the Hugo. I also look forward to hearing about the Printz Award every year, but mostly to debate and disagree with their choices. They play it too safe.

Do you have any award favorites? Ones you look forward to hearing about as soon as award season starts?

Wednesday Quick Picks

2009-09-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

Some random good things from the literary world and beyond for a rainy, slow Wednesday afternoon:

- An Off Year by Claire Zulkey
Fresh, funny, and disarmingly honest study of an average girl's minor breakdown upon facing down the first year of college. Zulkey never gets melodramatic, which can often cause the emotional center of a book to go flat, but instead, the reader is treated to minor epiphanies as they occur, as small as our protagonist, Cecily, getting out of the house for once.

- The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
Just released in paperback, I tried all last fall to relate my feelings on Vowell's labor of love. While not as funny as her other books, its perhaps all the more affecting for how closely she relates to the subject material. For Vowell diehards and early American literature buffs, this is a must read. For anyone else, pick up Partly Cloudy Patriot and Take the Cannoli first.

- The Indie Rock Coloring Book by Yellow Bird Project, illus. by Andy. J. Miller
Because your kids aren't taking nearly enough psychedelics, nor are their coloring books groovy enough to serve as poster art. Lots of cool bands represented with zany, incredibly designed illustrations. And it benefits a good cause! What more could you ask for in your hipster kids coloring book? Here's a taste:

- The Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
Admittedly, I haven't read it yet, but it's Byrne's writings and musings on cities, travel, urban societies, all from the point of view of his handy collapsible bicycle. Maureen wrote up a killer marketing plan to get Byrne in our store when he goes on his book tour - maybe this shout out will help things a bit. Hey, Mr. Byrne! Come to our store for a signing! We'll buy you delicious food from the OTB Bicycle Cafe and just generally do your bidding.

- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - based on the book by David Foster Wallace
Just watched this last night. John Krasinski directed and adapted for the screen the book by David Foster Wallace. While a film adaptation of Wallace's short story collection is well-meant tribute to the late writer, and Krasinski really does all that he can on this first try at directing, this is a piece meant - I mean, really, just meant - for the stage, but not quite so suitable for 80 minutes of movie watching. Krasinski does a nice job of instilling a tension in scenes that could have felt long and aimless, and the performances mostly deliver - the touch of stunt casting fails, as Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie fame) mostly looks like he can't believe he's in a movie (and neither can we) - but it just falls short of something. Could imagine this being absolutely electrifying on stage - and it has been, back in 2000, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

Friday Finds

2009-09-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

A combination of cold, bad weather, and general weariness kept me from using my break for book hunting. I haven't been to my favorite used book store, Caliban Book Shop, since I moved to the West End, so I had planned on attempting a trip sometime during my three days off.

If it was sickness and bad weather keeping me from venturing out of doors and out of my area, it was general unease about utilizing public transportation during G20. Which turned out to be mostly overblown paranoia, aside from a few notable protest escalations here and there. My routes were pretty much unaffected, for which I was very, very thankful. If I was still living in the Bloomfield/Lawrenceville/East End area, I may have not been able to say the same thing.

Because this is primarily a book and reading related blog, I won't go on about G20, the protests, the general abounding hoopla surrounding two intense days in Pittsburgh. Many arrests were made, some justified, many definitely not. I don't go in for catchall, everybody-in-the-pool protests. Too many disparate voices lobbying at the same unseen forces just starts to feel like generic slogan slinging. I believe in well-planned, well-reasoned, focused protests where large amounts of people can bring attention to a single aim or overall cause. I also abhor protesting that amounts to little more than property damage and vandalism. Buildings can't listen to what you have to say, but business owners, especially small, independent business owners won't care, because they'll be too busy figuring out how to compensate for your needless destruction.

What is especially disconcerting about destructo-protesting is that it so often contradicts what it claims to stand for. If you're protesting the invasion of your private life, the oppression wielded by government forces, the things that affect you on a daily basis and that you cannot control, what better way to reinforce those very same offenses than to inflict the same damage upon someone else's stuff? Bashing windshields, dumping over garbage cans, breaking windows... what does that prove other than the fact that you can cause oppression of your very own? If you're not smashing the windows of the finger of government, than you are taking it out on an innocent person. What implicates someone better than absence, right?

It is important to note, however, that not all G20 protests were made alike. For every unpermitted march, there were demonstrations and marches done peacefully, with full permits, that disproved all the talk about potential rioting and massive destruction to the downtown area. Okay, maybe not in equal ratio, but a lot of people were willing to express themselves without putting others (and the property of others) in danger.

The summit has yielded little interesting news coverage, but this story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, concerning an impromptu demonstration in Oakland Friday night that turned into a giant, arrest-laden mess, is particularly compelling. While it doesn't give a clear time line of the night's events, it did clear up some questions as to where portions of the people were, why some of them were there, and how things might have gotten swiftly and unfortunately out of control.

So, this tumultuous week has not really done much for my book buying. The little bits:

An Off Year by Claire Zulkey
After returning The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo - which I loved - to the store, I decided to check out this debut novel by a writer I know primarily from The Onion AV Club. Well, I'm about a third of the way through, and I'm really enjoying it. Cecily is a fairly average teenager, amiable enough to coast through her high school years without dissent. But within moments of her arrival to college, she makes the swift but certain decision that she wants to go right back home. And so she does. What follows is rare for a lot of teen books, whose protagonists always seem to have flaws that aren't really flaws, devoted, understanding best friends, and either horrible parents or parents that are unbelievably cool. Cecily's flaws are very, very real, and also, as is typical of that age, almost unrecognizable to her own insight. But I'm only a portion through the book, so more on that one later...

You Suck by Christopher Moore
A hardback copy of this was sitting at my desk, seemingly fallen from the heavens for my reading enjoyment. I've been wanting to follow up on my minimal Christopher Moore reading, and due to a longstanding disinterest in vampires, I never really chased after this one, but if some unforeseen forces want me to read it, who am I to resist?

I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb
Delivered in a box of ARCs, alongside a bundle of awesome buttons that say "I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Bookseller." This book poses the question: What if you were rich, supremely intelligent, and lacked a moral compass, but your 7th grade peers still wouldn't vote you Class President?

It's hard to hold a book while you're blowing your nose...

2009-09-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the recycled, shared air in the Dealers' Room at Horror Realm on Saturday. It was probably the inevitable consequence of everyone around me getting sick. Both colleagues and friends have been succumbing to the same cold for the past few weeks, and I somehow managed to evade it... until now.

Being sick during time off isn't ideal, but at least I don't feel any pressure to do stuff. Lacking a significant stretch of time or abundance of funds, a sleepy staycation seemed like a decent idea. Having a cold makes homebody-ness necessary.

Reading while sick has its ups and downs. Not all books are cold-day books. It's too easy to be distracted from reading that is particularly dense or dry. Eyes are quick to tire of very small type and minimal margins. Even the coloration of a book's pages can affect its readability.

A lot of people use their sick day reading to indulge in guilty pleasures, cheesy romances or mysteries featuring a weekly knitting club's members set in a small, New England town. While I'll use being sick on the couch as an excuse to watch terrible, unforgivably bad movies (I have Fear Net and I'm not afraid to use it), my patience for clumsy or convoluted writing is worn especially thin when sick. That's not to say I'm paging through Violence by Slavoj Zizek or attempting, for the umpteenth time, James Joyce's Ulysses. Rather, things that will escape my notice when I'm reading amidst a current of activity are more likely to trigger my annoyance when being read in a vacuum of lonely sick time in bed.

Bad writing can be exhausting. So can really good writing. When you're sick, the last thing you want to do is struggle with what you're reading. I tend toward the humorous, subtly crafted literary fiction (Zadie Smith is a good example - an author of extraordinary talent, but whose work doesn't itch with trial or writerly posturing), magical children's fiction, and light or pop culture-centered non-fiction.

Food writing is fairly safe - During a particularly bad cold last year, I devoured several food-related biographies and chronicles, including the enchanting Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee, as well Waiter Rant, The Devil in the Kitchen by Marco Pierre White, and My Life in France by Julia Child. The episodic nature of most food-related tales lends itself to the pick-up-put-down habits of sick reading. Plus, it's fun to think about frivolous things like a nice meal when you're drowning in snot-clotted tissues and orange juice.

Short stories are suitable in similar fashion - finish one, and you feel fairly accomplished in your sick state. Go for writers whose simplicity works on multiple levels of sophistication, and whose plots and characters are good enough to make-up for the possible delay of mental faculties to put together more complex thoughts of symbol, theme, and tone. Raymond Carver is a perfect example. I'm also a longtime devotee of Alice Munro - any of her collections will do, but I cut my teeth on Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories. Two very good recent short story collections: Barb Johnson's New Orleans tapestry More of This World or Maybe Another and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, a spectacular debut collection of short fiction by Kevin Wilson.

Graphic novels are always good - the emphasis on visuals relieves strain on the eyes. I go for lean serials in favor of longer tomes. I've mentioned it before, but Y: The Last Man will make anyone a convert to the comic form. A sharp, funny, and surprising series surmising what would happen if a global plague wiped out every male on Earth... except one. I've recently dug into Vertigo's other big series, Fables, a clever take on well-known fairy tale characters and tropes.

Any sick day reading suggestions? How do you spend your sick days?

My television is anti-literacy.

2009-09-21T13:15:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a three-day mini vacation from work... and I'm already bored. Of course, I've got a stack of books to read... about three or four stacks. But digital cable is a harsh temptress, rewarding watchers with quality entertainment and enthralling trash, and I've found myself sucked into another viewing bout of... Misery:

I'm giving myself a pass on this one, mostly because it's really entertaining, an over-the-top thriller that, although teetering on the edge of ridiculousness, never goes off the rails completely. Also, and this is kind of hard to explain, I have a weird crush on Kathy Bates from watching Misery.

Yes, she's psychotic. Homicidal. Maybe she doesn't have the best grip on reality (or, at least, not a grip as good as the one on her sledgehammer). She seems to be obsessed with a fairly mediocre romance series, which doesn't exactly indicate the best level of reading taste (but who am I to judge?). Obsessive? Absolutely.

But, other than being a homicidal maniac, Annie Wilkes has some redeeming characteristics. Seriously! She's brave, strong, resourceful. She's an avid reader. She's caring and even hospitable. But more than anything, her intense obsessiveness is party to her even more intense observational talents. She has a keen eye and devotion to continuity and will not settle for less than the best from her favorite writer:

Kathy Bates in Misery
Uploaded by spicesoda. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

So, most viewers witnessing that would say, "What a whackjob! It's just a stupid movie. Bitch is crazy."

Indeed. Bitch is crazy. But that doesn't mean that bitch is wrong. Despite her craziness bringing about all kinds of physical and psychological torture on Paul Sheldon, there's a strange clarity to her comments on his work. Yes, he's being forced to bring his character back from the dead by a lunatic that has him virtually shackled and imprisoned. But that's no reason to be lazy. Your number one fan is reading this, Paul, and she's keeping track of everything, every character, every move, every comment. It's a credit to Annie that she is as critical a reader as she is crazy a person. This clip cuts it off, but Annie gives Paul a bit of simple, but astute advice: "Misery was buried in the ground at the end, so you'll have to start there."

Plus, I kind of love her overwhelming, creepy enthusiasm. "I've known from the very first book that Misery had to be born of nobility, and I was right!" "Misery's alive! Misery's alive! This whole house is going to be filled with romance!" Annie's also got a kind of folksy charm. "I'd have to check which one of my legs was being pulled!"

Unfortunately, she so often seems to go from extreme high to psychotic low. Oh, and she's a killer.

I'm not saying it excuses her behavior, but it's rare to meet a killer whose also an avid, enthused reader.

The Heart is a Lonely Giveaway

2009-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

Woot! Let's put on our happy faces - it's time for the very first Heart is a Lonely Reader book giveaway.

First, how to enter: For the first giveaway, I'm not doing anything fancy. Just your standard "Leave a comment with your email so I can get in touch with you if you win."

I will be posting this contest on West of Mars, so hopefully these books will go to a good home. Thanks to Anastasia of the great book blog, Birdbrain(ed) Blog for her excellent suggestion. If I get any new readers here, it will be thanks to her insight.

Enough preamble! Up for grabs is a set of two recently released hardbacks. Both are works of adult literary fiction, one from Harper Collins, one from Simon & Schuster. Because I don't have too much time for the adult and serious these days, I'm putting them out there for someone else to enjoy.

Songs for the Butcher's Daughter by Peter Manseau.
From the publisher:

"Summer, sweltering, 1996. A book warehouse in western Massachusetts. A man at the beginning of his adult life -- and the end of his career rope -- becomes involved with a woman, a language, and a great lie that will define his future. Most auspiciously of all, he runs across Itsik Malpesh, a ninetysomething Russian immigrant who claims to be the last Yiddish poet in America. When a set of accounting ledgers in which Malpesh has written his memoirs surfaces -- twenty-two volumes brimming with adventure, drama, deception, passion, and wit -- the young man is compelled to translate them, telling Malpesh's story as his own life unfolds, and bringing together two paths that coincide in shocking and unexpected ways.

Moving from revolutionary Russia to New York's Depression-era Lower East Side to millennium's-end Baltimore with drama, adventure, and boisterous, feisty charm to spare, the unpeeling of this friendship is a story of the entire twentieth century. For fans of Nicole Krauss, Nathan Englander, Richard Powers, Amy Bloom, and Lore Segal, this book will amaze at every turn: narrated by two poets (one who doesn't know he is and one who doesn't know he isn't), it is a wise and warm look at the constant surprises and ineluctable ravages of time. It's a book about religion, love, and typesetting -- how one passion can be used to goad and thwart the other -- and most of all, about how faith in the power of words can survive even the death of a language.

A novel of faith lost and hope found in translation, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is at once an immigrant's epic saga, a love story for the ages, a Yiddish-inflected laughing-through-tears tour of world history for Jews and Gentiles alike, and a testament to Manseau's ambitious genius. "

Bird in Hand by Christine Baker Kline
From Publishers Weekly:

In her fourth novel (after The Way Life Should Be), Kline traces the construction and collapse of two long-term relationships. On her way home to New Jersey after an awkward party for her lifelong friend Claire's highly autobiographical first novel, Alison gets into a car accident that kills a boy in the other car. Even though the accident wasn't her fault, Allison, a mother of two young children, is wracked with grief and guilt. Her husband, Charlie, also struggles with the impulse to blame his wife, especially as he longs for any excuse to escalate his nascent affair with Claire and end his marriage.

Episodes detailing the inevitable collapse of Alison and Charlie's marriage, as well as Claire's marriage to her well-meaning husband, Ben, are interspersed with vignettes revealing the four friends' 10-plus-year history together. Shifting perspectives and thoughtful interior monologues reveal just how isolated, and in some cases misguided, the characters are. Kline's unflinching gaze and lovely prose sets Kline's novel apart from the herd of infidelity/marital ennui novels. It's well-done, thoughtful and thought provoking.

These books will come lovingly packaged, sent right to your doorstep, and who knows? There might be all kinds of other goodies packed up inside. I have a lot of random stuff around. You might just win it.

Friday Finds

2009-09-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

My bookshelves are going to break.

After two slow weeks of finds, this week erupted with boxes of galleys, upcoming releases, even published comps. We always get a bit bombarded by stuff in the Fall - between current releases and upcoming Winter/Spring titles, there's no end to the stuff publishing reps want you to take note of. I'm more than happy to oblige them, but... seriously, I need to get rid of some books. If I had more blog followers, I'd do a giveaway. Maybe I should offer them to other bloggers for their giveaways. Hmm... not a bad idea...

Possible bloggers reading this, take note! Want a giveaway for your blog? Need a promotional or free book for attracting readers? I'm your girl! Want a galley for personal perusal? Right here! Just leave me a comment or email me.

Come one, come all. Free books! Free books!

Okay, now that the histrionics are out of the way, my Friday Finds. This is a somewhat abbreviated list (I got a ton of Macmillan upcoming kids releases, but I won't go into all of those right now)....

- Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup
If you're starting to recognize that name, it's probably due to Slumdog Millionaire. A year ago, Swarup's Q&A was a blip on the radar, nothing much more. That book, modified and re-titled, became an Oscar-winning smash. This is Swarup's follow-up, a murder mystery set at a posh New Dehli restaurant.

- The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
I finally got hip to what a lot of librarians and teachers have known for a long time - Kate DiCamillo is awesome. I just checked this one out from the store, but I have a feeling I'm going to love it. A story of a boy searching for his sister by following the clues given to him by a mysterious fortune teller, clues that lead him to a magician, his elephant, and a world of magic. I'm a sucker for anything having to do with magicians or circuses, and this promises to have a little of each flavor.

- Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes
Snapped this out of a Macmillan galley box. I've been meaning to read a book by Julian Fellowes, whose screenplay for Gosford Park ranks among my very favorites. A mystery involving the rich elite of 1960s London. I'll just assume that it sparkles with wit.

-Blame by Michelle Huneven
I know nothing about Huneven, I've never read anything she's written, and I'm not even sure that I know what this book is about. But Richard Russo recommends her, so why not give her a try.

- You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs
A flasher Santa marks the cover of this upcoming Burroughs Christmas-themed collection. Guaranteed to be as heartwarming as Holidays on Ice. I think I will read both, back-to-back, while drinking whiskey and writing Christmas cards to exes.

-The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Truthfully? Picked it up because of the title. I held onto it because its subtitle is, "The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession." The book concerns the true story of John Charles Gilkey, literature nut and unrepentant rare book thief, and his rise and inevitable fall, as well as the overall culture of literary obsession. As my bookish tendencies sometimes grow to out-of-control proportions, I am interested in Bartlett's perspective and analysis of literary obsessives.

- The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
I don't have much bias toward publishing houses, but I carry a torch for the Europa Editions. We were sent two copies of this newest release by the Whitbread Prize winner, whose Old Filth has had a spot on my "to be read" list for years. Here's hoping I have a more successful follow-through with this one.

- The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan & Peter Sis
Came in a Scholastic box today, and because I love Esperanza Rising, I had to have it. Written with Ryan's characteristic magical realism and South American backdrop.

- Love and Summer by William Trevor
A Viking release by the author of The Story of Lucy Gault, one of those books that gets a lot of mention, but no one seems to have read. This one sounded like a safe bet, and the cover is nice.

-Eat Your Feelings: Recipes for Self Loathing by Heather Whaley
An Amy Sedaris-like cookbook, each recipe is half actual recipe with half snarky proposed scenario. Good for a laugh, and some of the recipes even look halfway decent. Yet another unique addition to my small (but growing) library of cookbooks.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week!

2009-09-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the ever-excellent Boston Bibliophile, I have learned not just of Book Blogger Appreciation Week {September 14 - 18), but also this fun reading meme from the sight for Tuesday, September 15th.

And, as always, I'm more than happy to indulge in a reading meme.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack? Sometimes - I do a lot of reading while commuting, and that doesn't really lend itself to another activity. Favorite reading snack? Chinese noodles or cheese and crackers.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? I don't mark my books, but it doesn't horrify me. Every once in a while, I'll highlight a sentence in a non-fiction book I'm reading.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Both - I make bookmarks out of just about anything, including the corners of pages.

Laying the book flat open? I've gotten better about not doing that.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both? Both, in unequal proportions. I try to get a good amount of non-fiction in there, but I admit to falling off in favor of a good YA title or two.

Hard copy or audiobooks? Mostly hard copies, but the occasional audiobook is nice - we get promos every once in a while, which is awesome, but I mostly give mine to my mother, who is a junkie for audiobooks.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point? Depends on the book.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Absolutely. I do the same when I come across any bit of information that I want to know more about.

What are you currently reading? Just finished the wonderful Impossible by Nancy Werlin. Just picked up The Magician's Elephant, the new one by Kate DiCamillo.

What is the last book you bought? Dinosaur vs. Bedtime by Bob Shea, a picture book about a dinosaur triumphing over various challengers, including a pile of leaves and a bowl of spaghetti. Dinosaur wins!

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time? I can really only do one at a time.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? In the sun box (or generally in my living room), mid-afternoon.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books? Stand alone. I never keep up on series. Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games is the rare exception.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over? Depends on the person I'm recommending to. However, I've pretty much shilled The Hunger Games to anyone who would listen.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?) Once I have permanent and collection-encompassing shelves, I will organize. Until then, my library remains a hodgepodge of this and that. I want to separate the adult and kids titles, however, with a special area devoted to YA.

Review: Impossible by Nancy Werlin

2009-09-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

It is suitable that I fell in love with Impossible by Nancy Werlin - after all, the book is about the redemptive power of true love against extraordinary odds, about how believing in love is the ultimate leap of faith, and how that faith can bring remarkable strength for even unfathomable tasks. But the novel doesn't beg or plead for your love - it doesn't need to. Rather, like its main characters, it enraptures the reader, capturing, enchanting the reader. Picking up this book was like sustaining a hypnotic state that I didn't want to shake.

Lucy Scarborough grows up in a loving home amongst a supportive foster family and enduring friendships, but she is haunted by the recurring presence of her mother, Miranda, a frequently disappearing vagrant whose reappearances are marked by obscure, hostile remarks, inexplicable actions, and a version of the folk song "Scarborough Faire." For most of Lucy's life, Miranda's appearances are simply a disruption - a blight on an otherwise idyllic upbringing with two open-minded, understanding foster parents.

At seventeen, however, Lucy learns of the true background of Miranda's illness - a family curse, placed by the Elvin Knight after being spurned by a human woman, Fenella. The Elvin Knight arranges for each daughter of Scarborough to be impregnated by eighteen, then burdens themwith the three impossible tasks from the song "Scarborough Faire" - if they can achieve each impossible task by the time the baby is born, the curse will be broken. Otherwise, they will go insane and the curse will repeat its pattern on the next generation.

As Lucy begins to understand the curse, its implications on her, her mother, and her family history, she sets to accomplishing the three impossible tasks before the birth of her own daughter. Unlike her mother, however, Lucy has the love and helpful support of her parents and longtime friend, Zach Greenfield - but will it be enough to save her sanity and that of her unborn daughter's?

To tell more than that is to give away significant portions of the text, which would be a shame because Werlin builds an intensity so subtle, 100 pages passed without notice, then another 100 pages. The use of "Scarborough Faire" as setup is an ingenious move - the song, often thought of as beautiful and loving, can also be read in very sinister terms, with the protagonist asking the impossible of a possible "true love," insisting that if these tasks are not completed, then she is not a true love of his - but without an excellent execution, Werlin's device would have come off as a novelty.

Werlin's a better writer than that. The touch of magic inhabits almost every character and plot action, but she never overdoes it. She lets the vibe carry through the story, but doesn't pushes by filling her plot with an overabundance of magical characters, strange happenings, or fantastical occurrence. The magic comes in bits and pieces - a character's devotion to another, an implicit understanding, a family bond, a lucky coincidence, an odd presence - and the characters realistically respond to out of the ordinary things.

Werlin crafts an excellent protagonist in Lucy. She's smart and strong, but fallible, and by midway through, the reader's affection for her is on par with that of the supporting characters of the novel. There always seems to be a purpose to her choices, even when her decisions are confusing or counter-productive, and it is to Werlin's credit as an author that while the love story set up for Lucy is pushed along rather quickly, it matches the tone of inevitability coursing through the book.

Good versus evil looms large, but inevitability is also a core concept - how inevitable is Lucy's fate? In the long line of Scarborough daughters, not one has managed to break the curse on the family. In her journal, eighteen year-old Miranda confesses that she could not even accomplish the easiest of the three tasks. She fears for her sanity each day closer to the birth of her daughter, the inevitable turn that will happen after the baby is born, after each Scarborough baby was born.

But Miranda's situation is unlike the others before her, and also that of Lucy's. While the others suffered in predictable loneliness and despair, Lucy has the abounding resolution of her family around her. She is supported by something much stronger than the crushing compounding doom of the looming family curse. What has been inevitable may not be once the impossible is achieved.

This is a YA novel for any age, a fairy tale for all audiences, a beautiful and beautifully written story.

Too early for Halloween favorites?

2009-09-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

It may be too early to post a list of Halloween favorite titles, but I'm sort of stuck on retail land, where the minute one yearly milestone passes, another begins. That's why the day after Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas displays and decorations go up. The stores are going to get you with their holiday merchandise, and they're going to get you early. Bookstores are no exception.

Still, nearly two months straight of Halloween books? Meaning two months of Halloween decorations, music, and themed storytimes and events? Sign me up! This is my favorite time of year. There's a reason the Halloween display is the most elaborate display in the department - we even have a flaming cauldron (courtesy my lovely co-workers, Mo and Brandon).

It's a slow day (too many people out drinking last night for the Steelers' opener), so I'll take a minute to cover some excellent new (and new to me) kids' Halloween titles.

- The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children by Keith McGowan (and illustrations by Yoko Tanaka)
A contemporary Hansel and Gretel, with clever, worldly children replaces the naive waifs of the original story. When Sol and Connie come across their weird old neighbor's dog carrying a bone in its mouth, they discover not just any old bone, but a human femur. But just how dangerous can investigating the old lady next door be? A neat twist on the old folk tale, it's fleshed out even further by the vivid and detailed illustrations by Tanaka. [Hardcover, $15.99]

-The Runaway Mummy: A Petrifying Parody by Michael Rex
Coming up with one genuinely classic parody, Goodnight Goon would be enough for most satirical children's authors, but not Michael Rex, who could not resist the urge to go after Margaret Brown's other seminal kids' work, The Runaway Bunny. No matter what incredible creature Little Mummy becomes, Mother Mummy is there right beside him, a fire-breathing dragon to his mountain-sitting gargoyle, or maybe just a scary, shrieking mummy to frighten off the normal parents that drive him to karate and piano lessons. Not quite as surreal as Adam Rex's Frankenstein Takes the Cake or as starkly sardonic as Jon SciesZka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, this is parody light that will appeal to a wide range of children. [Hardcover, $15.99]

Cake Girl by David Lucas
A clever tale about a witch and the girl companion she creates for herself out of cake. At first the relationship is defined by the creator and the created, but gradually the cake girl establishes an equal ground with the witch, one that allows them to appeal to each other as friends instead of master and servant. A great kids book in a very old illustrative style that is still visually appealing to young readers. [Hardcover, $15.95]

Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
I had pumpkin soup for the first time when I was in London, and I've never forgotten my surprise at the taste of this savory, fortifying soup. Helen Cooper's book is very much like that meal: simple, classic, hearty, and very, very satisfying. A cat, a duck, and a squirrel make the perfect pumpkin soup... until tense group dynamics ruin the flavor. Can the soup - and the friendship - be saved? [Paperback, $6.96]

Only a Witch Can Fly by Alison McGhee (illustrated by Taeeun Yoo)
One little girl wants to fly. With her broomstick, the support of her trusty cat and disbelieving little brother, she attempts to fly. At first she fails, but with perseverance and bravery, she may just achieve her moonlight sky trip after all. Adorably rendered by illustrator Yoo and lovingly told, I couldn't wait to pick this one up for storytime.

Boo to You by Lois Ehlert
I am an unabashed devotee of Ehlert's books, but this one is absurdly adorable. The garden mice are getting ready for their annual harvest feast, but the presence of a scary cat threatens to destroy the gathering... that is, unless the crafty mice can scare it away before it ruins the feast. Done in Ehlert's signature mixed media visual style and told in simple, easy rhyme, this is a great Halloween/fall tale for kids a little too young for spooks and monsters. Especially handy is the guide to harvest colors and crops, much of which is featured in the actual story. And the two-page spread of jack-o-lantern pictures features simple carving directions and an easy roasted pumpkin seed recipe. Fantastic.

Getting back into the swing... Friday Finds!

2009-09-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

I relapsed into some bad habits, namely not blogging (not even feebly attempting to do so), so I'll include both last week's and this week's finds in this post.

I think what locks me down, at least some of the time, is that I get hung up on trying to cover everything I've been reading. In the last few weeks, I've had the great luck to read some incredible books, of varying genres and styles, but when I go to actually write about these books (whether in a formal or informal review), I realize there's a whole bunch of things I haven't caught up on as of late, and then I become convinced that I should write about this before that, devote time to this book before moving onto the next good read... etc. Excuses, all of it, but honest excuses.

In case I don't get to them in future posts - I fully intend to, but it seems that my intentions don't always play out the way they should - here are the following books that readers should take notice of:

- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - The riveting and surprising follow-up to last Fall's The Hunger Games. This series is going to catch on even bigger now, so get to it before the hype wears you out.

- Candor by Pam Bachorz - Egmont USA's first title, and it's a doozy - A Stepford Wives-esque tale revolving around a small, affluent Florida community that is brainwashing its youth. Bachorz offers some small, but vital twists to her authoritarian nightmare, and the book doesn't quite take you where you think it's going to. Oscar, the son of the town's founder/chief manipulator, is an unlikely hero, a boy saving others for the benefits they bring to him (money, sex, favors...) until he meets the new girl in town... A quick, unsettling, and immensely satisfying read.

- Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman - This strange YA title is going to halt a lot of readers in their tracks by the first chapter. Plow through the extended references and intellectual musings on occult history and practice from the protagonist, and you'll end up falling in deep for the story of awkward and anti-social Andromeda Klein as she navigates mysterious occurrences following the death of her best friend, Daisy, the disappearance of her secret older boyfriend, and the sudden seizure of a collection of valuable and rare occult titles by the "Friends of the Library." It's hard to be very original when it comes to YA lit, but Portman has shown he has the ability to pull off one of the most difficult of voices - teenage girl - and make it sound not only convincing, but original and true.

- When You Reach Me Rebecca Stead - Random House is kicking butt going into Fall, but perhaps no title has had as much publicity impact as this one, a coming of age story masking a subtle fantasy involving a sixth grader, 1970's New York City, mystery notes, and time travel, all loosely wrapped around A Wrinkle in Time. One of those books that you fly through, only to re-read again and again, finding more clues and ties each time around. Stead has done a beautiful job melding two difficult genres - intermediate-level coming of age story and fantasy - and working it well into its background era. I really can't say enough good stuff about this book, partially because of how good it was, and partially because to elaborate thoroughly would give too much away.

- Shiver Maggie Stiefvater - With paranormal romance being all the rage in teen literature, it's hard to find a truly captivating tale amongst the rip-offs. Maybe it's just because I've never been into the vampire thing, but I find werewolves infinitely more interesting. Grace has watched for the wolf with the golden eyes since she was a child. Sam lives two lives, a human in the warm months, a wolf in the cold, but each half is wholly concerned with the girl whose life he saved years ago. I'm not really a crier with books, but this one left me with tears running down my face. It's not perfect - there are a few plot holes and a few moments that are a little too cute to match the tone - but it's definitely well written and offers a neat twist to the already well-tread mythology of werewolves.

Okay, that's a lot of YA, but I swear, I read adult books too! Three that I can absolutely stand by:
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - A concierge masks her intellectualism with bland mediocrity, but cannot hide from the precocious girl living in the building, nor the sharply observing new resident who instantly senses a kindred spirit in the lonely middle-aged lady. A surprisingly affecting tale and perfect afternoon reading. The prose is clean but lovely, but most remarkably, Barbery doesn't write intellectualism as cold and aloof. Rather, her characters, in embracing those intellectual pursuits that they hide in public, become warmer, more gracious, more open selves.

- A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore - I could go on and on about how brilliant Lorrie Moore is, but if you even slightly care, you are probably well aware of how brilliant she is. It's been eleven years since she's published anything, eleven really long years, and now she gifts us with a novel of a college-aged woman, coming to terms with the changing terms of relationships amongst a country in crisis post 9/11. I feel weirdly attached to this book. Told from the distinct position of a Mid-Westerner, I could not relate with the stoic Tassie, who relates a period of heartbrokeness in a calm, controlled manner, with the detachment of an observer rather than the person suffering. If you're not familiar with Moore's work, start with Birds of America - this novel is not for the uninitiated, but it's a great follow-up for someone looking to further their Loorie Moore addiction. It certainly fed mine.

-The Magicians Lev Grossman - Holy crap. The worlds of JK Rowling and CS Lewis meet Jay McInerney. Quentin Coldwater is a Brooklyn teenager constantly fleeing real life for the fictional world of Fillory. Mysterious circumstances bring him to Brakebills, a college for the study of magic. Now Quentin can live out his fantasies... except that no reality is perfect, not even one where magic is real... Grossman divides his book into four distinct parts, each a perfect compliment to the other, and in some ways, more riveting than the last. It's cliche, but this is a magical literary fiction for adults. Any adult who enjoys indulging in the occasional children's fantasy read should pick this book up now.

As for the Friday Finds, I bought a ton of bargain books at work, so many that I can't remember all of them. Those I can remember:
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- We Tell Ourselves Stories... by Joan Didion (Score!)
- Carried Away: Stories by Alice Munro (Woot!)
- On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
And probably at least three or four other titles that I can't recall because I accumulate books at an inhuman level.

Also "found" the last two weeks:

The Magicians by Lev Grossman - Checked this out from work for the week, and I'm having trouble deciding if I want to buy it or just wait for the paperback. I loved it, but I don't know if I require the hardback now that I've read it through...

Epitaph Road by David Patneaude - Upcoming Egmont USA title, about a virus that wipes out virtually all males on the planet. I love the series Y: The Last Man, and the premise for this YA is similar, so I'm happy to give it a go.

Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton - I'm not a worshiper of the Warhol altar, but I'm always game to read about the Factory scene and the debauched fabulousness of it all. I'm hoping that this book will be more dishy than its exterior presents, but even if it is, this one's probably one I'm going to pick up and put down a whole lot.

Cooking for Friends by Gordon Ramsay - Of the several Ramsay reality shows, the only one I've watched enjoyably is the British Kitchen Nightmares where Ramsay scolds, swears, and browbeats restauranteurs into improving their failing, mediocre (or worse) businesses. This hardback was left on my desk by my generous general manager. It marks a change from my normal cookbook of choice - inexpensive, black and white, utility cookbooks with little flash or pictures. This is a cookbook of a variety I don't bother buying, but would love to own - pretty, hardback, nice quality, beautifully photographed, and filled with recipes that probably aren't immensely challenging but still look a bit sophisticated for my rice and peanut butter sandwich self. Though the point is to cook this for friends, so...

Friday Finds

2009-08-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

Three excellent finds (one purchased, two free and found completely randomly) mark the end of a truly exhausting work week.

- Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore - I am already about thirty pages into this one, and yet, I had to go back and review the title while typing this up. Why? Not because the book isn't a sheer pleasure to read, but because I never stopped to look at the title. I saw "Lorrie Moore" on a galley laying in one of our up-for-grabs boxes in the backroom and snatched it up before someone quicker and smarter than me could get at it.

- Impossible by Nancy Werlin - So, lightning does strike twice in one week, in the the same spot nonetheless. I have been considering Impossible for a while, but I just couldn't get off the fence of read/not read until it came out in paperback this week. So, I was considering buying the paperback, because I had heard really good buzz with the book, and it seemed like it could be up my alley

- Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform - I picked this one up right before his talk and signing at the store today. It appealed to me for two reasons: 1) It's a supposedly straight-forward, easy-to-follow take on the healthcare plan and 2) I could get it signed then and there. Maureen also took a photo of me with Dean (after I was too tongue-tied to really talk to him), which I will post ASAP.

Because I have two wonderful followers, I will go ahead and ask it anyway: In your mind, is there a perfect spread to a week's worth of book finds? Would it be nice to add a book a day, or maybe two or three good finds spread through the week? What's your ideal?

NPR's "Best Beach Books Ever"

2009-08-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

Knicked from the fabulous Boston Bibliophile is the NPR "100 Best Beach Books Ever."

In bold are the ones I have read.

*Starred* = Want to read, planning to read, etc.

Underlined = What the hell? Picks that are confounding either because they don't make sense as a beach read or because I simply don't think they deserve a spot on the list.

NPR's 100 Best Beach Books Ever

1. The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling - All except the last book (which I'm going to start, promise, any day now).

2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

3. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini*

4. Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding

5. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

6. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells - Weird, right? Cause my tastes really don't run to the chick lit at all, and this one is pure chick lit. It has "sisterhood" in the title, for God's sake... But I read it on a car trip with my mom back when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. We didn't have the audio book, so I just read it aloud to her.

7. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald - This is my kind of beach book.

8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams - Correction, this is my kind of beach book. Actually, I'd probably just listen to the fantastic BBC Radio series instead.

9. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg - I went through a serious Fannie Flagg stage when I was thirteen or fourteen. Can't say why. Just loved it, though.

10. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

11. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

12. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel - Can't see this one as a beach book, other than it being a bestseller.

13. The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

14. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

15. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

16. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

17. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett

18. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

19. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides* - This is perpetually on my reading list, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a beach book.

20. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen - Don't know about for the beach (probably a good fit) but it was perfect reading for the 24-hour read-a-thon last Fall.

21. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain*

22. The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver - Beach-goers really love the Kingsolver, don't they? Wonder why Prodigal Summer isn't on the list.

23. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith - Little interest in actually reading the books, but I have to admit, hearing the little bit from the audio books my mother plays in her car, the audio version is pretty charming.

24. The World According to Garp, by John Irving*

25. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller*

26. The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

27. Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

28. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

29. The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler

30. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

31. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole*** - I'm working on a reading project for the Fall, loosely entitled "Back to Basics" where I'm going to try and read a bunch of classics and contemporary, modern favorites that I haven't yet gotten time for. This one is at the top of my list.

32. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

33. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant

34. Beach Music, by Pat Conroy

35. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez* - Is there a confusion between what is "beach" reading and what is required high school "summer" reading?

36. Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier

37. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card*

38. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry

39. The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough

40. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon - I bought my copy of this book in a beach town independent bookstore.

41. Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

42. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

43. Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice

44. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

45. Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

46. Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes

47. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

48. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins

49. I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb

50. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie* - The only AC I've read is Ten Little Indians [or, in PC times, And Then There Were None]. Agatha Christie would have scarcely been a blip if it were not for vacationing mystery enthusiasts and shore-side bookstalls that are always readily stocked with her paperback titles.

51. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott - Obsessed with this book as a kid. Read it everywhere, beach included. If I ever find the green hardbacked version that I always borrowed from the library, I will die of happiness.

52. The Stand, by Stephen King* - Probably a "B2B" title.

53. She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb

54. Dune, by Frank Herbert

55. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows* - Almost read this on my last vacation. The person I was traveling with bought this book the second or third day in.

56. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez*

57. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

58. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

59. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo

60. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

61. Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver - Seriously, but no Prodigal Summer?

62. Jaws, by Peter Benchley

63. Good in Bed, by Jennifer Weiner

64. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

65. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson - In this version of "beach reads," anything that maintained a spot on the bestsellers lists for a long time counts. I don't think this book qualifies as a beach read, but then again, neither do half of these titles by my definition.

66. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

67. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

68. Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

69. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

70. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler*

71. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

72. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy

73. Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns

74. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

74. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe [tie]

76. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

77. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

78. The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher

79. Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver - Woo hoo! One of two Kingsolver books I've read. This one is similar to her others, I believe. The only real difference is that I had to read this one for my "Eco-Feminist Literature" class.

80. Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett

81. Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck*

81. The Pilot's Wife, by Anita Shreve [tie]

83. All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy

84. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson* - Never finished. Heard that it picks up after a slow beginning. Will try it again soon.

85. The Little Prince, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery - Who reads this on the beach?

86. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

87. One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich

88. Shogun, by James Clavell

89. Dracula, by Bram Stoker*

90. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera*

91. Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow

92. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

93. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

94. Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris

95. Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume - Back during those years where I could stand Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood... Still, Blume is a genius at crafting feminine relationships. There is stuff in Summer Sisters that echoes even my present-day female friendships.

96. The Shining, by Stephen King

97. How Stella Got Her Groove Back, by Terry McMillan

98. Lamb, by Christopher Moore*

99. Sick Puppy, by Carl Hiaasen - Wondered when Carl Hiaasen would make an appearance on this list.

100. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson - Because it has island in the title?

Friday Finds

2009-08-07T14:40:00.001-07:00

After the heaping loads of the last two weeks, I took it easy on my bookshelves and bank account and only grabbed a few items.

- Our GM, Chris, handed over the ARC of the upcoming Margaret Atwood, Year of the Flood, for which I'm psyched for. Atwood is usually the opposite of light-hearted, and with the summer waning (really, August? Already?) I'm not sure if I'm in the best of spirits to be sinking into one of her complex, heavy-duty novels. That being said, I'll probably start it this coming week. Immersing yourself in children's literature has many, many rewards, but there's a significant shortage of depressing yet brilliant books written for young audiences. Whenever I find myself getting into a rut with what I'm reading for kids, I turn to adult titles to shake up my system, whether its with heavily plotted morality plays, wickedly crafted murder mysteries, wry, ironic statements on present popular culture... even the occasional horror title... Sometimes I read myself into such a coming-of-age hole that the only thing that can save me is a good old gory monster story.

Three from the Scholastic box that arrived today:
- Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve - He's a favorite among intermediate-level enthusiasts, and I've never read any of his stuff. Why not start out with this very intriguing upcoming release? This one's a fantasy-mystery about an orphan discovering her roots through assisting an archaeologist with a top-secret mission. Oh, and I want the coat the illustrated girl is wearing on the cover of the ARC. This one comes out April 2010.

- The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco Stork - Because I really liked Marcelo in the Real World, and this one sounds pretty heady. Out March 2010.

- Smile by Raina Telgemeier - A graphic novel about a girl getting braces. I'm a sucker for this type of cute comic thing. They're surprisingly hard to sell on people, though, but as Wimpy Kid gets bigger and bigger, the profile on young kid-friendly graphic novels may go up, and customers might respond better to something that at first seems juvenile and beside the point. This one hits February 2010.

And one from the Random House box I received a few weeks back:
- THree Rivers Rising by Jame Richards - A YA title about the Johnstown Flood, a topic that is close to my heart: My mother grew up in Johnstown, PA, and we still have relatives living in the town and around the area. I've been to the Johnstown Flood Museum many, many times, watched the same old rickety informational film, watched as the diorama lit up and flooded with water, walked the trail, stood around half-bored as family members read every plaque and information post available.

So yeah, I'm going to read this ASAP. Besides, I love historical/disaster YA titles.

Re-Post: Galley Talk

2009-08-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this appeared in last week's "Children's Bookshelf," a children's literature email newsletter by the friendly and invaluable folks at Publishers Weekly. I have made no edits to increase the slickness or better the language of this review. This is exactly what was published:

Emily Fear, manager of children’s books, Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, Pa., talks about a fall favorite, Candor by Pam Bachorz.

Candor by Pam Bachorz (Egmont USA, Sept.) is a Stepford Wives-esque tale—the galley even references that novel. But instead of a novel about the brainwashing of wives, this is about brainwashing an entire community, especially its teenagers. The founder of the town of Candor tries to shape what he believes should be model teens—down to what they should eat and how they should dress. He plants subliminal messages into audio CDs that play nearly constantly throughout the town. Everyone becomes addicted to the CDs and has to keep listening to them—otherwise they’ll go insane.

The novel doesn’t pull any of the punches you might expect from a YA thriller. You might expect a tidy ending or a hero whose motives are unquestionable and who has noble intentions. But this novel’s protagonist is very flawed. He’s the son of the town’s founder and runs a secret business selling teens CDs to counteract the brainwashing. But actually he’s also brainwashing them—and doing it for profit. There’s a totally unexpected ending that defies the reader’s expectations of what this character is capable of.

I’d recommend this book to customers for a number of reasons. This is a very intelligent teenage thriller, and a spooky one. The novel offers a dark twist on society’s expectations of teens, revealing an exaggerated form of parental authority. I think teens will respond to the notion of what it would be like to have the pressures on them magnified like this. The plot’s pacing is really well done and the action is creepy without being violent. Well, there’s a tiny bit of violence, but nothing very graphic. The gleefully misanthropic protagonist is very likable despite his flaws. And the relationships between the characters are really dynamic.

It’s an incredible first novel, and the fact that the author wrote it while living in Celebration, Florida, the planned community developed by Disney, makes it all the creepier. It’s a great crossover book, especially since so many adults have read or seen the film version of Stepford Wives.

Friday Finds... because I can't seem to do anything else

2009-07-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

Hoo boy, well that big self-reprimand I gave myself last week turned out to be hot air... or it's computing, internet equivalent... because all I managed to churn out last week was a Friday Finds (however extensive it was, it was still just a meme).

Alright, after this post, I will re-post something here that appeared last week in Publisher's Weekly's weekly newsletter, "Children's Bookshelf." I was interviewed for a "Galley Talk" column, where they ask you a bunch of general questions about an upcoming release and you answer as well as possible (on the fly) and then the put your answers into a somewhat coherent review. Why bother, right? If the woman asked me to write a review, in an hour I could have sent her in something comparable to what was published (if not better). But okay, I'll re-post it here, because so far only my mother has read it... And I like attention...

On with the finds!

So this week's finds come almost exclusively from impromptu trip to Half Price Books. I don't always land a huge pile when I go there - I tend to be a bit picky about editions and prices - but this was a fairly successful venture. I went looking to pick up Madeline L'Engle's entire "Time Quartet" and I was not disappointed:

- A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters by Madeline L'Engle - Not only did I get the entire foursome for a steal, but they're all the same edition (which I was hoping for, but I was willing to settle if need be). I read WiT when I was a kid - my mother kind of forced me (thanks Mom!) - and I've been dying to re-read it ever since I read When You Reach Me. I never did make it through the entire series, however, so this is a good time to give it a go again.

- The Long Walk by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) - This and another Bachman book, The Running Man, are obvious inspirations for one of my favorite books of last year, The Hunger Games. I've read all about this one, so I was glad to finally snag a copy. However, if anyone ever finds an old edition in a used bookstore or thrift store (etc.) please get it for me, and I'll pay you twice what you paid. I love the old paperback cover of this book, and the new one just doesn't hold the same pulpy terror.

- Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote - Because I don't own it, it's terrific, and at Half Price Books, mass market paperbacks are half the cover price. This old paperback cost $1.50 list price... So $.75 for a classic isn't so bad.

- Foundation and Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov - I have a hard time swallowing hard science fiction (my taste runs toward not the fantastic side, but science fiction with a larger emphasis on literary themes than detailing and exploring the machinery inhabiting the world - I want to know the why, not the how, basically), but I like Asmiov, and I've been wanting to get more of his books.

- The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin - LeGuin is my favorite science fiction author, one of my favorite writers period. Reading Lathe of Heaven changed the way I felt about science fiction and fantasy, so while I/m not really a completist with most authors, I am with her.

- The Night of the Gun by David Carr - I heard a lot about this book upon its release, so when we found the hardback on the discount shelves for $2.00, I begged and pleaded with my roommate (another devoted bibliophile) to hand it over. He eventually did.

Not bad for one hour's visit. There were a few galleys that came my way, but nothing extraordinary seeming. Our general manager, Chris, handed over a hardback copy of Joyce Maynard's new book, Labor Day, but I think I'm going to pass it on.

Oh, and I just finished Jincy Willett's The Writing Class - the author's ability to mercilessly poke fun at her own self is once again used to great effect. I won't say anything more on the subject except for this: If you have ever taken a writing workshop, if you have frequented them, if you have only taken one, you need to read this story.

friday finds

2009-07-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

It was a busy week, and this week is going to be even busier at the store, as Monday marks the first of our week-long Band Camp. I'm armed with random junk, kazoos, poster board, and Ann Wiseman's beyond excellent Making Music. The first day of June's Superhero Camp was pretty rough, but I have a better idea of what to expect, and hopefully with something more tangible as teaching basics of music and rhythm to the kids, there will be more active things to do and discuss.

But I don't want to just do Friday Finds (as fun as it is to keep track of my incoming books), so I'll try to keep the blog as fresh as possible this week. I finished both Knife of Never Letting Go and the upcoming Candor, and there's a lot to discuss regarding both books. I didn't intentionally seek out two like texts, but in the process of finishing Candor, I realized that there were a lot of parallels to both its and KNLG's storylines. Both feature male protagonists who are both insiders to their horrifying worlds, but outsiders because of the presence of disparate perspectives and willingness to defy the momentum of the status quo. So, hopefully, more on both of those books later this week.

Onto the Friday Finds! Only a day or so after my last Friday Finds post, I received a big box of Random House ARCs, and I have to say that this may have been one of the best promotional boxes I've gotten in a long time. I put a lot of the books on my galley shelves in the storage closet, but I snagged a large amount for myself. Among the selections in the box:

- A two-in-one ARC for the Looking Glass Library release of The Book of Dragons by E. Nesbit and The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald.

- Dream Life by Lauren Mechling, the follow-up to Dream Girl Coming out January 2010.

- Party by Tom Leveen - Entitled teens at a party - Yay for underage debauchery! Coming out April 2010.

- The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History by Adam Selzer - I love The Smart Aleck's Guide series, and I still hold a fondness for Dave Barry's Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States, so I'm looking forward to this one. It's coming out December 2009, and I think it could be a great Christmas sell.

- The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone. Truth be told, the cover sucked me in one this one, but as I learned with The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, sometimes that's all you need to clue you into a great read. This is an art mystery, similar in sound to Blue Balliet, Mystery of the Third Lucretia, etc. Comes out February 2010.

- The Knife That Killed Me by Anthony McGowan. High School-set thriller coming out April 2010.

- All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab. Mystery thriller, featuring the mean, rich, elite of a private school. I don't read enough murder mysteries featuring bitchy teenagers. This one looks like it will be more than a cut above the rest. Comes out January of 2010.

- Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray. Three boys strike revenge on those they believe responsible for their friend's death. Set in England and Scotland, I'm very, very excited for this one. Coming out March 2010. [By the way, kudos to Random House for getting these ARCs out super early. It's not always a great thing to be laden down with galleys, especially if you get them only a month or so before the release date. Getting them far in advance gives you a chance to really get into each title, increasing the publisher's chances of having you not just read the book, but enthuse about it, build up excitement about it, etc.]

-Notes From the Dog, the latest release by Gary Paulsen, who has always been hit or miss with me, but this one sounds pretty promising. It comes out this Tuesday, so I'm hoping to get a jump on this title. Also, I'm chasing after Wendy Lamb books these days, because I've had such good experiences with their releases.

-Split by Swati Avasthi. Another March 2010 release, this one an intense coming of age about a runaway moving in with his estranged brother.

So, those were my RH box grabs - There were at least three or four other books that I left on the shelves that I may go back for. Right now, I'm going to try and get through at least one of these galleys a week.

Other grabs:

- The Writing Class by Jincy Willett - Because I am a cheap bastard at heart, I was waiting for this one to come out in paperback. Not that I don't think she's every bit worth the twenty-some dollars for the hardback. Willett may be my favorite writer, and I've only read Winner of the National Book Award. I just started this one, and even though I'm only ten pages in, I'm pretty sucked in. And as a former English Lit/writing student, the use of a creative writing workshop as a backdrop for a murder mystery appeals to every bit of my sense of humor.

-A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century by Jane Vandenburgh. I've read quite a bit about this memoir, and I've liked the sound of it, so when I saw this in a box of ARCs, I grabbed it immediately. I don't tend to jump into memoirs like I used to, but I'll give this one a read very soon.

That's it for the finds. Wish every week could be as lucrative in books (although my bookshelves must certainly be relieved that this kind of windfall only happens occasionally).

Friday Finds

2009-07-17T13:47:00.001-07:00

Another slow week of finds.

- The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness - I picked this up when it came out in paperback on Tuesday. I received The Ask and the Answer (the second book in the Chaos Walking trilogy), so I needed to read the first book. I'm about done, and it's pretty great: suspenseful, scary at points, with a really interesting protagonist, and a mystery that is only now being somewhat unfolded. The way Ness is using the constant stream of telepathy is very clever, and it's a premise that is working in ways I wouldn't have immediately thought.

- Candor by Pam Bachorz - Upcoming release from Egmont USA's fall line-up. I'm very excited about Egmont USA, especially after receiving their catalog of fall releases yesterday. Candor is a Stepford Wives-esque tale about a boy living in a small community in Florida who runs a profitable business providing anti-brainwashing CDs to his fellow teenagers. Trouble - having already began with the whole brainwashing business in the first place - continues with the arrival a new girl in town and the obvious complications falling for her presents. After reading the review in Shelf Awareness, I was eager to get my hands on this title - the West Coast rep for Random House was nice enough to send a copy over to my store.

Hey! There's a book trailer for Candor:

Not totally sure how I feel about book trailers. Mostly silly stuff, to be honest. Most book trailers I've seen have been foolish attempts to capture a market that is way more invested in already produced sight and sound, then whatever they can attempt to create in their own imaginations while reading. It's not a bad gimmick, but I haven't seen it used to its best effects yet.

The best attempt I've seen of late is Quirk Book's trailer for the upcoming Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Very cute:

Hmm... that was it for the week. A box of upcoming Random House titles should be coming any day, however, so I'll have a lot of finds in the near future.

I haven't been keeping up on my book buying, for one because I just moved and I'm trying to get all the books I already own sorted out, and two, because I'm trying to save a little money for the things that a new apartment requires, and three... well, I'm should catch up a bit before overloading myself again. Fall ARC season is coming, and I know I can't resist the impossible lure of books that are free for the taking. But it's cut down a whole lot on my used book buying, and buying the occasional full price gem at my store or any random other book store.

Still, there's a bargain bookstore in my new neighborhood that I have been meaning to try out. I haven't heard very positive things, but they did have an original Mysteries of Pittsburgh paperback (with the old cover, of course) in the window for a time, so they can't be completely devoid of interesting finds.

Review: How I Became a Famous Novelist

2009-07-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have been in a mild reading slump as of the past two weeks. I read The Graveyard Book, which I adored, and then… well, it’s the weird mystery with reading: sometimes even the best titles don’t click. It’s all about timing. After book club last Thursday, I put down my half-finished copy of Twilight, and I have to pick it back up, despite meaning to – it’s still on my coffee table, waiting to be finished. I’m also more than halfway through The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday, which, while informative, engaging, and definitely the kind of thing my mind should be sucking down right now, is not quite doing it for me either. I’m enjoying en route to work, or in the few minutes of clarity I have, right after I wake up… but it’s not the kind of book that has kept me from chanel-surfing, watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on ABC Family or any random reality show on Bravo or even Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

If a book can’t keep you from watching the nearly 24 straight hours of Law and Order that there always is on cable TV, then it’s not doing its job.

It seemed like I was about to go through one of those really bad reading droughts that can derail my booklist for months. Then a few bright spots appeared:

- A book I’ve been meaning to read, The Knife of Never Letting Go, has been released in paperback. Naturally, I snapped up a copy. I already have an ARC of The Ask and the Answer, the follow-up, so if I get into the series – fingers crossed, but it sounds awfully promising – I’ll have an instant second read.

- Frank Portman – or Dr. Frank to those of us MTX devotees – has a new book coming out soon, a follow-up to King Dork. An ARC for his new one, Andromeda Klein (great name) arrived in the mail. I’m going to have to get out my old Mr. T Experience albums and read while I rock out.

- Lovely Sarah Nasif is sending me an upcoming release off of Egmont USA’s fall line-up, Candor, which I read about in Shelf Awareness last week and sounds like just the thing to keep my reading fires aflame. The Shelf Awareness review of Candor can be read here.

- I’ve been trying to keep a commitment to read (or check out) at least one book featured in the New York Times Book Review every week. Media Relations Department of Hizbollah was one of those titles. Yesterday morning, skimming the times before rushing off to work, I read a quick one-page review of a recently released title that I remembered I had a galley for, albeit, buried in the one of the three lockers I take up at work.

That’s how I came to spend most of my Tuesday reading How I Became a Famous Novelist, a book whose cleverness vastly outweighs its plot, but that’s all part of it. You would think that Steve Hely, a comedy writer (formerly of Late Show with David Letterman, now unfortunately mired in the depths that is American Dad), was a grizzled veteran of the literary set. Yet, his skewering of popular (and at times, populist) literature, the nature of bestsellers, and the culture of literary fame comes from the distinct observation of someone who has not actually delved in that gray area of writing a famous novel.

This works to his advantage, as he is allowed to spend more time on pure literary parody and less on the moral and creative consequences of writing a hack novel (this crisis being a weight, dragging down the second half of the book). Not that there shouldn’t be discussion of the problematic dynamics of readership, popularity, and literary merits. But Steve Hely is not the writer for that task.

Instead, the first half of the book displays his genius as literary parodist. Hely’s stand-in is slacker Pete Tarslaw, an expert hack in the making, working for a shady entrepreneur, penning college admissions essays for rich underachievers and foreigners. Pete briefly describes idealized college life as a blurry, hazy whirl of cutting academic corners, drinking too much and lying around with his girlfriend at the time, Polly Pawson. But following graduation, Polly breaks up with him, headed for law school and a fulfilling future, while Pete, stranded in the mundane present by heart ache and his avowed laziness, inhabits a muddled middle ground between his formative years and adulthood.

That is, until he finds out that Polly Pawson is soon to be wed. Embarrassed and jealous, Pete takes inspiration from the king of contemporary literary fiction, Preston Brooks, ascribing to become a bestselling author of the type that wins over college girls at university lectures and bookstore appearances. “That’s why I always tell people Preston Brooks was my inspiration. Because right then, I figured him out. I realized what a magnificent, ridiculous bastard he was.” Peter sets out to become a famous author to one-up his ex at her wedding.

This is all, of course, well beside the point. Hely’s thin premise is a vehicle for his much stronger skill: providing the kind of hack literary Olympics that allow his parodies to span genres, eras, and levels of popularity. Hely hits it so on the head, it’s a wonder that many of the titles on his New York Times Bestsellers List don’t already exist: Guess (“An economist analyzes the importance of random choices in everything from investments to choosing sushi to professional bull-riding.”), Manassas (“Accompanied by the ghost of Ulysses S. Grant, a young writer goes in search of his ancestor, a gay Civil War soldier.”), The Balthazar Tablet (“The muder of a cardinal leads a Yale professor and an underwear model to the Middle East, where they uncover clues to a conspiracy kept hidden by the Shriners.”), and – my favorite - The Jane Austen Women’s Investigators Club (“Housewives inspired by the 19th century novelist probe a murder mystery in their quiet suburb.”).

The underbelly of what he’s describing is the real bite of the novel: bestsellers that go “from store shelves to home shelves to used-book sales unread.” Tarslaw’s literary world is cluttered with accomplished hacks. A crime novelists who farms out writing her hit series to “starving graduate students,” a famous author of military history who claims to be able to “make the switch over to movies, video games…” because of his ability to tell a story without “prose, frills.” Pete’s book becomes an unlikely, unwieldy success, built off of everything he learned about writing from the bestsellers lists.

“Rule 5: Must include a club, secrets/mysterious missions, shy characters, characters whose live are changed suddenly, surprising love affairs, women who’ve given up on love but turn out to be beautiful.”

Pete’s book, The Tornado Ashes Club, is a literary Frankenstein’s monster. But while Tarslaw’s creation of the monster is hilarious, and it’s abrupt rise is even more amusing, the second half the book is dragged down by unexpected existential crisis. While his book (and it’s success) is based off the notion that people will buy anything that is comprised of certain basic plot and prose elements, Pete keeps finding himself in situations where people treat “serious” writing very seriously, such as a talk at the University of Billings. Seated with the professor and several of his writing students, Pete is confounded by a request for “the lonesomest story he ever heard.” While professor and students alike tell their their own horrifying tales, he sits there rendered almost speechless.

Truth in writing is a batted about debate in the book – writing truth, writing truthfully, being truthful to readers, readers seeking truth. But Hely never really gets to any breakout moment with Pete: his comeuppance is appropriate, but without a definite catharsis or revelation for the character. Which is perhaps the point: Hely has Pete condemned (very, very publicly) by an author and his faithful readership, then backtracks a little, allowing a character to re-appraise Pete’s take on literary success.

Having both a degree in English Literature, years experience working in both a library and bookstore settings, I feel like I’ve got a pretty good grasp of what is popular, but I still have never quite grasped why. Hely opens up a very good debate, but the debate is nowhere near as interesting as the inane titles, ridiculous authors, cleverly hackneyed and precious plots, and hilarious literary world run-ins. Peter Tarslaw is an appropriate blank slate for these elements: a slacker, not particularly likeable or unlikable guy, with little interest in writerly or moral debate, and little to no genuine remorse or reaction to his own subterfuge.

How I Became a Famous Novelist is a great read: quick, energizing, and very, very funny. It may hit a little to home for some, but it spares no spite on any readership, whether it be the “sophisticated” lit. fic. set or the sentimental ladies of chick lit or the beach-going or subway riding followers of icy crime fiction. Everyone gets a little blasted, a little vindicated…. even the hacks.

Friday Finds

2009-07-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

I’m doing it. I’m going for it. This marks the first, brave steps I take toward… memes. But first, what is a meme anyway?

“A meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with "cream"[1]), is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.”

Interesting. This is traceable from slang patterns to fashion trends to regional dialects. But how does this apply to blogging?

“The term "Internet meme" refers to a catchphrase or concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the internet, largely through email, blogs, social networking sites, and instant messaging.”

Well, okay, that’s a little more useful. Basically, an Internet meme is something people continue to do long after it ceases to be funny.

But I’m still not sure how this applies to blogging. Maybe The Daily Meme can help me:
“In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

By some other definitions memes are viral and propagate around sometimes mutating as they propagate. Someone proposed something along the lines of some blog posts are viral, they write about something they see on one blog and the next person does the same sometimes their interpretation varies slightly changing the story (I cannot find this original reference).

Eventually some people decided they were going to creating weekly questionnaires (memes) and post them every week. Some are monthly, a few are daily and some are always there. Some suggest that you get five other people to do the same meme and they have to get five people (and so on), which sometimes increases their propagation. This probably stunts their mutated growth, having a permanent storage place where people go to find them but many people copy them from the site where they see it and they'll still change a bit.”

That’s more like it. So, a lot of book blogs that I enjoy reading participate in a few of the more engaging memes out there. The Boston Bibliophile recently decided to cut back on a few, but some bloggers do at least a meme a day. While I think that can get a little boring – I prefer reading their reviews to most of their meme answers – following a meme (or two) is a nice way to keep up the blog entries. When a really busy, frenzied week strikes, and I simply can’t drum up the time or energy to write a wholly original entry, I can still jot up a few quick meme-related entries. It keeps me in the practice of writing these entries, and a little reinforced writing exercise is never a bad thing… unless it’s unforgivably dull, and if it gets to that point, I will stop.

Another good point of participating in memes is that it connects you to a smaller network of bloggers in your preferred topic. To gain a readership, one must be an avid blog reader and communicator. It almost never works without participating in the very network you seek readers.

So, anyway, forgive the preamble, and follow me into the fun-filled world of… Friday Finds!

Since I’m still in the process of unpacking my new residence, there weren’t a whole lot of finds for me this week. What I did come across:

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday by Neil MacFarquhar – I checked this one out from my store after reading all the praise it received in the Times. I’m about seventy pages in, and I’m pretty hooked, but it’s also an easy book to pick up and put down.

Making Music by Ann Wiseman – While at the Carnegie Library on Sunday, I came across this book, a 2003 reprint of a great children’s music book from the 1970s. The illustrations are worth the money alone, red and white hand drawn and very, very 70s. But I’m running a music camp at the store the last week of July, so I thought I needed a few decent books on making music and building instruments with children.

Spook by Mary Roach – The only one of her three books that I haven’t read. It appeared on the bargain table a few weeks ago, and I remembered to grab a copy before they all sold out.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby – Upcoming release from one of my favorite author’s. Not technically one of my snags, because my roommate grabbed it before I saw it. Since it lives in my household, I count it as among my finds. Super excited for this one.

Galleys and ARCs have dried up a bit for now. I expect Fall release stuff to be coming in closer to August. I received two from Bloomsbury last week (or possibly the week before), but I haven’t seen a whole lot come in the past month or so.

some intriguing recent reads...

2009-07-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

My one (and only) reader, Maureen, informed me recently that she wished that I would keep up the blog with more consistency. Her assessment is entirely correct. Where as I'm excellent in starting blogs, I have considerable trouble when it comes to actually keeping them going.

It's frustrating, because I'm always consuming new reads, always digesting new reads, and I spend a ton of time thinking about what I read... yet, it almost never makes the transfer to a written form or any kind of recorded discourse. It usually only makes an appearance in an off-hand comment to a co-worker or customer or friend. "Oh, I just read the best book." "The book I just finished was really disappointing." "Have you read that? It's great!"

I find myself so often engaging in empty pleasantries, I'm often horrified by the bland nothings that come out of my mouth. I know that writing these posts do more than externalize my feelings for the books that I consume. Writing posts allows me to sharpen my insights, purify my thoughts from the bullshit and generalizations. Like writing in college, only focusing on the stuff that I want to focus on, and without the need to over-intellectualize (but, admittedly, that is still fun to do) or fit the analysis into a specific theoretical framework.

Not only does writing allow for a better, cleaner thought process (in all manners of thinking), but it also will allow me a better retention over what I've read. When you consume book after book, you tend to even let go of details of even the best reads. Lately, I've had a hard time recalling the specifics of what I've just finished, and that simply will not do.

Basically, I will try to post more. For now, however, here is a list of recent reads, with brief (very brief) assessments.

Read on vacation: The following books were read during my trip to the Southwest the third week of May,
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog: Loved it. Get past the first few dry parts, and you find a story that's every bit as warm and funny as it is intellectual.
-Coraline: Read it for Mother-Daughter Book club. I've got a lot to talk about regarding Neil Gaiman, so I'll save most of my comments for another post. But of course, I thought it was great.
-Bonk: Mary Roach can make anything interesting, so her coverage on the history and practices of sex research was bound to be hilarious and endlessly entertaining. It did not disappoint.
-The Savage Detectives: Apologies to Bolano's multitude of fans, but I have not finished it. I think I'm going to need another vacation before I really get into it.
- Pure: Thought McEvoy did a fine job covering what could have been a melodramatic, borderline absurd teen morality play. Minor quibbles aside, it's a decent YA read.

The Savage Detectives was preempted by a copy of Catching Fire arriving in the mail while I was gone. I have a ton to say about Catching Fire and The Hunger Games overall, so I will save it for another post.

Liar: This is the first Larbalestier release that I really got into. It’s surprisingly complex, with an unreliable narrator/protagonist and a fluctuating storyline that spins into a mix of teenage angst, murder mystery, and fantasy suspense, but even more surprisingly, doesn’t lose its tense, unpredictable quality. This one comes out in October, I believe.

When I Reach You: I read this book in only a few hours, but it takes a while to sink in. It comes out next week, and I've been tempted to re-read it, to see how I've changed my mind about it. I really enjoyed it. It's a perfect blend of 1970s era coming of age story and the slightly fantastic, all loosely connected with A Wrinkle in Time, which I've also been tempted to revisit. A charming, remarkably well told work of children's literature. I especially liked the mother-daughter relationship in the book. Very true to life, very relatable.

It gets a little fuzzy around here. I think I started and stopped a lot of stuff. I re-read The Westing Game, which remains one of my favorite children's books. Raskin is smart about genre: she knows just how playful to be with her young audience, but doesn't dumb anything down regarding the mystery, the action, or the chracter development. Plus, the writing is near perfect for a who-dunit.

Sometime around then, I read an upcoming Bloomsbury release, A Whole 'Nother Story, which I didn't fall in love with, but I can definitely see the appeal. It's got a bit of Mysterious Benedict/Lemony Snicket thing going, but at this point, that style is starting to get used to a degree of quirk and preciousness that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with. Style won't save you, not even in children's literature.

Then... eek... when did I pick up Shiver?... So, I don't go in for paranormal romances. I'm just not the type. I've certainly tried them out before - and yes, I am currently reading Twilight, for the I Heart Teen Lit book club - but they've just never stuck. I tried out Cassie Clare's "The Mortal Instruments" trilogy, but ugh... I didn't make it past page 70 of the first book, City of Bones. Normally, it's the writing that puts me off, not the romance or the paranormal or the revived/altered/changed/blended version of mythical figures... always the writing. Shiver did not have this problem. A werewolf story, of sorts, but not the kind you might expect. I imagine I'll have more to say when it's released in August.

Okay, from there, it was Chronic City, the upcoming Jonathan Lethem. More to say on that. It's Lethem trying out his inner Philip K. Dick, with mixed results.

So, I just finished The Graveyard Book, hence having so much to say about Neil Gaiman. Let me just say that he earned that Newberry. He's one of the most continually exciting authors out there, and it's because he's a brave writer, not just a good one, and he treats children's literature with the same dignity bestowed upon contemporary literary fiction.

Now, I'm splitting my time between Twilight & The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday. Weird combo, and I almost never read two things at once - I don't usually have the patience for going back and forth, but these are two such disparate works, it's somewhat more suitable.

My favorites of 2009, thus far:
- Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
- The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
- More of This World or Maybe Another
- Catching Fire
- Netherland - Despite being released in 2008, I'm counting this for its paperback release. It's good enough for two years.

At some point, I will finish both The Savage Detectives and Thirteenth Child (which I started right before... something... I can't remember... maybe The Graveyard Book?).

Where the Wild Things Are trailer

2009-04-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

I can't make assurances for the movie. I can't make guarantees. I wasn't entirely optimistic about this project when it was announced. And I'm still a little dubious. BUT...

...trailer looks freaking awesome. Breathtaking, really.

Watch it. Watch it now. Look, I put it below, just for you lazies who don't want to be bothered.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth or Why I Hate Selling Young Adult Novels in a Post-Twilight World

2009-04-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

No doubt, the publishing industry is attempting to rebound from the fiscal crisis by banking on whatever is the most plausible follow-up sensation to the epic, sales-juggernaut Twilight series. Booksellers, librarians, pub reps, avid readers, anyone with a remote interest in the topic is laying their bet on what is going to be the next big series draw. Some are staying with vampires. Some are leaning heavily on werewolves (it seems so long ago since Blood and Chocolate, does it not?), others are saying ghosts (very probable), but some... some are laying their bets on zombies.

Of new YA novels, March's buzz book was The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, mostly because the smart folks at Random House had the savvy to align it with Twilight without making direct comparisons, and because a lot was made of the supposed violence and dark tone of the novel. Well, and I'll admit this right now, I have not read Twilight (although I did read The Host, which proved to be surprisingly sturdy, if problematic...), but I can guarantee that if Twilight held the same poor writing, bad pacing, and gaping plot holes that this novel suffered so severely from, there's no way it would have the near religious following it does now.

The basic premise: Mary has grown up in a cloistered, protected world, defined by the Sisters who run the town, and the fence that separates the civilized from the hungry, savage "Unconsecrated," who, generations ago, rose in population to such a degree that, outside of the village, mankind no longer exists... or does it? Growing up, Mary's mother passed along family stories of life before the Unconsecrated, of cities and human populations and oceans. As a result, the young woman is plagued by a restless curiosity that inevitably leads to trouble.

When the fences are breached, Mary and a small crew of survivors must figure out how to survive while traveling a fenced path that may or may not lead to their salvation. Meanwhile, Mary is struggling with her feelings for Travis, a fellow villager, but cannot freely express her love due to his betrothal to her best friend, Cass, and Mary's own betrothal to Travis's brother Harry. Also along for the death trek is Mary's brother Jed and Jed's pregnant wife, Beth.

The first half of the novel is semi-promising, with its venture into the convent of the Sisterhood that runs the village and the sudden, ominous appearance of a stranger, whose appearance isn't nearly as troubling as her then sudden disappearance. But very little of the Sisterhood's conspiracy is fleshed out, and Mary's minor discoveries, made in the hidden, underground chambers of the Cathedral are surprisingly anti-climatic.

By the time the village is seized by the undead, the story is falling apart. Mary is a difficult protagonist to become attached to as a reader. Under a more capable hand, her contradictions would be worthwhile complexities, and watching her slowly unravel would be a breakthrough for the character as well as the reader. Instead, she is poorly drawn, and instead of coming off sympathetically rebellious, she comes off unreasonably stubborn, difficult, and self-serving. Ryan doesn't attempt to help the reader understand Mary's intrinsic attraction for Travis. The feelings exist, they continue to exist, but the few meaningful details the reader is given don't add up to a romance of impact.

Ryan is a mediocre writer. Not by YA lit standards, because I don't believe that there is necessarily a lower standard, but by genre standards. It is possible to write a thrilling horror novel without losing narrative nuance. Sarah Langan is the name I throw around the most, because I found The Missing just absolutely enthralling. Ryan can't hold the story together. Her supporting characters border on caricature, and attempts to add dimension only muddle the depiction even more.

The ending is a mess. The whole ordeal is reminiscent of the movie The Village, but more abruptly startling in its absurdity. And, as a reader, I didn't buy any of it. It's fine to ask your readers to take certain leaps of faith with you, to suspend disbelief in matters of the plausible. It is not the same thing to write something filled with holes that renders the outcome nearly implausible.

And if I had to read of a character smelling like sunshine one more time...

Yet, with all my complaints, even initially, with the text, I finished the book. There's something weirdly intoxicating about the book that allowed me to continue reading, despite my growing disinterest. I described this feeling to a friend of mine, and she responded with, "I felt the same way during Eclipse [the third Twilight book]. And I had to read the fourth book too."

If there is any mercy in the publishing world, Carrie Ryan will not write another installment. I don't know if I'll be able to stand another book... or resist it.

The trailer for the book is actually more entertaining than the entirety of the novel. Maybe because it uses imagery and words from the first half...

sunday afternoon snooze pick

2008-11-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

My workweek at the store is Friday - Tuesday. By this time, Sunday afternoon, I'm feeling a bit run down. I really just want to find a corner of the store with minimal sunlight, maximum heat, pull a blanket over me, and nap until we close. It's tempting to do so, but with the surefire presence of management's watchful eye, I'll get busted and booted before I can emit the first snore.

So, to perk myself up, I'm going to make an effort, every Sunday, to pick a book to perk up the senses and either accompany you through your lazy, sleepy Sunday, or ease you through you decidedly un-lazy Sunday at work.

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
Thomas McNamee

I've got to hand it to McNamee: Not only did he make a lovely sense out of the lovely disorder going on at Chez Panisse, he carefully crafts the depiction of Alice Waters, so as to capture all facets of this prism personality. In the late 1960's, Waters, an admitted Francophile and dreamer, opens up the Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, where she could serve the kind of food that she ate while in France, the idea of food that she had been chasing ever since returning to the U.S.

The early history on Waters is brief, and very fittingly so, because this is not a woman whose childhood seems like an improbable notion. Even into her old age, Waters bears a whimsical presence on the restaurant she founded, on her family, friends, colleagues, students, and business partners, on her fans and devoted followers, and this whimsy is fueled by a residing childlike notion of purity, cleanness, simplicity.

It's also fitting, then, that the bulk of the background behaviors at Chez Panisse could be described in opposing terms. In lesser work, the personalities and presences of so many people coming and going would read as an impassable blur, a messy, ill-defined group of misfits, romantics, artists, cooks, outlaws, etc. But McNamee's patience is well utilized. He handles each kitchen personality with careful character crafting, following their story to the very end of their time at the restaurant, and many of them long after. He sketches such clear pictures of the supporting players, that they stick with you throughout the entire history, much like their actual presence in Alice Waters's life.

The ultimate achievement of this book is that it accessibly relates the story of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse without sacrificing the spirit of mercurial disarray and sentimental disaster. The reader can understand how botched the accounts were for 30 years, how close the restaurant came to financial ruin (the many, many times), and yet, nothing dampers the sentimental glow of the dining room, the idea of fresh, simple foods served lovingly, the endless search for better, finer, fresher, local ingredients. The perfect radish, the perfect lemon, the perfect bunch of herbs, the perfect lamb. To track down the freshest ingredients, as told from the perspective of even the most freelance of scavengers for the restaurant, is a devotional task to a higher calling of a glorious slow food revolution.

To sink your teeth into something ripe from the vine, or to liven a dish with herbs freshly sprung from pots in the window. Wild vegetables and fruits. In a way, McNamee makes sense of Waters and Chez Panisse the same way they make sense of their work: In his mission to provide the best history of the woman and her groundbreaking restaurant, the author keeps it simple, fresh, and goes straight to the source for the perfect information. It's slow, tedious work, but at the end you have a literary meal hearty, delicious, and soul-satisfying.

bookchat picks

2008-11-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

At the store, a few of us have been asked to pick five books to talk about to the general book-buying public. The idea is that twice a day during weekdays, four times a day on weekends, a bookseller will sit at the desk near the fireplace, displaying their five book picks and discussing them to anyone who will listen. So far, the results have been disappointing. Paul kicked things off with the first bookchat on Sunday, and it went decently. He sold three books total, which is three more than anyone else has managed to sell. Hell, no one so far has been able to get anyone over to the table, let alone sell them a book.

But I've got a plan. My first bookchat is on Friday. I plan to make cookies, cupcakes, muffins, anything that will lure unsuspecting consumers to my book lair. Here's a cookie, listen to me talk about this book. I've been drawn in that way. There's nothing more direct than a pile of delicious baked goods. People sense free food from the moment they walk into the building. I seem to have a sixth sense, honed to pick out potential food giveways and samples. That's why it's so much fun to go to nice grocery stores on the weekend. Customers love to get free food, and I'm not even trying to get them to donate to my charity or join my religious group or vote for my particular candidate. If they stand there and eat the cookie while pretending to listen to me talk about my choices, then so be it. At least it will kill the fifteen minutes.

We were allowed to pick any book that the store sells, so I tried to make my list ecclectic and varied enough to sell to anyone. I think I should have included a stronger selling title, but... well, I tried.
In no particular order:

1. After Dark - Haruki Murakami - This was the first book I wrote down when I was picking choices, and I think I know why. Of all the Murakami to read, this, his most recent novel, is the easiest to sell to the uninitiated. It's not as strange and haunting as Sputnik Sweetheart or Norwegian Wood, and it doesn't have the intimidating heft of The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, but it carries the same unique accesible qualities that even his denser works carry. It's a short book too, and contains a fairly linear plot line. Two sisters, one stuck in a constant sleep, imprisoned by her dream state, the other sister unwilling to return home and rest. Also included: a sweet, shy saxophonist, a "love hotel" and its unlikely caretakers, and the rapidly beating heart of a Tokyo nighttime. Perfect quick reading.

2. The Big Ass Book of Crafts - Mark Montano - A nice Christmas present, and I already know that this book sells itself. It's big (obviously), has a great aesthetic, and Montano's crafts are actually stuff you would want in your home. The focus is on interior design projects, from new ways to deal with those pesky subscription cards that fall out of magazines, to an incredible lampshade made of bendy straws to foot scrubs, hand creams, and homemade soaps. The amount of projects alone justifies the price, but it's the quality of project that's the real draw. Montano doesn't require you to buy expensive supplies, or a lot of supplies, or lose your sense of personal taste. He gives the reader just enough of a framework so that they can add and subtract what they choose to. The instructions are clear, the supplies accesible and easy to obtain, and the best part: the projects are actually really cool.

3. Winner of the National Book Award Jincy Willett - After releasing the short story collection Jenny and the Jaws of Life in 1987, Willett didn't release another major work until 2005. But with a book this good, it turns out the wait was well worth it. Rhode Island is the remarkably unremarkable setting of this tale of twin sisters, Dorcas and Abigail, the first a dour and sardonic lover of the written word, the second a promiscuous small-town hussy, happily pursuing her own lascivious desires until she meets Conrad Lowe, former gynecologist and famous memorist. Lowe is also a sadistic, manipulative mysogynist, and his marriage to Abigail and intrusion into the world of both sisters sets the stage for a downward spiral of hideously hilarious proportions. Dorcas is an incredible narrator: her dry, near-detached bemusement lifts to reveal a woman deeply attached to her twin sister, despite all the differences between them, despite the near and realized tragedies of their circumstances. Willett also paints a vivid portrait of Rhode Island as the ultimate middle of nowhere, a place where natives neither flash their academia or revel in low-class pursuits, but where everyone attacks the grocery stores on the eve of an impending giant storm.

4. Black Hole - Charles Burns - If you're a fan of graphic novels, chances are you've already read Black Hole, but in case you been residing in a hole of your very own, then absolutely seek out this giant volume of the collected Black Hole comics. Set in suburban Seattle in the 1970s, the novel follows a group of teenagers as an epidemic slowly grows to include several members of the local high school. The artwork is astounding; whether shocking, grotesque, or strangely beautiful, it's the absolute perfect method of storytelling for this particular story. Some graphic novels work because of the writer's particular voice, some work because the artwork is so beautiful, some work because the comic format is the only way that particular story could be told. Black Hole is the perfect example of a graphic novel that was meant to be: the visuals are perfect, the plotline absolutely engrossing, the characters sympathetic and fully realized, the themes unsettling, the tone haunting... A dense, wonderful, terrible head trip, and an absolute must read.

5. La Dolce Vegan - Sarah Kramer - Truth be told, between the two reigning vegan divas, I kind of prefer Isa Chandra Moskowitz's recipes, because they are a bit more sophisticated. Still, if you have one vegan cookbook on your shelf, then it should be this one. I'm not vegan, not even vegetarian, but I own both this book and In the Garden of Vegan, because the recipes are simple, great, and inexpensive to produce. Kramer gives the home cook a lot of wiggle room with volume and type of ingredients, but the instructions are easy to follow. What's more, she provides endless tips on living a fun (but frugal) vegan lifestyle, including that ever-so-useful egg-replacement chart and a bunch of easy recipes for fake meat flavors. The cookbook's full of sassy style, and looks right at home in any kitschy kitchen, and it's trade paperback, so you won't mind getting a glob of banana or spot of tofu on the pages.

When I Grow Up review

2008-10-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have been easy reading time. I’ve been a bit lazy, reading a pair of very different new releases and a graphic novel. One of the books, The Gargoyle, and the graphic novel, Alison Bechdel’s excellent Fun Home, offered the kind of challenges so necessary in a reader’s diet. The other book, Juliana Hatfield’s memoir, When I Grow Up, wasn’t what I would classify a challenging read. At points, it wasn’t even that enjoyable, as Hatfield is novice memoirist and resorts to cliché and redundancy on more than a few occasions. The trio, however, formed a near-perfect unit of reading, and, I admit, I’m a bit desirous to repeat the formula. It breaks up as this:

1 lightweight non-fiction + 1 heavy work of contemporary fiction + 1 heavier work of contemporary graphic fiction = satisfied literary appetite.

Perhaps it doesn’t breaks down quite so easily. But I had hit a bit of a slump following the hilarious and weirdly inspiring Stiff (Mary Roach), and following Roach’s own glowing review of Traffic, I gave it a try. And while the book is written with extreme intelligence and style, I put it down about halfway through. Maybe because I don’t drive, the detailed implications of the hows and whys of traffic conditions didn’t hold my interest. If I ever do manage to get my driving license, I’ll probably pick up Traffic again. It’s one of those books that is good, and good for you, and unfortunately, I’m almost never in the mood to really get the most out of a book like that.

I was still struggling through Traffic when I received a copy of When I Grow Up, and in the interest of timeliness and courtesy to Stephanie Corby from Wiley Publishing (thanks!), I took up the memoir immediately, and upon following, I needed something that would be its opposite, and in the middle of The Gargoyle, my copy of Fun Home arrived at the store, so I read bits and pieces of it during register shifts. So now, at the end of my three- book streak, I’m on the hunt for the next trio. My reading habits seem to come in three-book bursts, with about a week- long period where I can’t seem to find anything that grabs me.

But I think the new streak has begun, because I picked up How to Be Idle just yesterday, so I think I’ve found the one lightweight non-fiction book in the formula. Maybe I really should try the equation again, see if I can perfect it.

When I Grow Up – Juliana Hatfield (September 2008 -Wiley Publishing)

I have a tendency to fetishize 90s alternative rock. I was just old enough to see women like Lisa Loeb, Jill Sobule, Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, etc., as older sister archetypes, women who I didn’t exactly want to be (okay, I did want to be Lisa Loeb), but I wanted to be just old enough to really relate with at the moment. Really, at heart, all I really want to be is Wynona Ryder in Reality Bites, with an adorable short hair cut and adorable clothes listening to mid-90s alternative rock, “Spin the Bottle” spinning in rotation with The Lemonheads, Pixies, Pavement, as well as all kinds of terrible mid-nineties radio jams that I absolutely loved. (I also have to point out that both Lisa Loeb and Juliana Hatfield are on the Reality Bites soundtrack. Also, if I were Wynona Ryder in Reality Bites, I would have picked Ben Stiller over Ethan Hawke. I have complex reasoning as to why, so I’ll explain at a later point.)

Anyway, so I have an enduring fondness for Juliana Hatfield, despite that I find her later music to be irritatingly self-possessed. Actually, her music is almost always a little gratingly self-possessed, and it’s an early strength and belated weakness. Still, she’s a woman who has been on the scene since the late 1980s, starting with her band The Blake Babies, through her moderate alternative-rock success as a solo artist and subsequent breakdown, semi-come back, semi-retirement, semi-come back. The chapters are written in back and forth view points, half tour diary, half recollection. Both halves suffer from redundant storytelling. Hatfield either doesn’t trust her readers to recall simple information, or her copy editors weren’t nice enough to do the job for her and cut out the repeated information.

The tour diary is the stronger of the halves overall. It feels more immediate, fresher, more vividly recalled. It dates back to the first Some Girls tour, Hatfield’s latter day trio with fellow former Blake Babies’ drummer, Freda Love. Surprisingly, it doesn’t matter if you’ve heard a Some Girls album, Hatfield provides enough details on the people in and working for the band, the places they visit, and the music they play to give the reader a full picture of the tour experience. In fact, the tour chapters read as a kind of generic diary of an artist dealing with playing a scene that she has less and less in common with, and a dwindling fan base of devotees that she is simultaneously grateful for and exhausted by. And for as much apologetic self-explanation that Hatfield resorts to, she exhibits a brave willingness to expose all of her bad behavior, unappealing bitchiness, neurosis, and insensitivities all. Like when a quiet fan in Columbus approaches her after a show, asking her to sign a giant, career-spanning pile of Juliana Hatfield merchandise. Hatfield balks:

“He didn’t even say hello to me – and not a word about the show- and now he wants fifteen or twenty autographs? But why? So he can sell them on eBay? Why can’t he just be happy to see me, like all those smiling people over there talking to Heidi and Freda? He’d probably be just as disappointed with me if I chopped off one of my fingers right now and gave it to him. It wouldn’t be enough. He’d want the whole hand.”

Melodramatic, yes, but then again, whose diary isn’t? Hatfield could have edited a lot of the conflict, nail-biting, self doubt, and bad mood stuff out, but she would have lost the cranky heart of the book (as well as more that half of the chapters). Her overwhelming point is that she’s not exactly cut out to be a public figure, and the stories she tells back that up to a strong degree. Still, even devoted fan reading this might feel like Hatfield is overreaching a bit when she talks about the oppressiveness of being in the spotlight (especially when she’s talking about the spotlight as it exists upon her now).
The other half of the memoir, the real memoir-ish half, remains compelling when Hatfield discusses her childhood, her painful early time at Berklee College of Music, the nitty gritty of her Blake Babies/solo success in the early 90s, and her emotional/physical breakdown in the midst of her career decline. Especially of interest is the later chapter regarding God’s Foot, the lost Juliana Hatfield album that, lacking a single, Atlantic pulled from release and shelved. Candid writing about that level of artistic castration is rare, and the subsequent bravado/vulnerability that Hatfield details of her post-label career is heartbreaking.

Hatfield is a gifted enough writer that she knows how to carefully construct a scene, and the environments and players she depicts are genuine. Hatfield, herself, plays up the “remarkably unremarkable” image, and she’s not above a little cloying self-deprecation, “I’m so horribly ordinary, how could anyone care about me, care about my music, love me and appreciate me and think I’m pretty,” etc, etc. It’s almost a neat literary trick when, in the later chapters, as Hatfield discusses her emotional growth and subsequent return to making music, the writing gets stronger and stronger. For all the emotional outreach that she attempts to depict with her interactions with fans, friends, fellow artists, she finally nails it on the last page. With a single paragraph, Hatfield finds grounding, and When I Grow finds its true heart.

- Em