Bliss by Lauren Myracle

Bliss is excited to start Crestview Academy. Fresh off the commune, dumped on her grandmother's doorstep by her parents who are off to Canada to avoid Nixon's war, she is eager to make friends and experience real life, like she sees on the Andy Griffith show.

Crestview may be bright and beautiful and ivy-covered, but it's full of secrets, too. There is a voice that only Bliss can hear--a voice that whispers of blood and bones and tombs. Bliss figures she'll be okay as long as she stays away. But there are secrets among the students, too, hiding in the most unexpected of place. Dangerous secrets that will enmesh sensitive, kind Bliss in their web, and destroy anything--and anyone--in their path.

I am haunted by this book. Literally. I fell asleep while reading yesterday (a commentary on my state of mind, not the book) and dreamed over and over again about it. And last night, even as I struggled to stay up and finish it, when I fell asleep, I dreamed about it again. And now that I've finished it, I can't stop thinking about it.

I am awed and impressed by what Myracle has done here. This is a genuine, actually scary ghost story for teens. (And let me say, this is one creepy package that absolutely does justice to the inside. Gorgeous!) She doesn't pull any punches. She never holds back. This story is really freaking creepy. There were times, reading last night alone in my living room, that I had to close the book, because I had the creeps.

She's not gory. Never gory. But Myracle packs this novel full of atmosphere and voice, and she builds the suspense and the creepy so very well that as it rises to a close, you feel it gripping you in the throat.

( Here it gets spoilery. )

Taking a short break from my diet of Cybils-only literature to read and review a few last books. Because they're due back to the library. I promise I'll be good from now on!

Perfect by Natasha Friend

Isabelle wants to be anywhere but where she is right now. Where she is is in Group--group therapy. Which is where she got sent after her annoying little sister April (otherwise known as Ape Face) caught her throwing up her dinner in the bathroom, and refused to be bribed into silence.

Isabelle may be in Group, but she doesn't think she has a problem. She's only thrown up a few times. Okay, only a lot of times. But it's her way of coping with the sudden death of her father. Grief isn't allowed her in her house--her mother cries behind closed doors, and her little sister just gets brattier. None of them could possibly understand how sad she feels.

And then Ashley Barnum walks in to Group. Pretty, perfect Ashley Barnum--queen of the eight grade. She's everything Isabelle's always wanted to be--and now she's sitting next to her in therapy.

As Isabelle and Ashley become friends, and Isabelle starts to think about her bulimia, her family and her life, she begins to realize that maybe perfect isn't what she always thought it was.

This book starts off feeling like an after-school special. You know the type--a bulimic girl bonds with the most popular girl in school over shared vomiting experiences, and then the two of them push each other further and further into the deepest depths of the eating disorder. I actually think I watched that one in high school on Health Day.

But then it blossoms into something deeper and better. When Isabelle starts saying no to Ashley, and the place their friendship goes after that. Isabelle's relationship with her little sister April, and the very real, noncliche form their mother's (and their own) grief takes. It's a book that feels rough, and a little bit painful, and sometimes a little too honest--in other words, real.

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How to Be Bad by E. Lockhart, Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mylnowski

Jesse, Vicks and Mel are on the road. They’re going to Miami—or more importantly, they’re getting out of Niceville, Florida, where nothing ever happens. They are as different as can be—Vicks, the devil-may-care girl whose boyfriend hasn’t called once in the two weeks since he went off to college. Mel, the rich girl who just wants to be liked, and Jesse, the trailer-dwelling Christianpants who just learned some life-altering bad news.

They have three days, one ancient car, a fifteen-year-old guidebook called Fantastical Florida, and a plan. By the time the trip is over, they’ll have run out on a toll, picked up a hitchhiker, met a cute guy, seen the world’s smallest police station, have a run-in with an alligator (or two) and their friendship will be changed forever.

There is nothing bad about a good road trip book. And this is a very good road trip book. It has all the trappings of a perfect road trip—three very different friends, thrown together for the ride, the crappy car, the road food, the stopovers, the catastrophes, and the memories. Told in alternating voices of the three girls, it’s easy to get lost in this breezy story. My only quibble is that I wanted a little more from all three girls. A little more depth, a little more resolution—especially for Mel—but that’s just because it’s so much fun I wanted more.


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She's So Money by Cherry Cheva

Maya’s life is so busy it’s ridiculous. Between trying to keep her grades high enough for Stanford to offer her a scholarship, working at her parents’ restaurant every night after school and working in the tutoring center, she barely has a moment to herself. But after she makes a disastrous mistake that could bring down the restaurant unless she comes up with a lot of money—and fast—Maya finds herself getting sucked into a plan that’s so evil it just might work.

Together with Camden King, popular guy and all around hottie, Maya starts a for-profit cheating ring. If does homework for enough rich kids, she just may be able to save her family’s restaurant, without her parents ever being the wiser. But as the homework piles on and the stakes get higher, Maya begins to buckle under the pressure. Can she keep up with the piles of homework? Can she make enough money under the table to save her family restaurant—and her butt? And most importantly, will they get caught?

The most immediately appealing thing about this book is Maya’s funny, sassy, voice. She’s a great heroine—smart and geeky, but also sarcastic and sassy. I also loved how Cheva doesn’t demonize the popular crew. Aside from Camden, who obviously gets humanized, the other popular kids are mocked, but not demonized, which is refreshing.

Less refreshing is the entirely stock, one-note nature of Maya’s geek friends and her little brother. They’re all very generic and uninteresting, which is a shame.

Overall, this is a fun, fast, but not overly remarkable teen read.

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas

Conn is a thief--a pickpocket, lockpick and gutterboy. Living in the Twilight, the seedy district of the magical city of Wellmet, there's not much else he could be. But when he picks the pocket of the wizard Nevery and comes out with Nevery's locus magicalicus, he's stolen more than he expected.

Nevery expects Conn to be dead--and fast--but when Conn doesn't die, Nevery decides to keep him around--just for a little while. Just until he figures out why not.

While Nevery may think that Conn is his servant, Conn knows that he's really Nevery's apprentice--and that he is meant to be a wizard. But there are a few obstacles standing between Conn and his plans. He has to find his own locus magicalicus within thirty days, or he's out. And between going to school for the first time and trying to help Nevery solve the dangerously low level of magic in Wellmet, Conn is running out of time.

This book is. so. good. Conn is utterly, ridiculously, wonderfully likeable. That's the first thing. Once you start reading his first-person narrative, you don't want to stop. And Prineas's fascinating magic system is clever. Best of all, Wellmet is a fully realized city in a fully realized world--and even as Conn only sees bits and pieces of it, we pick it up on the periphery of his vision--kind of like the way we learned about Lyra's Oxford in The Golden Compass.

This book is the real deal. An honest to goodness great adventure, a feel-good fantasy read that you won't be able to stop reading and will be sorry once the book is over.

Lucky for us, it's the first in a trilogy.

So if you haven't read Sarah Prineas's The Magic Thief yet, why not? Get to it. You will not regret it.

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Lucy Scarborough doesn’t really believe in true love. She believes in being practical, in being content in her life with her beloved foster parents, Soledad and Leo Markowitz, and the friendship of guy-next-door Zach. And most of the time, she can keep her birth mother Miranda, who is insane, lives on the streets, and sometimes shows up to harass her, out of sight and out of mind. But that’s before the nightmare begins—the rape, her pregnancy—and the discovery of an ages-old curse.

Lucy is one in a long line of Scarborough women—women who get pregnant when they are seventeen, and are doomed to madness from the moment their daughter is born—unless they can complete three impossible tasks. Lucy is afraid—but she is determined to try to succeed, even though generations of Scarborough women before her have always failed. But she has something they don’t—the love of her foster parents, and the strength and courage of Zach—who is becoming more than a friend with every passing day.

This is the kind of book that I love most: a retold fairy tale that fits, doesn’t feel forced, and allows for modern influences. It reminds me of Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin—with both the implied positives and negatives of that title. I felt a little bit like the first half of the book—up until Lucy really discovers and believes in the curse—dragged. It’s unavoidable, I guess, but as the reader, I knew that the curse was true, and I was just waiting for Lucy to discover it and believe it herself. It made me impatient for the book to get moving.

But once it picked up, it certainly did get moving. Once Lucy and her family accept the reality of this crazy curse, the modern approach to solving an ancient puzzle is fascinating and compelling. There are certain moments in the book that feel a little silly—but they are mitigated because Werlin has the characters recognize that they’re silly, or that certain reactions or decisions don’t make any sense at all, but they’re making them anyway.

I also found the omnipresent feeling of dread in the book abolutely fascinating. The introduction of Padraig Seeley is chilling--even as Lucy and her supporters don't recognize the gravity of the threat, the reader does, which adds an element of urgency that, for much of the book, made me want to yell at Lucy to get moving. And once Lucy does realize just how awful things could be--the possibility of failure is absolutely chilling. Kudos to Werlin for making me utterly afraid for Lucy as the book neared it's close--and also for not ignoring the fact that even though a happily-ever-after may solve the immediate supernatural problems, there are still as many real life (though not as life-threatening) problems caused by the solution and the aftermath.

Overall, it’s a good solid read and a great contribution to the growing canon of retold modern fairy tales. As an aside, I do think it’s fascinating how retold ballads always seem to contain a pregnancy—like in Tam Lin.

The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski

Petra Kronos lives an unusual life, but a happy one. She lives in a small Czech village with her father, an artisan who can move metal with his mind and works with invisible tools. When her father is commissioned by the prince to build a marvelous clock, he goes off to Prague—and comes back blinded. The prince has stolen his eyes. Even worse, the prince now has control of a clock that has the power to control the weather.

Petra doesn’t know a lot about the world, but she knows this: she will go to Prague and somehow steal back her father’s eyes. It’s a tall task, but she won’t be alone—she has the companionship of Astrophil, her tin pet spider, and the help of Neel, a Roma boy with fingers that extend into invisible ghosts that can pick locks.

What I like about this book: pretty much everything. Petra is a wonderful character—spunky, determined, immensely likeable, and often entirely naïve about the way the world works. What’s wonderful about this book is that people call her on it—when she plans to do something ridiculous, like, say, sneak into the prince’s castle and steal back her father’s eyes, that doesn’t get to be something that makes sense. She’s young and sheltered, and sometimes that’s why she succeeds—even when odds are against her.

I also love how sometimes this book nods at clichéd plot points and then moves past them. Like when Petra first goes to Prague, she cuts off her hair, to blend in as a boy—a classic spunky heroine move—and then discovers that no one is really fooled, and life would have been somewhat easier if she had just kept her hair and called herself a girl from the start.

The flavor of Marie Rutkoski’s Czechoslovakia is also delicious, and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. A changing Europe with a dangerous prince who courts danger and foments unrest among his people. The commonplace feel of magical talents—and the nature of those talents is fantastic. Invisible ghost fingers that can pick locks. The ability to move metal with your mind.

Marie Rutkoski has a gorgeously creative imagination, and this is a beautiful book. It’s the sort of novel that feels solidly based on a history only slightly different from our own—it feels like it might have been true in some parallel universe. It’s lush with detail—even the little things—and feels like a full literary meal.

Cabinet of Wonders has a solid ending and stands comfortably alone, but is clearly the first in a trilogy (says so right on the cover) and I am eager and hungry for more from Marie Rutkoski.

If you're here because of the Cybils, welcome! I am really excited to be on the Fantasy and Science Fiction panel this year, along with a host of other fantastic bloggers:

Laini Taylor: Growing Wings
Charlotte Taylor: Charlotte's Library
Alyssa Feller: The Shady Glade
Em: Em's Bookshelf
Tizrah Price: The Compulsive Reader
Amanda Blau: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

It's going to be an exciting, book-packed couple of months, so welcome! And go nominate books!

You can nominate one book in each of the following catagories: Fantasy and Science Ficion, Fiction Picture Books, Non-fiction Picture Books, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade fiction, Non-fiction: Middle Grade and Young Adule, Young Adult Fiction, Poetry and Easy Readers.

You have until October 15 to nominate books, so get to it! And then come back here for a lot of book reviewing and reading.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Jenna was sixteen when she was in the accident that sent her into a coma. Now she is seventeen. She has just awoken from her coma. She is missing a year of her life, but more importantly, she is missing herself. She has no memories of herself, of life before the accident--of life at all. Her parents show her pictures, home videos, tell her stories, and slowly, Jenna begins to remember. But with her memories come the questions--what really happened after the accident? Why did her family leave their home in Boston for the remote California town where they are living now? And why, if her parents want her to remember, are there still so many secrets?

This is an interesting book, and I really did enjoy reading it. I guessed the big reveal pretty early on, but I'm not altogether sure that I wasn't supposed to--this book is less about surprising you with the plot, and more about the way Jenna reacts and feels and responds to what she learns about herself.

It's interesting--Jenna's cold, disconnected way of viewing and learning about the world at first made me almost think of Cameron, the terminator from The Sarah Connor Chronicles. If Cameron had an internal monologue, I bet this is what it would sound like.

I give it three stars not because there was anything wrong with it, but because it felt like there was a step further Pearson could have gone, but didn't. It felt a little lacking, like it almost but didn't quite catch me in that place where really good books take root. It's a good book--don't get me wrong--and a fascinating view of a possible future--but it doesn't haunt me the way I feel like this sort of book should.

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Soulless by Christopher Golden

For the first time ever, three powerful mediums join hands on the set of a live broadcast morning show in Times Square. If the seance goes according to plan, there will be a short window where people around the world will have a chance to say goodbye to the spirits of their departed loved ones.

But things don't go according to plan. Instead, the mediums slump over, comatose. And as they do, the dead start to rise. They are seeking out their loved ones, but they are also hungry.

The great thing about Christopher Golden, and this book, is that he really, really knows New York. When his characters live in New York, it's the real New York, the one I live in and understand, not the glamorized fictional New York you so often see in books like this. This is a New York where people drive on the Merrit and get donuts in Riverdale and realize that there are cemetaries in Washington Heights. It's a New York were people have family in Scarsdale.

For nothing other than that, I love this book.

Also, I started reading Soulless this morning on the train, and suddenly, in the middle of it, I put it down, and went, "Crap. There's a cemetary right near my house. If a zombie infestation happens, what's the best possible plan to get me and my family together and safe? Do we have anything useful to barricade the windows with? Maybe we should invest in some more heavy furniture."

This book is pure zombie fun/horror. If you like zombies and/or New York, this is the book you want to read. Christopher Golden is spot-on with the terror of surviving a zombie infestation.

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Poison Ink by Christopher Golden

Sammi Holland has always been a drifter. She always was friendly with people in all different groups, but never really fit in with any one in particular. That’s what makes the friendship she now shares with Caryn, Letty, T.Q. and Katsuko so precious to her—they’re all drifters, but together, they belong. And that’s what inspires them to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to get matching tattoos—to mark them forever as friends. Sammi isn’t thrilled with the idea of a tattoo—for one thing, her parents would kill her—but she doesn’t want to be the only one to back out. But when she gets to the shady tattoo parlor—the only place they can go without being over eighteen—she just can’t go through with it. She knows her friends will be disappointed, but she figures they’ll understand.

And that’s when everything changes. Suddenly, her so-called friends won’t talk to her. They won’t sit with her at lunch. And then rumors start swirling around them—smoking, drinking, drugs, seducing teachers, starting gang fights—behavior that is so foreign to the girls Sammi was friends with that she’s forced to wonder if she ever really knew her friends at all.

But it’s when Sammi tries to break up a gang fight that her former friends had started that she sees it—across Letty’s back, the original tattoo has grown, spread, crawled across her back like tendrils of poison ivy. Sammi knows that somehow, something in those tattoos is controlling her friends, destroying them from the inside out. And it’s up to her to stop it—before it’s too late.

This is not a good book. On so many levels. For one, the characters don’t behave like believable teens at all. If I didn’t know how old Sammi was, and there was no reference to high school, I would have guessed she was in her mid-to-late twenties. They’re too self-aware. Not to mention, boring.

For another, the central plot-point is never really explained. The “shocking” truth is revealed, that Dante the creepy tattoo artist has been controlling Sammi’s friends, using them to do bad things. But why? What does he get out of it? He wasn’t using them as a crime ring—he was just debasing them, making them do drugs and sleep with teachers and be nasty. Is he just a psychopath? And, what causes it?

Nothing is explained. The whole book leads up to a big fat pile of nothing. And I didn’t care for one second about Sammi or her extraordinarily boring and predictable relationship with Cute Adam, who was so unrealistic that he dragged down the already bad book.

Soulless is a great read. This is terrible.

And now, for something that has nothing to do with politics!

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen

Eli will never forget the night of the attack. He'll never forget the moment they heard about the nukes, how his father grabbed his family and rushed them away to the secret compound he had spent years building. How he locked them in, locked them away from the rest of the dying world for fifteen years, until it will be safe to come out again. It was the day everything changed. It was the day he found himself stuck on the inside, safe, while his twin brother and best friend Eddy was stranded on the outside, and doomed.

Six years later, Eli, now fifteen, hates himself, his life in the compound, and his family--his domineering, controlling father, his meek mother, his selfish older sister Lexie, and his delusional younger sister Terese. And he tries not to think about the growing food shortage, the way the flour has started moldering and they're running out of lights for the hydroponic bay.

They're supposed to stay in the compound for fifteen years, but it's becoming clearer and clearer that their food supplies won't last that long. And even worse, Eli is stunned to realize that his father has been keeping a secret from them all, a secret that changes everything--what if the outside world isn't a wasteland after all?

This book is chilling. It's a terrifying look at a family under the control of a madman. The business with the Supplements--chilling! It's a compulsively readable page turner--you cannot stop until you find out what happens.

The plot does get slogged down a little bit towards the end with the madcap farce of a treasure hunt, and I would have liked a little bit more in the aftermath. But overall, it's a shocking, fast read that will definitely appeal to reluctant readers.

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Taken by Edward Bloor

In 2083, kidnapping is a growing industry. Wealthy children are surrounded by security, and carefully trained in case the worst happens. They are told--remain calm. Cooperate with the kidnappers. Your parents will deliver the ransom and everything will be fine.

Charity Meyers has heard all the rules, and so when she is snatched from her house in the exclusive, gated Highlands community, she is prepared.

But what she is not prepared for is finding out that this is no ordinary kidnapping, and her kidnappers want a lot more than just a ransom payment.

I was excited about this book--both the concept of a world where kidnapping is an accepted industry (not so far off from what is happening today in places like Mexico, South Africa), and another book by the multitalented Edward Bloor (who brought us gems such as London Calling and Story Time) but the execution fell flat.

Kidnapping was not as "accepted" as the flap copy made it out to be--it was just more common. And while I was indeed shocked by the major revelation, I felt like it almost cheapened the rest of the suspense. And speaking of the suspense, it dragged. And the ending felt too neat and tidy, too easy.

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The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

In a time when everyone was thinking the way they were told and following the rules, Helmuth Hubener found that he could not sit down and be quiet. As Hitler rose to power in Germany and began taking away all the freedoms and liberties that Helmuth had taken for granted, Helmuth knew that he could not sit by quietly.

This book is based on the true story of Helmuth Hubener, a Hitler Youth member who furtively distributed pamphlets that raged against the Nazis and their reign of terror. Helmuth was executed for his crimes at the tender of age of seventeen.

What Bartoletti tried to do here was to bring Helmuth alive for us, the reader. She tried to take the true story of a boy who stood up in the face of a terrifying machine and make him human.

Part of the problem is the writing. It's not bad, per se, but it's second person present tense, which can be good if the writer has a real skill, but most of the time isn't. And in this case, while I think Bartoletti was going for immediacy, the sense I got was distance. The second person distances me from Helmuth. I never really felt like I got below his skin at all--I just felt like I was watching events from a far distance. I never connected.

The other problem is the subject material. The Holocaust has been done and overdone in fiction, and for a book to stand out, it has to--well, stand out. It needs to bring a new angle to an old story, and do it really well, and this book doesn't.

None of the viewpoints about Germany and Hitler Youth was insightful. It all felt old, tired, like something I already knew. What I wanted was to see how someone could, from within the Nazi machine, begin to realize that things are wrong, and take the next step to wanting to change things.

I don't know what Helmuth Hubener was really like--he was a real person, after all. But according to this book, Helmuth never bought in to Hitler's propaganda. So there's no real character arc. There's no growing or changing--there's just a progression of the inevitable.

And the perspective of a German being angry with the Nazi takeover is nothing new either--for a book that does that well, read Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.

I am answering the phones for Bossman P this week, while his assistant is on vacation. Most of his phone calls are official business, but, sweet baby Jesus! You would not believe how many of the calls are people cold calling with submissions.

Now, let me just flesh out the picture here: Bossman P is the president of children’s publishing. The president. As in, not even an editor. Not even a publisher. He's the guy on top.

What are these people thinking? I really do not understand. I just had a conversation with a woman who wanted to speak to Bossman P about her submission.

Me: What is this concerning?
Her: It’s about my book. I want to speak to him about publishing it.
Me: Do you have a previous relationship with Bossman R?
Her: No, but I need to discuss my book with him.
Me: If you have a submission, you need to submit it to submissions editor.
Her: No, I can’t just send it in. I need to protect my rights.
Me: (huge eyeroll) No one is going to steal your rights.
Her: I need to talk with him.
Me: It doesn’t work that way.
Her: (huffily) Then I will take my book somewhere else.

These people must do some research to get to the point where they have Bossman P’s name and try to call him. So why do they not realize that the president of children’s publishing is not going to want to field their calls? Do they also try to call the White House to discuss their political aspirations?

Someone explain this to me, because I got nothing.

People, it's that time of year again.

elisem is having a MegaClearance Shiny Sale in her journal right now. I love her stuff, and you should too!

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS YOU GUYS.

So I finally got my ipod fixed so I can put music and stuff on it again, so I decided it was time to revisit my love for the Ninth Doctor. So I downloaded some of the first season, and I was watching Rose on the train this morning, and you guys, I forgot how much I loved Nine. I mean, really really love Nine. Ten is okay. I like him fine. But Nine! Oh, Nine. Nine is my Doctor.

Also, Dr. Horrible is stuck in my head and will not leave. There are worse things to have stuck in your head, I know, but the problem with this one is the urge to belt it out. I am in a cubicle. I do not think that would go over very well.

In further news, fashion_piranha is having a Neil Gaiman giveaway contest over here. So go check it out. The more people who enter, the more prizes there will be, and everyone loves prizes. Especially Neil Gaiman flavored prizes.

Today, we learned that we are putting one of our paperbacks on the Summer 09 list. That means that I had to write cover copy, front matter, teaser matter, and catalog copy for the book today.

The reason this is extra-fun is because all of those things are basically blurbs about the book. Which means they all share the basic same idea—which would be, the plot of the book. And yet each one of them needs to be different.

This, on top of the three different ways I blurbed the plot for the hardcover edition.

Usually, these tasks are spread out over time. You do them over a few months.

Doing them all in one day?

I am BURNT OUT. I never want to look at this book again. Augh.

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In further news, I discovered an amazing new resource earlier this week—the CT library system. Those of you who know me know that I have a slavering devotion and love for NYPL, the wonderful New York Public Library system. But we moved to CT, and I got a library card at the CT library, and suddenly I realized—now I have a whole new library system to abuse! And then, in a fit of brilliance, I placed hold on all the titles I have been waiting and waiting and waiting—months, I tell you! for NYPL to get in stock.

And like, twelve of them have already come in for me!

I love this new shiny library system.

Okay, because it has been bugging me lately, a poll or two:

Poll #1221134 Random questionocity
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: Friends

What does the phrase "a couple" mean to you?

Poll #1221135
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: Friends

How many is "several"?

This is stolen shamefully from katallen, over here. I filled it out for her and had so much fun I decided to transport the game over here so we could play in my journal too.

The Game:
If you could recommend ten books (or series) to a friend, what would they be and why? Make a list of ten. We could all easily make a list of 100, but that wouldn't be any fun, because then you couldn't invite others to do it too.

The Rules:
1. You must list why you think friends should read them.
2. You cannot list your own books, but you can list a friend's.
3. You can list them in comments or provide the link to your page in comments if you prefer.
4. You cannot list a book that I listed or that another responder already listed.
5. There's no point in including Harry Potter, because I don't think there's anyone left that hasn't read them.

The Caveat:
As I mentioned in this post, my list of "best books ever written" changes pretty regularly. These are the books that are at the top of my list right now. No promises about an hour from now, and certainly no promises about tomorrow or next week.

( The Books! )

My father, who is aboard a plane to Israel right now, just sent me the following email from his blackberry:

Once when we had lunch you told me about a book that was one of the best that
you ever read. If you remember what I am referring to the please bring me a
copy. I will pay you back.


...Um. Doesn't he know that I have several best books I've ever read. That it changes regularly? That I have a mental, mutable list of books that qualify as "best books I've ever read"? That saying that I once told him that something was the best book I ever read doesn't really narrow it down for me at all?

If he had at least given me a time frame, at least I could look on goodreads and try to see what I was reading around then. But a subject matter at least?

I am baffled. I would gladly pick it up for him, whatever this mysterious book may be. But I literally have no idea what it was. Science fiction? Fantasy? Adult? Teen? Middle-grade?

There is nothing to narrow this down!

ETA: Ooooh. I think it might be The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. I emailed my father to see if that sounds right.

I am so good, I sometimes impress myself.

HOMG!

A third book in the Life as We Knew It/the dead & the gone set! With recurring characters from those books! And a plot instead of a series of disasters! And rebuilt-society-after-world-changing-disaster!

Why didn't any of you people tell me about this?

You all fail.

I can't wait until Spring 10.

To my dear fellow New Yorkers:

If you are like me (and if you are on my flist, I suspect you are), you like books. You probably like them a lot. If you are like me, then you might have spent your childhood addicted to the public library. You might have felt a little thrill of excitement every time you went to the library, to see what new books you could bring home today. You might have been willing, back before interlibrary loan was all internetted, to shell out 40 cents to place an order for a book you were dying to read. You might have had your world opened up in a million ways by the books your local branch of the public library could provide.

If you are like me, then your public library made all the difference in your life when you were growing up, and if you are like me, then it still does.

Right now, there is not enough funding for public libraries. If you can give back financially to your library, more power to you. But if you're poor like me, there's another easy way for you to help. My branch is having a letter-writing campaign right now. Maybe yours is too. You write a letter. You put it in an envelope. You give it to the librarian, and the library mails them all out. It's not hard. It's completely free. And it really makes a difference.

At the mayor's office, and the city council, they count these letters. These letters tell them how important Public Library is to the people of this city. Is it important to you? It's important to me.

So give back to the library. Write a letter. It doesn't even have to be complicated. In fact, there's even a form letter that I will reproduce here for you:

( Form letter, below the cut. )

( And here are the people to send it to )

So write a letter. Write two. Write ten. If your branch isn't having a letter-writing campaign, you can write them and give them to me and I'll give them in at my branch. It's so easy. And it's free.

If you're like me, you've been using your library for free (aside from a few fines) for most of your life. I think it's time to give a little back.

Hey, you guys! It's that most wonderful time again. Time for another fabulous jewelry sale by elisem!

She's having a June Shiny Clearance Sale, and lots of her gorgeous jewelry is marked down, down, down. It's all gorgeous, and worth looking at, and definitly buying. I've bought several pendants from her, and I wear them all the time. I love them like crazy. I think of them as fairy jewelry. They're like magic.

I even look at her earrings, and I don't even have pierced ears. I just like to see the pretty.

So go look! And take advantage of the sale!

The Pursuit of Happiness by Tara Altebrando

Betsy Irving is not looking forward to spending all summer working at Morrisville, a colonial village reenactment. She dreads wearing the colonial clothes, giving the tours, and hanging out with Liza Henske, the school goth. But when her mother dies, she begins to look forward to the escape that Morrisville provides--from her too-empty house, from the boyfriend who dumped her, from the friends who don't understand.

As Betsy throws herself into her summer job, she begins to learn a few things. Like, that Liza Henske is nothing at all like her reputation. And that when she's with James, the woodcarver's apprentice, she starts to feel complete again.

This book made me want to write a letter to Tara Altebrando, asking her why she let this book be published by MTV and branded as such a cheesy summer read. I almost passed it by--I would have, if I hadn't read a glowing review of it in a blog I trust. As it is, I took it out of the library three times before I actually got to reading it.

This book is good. It's really, really, good. It's ache in your heart because the writing is true good. It's a book that doesn't hold its punches and doesn't follow lines of cliche and doesn't do what you expect, and that makes it feel all the more honest.

Betsy's voice is heartbreaking--she just lost her mother, and she's trying to deal with that loss, and with the guilt of not always having liked her mother, and at the same time realizing that her mother was a person. She's trying to put her broken family back together. She's trying to hold on to her friends, and she's not so good at it, the state she's in.

This book doesn't demonize anyone. It--and Betsy--recognize that people are flawed, but they're still people, and they still have good in them, and it's fantastic. I hate it when the best friend at the start of a book is a bitch by the end. This book doesn't look at anything in two dimensions--all the characters, even the ones you don't expect to matter, are in full, real technicolor.

I highly recommend this book. Ignore the lame cheesy teen summer cover, ignore the packaging, and go straight for the text. This book is really, really good. It deserves to be a big book. I will definitly be looking for more of Tara Altebrando's work in the future--I am only sorry that this one took me so long to get to.

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The Market by J.M. Steele

Kate Winthrop is an average teenage girl. She has her two best friends, is four weeks away from graduation, and is perfectly happy with her life as it is. And then, at a party she has no business attending, she overhears someone mockingly call her "Seventy-One." Next thing she knows, she's gotten a mysterious IM with a link to the Millbank Market, a stock-market-esque website that rates the "stock" of each of the 140 girls in Millbank's graduating class. Kate is #71.

At first, Kate is crushed to discover that she's not even in the top 70. But then, she and her friends concoct a plan: they'll invest in her stock, and then give her a makeover so that her "value" shoots up--and then they'll make a killing.

It's a great idea--at first. But as the social experiment progresses, Kate and her friends get so wrapped up in it that they begin to forget the things that are really important. Will becoming a hot commodity make Kate forget all the things she really cares about?

This book gets two stars because the concept is so much fun. It's a great and silly idea, and with the right execution, this could have been a great book.

Unfortunately, the writing is terrible. The voice is cheesy and over-the-top. Kate, and all of her friends--all of the characters--are cliches. The plot is so predictable that I could cheerfully have bet my life savings on the direction it would take and not had to worry. The parts of the book which actually could have been interesting are introduced as a plot point and then completely ignored. There were a hundred ways to make this novel meaningful, interesting, powerful and entertaining all at once--and instead, JM Steele chose to make it a predictable, shallow cliche.

This book is a definite sell.

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Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083 by Andrea White

In 2083, until 8th grade, kids attend teleschool. They watch reality television that is loosely designed to teach them things—Historical Survivor, Dialing for Dollars, and more. Kids who want to continue their education—the only way to really make anything of yourself—is to attempt the Toss, a roll of the dice that determines if you will receive a government scholarship.

Polly, Robert, Grace, Andrew and Billy have lost their Tosses, and have been chosen to be the participants in Historical Survivor: Antarctica. They’ll struggle to survive Antarctica, and recreate Captain Scott’s doomed mission to reach the Pole. It’s a brutal struggle for survival, all filmed for reality television and the entertainment of the viewers. As conditions worsen, the teens need to band together to try to make it out of Antarctica alive.

A lot of the concepts in this book seem a little silly, and the characters all feel a little stilted. The Urban Trash Wars, teleschool, flavored nutrient chips—it has all the fixins of a developed futuristic society, but somehow they don’t fall solidly into place. But once you get past all the marginal silly, this becomes a gripping tale of survival. It took me a little while to get into it, but once I was halfway through, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.