Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

How excited was I when a copy of Say What You Will landed in my mailbox?  Very excited, I'd say.  It would have been extremely excited except for the cool cover art didn't make it onto the ARC.  Just the same, I'd heard the comparisons to Rainbow Rowell's books that are so very popular right now and seen the cool cover art online, and I was very excited to crack the cover on this one.  So excited, in fact, it didn't even make it to the purgatory of the middling size pile of books I need to review, I just started reading it straight away during the Bout of Books.  Bottom line?  It was good, but I came away a bit disappointed.  Cue unpopular opinions of a dissident blogger! (There are some very light spoilers in the following review, so beware.)

Amy has cerebral palsy.  She can't walk without a walker, can't speak in a way that people can understand, and struggles to feed herself without making an embarrassing mess.  Despite appearances Amy is smart, has a knack for writing, and an optimism about her life that verges on the unbelievable.  Matthew has had classes with Amy since they were kids and one day he blurts out the truth, as he sees it, that Amy has no friends and the messages she's sending about her life aren't quite true.  Amy's encounter with Matthew changes her whole perspective and she decides that in order to be ready for college, it's time for her to make friends her own age, so for her senior year, her parents hire a flock of student aides to help her at school.  Matthew's hired to help Amy, but he's dealing with a disability of his own.  As the unlikely pair becomes friends, Amy realizes that she can help Matthew, too, and they both realize that they might want to be more than just friends.

Say What You Will is a quick read with a pair of different, interesting, and lovable characters.  For the first half of the book I was enchanted by Amy and Matthew's budding friendship and their slow realization that maybe they could have something more regardless of their respective disabilities.  Each challenges and helps the other to step outside of a life defined by disability, and it was touching to see them discover that when you love somebody, they become beautiful to you despite and sometimes even because of the failings of their bodies.  

After that, a strange thing happened: Amy couldn't stop her expectations from rising.  She imagined herself transformed and beautiful, like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, with her homemade dress and mysterious lace boots.  She pictured her hair in an upsweep of loose curls.  In the fantasy, her prom face looked like the one she only wore asleep, loose and relaxed.  She imagined a photographer asking her to smile and, for the first time in her life, being able to do it.  

I felt like I saw where McGovern was headed with her story and liked it, but then came the prom and the whole thing just started coming off the rails for me.  What started out as a pleasing slow steady climb of a story quickly took a sudden turn down a roller coaster hill.  After a build-up, prom is come and gone within only a chapter bringing with it all kinds of plot points that could have been dug into, but were instead quickly glossed over.  Characters started acting, well, out of a character, and what should have been a major plot event zipped by quickly, without the attention it seemed the warrant. 

And then, wow.  Then there's a plot twist that really came out of left field, and left me feeling pretty disappointed.  It's as if, instead of letting the book follow the good and natural progression that she'd started, the author decided that something major had to happen to keep readers turning pages, and that something turned a sweet romance on its head and sent it tumbling into after-school special territory. I wanted to love this book, and the beginning showed all the potential I'd hoped for, but the unnecessary theatrics caused me to disengage from the characters just enough that by the time the payoff came that I'd been waiting for through the whole book, there was no way it could deliver. 

(Thanks to HarperTeen for sending me a copy for review.)

Top Ten Books I've Read So Far This Year

This week's Top Ten Tuesday at The Broke and the Bookish asks us to share the top ten books we've read this year.  I would say that overall, my reading thus far this year has tended toward the lackluster, but looking back, there have definitely been a few highlights.  Here they are!  

1. Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen - This book has a dark premise but a great child narrator that balances things out.

2. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - Yep, I finally read Ender's Game this year.  I actually liked it more until I went to book group and everybody reasonably pointed out that Ender maybe shouldn't have been as sympathetic a character as he was.

3. Falling Under by Danielle Younge-Ullman - This is a book that I'd barely heard of until I was reading it.  It's about an artist dealing with lots of issues in her past and a host of anxieties in her present while she is in search of the happiness she's afraid to find.  The dialogue really pops, the main character is very sympathetic, and flashbacks to her childhood are written in the second person which is an interesting device that really works. 
 
4. The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson - Interconnected short stories about one mid-western family very successfully convey a sense of the past few decades of the American experience.  I liked this much, much more than I expected.

5. Beauty by Frederick Dillen - A girl from a blue collar background grows up to be in the business of burying failing companies for her bastard corporate employers.  When the rug is pulled out from under her, she sets her sights on resurrecting a company instead.  Corporate jargon made the beginning kind of a slog.  A winning main character and a small town with spunk turned it around.

6. One Hundred and Four Horses by Mandy Retzlaff - I loved this memoir of a couple saving the abandoned horses of Zimbabwe during Robert Mugabe's plundering of the nation.  It's full of heart and feels like hearing the very personal story of an old friend.

7. Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink - This non-fiction about the horrible situation at Memorial Medical Center in the wake of Hurricane Katrina definitely lived up to all the hype.  Fink's re-telling of the events during and following the hurricane kept me on the edge of my seat, often with my mouth dropped open in horror.  It's a big book, but the pages fly by, and Fink does an admirable job of conveying both sides of the story, so that the complexity and scale of the failures that occurred there could never quite be blamed on any one person or entity, nor is anybody absolved of all guilt.

8. The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis - I don't go in for the whole graphic novel thing very often, and I'm still not sure how much of a children's book this is, but, the bottom line is that I loved it.  Sis's story and his drawings do a remarkable job of depicting the resilience of the human spirit, even under a totalitarian regime determined to squelch it.  Maybe I should go in for this graphic novel/children's book/whatever this is thing a little more often!

9. The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood - It's not the psychological thriller I was expecting, however it is an excellent character study and thoughtful consideration of what it is that constitutes "wickedness."

10. Bright and Distant Shores by Dominic Smith - Okay, I'm totally cheating because I'm still reading this now.  Smith alternates between late 19th century Chicago and a trading ship in the South Seas.  The book is full of colorful characters, perfectly set scenes in all manner of exotic places not to mention Chicago itself, and Smith's beautiful writing.  I'm not sure where it's headed, but I'm liking the journey.

What's the best book you've read so far this year?

Armchair BEA: YA and I

YA is Armchair BEA's prompt of the day.

I almost missed YA.  Seriously, when I was in high school the first couple Harry Potter books were taking the world by storm, but I was beyond this young witches and wizards stuff by then.  I had started to trod the hallowed halls of high school (Ha!), and with those days came carte blanche to finally read whatever I wanted.  I considered myself a Reader with a capital "R," and I was ready to eschew all this "stupid kid stuff" to spend my long, hot summer days with frightfests by Stephen King and Dean Koontz.  Digging into John Grisham's legal thrillers and the freshly minted Oprah's Book Club titles was way more enticing to me than reading about high school horrors and romances among kids that reminded me of the annoying teenagers I walked the halls with every day.  I couldn't wait to be out of high school, and I certainly didn't want to spend my free time reading about it.

Luckily, my life and times on the interwebz wouldn't let me put this whole wealth of YA in the rearview.  Rather, day by day friendly Bookcrossers and then bloggers convinced me of the merit of this body of work I was so eager to leave behind.  By the time I was in college, I was already backing away from Dean Koontz's laughable metaphors (sorry Dean, but I think even you make fun of your metaphors now) and James Patterson's two page chapters (and I thought YA might talk down to me??) in favor of the very Harry Potter books I was "too good for" in high school.  I loved them so much that they may have, on occasion, actually made me late for work at my summer job slinging dishes in a nursing home dietary department (no great loss there).

Since then, I've lost myself in numerous YA books of the highest quality like...

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Did I even need to say it?)
Sparrow Road by Sheila O'Connor
Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Open Wounds by Joseph Lunievicz
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

....and so very many more excellent reads. 

Truly, truly I owe Bookcrossers and bloggers a great debt of gratitude for bringing me back to what has become one of my favorite categories of books.  A category that can hardly be called a genre because it seems to cover all genres.  Now I read YA when I'm looking for a break from the occasional slog of interpreting literary/contemporary fiction because I know I can count on YA for solid reads that dabble in any of a few genres with relate-able characters that won't ask me to leave my brain at the cover to enjoy them.  Great YA authors today are writing books that ask important questions that will give young adults (and the crusty old grown-ups who read their books) food for thought all delivered with quick pacing and fantastic characters that render those books completely unputdownable. 

My bookshelves and my Kindle are both loaded down with YA, and I couldn't be happier to be young again, if only in the books that I read.  How about you?

Armchair BEA: Introductions

Good morning, all!  I thought a little bit about the week that starts today and reconsidered my verdict that I'd be too busy to participate in Armchair BEA.  I probably won't have a post for every day or anything, but I'm excited to use the time that I do have to meet some new bloggers and reconnect with some old ones, especially since I've been so lax in my blogging for quite a while up until recently.  I'd sure like to make a go of this (more serious) blogging thing again, but it gets to be awful boring if you're not hanging out with the best part of book blogging - book bloggers.  Anyway, today is for introductions, so without further ado...

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? Where in the world are you blogging from?

Hi, I'm Megan, and I've been blogging here at Leafing Through Life for almost seven years now.  I got into blogging because, in the fall of 2007, I'd just returned home to Pennsylvania from Boston where the best-paying steady job I could get was at a Borders bookstore (RIP).  When I got back, I had no job, and I missed spending my days in the company of books and bookish people.  I wondered if I could review every book I read just for kicks, and I saw a handful (back in the very olden days of book blogging - LOL!) of bloggers were doing just that.  So, here I still am, except now I have a decent job in healthcare that monopolizes more of my time than I'd like, but I'm still blogging it out here in Bloomsburg, PA.

2. Describe your blog in just one sentence. Then, list your social details -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. -- so we can connect more online. 

Leafing Though Life is a collection of the honest book reviews and laughable life-related ramblings of a busy thirty-something who buys many more books than she reads.

Now, for shameless social media self-promotion, here's my...

Twitter
Goodreads
LibraryThing
Instagram

I'm always look for new friends.  LT is the more comprehensive listing of my library.  I'm a late-comer to Goodreads, but I'm trying to be more social.  And I just luff Instagram, even though I forget and neglect it too often.

4. What was your favorite book read last year? What’s your favorite book so far this year?

This is the hardest question, I read so many great books last year.  In adult fiction?  Brewster by Mark Slouka or Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden.  In YA?  I finally read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green last year and loved them as much as the hype would suggest.  This year? Honors go to Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen. 

8. Share your favorite book or reading related quote.

Well, I really love the one that's in my blog header:

"She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in."

After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell

Have you ever felt that way?

9. If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 books would you bring? Why? What 3 non-book items would you bring? Why? 

Books: 

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, because then I'd finally have to buckle down and read it, right? 
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, because I've been meaning to read it for sooo long.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen, because I'm not a re-reader, but I'd like to revisit this one.

On the practical side:

Food and water, for obvious reasons.  And a gigantic vat of sunblock to protect my pale Irish skin from that big desert island sun.



(P.S. Yes, I'm a "word person," but really, I can count.  I was supposed to pick 5 out of 10 questions, and I used ArmchairBEA's numbers, of course!)

Loose Leafing: The Week That Sucked and Other Low Grade Horrors

Fair warning, this isn't going to be one of those warm, fuzzy gratitude posts.  You may have guessed this from the title.  Now, it's not a eulogy for a pet or a loved one or even my car, happily.  I mean, for sure, this week sucked, but it's sucking in a "you'll laugh about this later after you get a few good nights sleep and the extensive dental work you've been avoiding for years" kind of way.  It's sucking in such a way that may even be able to get you to laugh at me now despite my more less or less continuing low grade wretchedness.  So, here's the story of the week that was.  I mean, the week that sucked.  

 You look friendly enough, but I'm onto your game, Mr. Blood Drop

I let you drain my lifeblood, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt?   Okay, so.  I got this new job, and it so happens that one of my new co-workers is a somewhat crazed lunatic about getting people to donate their blood.  Working in a hospital, opportunities to be abducted by said co-worker and coerced into forfeiting my more valuable bodily fluids are numerous and unavoidable.  It seemed like a worthy, if vaguely terrifying thing to do, so I failed to "just say no" to this particular peer pressure.  Also, I'm thirty years old and have no idea what my blood type is, so what sane person wouldn't give up a pint of it to find out that little tidbit of information?  (I'm A+ if you were wondering.  Put that under your hat in case you might want to give me a kidney some day or something.  I'm kidding.  Or am I?) 

Anyhow, as was my great fear, I suck at giving blood.  All these fine folks dashing in on their lunch break, casting off a pint of blood, downing a cookie, and then off on their merry way just as right as rain?  I am not like those people.  I'm the sad sack that makes a scene by almost getting sick and almost passing out.  Sure everybody was really nice and nobody let me bonk my head on a sharp object and my co-worker, the closet "Donate life!" recruiter girl, kept me company for the overlong time I was there basking in my lightheadedness and vague sense of humiliation, but the experience was none too pleasant.  I hope those three people that can apparently benefit from my blood are enjoying it, because I'm kind of missing it, and the free t-shirt, comfy and oversized as it may be, is no pint of blood.

So, that Tuesday night I retired to my bed exhausted from the work of regenerating my lost pint of blood when along came my next adventure...

Close encounters of the bat kind.  Because who, when busy regenerating their lost vital bodily fluids, doesn't love to wake up at 2:30 AM to find a bat (!!) flying around their bedroom?  Okay, I'm generally not among the super easily frightened, but if the prospect of having a bat bodily collide with you while it's swooping unpredictably around your bedroom in the middle of the night doesn't drive you to scream and scramble into the bathroom where you slam the door and exhale as if you've just escaped being tortured by one of the sicker serial killers to grace Criminal Minds, what will?  (Actually escaping a sick serial killer, you say?  Oh pshaw).  So, here it is 2:30 in the morning...3:30 in the morning...bat has disappeared...but to where?  Three hours of sleep, combing every inch of my bedroom in search of the bat with the amount of tension usually reserved for turning the crank on one of those infernal jack-in-the-boxes, and no bat to be found = not a great way to recover from being a sucky blood donor.

Next night, repeat, only at 1:30 AM, and this time I figure I've discovered batty's entrance and exit point.  I jam the hole temporarily with old socks.  I take to Twitter at 2 AM to congratulate myself on a battle won and use up my stock of creative hash tags.  I am the winner!

 Don't look so smug, Twitter chump.

Next night.  Nope, I'm a big loser.  Discover the bat fluttering around my window before going to bed.  Feel bad about possibly killing him when he's probably really great at eating stupid bugs.  Pin him between inside window and outside screen, and talk my dad into pulling the screen up an inch so the bat can escape and do his batty thing in nature.  He does.  I find a creative use for rolls of pennies, which are decidedly more sturdy than old socks.  I may have won the bat battle, but I've lost the bat war.  Everything that moves startles me.  Awesome.

And in the meantime...

Oh HAAAIIILL no!   That's right, big freak hail storm decimates the expansive parking lots of my workplace.  This is even scarier when your employer ran out of real office space a few departments ago and you're gawking out the window of your office trailer during a tornado warning.  Golf ball to baseball sized hail fell from the sky for a frighteningly long time making my car look like this...

 When hailstones attack....

Thankfully, it didn't look like this (which a lot of people's did):

 ...they can be really big meanies.

But that doesn't mean I'll be spending any less time on the phone dealing with insurance claims.

In the mean meantime.   I have too many teeth.  And it's starting to become really, very unpleasant. The writing on the wall says, "Megan, you are about to become likethis with your dentist," and that is a prospect that frightens me (and my bank account) to no end. 

All that, and I just last evening finally committed the "meh" book I was reading to the DNF pile, and discovered (much too late) an e-mail about a giveaway win in my spam folder, so even books have not been able to suitably lift my spirits this week.

Anyhow, that's my week from hell.  How was your week?