- I went to get my oil changed on Tuesday before work. I took 9 packaged books along to mail at the post office between the oil and the working. However, for the first time in months, I forgot to put a book in my bag for me to read. I felt bereft all day. And what is it that people who don't read do on their lunch breaks? Just eat?!? Underachievers!
- I went to the grocery store after church on Sunday. I got a big salad from their salad bar....and a cake. The checkout lady laughed at me.
- I went to the drug store yesterday morning to buy, ahem, some feminine hygiene products. Mysteriously, a Nestle Crunch bar appeared on the counter next to them. That checkout lady laughed at me too and insisted that the latter was just as or more important than the former. She exhorted me to eat it slowly. Then I laughed at her.
- A guy from my town is a finalist in the cartoon caption contest on the last page of the New Yorker this week. Why do I feel like a traitor because I like the caption the guy from Bend, Oregon sent better?
- I love all the excitement surrounding the release of book prize long lists, yet, I rarely actually read the books. Here's lookin' at you, Booker Prize longlist. I would probably enjoy reading all of your titles, but I won't, because I just don't.
- Tomorrow I'll be posting my first book review of a book aimed at an adult audience since...June 14th! How did that happen?
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
"Waiting On" Wednesday: Years of Red Dust
"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Years of Red Dust by Qiu Xiaolong
St. Martin's, September 28
Synopsis:
Published originally in the pages ofLe Monde, this collection of linked short stories by Qiu Xiaolong has already been a major bestseller in France (Cite de la Poussiere Rouge) and Germany (Das Tor zur Roten Gasse), where it and the author was the subject of a major television documentary. The stories in Years of Red Dust trace the changes in modern China over fifty years—from the early days of the Communist revolution in 1949 to the modernization movement of the late nineties—all from the perspective of one small street in Shanghai, Red Dust Lane. From the early optimism at the end of the Chinese Civil War, through the brutality and upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, to the death of Mao, the pro-democracy movement and the riots in Tiananmen Square—history, on both an epic and personal scale, unfolds through the bulletins posted and the lives lived in this one lane, this one corner of Shanghai.
What are you "waiting on" this Wednesday?
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Intertwined by Gena Showalter
It seems like I'm having a bit of a paranormal YA summer. I bet this thrills all of you who thought they had me pegged as a different sort of reader than I turned out to be. As usual, I continue to shoot myself in the foot when it comes to "branding" my blog and having a nice concise answer to deliver when people ask me what kind of books I blog about.
I'll be honest. I never thought that paranormal YA would be my guilty pleasure. I love a vampire or a werewolf or a zombie as much as the next girl, but I never thought I would be that person who had read a book or two of half a dozen different series featuring such things, never thought it would be a genre that would capture me for any length of time. As it turns out, though, during the languorous, roasting hot days of this summer, it seems like the untaxing entertainment that YA books about vampires and werewolves and zombies (oh my!) have to offer is just what the doctor ordered. Perfect, pageturning little intermissions between the rest of everything my collapsing bookshelves have to offer.
Why all the preaching about paranormal, you ask? I'm sure you've already guessed. I'm about to review yet another paranormal YA title, and I wanted to prepare you and assure you that this is (probably? maybe?) only a phase, and I will move on to something else in due course. What that something else is, I can't guarantee. Perhaps when I begin reviewing carpentry manuals or anatomy textbooks or something, you will long for these days of werewolves, immortals, and disembodied souls. Of course, I'm just kidding about the manuals and textbooks....or am I? ;-)
Intertwined
Gena Showalter
Harlequin Teen
Intertwined is the first in a new series by Gena Showalter featuring Aden Stone, a hot sixteen-year-old guy who would be totally normal but for the four disembodied souls taking up space inside his head. Since his parents abandoned him as a small child, Aden has been bounced from mental institutions to foster homes to prisons and back again. Finally, he's landed at D and M Ranch, a home for troubled teenagers run by a former football player. Unfortunately, Aden's troubles have just begun. You see, the souls give Aden powers - powers to raise the dead, see the future, travel through time, and possess the body of another; and those powers are attracting creatures that Aden never believed existed. A few of them are on his side, but the others' motives could be far more sinister.
Aden knows the only way to stop what's going to happen is to find the four souls bodies of their own, and he may have just met the girl who could help him do just that, a girl named Mary Ann who inexplicably neutralizes the souls. Before he knows it, Aden, a guy who has never had so much as one friend is friends with Mary Ann, in love with a vampire princess, and at odds with a werewolf. All this, and he has to convince the owner of the D and M that he's changed his ways and is living a normal, upstanding life or chance being sent away yet again.
I'm so torn about Intertwined. Honestly, it was a bit over the top for me. There's more paranormal stuff in this book than you can shake a stick at. It fairly reeks of its Harlequin brethren which I abandoned shortly before I graduated from high school. Its male characters are all strikingly beautiful. Its female characters, even the would-be strong ones, seem to be always in need of protection, or, at least, so all the male characters seem to believe. It's all just a bit too contrived with problems a bit too easily solved by unlikley powers seemingly invented on the fly. I found myself more than occasionally irritated, even patronized by its wanderings into the ridiculous.
Ah, but wait. I also devoured the story with alarming speed. It's well-paced and packed with action and mystery. Its characters, including all of the souls Aden's mind plays host to, are a sympathetic bunch, even the ones who have slightly more evil leanings. I had an easier time buying one romance than the other, but both were played out in interesting and often unexpected ways. Showalter tells an absorbing story even if it does require a hefty dose of suspension of disbelief. All in all, Intertwined is a book that I have a hard time admitting that I liked, but I did. I'm sure I'll be eager to have the next installment, Unraveled, when it drops on August 31st, because, well, I have to know what happens to Aden and his souls, don't I?
(For the curious, I won this book from Robin at My Two Blessings in her BBAW contest last year. Thanks again, Robin!)
I'll be honest. I never thought that paranormal YA would be my guilty pleasure. I love a vampire or a werewolf or a zombie as much as the next girl, but I never thought I would be that person who had read a book or two of half a dozen different series featuring such things, never thought it would be a genre that would capture me for any length of time. As it turns out, though, during the languorous, roasting hot days of this summer, it seems like the untaxing entertainment that YA books about vampires and werewolves and zombies (oh my!) have to offer is just what the doctor ordered. Perfect, pageturning little intermissions between the rest of everything my collapsing bookshelves have to offer.
Why all the preaching about paranormal, you ask? I'm sure you've already guessed. I'm about to review yet another paranormal YA title, and I wanted to prepare you and assure you that this is (probably? maybe?) only a phase, and I will move on to something else in due course. What that something else is, I can't guarantee. Perhaps when I begin reviewing carpentry manuals or anatomy textbooks or something, you will long for these days of werewolves, immortals, and disembodied souls. Of course, I'm just kidding about the manuals and textbooks....or am I? ;-)
Intertwined Gena Showalter
Harlequin Teen
Intertwined is the first in a new series by Gena Showalter featuring Aden Stone, a hot sixteen-year-old guy who would be totally normal but for the four disembodied souls taking up space inside his head. Since his parents abandoned him as a small child, Aden has been bounced from mental institutions to foster homes to prisons and back again. Finally, he's landed at D and M Ranch, a home for troubled teenagers run by a former football player. Unfortunately, Aden's troubles have just begun. You see, the souls give Aden powers - powers to raise the dead, see the future, travel through time, and possess the body of another; and those powers are attracting creatures that Aden never believed existed. A few of them are on his side, but the others' motives could be far more sinister.
Aden knows the only way to stop what's going to happen is to find the four souls bodies of their own, and he may have just met the girl who could help him do just that, a girl named Mary Ann who inexplicably neutralizes the souls. Before he knows it, Aden, a guy who has never had so much as one friend is friends with Mary Ann, in love with a vampire princess, and at odds with a werewolf. All this, and he has to convince the owner of the D and M that he's changed his ways and is living a normal, upstanding life or chance being sent away yet again.
I'm so torn about Intertwined. Honestly, it was a bit over the top for me. There's more paranormal stuff in this book than you can shake a stick at. It fairly reeks of its Harlequin brethren which I abandoned shortly before I graduated from high school. Its male characters are all strikingly beautiful. Its female characters, even the would-be strong ones, seem to be always in need of protection, or, at least, so all the male characters seem to believe. It's all just a bit too contrived with problems a bit too easily solved by unlikley powers seemingly invented on the fly. I found myself more than occasionally irritated, even patronized by its wanderings into the ridiculous.
Ah, but wait. I also devoured the story with alarming speed. It's well-paced and packed with action and mystery. Its characters, including all of the souls Aden's mind plays host to, are a sympathetic bunch, even the ones who have slightly more evil leanings. I had an easier time buying one romance than the other, but both were played out in interesting and often unexpected ways. Showalter tells an absorbing story even if it does require a hefty dose of suspension of disbelief. All in all, Intertwined is a book that I have a hard time admitting that I liked, but I did. I'm sure I'll be eager to have the next installment, Unraveled, when it drops on August 31st, because, well, I have to know what happens to Aden and his souls, don't I?
(For the curious, I won this book from Robin at My Two Blessings in her BBAW contest last year. Thanks again, Robin!)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
"Waiting On" Wednesday: Take Me Home
"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Take Me Home by Brian Leung
Harper, October 5
Synopsis:
Like many classic stories, Take Me Home begins with a journey home: Adele "Addie" Maine returns to Dire, a Wyoming coal mining town, 40 years after the deadly events that nearly took her life and drove her away without a word to her husband.
Years past: Headed West to stay with her brother Tommy, a young and feisty Addie arrives in Wyoming having been convinced along the way that the Chinese are half-man half-beast, devious creatures to be wary of. When Tommy falters at homesteading, the siblings look to the coal mines and Addie comes into close contact with one man in particular, Wing Lee. The bond between the two is a mere spark at first, hampered by the reality for both that a friendship would be impossible, forbidden, even in a territory where almost everyone is an immigrant. Together, Addie and Wing have a secret, and in protecting Wing's life, and fighting for what's right, Addie can’t find the answers to life’s most important questions. It's only in returning to Dire to bid farewell to a decades-ago friend, that Addie confronts the man she's certain tried to take her life, and at last learns the surprises and losses that await at the end of a difficult journey.
Take Me Home is a searing, redemptive novel that explores justice in a time of violence and the sweeping landscape between friendship and love.
What are you "waiting on" this Wednesday?
P.S. I've still got some books to give away. Take a look!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The Enemy by Charlie Higson
Do you ever find yourself reading books that are surprisingly similar in one way or another that you never intended to? I realized today that I've not read a book that wasn't set in England for something like a month and half now. All my reading has been more or less British for a month and a half, and the connection only just now dawned on me. I wouldn't say that the books are terribly similar but for their setting, but I like to mix it up quite a bit, and it always surprises me when I've fallen into an unrealized pattern. The Enemy was the book that started the trend. It's the first and so far, only, book I've read of the BEA plunder, though I've just started another book that I could've gotten at BEA but got from a different source.
The Enemy is a young adult title set in a London decimated by disease that turns anyone over the age of 16 into a rotting zombie, unable to speak, and intent only on survival by devouring the healthy children who have managed to survive in a world where grown-ups really are the enemy. The story centers on two groups of kids who have taken refuge in two supermarkets, one in a poorer area and one in a more well off area, whose numbers are dwindling daily. When the two groups who are rapidly running out of food and supplies and are being daily threatened by encroaching grown-ups meet a strange new kid, they're forced to choose whether to unite their forces and have to decide whether to take a big risk for a chance at a better, safer life.
I found myself thinking repeatedly while I was reading The Enemy that it is a book that would be great for boys. It's got blood and guts and assorted unpleasantness. More importantly, though, it's got the pace of an action movie. Its crowd of characters is always fighting against zombie grown-ups and amongst themselves, and there are countless "action movie" moments where just when you think the hero is safe, the next threat is already being revealed. This emphasis on action and moving the plot forward can make the story seem a bit shallow at times. That said, though, given the action driven plot and the sheer number of characters in The Enemy, Higson does an admirable job of fleshing out an impressive array of main characters, giving us ways to understand who they were before and how they became what they are after the disease struck and civilization crumbled.
Even though I would hardly call myself the ideal audience for The Enemy, I really enjoyed it. It's definitely a fast-moving action-packed romp of a post-apocalypse story that even, for a few fleeting moments, contemplates the possibility of the survival of goodness, loyalty, and doing what's right even when the world has gone horribly wrong.
Read other reviews at...
My Favourite Books
Carrie's YA Bookshelf
Fluttering Butterflies
A Chair, a Fireplace, & a Tea Cozy
P.S. I've still got some books to give away. Check it out!
The Enemy is a young adult title set in a London decimated by disease that turns anyone over the age of 16 into a rotting zombie, unable to speak, and intent only on survival by devouring the healthy children who have managed to survive in a world where grown-ups really are the enemy. The story centers on two groups of kids who have taken refuge in two supermarkets, one in a poorer area and one in a more well off area, whose numbers are dwindling daily. When the two groups who are rapidly running out of food and supplies and are being daily threatened by encroaching grown-ups meet a strange new kid, they're forced to choose whether to unite their forces and have to decide whether to take a big risk for a chance at a better, safer life. I found myself thinking repeatedly while I was reading The Enemy that it is a book that would be great for boys. It's got blood and guts and assorted unpleasantness. More importantly, though, it's got the pace of an action movie. Its crowd of characters is always fighting against zombie grown-ups and amongst themselves, and there are countless "action movie" moments where just when you think the hero is safe, the next threat is already being revealed. This emphasis on action and moving the plot forward can make the story seem a bit shallow at times. That said, though, given the action driven plot and the sheer number of characters in The Enemy, Higson does an admirable job of fleshing out an impressive array of main characters, giving us ways to understand who they were before and how they became what they are after the disease struck and civilization crumbled.
Even though I would hardly call myself the ideal audience for The Enemy, I really enjoyed it. It's definitely a fast-moving action-packed romp of a post-apocalypse story that even, for a few fleeting moments, contemplates the possibility of the survival of goodness, loyalty, and doing what's right even when the world has gone horribly wrong.
Read other reviews at...
My Favourite Books
Carrie's YA Bookshelf
Fluttering Butterflies
A Chair, a Fireplace, & a Tea Cozy
P.S. I've still got some books to give away. Check it out!
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