I read a review of Wicked Lovely on the Bookshelves of Doom blog. This is the part of her review that made me know I would really like this book:The review did not lead to disappointment. I cared so much about Aislinn and Seth and could not stop reading (and worrying) to know what would happen to them. I cannot describe Seth better than Bookshelves of Doom did. I wholeheartedly agree with her! I am so excited to read the next two in this series."Wicked Lovely beat the pants off Twilight*. I don't think that all Twilight fans will necessarily agree with that -- Wicked Lovely is much darker and it's very gritty. There are no sparkly vampires here. (Keenan, as the Summer King, sometimes does glow, but even that is kind of scary.) I personally liked it a bazillion times more.
Aislinn is tough and determined and smart and yes, scared, but she's also capable. She's able to make decisions. She's protective of her friends. She's not a waffler. She doesn't expect other people to protect her. She's all of the things that Bella is not.
Her best friend, Seth, is... I described him to a patron yesterday by flapping my hands around a lot and saying, "He made my stomach all squishy!" So, yeah. He's a dreamboat. A pierced, black-nail-polish-wearing, tea-drinking dreamboat. But, unlike stupid Edward, he doesn't treat Aislinn like a child. He's protective without being overbearing, and he doesn't try to make her decisions for her. AND HE LIVES IN A TRAIN. How hot is that**?"
*And I loved Twilight. Not the later installments, but the first one.
**I CANNOT believe I just typed that sentence. How embarrassing. Well, I'm leaving it in. And I'm not talking about sleeping on a pile of straw in the corner of a train car, either. He owns it, and it's been converted into a real, livable place -- with electricity and everything. Sah-woon.
One of my favorite lines in this book was describing Frankie's transformation from "a homely child into a loaded potato" so I thought this was pretty funny to come across on E. Lockhart's blog:"About a year ago, at the NCTE conference 2006, a bunch of YA authors including Coe Booth, Julie Ann Peters, David Levithan, Jordan Sonnenblick, Gail Giles and I don't even know who all else -- we had lunch at a very big table. And on the menu was a loaded potato.
Actually, it was loaded potato SOUP.
What is a loaded potato? we wondered.We were in the south. But we were not southerners.
We learned that a loaded potato is a baked potato with lots of cheese, bacon, sour cream etc. on it, and we began to think of all the other MEANINGS the phrase "loaded potato" might have. And we pledged to all put the word "loaded potato" into our next books.
I don't know if any of them did it -- but I did. And my loaded potato book is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which comes out in March. If any of you spot loaded potatoes as this coming season's books hit the stands, email me so I can tell the world!"
Cassandra Clare has completely tapped into the "Stephenie Meyeresque-can't-exactly-identify-what-it-is-but-it's-hypnotic" quality of writing. I know as I am reading it that it is silly but I can't stop reading. The books are really long but you can finish them in a few hours. You feel a compulsion to keep reading. And then as soon as you finish one to immediately go to the store and buy the next one. When I purchased City of Ashes this weekend I told myself there was no way I would buy the last book in the series because it was just released and is only available in hardback and that it would just be wrong to pay hardback prices for this series. But now I'm done and I just want to keep reading. So I know what I'll be shopping for tomorrow morning. At least it's Spring Break and I can read without feeling guilty.
I feel pretty neutral about this one. If it had been much longer I don't think I would have kept reading. Part of that it is that i just don't relate much to edgy, punk rock, foul mouthed teens.... but I did enjoy the following:"Hi. I'm Thom. With an h"
I tell him, "I'm Gnorah. With a g. The g is silent. Like gnome."
"Really?" Thom says. (p.35)
If Caroline were here, we could dissect Nick via My So-Called Life script/Jordan Catalano moments.
Rayanne:
I think part of him is partly interested in you. Definitely. I mean, he's got
other things on his mind.
Angela:
But that's the part that's so unfair. I have nothing else on my mind. How come
I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in microscopic detail, and
he gets to be the one with other things on his mind.
Rickie:
That is deep (p.149-150)
E. Lockhart is officially my favorite YA author. I loved reading this next Ruby Oliver book and can't wait to read the next two books in the series (I don't think they're out yet). Ruby continues to entertain..."I like to swim," I said. "And read. And watch movies. But can you imagine a catalog description for that? 'Exploring the Shallow Life: Students will enjoy a double feature of Love Actually and Bridget Jone's Diary, wallowing in the hotness of Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, followed by thrift-store shopping, intensive reading of mystery novels, and a dip in the pool. Evenings will be spent consuming Popsicles and experimenting with cosmetics.'" (p.72)
"Jackson was there in my mind, all the time. Like a tumor." (p.81)
"If this were a movie of my life, I would go on for a couple of weeks in a state of dejection,"
Since I loved E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks so much I wanted to give some of her other books a try. The Boyfriend List didn't disappoint. I have a hard time imagining enjoying one of her books more than Frankie but this was a very well written, interesting, believable story. One thing I really like about the narrator, Ruby Oliver, is that she sounds like a smart teenage girl not like a smart 25 year old or even a smart 40 year old which you sometimes run into in young adult titles."Kim has this quality. It's a great quality- until it's turned against you. She's quiet, she doesn't rock the boat. But if you really make her mad, she goes nuts. It's like she spends all this time being a good person, holding up ideals, getting good grades and being nice- and then when someone else fails to live up to her standards, she goes on a rampage." (p.25)
I want to be in Paris! Over the past 15 years (how is it possible that I am this old?) I have schemed various plans to get there, all of which have resulted in nothing. 15 years ago I was a 6th grader in Madame Costa's Beginning French course happily memorizing verbs and sure that I would be landing at Charles de Gaulle some upcoming summer or at the very latest on a study abroad program during college. When that didn't happen I planned to just go on a vacation like normal adults with jobs do... but it always seemed like so much money to spend when I might be quitting my job in aggravation, going to grad school, getting a pink slip, or running away to join the circus to escape an army of small germy children....
p. 2
"To be fair, E. Lockhart does have some interesting things to say about the empowerment of young girls. (Or at least the empowerment of young girls operating inside the waspy insularity of savagely exclusive East Coast prep academies.) She has undeniably sharp insights into boarding school psychology, and renders the shrill, all-consuming concerns of a kid grappling with social status in bright, witty sentences."
"But I’m going to say that I enjoyed the hell out of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. (Is it inappropriate to enjoy the hell out of a YA book?) I’m going to give it to my own kids when they’re older. I’m going to buy it for my nieces and nephews. It’s a terrific novel, and it’s actually kind of about something—self-respect and identity and gender and empowerment—that’s probably as important to teenagers as whatever Shadow Country is about is supposed to be to me."
"I think E. Lockhart deserves more credit for the depth of ideas in Disreputable History than Doerr gives her. Yes, we are in the fairly rarefied territory of the elite prep school, but the exploration of identity and self, particularly as it’s developed in young women struck me as nuanced and plenty deep.
I laughed many times. I eagerly turned the pages toward the end. Plus, any book that name-checks Foucault and has a running metaphor on the Panopticon isn’t spending all its time in the shallow end."
I have a long standing affection for Barbara Trapido's first novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack. It is endlessly quotable, full of funny moments & literary allusions, and several characters get to have a happy ending which I appreciate. I saw this and thought I would have similar feelings for The Travelling Horn Player... I was so wrong.
I have sunk to a new low in book recommendations. I saw multiple 1 star reviews for this on amazon referring to it as a cheap Twilight knockoff substituting evil pixies for the vampires and my first thought was that I needed to get my hands on a copy immediately."There is something about libraries, old libraries, that makes them seem almost sacred. There's a smell of paper and must and binding stuff. It's like all the books are fighting against decay, against turning into dust, and at the same time fighting for attention." pg.93
John Derbyshire, "February Fooled the Forsythia""I found myself in a new and very strange imaginative space, like none I had ever visited before, and filled with such wonders and delights that if I experienced any disappointment at not having been titillated, that disappointment was swamped by sheer esthetic pleasure, so much so that I retained no memory of it."
"But there are other ways in which Lolita is, to annex Nabokov's word, "telescopic." Looking back on it, he cited a critic who "suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel," and continued, "The substitution 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct." That's profoundly true, and constitutes the most strenuous test of the romantic idea that worshipful time will forgive all those who love, and who live by, language."
"Its real genius is too easily missed. It lies in what Nabokov called the "nerves of the novel," the "secret points, the subliminal coordinates by means of which the book is plotted." In these, Nabokov has hinted at the life that exceeds the perimeter of Humbert's encompassing obsession—at the inner lives of those others whom he so casually dismisses or destroys. It cost Nabokov, by his own admission, "a month of work" to write one sentence in which Humbert gets his hair cut by a barber who has never stopped mourning his dead son—a fact that scarcely dents Humbert's exquisite consciousness. And one last detail, hidden by Nabokov in the book's sham preface: Mrs. Richard F. Schiller, previously Miss Dolores Haze, aka Lolita, died on Christmas day 1952, giving birth to a stillborn baby girl."
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
How incredibly creepy but what an amazing opening for a novel. If you could take away the fact that you know what Lolita is about before you start reading and imagine Lolita as an adult; perhaps one half of a pair of doomed lovers it would be much easier to just admire the impossible beauty of this language. In fact by the time I came to the end of Lolita I had to admit something I never thought I would: that even though it’s a disgustingly themed book it is most definitely art and beautiful art at that. So Vladimir Nabokov, I guess you are what everyone says you are: an actual artist. Imagine that.
“There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction and… Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”
-Nabokov in the afterward to Lolita
Even though I’m classifying Lisa McMann’s books as Stephenie Meyer knockoffs and putting them on the “Not My Finest Moment” list, obviously I kept reading. After finishing Wake I checked to see if the library had Fade. No luck. No interlibrary loan option either. So I went out and bought my very own copy (I was in my late night Barnes and Noble “its ok to buy more books” mindset even though it was only 4:00pm). I can’t be eloquent about these books. I liked this one but not as much as Wake (the Stephenie Meyer comparisons continue: Twilight is so much better than everything that followed it but I still kept reading). Fade had darker themes than Wake but nothing that I hadn’t already seen in a Lifetime television event. Now the only problem is that the 3rd book, Gone, doesn’t come out until Spring 2010…..
It’s hard to read Wake without thinking about Stephenie Meyer. My apologies to Lisa McMann but it really seemed like this story should have been encased in a black shiny cover and be about the size of a phone book. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I was pleasantly surprised by this story and was glad to have found it (I can’t remember where I heard about this one). It’s a quick, easy, suspenseful read written completely in Stephenie Meyer-esque prose. And during report card/pink slip season that’s the kind of book I’m looking for at the end of the day.
Another book mentioned on MentalMultivitamin (who has yet to lead me astray recommendation wise). This book took me by surprise. I love the blurb on the back cover and it is much more eloquent than I can be:
"That rare, rare thing, a first novel with a sustained, magical and utterly faultless voice. After five pages, I knew she could persuade me to believe anything." -Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
I also loved realizing that Meg Rosoff is the author of one of my favorite picture books to read aloud to my students, Meet Wild Boars. It was a very random discovery and made me all the more impressed with her writing to see her versatility.
One of many quotable statements from Daisy, the narrator:
“It would be much easier to tell this story if it were all about a chaste and perfect love between Two Children Against the World at an Extreme Time in History but let’s face it that would be a load of crap.”
I saw this one reviewed on the Reading Rants blog. It was a fun and quick read. It felt more like a short story or novella than a full length novel. Just what I needed after being stuck in The Dud Avocado for a week. This book was suspenseful and I definitely wanted to keep reading and find out what happened but I didn’t get too involved with any of the characters. It has a sad ending; the kind that makes me go “uh…. her life still sucks, what’s that about?” but because I didn’t care that much and the supernatural part of the story was resolved tidily I said “whatever” instead of being irritated and went to sleep.
This took me ages to finish. I was completely prepared to be entertained and I was, at times, by the clever language in the book. The story is full of hilarious one liners but weak on plot. I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen and nothing did. It was just a catalog of Sally Jay’s adventures in the Parisian demimonde sprinkled with moments of hilarity or comments on her desire to really feel alive.
Sally is an aspiring actress and general free spirit who wants to experience life in every possible way. It’s full of descriptions of characters and places in 1950’s Paris. Just when I could hardly keep reading anymore a plot did appear but it was creepy and just reinforced my preconceived notions about why it’s not a good idea to live with no morals and constraints on your behavior (hint: the man you think you are in love with might turn out to be a pimp who steals your passport to trap you). I liked the last 15 pages or so best of all. Sally’s story regains its madcap innocence and almost takes on an Auntie Mame-like quality. She gets her happy ending and it is completely frothy and implausible… which about sums up the book.
Some more quotes to remember:
pg. 53
“Tell me something, tell me exactly how we would live. This isn’t just idle curiosity. It’s difficult to explain, but I just somehow feel that I never really have lived; that I never really will live-exist or whatever- in the sense that other people do. It drives me crazy. I was terribly aware of it all those nights waiting for you in the Ritz bar looking around at what seemed to be real grown-up lives. I just find everybody else’s life surrounded by plate glass. I mean I’d like to break through it just once and actually touch one.”
pg. 55
“I reflected wearily that it was not easy to be a Woman in these stirring times. I said it then and I say it now: it just isn’t our century.”
pg.103
“Was I fulfilling my childhood dreams? Well I’d certainly stayed out late and eaten what I liked. And I was meeting people I hadn’t been introduced to. That was for sure.”
pg. 105
“I soon realized that one of the most important things to find while working in the theatre was someone to giggle with. To find someone to giggle with I place just below finding someone to flirt with and just above the ability to knit.”
pg. 117
“I am no longer astonished at the lubricity of these old biddies.”
pg. 119
“Faggotry here reaches almost pyrotechnical heights.”
pg. 140
“There’d always seemed to me something so dirty-sweatered and dirndl-skirted about living with a man you’re not married to.”
pg. 149
“I’ve never had such a dazzling effect on anybody, even in my own mind.”
pg.156
“Hated France when I first got over here. Got on the train at Le Havre and looked out of the window and thought it looked so much like America, I wanted to cry. The scenery flying past, the hills and barns and cows, were just the sort of things you keep coming across through a train window in the States. The Untrained Eye, I told myself, training it enough to see that all the signs were written in French, at the same time letting the untrained nose get its first exotic whiff of garlic from my traveling companions, and the untrained stomach its first attack of French dysentery. But still, these were the only differences. I asked myself finally what did I expect France to look like? No answer.
pg. 160
“Frequently, walking down the streets in Paris alone, I’ve suddenly come upon myself in a store window grinning foolishly away at the thought that no one in the world knew where I was at just that moment.”
I’ve had The Dud Avocado on my To Read list for a long time and am finally getting around to it. How could I not want to read a book with this blurb on the back cover from Groucho Marx:
“I had to tell someone (and it might as well be you since you’re the author) how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).”
I haven’t been laughing, screaming, or guffawing yet but I admire Elaine Dundy’s writing. I’ve just been having a hard time getting into the story so far. I am going to keep trying. Meanwhile a few things to remember:
pg.25
“Why so broody?”
“I am in mourning for my life,” I said, still staring at my shoes, wishing they were black, at least, and wondering if he’d ever read the play. He hadn’t.”
Like Uncle Roger, I’m not so up on my Chekhov but thanks to the internet I’ve now added The Sea Gull to my To Read list. Which is probably a good thing. I’ve never read any Russian plays. And seeing how they are name dropped in certain show tunes that I like to sing it seems like I should give one a try.
pg. 37
“… I was merely a disinterested spectator at the Banquet of Life. The scientist dropping into the zoo at feeding time.”
I read this book in 1 hour and if I hadn’t promised myself to record every title I read in 2009 and be honest about it I would not be writing this entry. This book was just bleh. It might be my current state of mind and it also might be the signal to stop my teenage themed book-a-thon but I just have nothing to say on this one. All the blurbs tell me it’s acclaimed but I just don’t feel the need to write, think, talk, or read about this book ever again. So read it if you want to think about a sad family, misunderstood teenagers with sad back stories, and general sadness…followed up by more sadness.
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