Not that it seems like it; according to this I haven't read any books between May 8 and May 19 - but I have!
It's just that one of them I can't talk about, and then I'm in the middle of a couple of them so no single one gets finished.
But I did finish (and start) In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters. It was pretty good, especially for YA, I think - there were some "magical" elements, but also a lot about WWI and the Spanish Flu, and I thought the author did a nice job of incorporating her research and really setting the scene nicely. The story itself wasn't all that fascinating. An intriguing main character, and then some (not so) mysterious shenanigans.
Basically, she's the daughter of a man arrested for aiding draft dodgers and flees from Portland to her aunt in San Diego, where her childhood best friend / blossoming first love lived before he enlisted. Nobody's heard anything from him, then they hear he's dead, then he starts haunting her (after in a fit of rage at the desperation and hopelessness of life she goes and gets herself electrocuted) and it turns out things are not what they seem. Except...they kind of are. While I appreciated that in the end we didn't get the happy ending I thought was coming, the "twist" at the end wasn't much of one...unless the audience is supposed to spend the whole book yelling at the protagonist, "open your eyes, girlie!!" (I dunno, girlie seems period-appropriate). But I really did like Mary Shelley Black as the heroine - she loves science (and it's believable, not totally anachronistic, and not overly feisty) and does the right thing even when it's hard and/or dangerous.
Could be the start of a series - at least, MSB seemed way too well drawn, but also with hints at future developments, for a one-off. Not that a character in a non-series book couldn't or wouldn't be well-drawn, there's just something about it that feels like the author is setting her up for future escapades.
One major problem, though - the ghost non-sex sex scene was just LUDICROUS. I mean, seriously. So silly. And yet still a million times less stupid / hotter than the random 10-seconds-of-dry-humping orgasm in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, so that's something.
And they day before I finished a really good - although not as excellent as I had hoped - book, which I can't talk about because it was an advance copy I got my hands on.
Showing posts with label adolescent girls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adolescent girls. Show all posts
Monday, May 20, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Sometimes I make myself laugh...
At the utterly random reading I do. Case in point, the varied assortment of books that were waiting for me when I got back from my long weekend in D.C. (WHOO! Amazing as always!)
Lincoln Child, The Third Gate - I am sure I had requested this one because going on plane trips always makes me think of / want an Preston-Child (Agent Pendergast) book, and the latest one must not have been available. So I settled for a just-Child one. (Thanks for the picture, Amazon!)
Karen Engelmann, The Stockholm Octavo - I have no idea what this book is, much less why I requested it. Times review, maybe?
Tupelo Hassman, Girlchild - this is supposed to be excellent, I am so excited.
Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn - I think this was something that was mentioned when I went to a talk by book review editors, and someone asked what was one of the books that they really loved this year...
Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru - came across this somewhere, and I just always love books on the history/complexity of racial definitions.
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall - this one I just want to re-read so that I'll remember the first half of the story when I finally get Bring Up the Bodies in my hands.
Jane, Duchess of Northumberland (hilarious - really??) and Colin Stimpson, illustrator, The Poison Diaries
As best I can tell, an illustrated fiction story about a poisoner, based on the research of an actual poison-gardener? It's confusing, but I can figure it out later...looks cool for now!
Lincoln Child, The Third Gate - I am sure I had requested this one because going on plane trips always makes me think of / want an Preston-Child (Agent Pendergast) book, and the latest one must not have been available. So I settled for a just-Child one. (Thanks for the picture, Amazon!)
Karen Engelmann, The Stockholm Octavo - I have no idea what this book is, much less why I requested it. Times review, maybe?
Tupelo Hassman, Girlchild - this is supposed to be excellent, I am so excited.
Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn - I think this was something that was mentioned when I went to a talk by book review editors, and someone asked what was one of the books that they really loved this year...
Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru - came across this somewhere, and I just always love books on the history/complexity of racial definitions.
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall - this one I just want to re-read so that I'll remember the first half of the story when I finally get Bring Up the Bodies in my hands.
Jane, Duchess of Northumberland (hilarious - really??) and Colin Stimpson, illustrator, The Poison Diaries
As best I can tell, an illustrated fiction story about a poisoner, based on the research of an actual poison-gardener? It's confusing, but I can figure it out later...looks cool for now!
Friday, January 4, 2013
Cleaning house - Beauty Queens
Another Young Adult book!
This one is Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray.
I first read Bray's trilogy about girls playing with magic - and then losing control of it - at a boarding school at the close of the nineteenth century. It was a while ago, so I don't think I talked about it (or the later ones?), but I loved the title when I walked by the book one day (A Great and Terrible Beauty) and there were elements that seemed, and were, appealing.
Besides also being about teenage girls, and teenage girls facing up to serious crises, Beauty Queens is totally different, but I still really enjoyed it. This one is about a bunch of beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island, and forced to survive on their wits and handiness with a curling iron and homemade tanning beds. Just that premise alone would be funny enough, and Bray is definitely funny. But then she adds on to it a Corporation, with its hand in every pie in America - corporate, political - that needs to take out the teen queens before they ruin its plans to infiltrate a small dictatorship and the rest of America it doesn't yet own.
The overall book isn't quite as hilarious as it thinks it is. The "inserts," fake ads for Corporation products, get to be a little much, and feel a bit like heated over Fforde (then again, even Jasper Fforde re-hashes are still better than a lot of other stuff), but not really a problem. One character, the leader of the pageant pack, is just hilarious, utterly memorable. The character who I think is supposed to be the main character wasn't my favorite, but she has some good moments. What I really liked about the book, puns and lame-awesome jokes aside, is that all of the main characters actually grow and develop, not just one or two. It's really a ensemble piece, and Bray's girls are a strong team. And since they are, of course they thrive and then start kicking some a**.The lessons are kind of predictable, but it doesn't matter; even if we know where we're going, there are some twists along the way, and getting there is fun (secret bad-guy lair in a volcano!).
I'm still waiting to get my hands on Bray's other book, Going Bovine, but so far we're 4 for 4!
This one is Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray.
I first read Bray's trilogy about girls playing with magic - and then losing control of it - at a boarding school at the close of the nineteenth century. It was a while ago, so I don't think I talked about it (or the later ones?), but I loved the title when I walked by the book one day (A Great and Terrible Beauty) and there were elements that seemed, and were, appealing.
Besides also being about teenage girls, and teenage girls facing up to serious crises, Beauty Queens is totally different, but I still really enjoyed it. This one is about a bunch of beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island, and forced to survive on their wits and handiness with a curling iron and homemade tanning beds. Just that premise alone would be funny enough, and Bray is definitely funny. But then she adds on to it a Corporation, with its hand in every pie in America - corporate, political - that needs to take out the teen queens before they ruin its plans to infiltrate a small dictatorship and the rest of America it doesn't yet own.
The overall book isn't quite as hilarious as it thinks it is. The "inserts," fake ads for Corporation products, get to be a little much, and feel a bit like heated over Fforde (then again, even Jasper Fforde re-hashes are still better than a lot of other stuff), but not really a problem. One character, the leader of the pageant pack, is just hilarious, utterly memorable. The character who I think is supposed to be the main character wasn't my favorite, but she has some good moments. What I really liked about the book, puns and lame-awesome jokes aside, is that all of the main characters actually grow and develop, not just one or two. It's really a ensemble piece, and Bray's girls are a strong team. And since they are, of course they thrive and then start kicking some a**.The lessons are kind of predictable, but it doesn't matter; even if we know where we're going, there are some twists along the way, and getting there is fun (secret bad-guy lair in a volcano!).
I'm still waiting to get my hands on Bray's other book, Going Bovine, but so far we're 4 for 4!
Friday, August 24, 2012
Last bag!
Also last walk to work (well, bus stop - I DID have a huge bag of books) today from the apartment - Monday I'm moving and then Tuesday I'll be commuting to Cambridge from Brookline for the first time...
Mostly books I never get around to reading, like:
Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt (2011)
Not sure why I have this; I read something else by the same author, I think, but if it's the book I'm thinking of, I didn't love it, so I'm not sure that I would have sought out another one.
In the Kitchen - Monica Ali (2009)
I think because Brick Lane was checked out?
The Abruzzo Trilogy - Ignazio Silone (2000)
Well, OBVIOUSLY because it's all stories set in Abruzzi[/o]! And also because it just makes me sad how little comes up when you search for books about (or in, or vaguely near) Abruzzo.
Dirty South - Ace Atkins (2004)
Heh. The title just makes me laugh. I am totally sure I grabbed this one off the shelf based on the spine along.
Leeches - David Albahari (2011)
I either read something else by Albahari and really liked it, or read something I really liked and then Albahari was mentioned either in a quote on the back or acknowledgements or something?
A Feather on the Breath of God - Sigrid Nunez (1995)
The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy (1958, 2007)
These two are both totally different, but also both kind of concerned with the whole coming-of-age / blossoming into womanhood / etc. thing. And well praised. They're also both small paperbacks and I am really tempted to hold on to them and just pack them since they wouldn't take up too much space.
And a book I read half of last Aug./Sept (I think):
Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape - Kirk Savage (2009)
I really liked this book, solid public history, but it's larger than a normal book and pretty heavy, which made it next to impossible to read in bed, and that's pretty much the only place/time I had to do any reading over the last year, so it kind of languished on the blanket chest.
And one I read half of some other time:
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree - Tariq Ali (1992-2000: confusing)
I liked this, I'm not sure why I never finished it. I think I was always waiting until I could give it a good chunk of sober, not-exhausted time, and never found it...
Mostly books I never get around to reading, like:
Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt (2011)
Not sure why I have this; I read something else by the same author, I think, but if it's the book I'm thinking of, I didn't love it, so I'm not sure that I would have sought out another one.
In the Kitchen - Monica Ali (2009)
I think because Brick Lane was checked out?
The Abruzzo Trilogy - Ignazio Silone (2000)
Well, OBVIOUSLY because it's all stories set in Abruzzi[/o]! And also because it just makes me sad how little comes up when you search for books about (or in, or vaguely near) Abruzzo.
Dirty South - Ace Atkins (2004)
Heh. The title just makes me laugh. I am totally sure I grabbed this one off the shelf based on the spine along.
Leeches - David Albahari (2011)
I either read something else by Albahari and really liked it, or read something I really liked and then Albahari was mentioned either in a quote on the back or acknowledgements or something?
A Feather on the Breath of God - Sigrid Nunez (1995)
The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy (1958, 2007)
These two are both totally different, but also both kind of concerned with the whole coming-of-age / blossoming into womanhood / etc. thing. And well praised. They're also both small paperbacks and I am really tempted to hold on to them and just pack them since they wouldn't take up too much space.
And a book I read half of last Aug./Sept (I think):
Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape - Kirk Savage (2009)
I really liked this book, solid public history, but it's larger than a normal book and pretty heavy, which made it next to impossible to read in bed, and that's pretty much the only place/time I had to do any reading over the last year, so it kind of languished on the blanket chest.
And one I read half of some other time:
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree - Tariq Ali (1992-2000: confusing)
I liked this, I'm not sure why I never finished it. I think I was always waiting until I could give it a good chunk of sober, not-exhausted time, and never found it...
Thursday, August 23, 2012
More than halfway there!
Today I brought in the third of four big bags of books, huzzah! The system has gotten a bit confused, so some are books I've read and others are books I never got around to reading.
The former:
Ruth Rendell, The Saint Zita Society (2012)
Okay, but kind of boring.
Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (2012)
I really rather liked the writing here - calm, confident, subtle but with these glimmering lovely phrases - and the plot, about a couple in the Alaska Territory in the 1920s who find, or create from their longings and the winter itself, a little girl for them to love is original, although clearly inspired by a Russian fairy tale (from before fairy tales were so safe) that also features in the book. The characters are nicely drawn and, appropriately enough for an author from Alaska, the environment - the land and the animals and the weather and the seasons - is a remarkable character on its own. Plus, I just really like the author's name. More at: http://www.eowynivey.com/snowchild.shtml
Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died A Lot (2012)
Wicked funny; what else can I say? It wasn't the most enthralling of plots/mysteries for Thursday Next to unravel, but I feel like with this series, it's not about plot (other than the hilarious randomness of the plot, of course), but about going along for the really funny ride. And there were lots of puns and snarky little quips and in-jokes, so it was a good ride. I also LOVED the Richard Dawkins reference:
'So religion could trump science after all,' said Miles with a smile. 'That'll be a turn-up for the books.'
'Mind you,' added my father, 'at least you forced Him into revealing His existence.'
'That was unexpected,' admitted Joffrey, 'and very welcome - the billion or so former atheists now on board [with a universal-deity religion, combining all previous religions] really boosted the membership and bargaining powers.'
'Didn't Dawkins shoot himself when he found out?'
'Yes,' replied Miles sadly, 'a great shame. he would have been excellent GSD bishop material. Single minded, a good orator, and eyebrows that were pretty much perfect.' [81]
I ALSO appreciated "running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees." [7]
Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home (2012)
Really well written story about a adolescent girl in the late 1980s whose world is turned down when her uncle is diagnosed with AIDS and then passes away, and as her relationship with her parents and sister falls apart as she discovers, and negotiates the existence of, her uncle's partner. Strangely lovely; the author captures the turbulence and insecurities of the protagonist's age well, and makes a series of unlikely situations and events believable and relatable. More at: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/214920/tell-the-wolves-im-home-a-novel-by-carol-rifka-brunt
Connie Ann Kirk, Emily Dickinson: A Biography (2004)
Ugh. I think I read half of this forever ago, because I felt bad I didn't know more about Dickinson, esp. as an Amherst-lover, and maybe because I was going to read a different bio or a novel about her and wanted background? In any case, I never finished it.
Charles Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (2010)
This one was good, but I wasn't familiar with all the texts, so I kind of unintentionally gave up on the book because I wasn't getting that much from it. It's a cool idea though: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300163865
The latter:
Amanda Eyre Ward, Close Your Eyes (2010)
A mystery of some kind?
Andrea Stuart, Showgirls (1996)
I thought this was a biography of Josephine Baker, but apparently it's about a lot of female stars, from Marlene Dietrich to Madonna. So...I might not check it back out. I thought Stuart did a good job with Josephine Bonaparte, so JB seemed like it would be interesting, but I'm not sure this is really high on my list.
The former:
Ruth Rendell, The Saint Zita Society (2012)
Okay, but kind of boring.
Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (2012)
I really rather liked the writing here - calm, confident, subtle but with these glimmering lovely phrases - and the plot, about a couple in the Alaska Territory in the 1920s who find, or create from their longings and the winter itself, a little girl for them to love is original, although clearly inspired by a Russian fairy tale (from before fairy tales were so safe) that also features in the book. The characters are nicely drawn and, appropriately enough for an author from Alaska, the environment - the land and the animals and the weather and the seasons - is a remarkable character on its own. Plus, I just really like the author's name. More at: http://www.eowynivey.com/snowchild.shtml
Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died A Lot (2012)
Wicked funny; what else can I say? It wasn't the most enthralling of plots/mysteries for Thursday Next to unravel, but I feel like with this series, it's not about plot (other than the hilarious randomness of the plot, of course), but about going along for the really funny ride. And there were lots of puns and snarky little quips and in-jokes, so it was a good ride. I also LOVED the Richard Dawkins reference:
'So religion could trump science after all,' said Miles with a smile. 'That'll be a turn-up for the books.'
'Mind you,' added my father, 'at least you forced Him into revealing His existence.'
'That was unexpected,' admitted Joffrey, 'and very welcome - the billion or so former atheists now on board [with a universal-deity religion, combining all previous religions] really boosted the membership and bargaining powers.'
'Didn't Dawkins shoot himself when he found out?'
'Yes,' replied Miles sadly, 'a great shame. he would have been excellent GSD bishop material. Single minded, a good orator, and eyebrows that were pretty much perfect.' [81]
I ALSO appreciated "running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees." [7]
Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home (2012)
Really well written story about a adolescent girl in the late 1980s whose world is turned down when her uncle is diagnosed with AIDS and then passes away, and as her relationship with her parents and sister falls apart as she discovers, and negotiates the existence of, her uncle's partner. Strangely lovely; the author captures the turbulence and insecurities of the protagonist's age well, and makes a series of unlikely situations and events believable and relatable. More at: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/214920/tell-the-wolves-im-home-a-novel-by-carol-rifka-brunt
Connie Ann Kirk, Emily Dickinson: A Biography (2004)
Ugh. I think I read half of this forever ago, because I felt bad I didn't know more about Dickinson, esp. as an Amherst-lover, and maybe because I was going to read a different bio or a novel about her and wanted background? In any case, I never finished it.
Charles Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (2010)
This one was good, but I wasn't familiar with all the texts, so I kind of unintentionally gave up on the book because I wasn't getting that much from it. It's a cool idea though: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300163865
The latter:
Amanda Eyre Ward, Close Your Eyes (2010)
A mystery of some kind?
Andrea Stuart, Showgirls (1996)
I thought this was a biography of Josephine Baker, but apparently it's about a lot of female stars, from Marlene Dietrich to Madonna. So...I might not check it back out. I thought Stuart did a good job with Josephine Bonaparte, so JB seemed like it would be interesting, but I'm not sure this is really high on my list.
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