The Last Book I Read

It’s really quite ridiculous how many books one comes away from conference wanting to read.  This morning was YALSA’s YA Author Breakfast and I enjoyed talking to several different authors and hearing about their new books.  I also used my spare half hour of free time to visit the exhibits and pick up some galleys.  Here’s my list as of tonight of all the books I can’t wait to read:

Madapple

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (a sequel to Life As We Knew It, which I loved)

Wide Awake by David levithan

Hunger Games

Trouble by Gary Schmidt

Radioactive Love Song by Sherman Alexie

Decoding of Lara Morris by Tom McNeal

Charlotte Sometimes

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

I have a lot to look forward to!

Here I am at the ALA annual conference in Anaheim, California. I’ve already been here since Wednesday night and will be here a few more days. As always this conference attracts thousands of librarians and authors and is a wonderful and overwhelming event. It’s been some time since I’ve really been able to enjoy all the author meetings and workshops since I’ve been so involved in governance the past few years. That said, so far I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Cecil Castellucci, Amy Goldman Koss, and Orson Scott Card, winner of the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards award. It was great talking to Cecil as I had recently picked up a Minx sampler and read a little preview of Janes in Love, which is coming out this fall. Koss is the author of The Girls, a book I used to frequently booktalk to the 6th graders. It’s a great completely believable story about inexplicably mean and bitchy 12 year olds. It’s so realistic it hurts. Unbelievably I did not bring a copy of Ender’s Game to have Mr. Card autograph, which I’m kicking myself for. If you haven’t already read Ender’s Game, then run right out and get yourself a copy and do so.

To find out more about what’s going on at the conference, check out the YALSA Blog for frequent updates.  I’m hoping to pick up a few new books tomorrow to read (I’m already midway through Koss’s new book, Poison Ivy)

Once again I’m on an airplane and not only have just read this entire book on the plane, but will also hopefully be able to write my entry for it and the three other books I’ve got in a backlog situation. I found this book very very moving. (And let me just say what an uncomfortable situation that made—I’m sandwiched between two guys, our arms are all touching, the one guy has to keep getting up, the aisle guy won’t move, it’s all dreadful and not two people I feel like being misty around!)

Jenna is seventeen, popular enough, has a boyfriend, has a great stepdad and mom, and seems pretty happy. This persona is one she has worked hard to create, though. As a child she was chubby and lonely, picked on and tormented, left alone a lot by her mom, and only had one real friend. But what a friend Cameron Quick was. The bond they shared was incredible and they meant the world to each other. And then Cameron disappeared. That was when Jennifer became Jenna. Now, years later Cameron has arrived in her life again and everything is turned upside down.

I really like this book so much. Jenna is a great character-the author really lets you into her emotions and I think Jenna is pretty mature. The relationship between her and Cameron is so touching and intense, and I think it’s not something you typically read about (as it’s not a romance and they are not typical best friends.) A real standout character was Alan, Jenna’s stepfather. He sounded so wonderful, but not over the top, just comfortable, kind, and real. The sort of person you wish you knew.

I think what got me most in the book (and brought a tear to my eye) was the description of Cameron as a little boy rocking a baby doll.

Highly recommended.

Update: here’s a little video taken at conference of me talking about the book

This poor book suffered from being read in choppy bits because I read two other books during this one, lost it under my bed for a while, and then kept reading just little bits before I fell asleep. (Why is someone always farting on an airplane? Seriously, I’m being assaulted here. ) The novel is sort of choppy anyway, and occasionally I had a little trouble following points of view and the time frame.

It is the story of a Southern girl and her fellow “Camellias.” One is a drug addict, one is a bitch, one is a good girl, and Sarah, the main character, is a bit of a lost soul who just can’t seem to get her act together. At times I really liked the story, but at other times I didn’t. I definitely didn’t like it as much as ML, Melissa, and Denise did. I found myself frustrated with the main character overall, and I liked the ending until I got to the last page and then I wasn’t sure what to think.

Again, though, I have to point out that I was not the fair to the book and didn’t read it straight through. Had I, perhaps I would have a different point of view.

If you like David Sedaris then you like him, and if you don’t, well then I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Apparently you have no sense of humor. One criticism I read of this latest collection of essays is that if you like David Sedaris you’ve probably already read most of them because they were already published in The New Yorker, Esquire, or This American Life. As it happens only a few of them were already familiar to me (and I gladly reread them.)

I think it is impossible to read Sedaris’s stuff without hearing him in your head. My favorite bits are when he talks about Hugh, who clearly is a saint to put up with David, and when he talks about his siblings. And I can’t get over that he quite smoking by moving to Hong Kong for three months. All I could think was “wow you have a lot of money and an extremely flexible lifestyle.”

I chose this as this month’s book club selection not really realizing that apparently it’s currently hugely popular, and also hugely popular with reading clubs. oh well. Well deserved though. There’s so much to talk about in this that I’m really looking forward to discussing it with my friends. I had wanted to read this book because it’s by the author of Love Walked In, a book I had read some time ago and really enjoyed. I didn’t even realize that this book is a sequel! I guess I didn’t remember that much about the first book so when I started reading this the main characters named sounded vaguely familiar but I still wasn’t quite sure. So, although it is a sequel it is completely stand alone.

Cornelia and Teo have moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia into a nice little neighborhood where people walk to their neighbors’ houses.  Cornelia feels like an outcast, especially when she meets nasty suburban Queen Been, Piper.  I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that when you read the first chapter, from Cornelia’s point of view, you hate Piper. She’s clearly a nasty bitch and you, the reader, are eager to be on Cornelia’s side.  And then you get to the next chapter from Piper’s point of view and of course find out she’s human and develop sympathy for her despite yourself.  There’s definitely an awful lot going on here: Piper has a best friend, Elizabeth, who is dying. Cornelia has a new friend, Lake, who has moved to the area possibly under interesting circumstances.  At least that’s what her genius son, Dev, thinks. Dev and Lake become friends with Cornelia and Claire, Cornelia’s special friend from Love Walked In.  There are many relationships here, all a little complicated, and they all connect in some way.  I thought it was great, loved how much there was to consider.  There are many points of view, which made it an easy book to put down at the end of a chapter (see, that’s good for me.) I hope my friends liked it as much as I did!

My husband brought these home to read and it turns out we’d been behind the times in these great funny books which come from a website. Greg is a seventh grader with an awful older brother, Rodrick, a younger brother who gets away with stuff, and a mom who is well meaning but really awful too. Lots of little cartoons as the whole thing is meant to look like Greg’s journal. Thing about Greg is, he’s hilarious, but he’s kind of a jerk too. He’s treats his friend like dirt (though granted his friend is pretty much loser and it’s likely you wouldn’t want to be friends with him either.) Greg’s older brother shines as the quintessential awful older brother in book two, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules. One of the best things about Rodrick is that he has a heavy metal band called. Loded Diper. And there’s an umlaut over the “o” in Loded.

Obviously there’s a lot more to these books but I read them a couple weeks ago (fast reads) and I don’t think I need to say much more than super funny diary of a middle school kid who seems to end up in a lot of predicaments. Besides, go check out the site and you can read a little sample.

Update: here is Paul’s entry on it.

How far would you go to save someone you love? That’s what it says on the cover of the book. And, having read that, it took me about half a chapter to guess the “secret” of this sort of futuristic novel. I’m finding it hard to think what I can say about this book without giving too much away. Basically 16 year old Jenna awakens from an 18 month coma with no memory of her life. Her parents encourage her to watch videodiscs of her life and she does begin to get her memory back. What’s bizarre is that she can also remember things from when she was not only two years old, but also two weeks old. How is that possible? And why do they live in California in such secrecy? Jenna knows something isn’t right but it takes her a while (longer than the reader) to figure out what. Maybe I’m being a little jaded because having read similar stories it wasn’t that hard for me to figure out (Eva by Peter Dickinson leaps to mind-it’s an incredible book.)

This was a fast read and an interesting one, too.  It brought up many questions of ethics and I thought the epilogue really changed the whole feeling of the book and made you rethink what you thought of it.  I’d definitely recommend this to fans of Eva or Turnabout by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

*So I was just looking for a good link to provide for Eva and I really don’t see one.  On Dickinson’s own website an excerpt totally gives away the surprise, and on amazon the new paperback edition also gives away the surprise. is it that they assume 18 years after publication everyone knows what the “secret” is? Like The Crying Game? I still don’t think they should do that.

**the author has also written David V. God, which I really liked and is worth checking out too!

I was excited to come across this because I remembered that I really really enjoyed Scott’s previous book, Bloom. Off the top of my head I couldn’t tell you a thing about it except that I remember it was romantic. This book is also romantic, and I enjoyed the relationship between the two main characters. Will is a a boy known for hooking up with lots of girls and he is widely acknowledged to be super cute, deifnitely out of Kate’s league. He does like her, though, and they keep hooking up. To the reader it’s obvious that he sincerely likes Kate, so it is a little frustrating that she has such a hard time accepting it.

The strongest and most compelling part of the story (to me) was the failed relationship between Kate and her best friend, Anna. They had been best friends since they were little, but all that changed when Anna went away one summer and lost a lot of weight. Suddenly she is popular, dating the boy who called her “wide load” a mere 6 months earlier, and completely ignoring Kate. Her treatment of Kate is so terrible I found it quite heartbreaking. I couldn’t believe how outraged I was with Anna and how sad I felt for Kate. Poor Kate really could use a friends too because not only does she need someone to talk to about Will, but she needs someone to help her cope with her dad’s behavior. He has decided to “follow his dream” by quitting his job to sell vitamins at mall and he makes Kate work there, too. His rash decision puts his family in severe financial jeopardy and makes the family start to fall apart.

Although all these things are dreadfully sad Scott writes with a wonderful humor throughout the novel. I loved this and can’t wait to read her next book.

Sarah Dessen is one of my favorite YA authors. I think she is a very talented writer and I always enjoy the smart characters she creates. This is her brandy-new book. If I have one criticism of it it’s that it’s about twenty-five pages too long. There’s a lot going on in this book-it seems like the first story thread is what the whole novel will be about, but then a new thread comes in, then you think that’s it, but instead another thread gets wound in and becomes the main story, and so on. That, by the way, is not what made the book too long, I actually really liked the way all the different threads took over and it’s almost as if there were three different overlapping stories in the whole novel. [Booooo-I’d like to interject that due to my big flight delay I had to eat all my snacks before we even boarded the plane and I totally resent that stupid United Airlines won’t even pass out a packet of ^&^^%%ing pretzels to go with my Coke. I hate the airlines and wouldn’t even bother flying anymore except sometimes it’s necessary. As another airline aside, I’m ever so pleased to see how many people are reading on the plane and at the airport.]

At 17 Ruby is just waiting until she can be legally on her own. She’s already got the “on her own part” going on-her mother just up and vanished one day a few months ago-but her landlords find out what’s going on and report her to Social Services. Which is how Ruby finds herself living with her older sister, Cora, and her husband, Jamie. The last time Ruby ever saw Cora was almost 10 years ago, so she can’t imagine how this will work out. After all, Cora abandoned her, leaving for college and cutting off all ties to the family. An awkard situation to say the least. Their lack of familial ties is further emphasized by Jamie who comes from a large family and is determined to provide Cora and Ruby with the family experiences they never had. Jamie is such a good person he is practically an unbelievable character. In fact, he is the human embodiment of a golden retriever—goofy, lovable, eager to please. This is where the story starts, but it grows to encompass so much more beyond Cora and Ruby creating a family, there are friends to be made, hurts to be healed, secrets revealed, inner strengths to be discovered. Really this was a wonderful story with wonderful characters. I adore Dessen’s writing and think her many fans will enjoy this newest book, especially older teen girls. And special bonus-she mentions Kiki Sparks!! Just a brief callback to one of my favorite books of her, Keeping the Moon. Don’t you just love when authors do that? It’s like a special treat for the dedicated reader.