Reading list: week 13

This week, I read the second and third books in Bree Despain's Divine trilogy: Lost Saint and Savage Grace (I love the title of the latter). It's been a long time since I read the first book, but I remember liking but not loving it. I liked these second two better, oddly enough, probably since there was less of a focus on this dark/mysterious romance and more focus on family relationships and trying to find/save Grace's brother Jude.

I also started at the beginning of Rhys Bowen's Royal series, with Her Royal Spyness. I love a good cozy mystery, and this series (I'm now on book two) has been a lot of fun. In the first book, Georgie moves to London to keep house for herself (literally--she can't afford a servant for the family home) and tries to make a living by moonlighting as a maid (but she only dusts and lights fires--she refuses to clean bathrooms or mop floors). Everything seems to be going along okay until her brother shows up at the residence and the man who's been threatening to take away their family home winds up dead (drowned) in their bathtub. Georgie has to convince the police that neither she nor her brother had anything to do with the murder, appearances to the contrary. The mystery here wasn't particularly profound (I figured out the murderer fairly early on--which is rare for me), but I really enjoy the voice and the atmosphere of the stories.

Reading update: week eleven

I'm a little behind on my updates. My excuse is that my family and I just spent a week in California for Spring Break, so I didn't post.

Now I have to actually remember what I read before the break.

I know I read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, which was breath-taking. Seriously. I don't usually like weepy books (this is no spoiler--you know going into a book about kids with terminal cancer that it's not all going to end well), but this one felt so honest and non-manipulative. And who can make teenagers quoting Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot's Prufrock actually sound cool? I'm sure I couldn't. The book was smart and beautifully written. I'm tempted to re-read it just to study some of the passages but I'm pretty sure the library needs their copy back.

I also read (shifting into break mode) Rhys Bowen's Naughty in Nice, which is actually the fourth or fifth in a mystery series, but I enjoyed it anyway. I liked Bowen's Evan Almighty series, and this was a similar pleasure (esp. for fans of cozy mysteries). The heroine, Lady Georgiana (Georgie) Rannoch, is a distant cousin of the Queen of England. She's nobility, but she's also broke and can't find a job. She lives on her brother's meagerly largesse and spends her days serving soup at a local soup kitchen--a noble, if depressing job. When her brother invites her (not seriously) to come spend the winter with him and his wife in Nice, if she can find her passage over, she jumps at the chance. Especially when the Queen gives her an assignment in Nice that will pay for her passage over. The murder/mystery wasn't especially profound here, but I loved the glimpse into Georgie's world: she meets Coco Chanel and hobnobs with British elite. A great escapist read.

I also read a couple of books from the Whitney list: Pride and Popularity, by Jenni James (a rather obvious retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a voice so teenagerish that I found it kind of painful to read) and No Angel, by Theresa Sneed, which had an interesting premise--a reluctant guardian angel--but was a little heavy on the moralistic side and which spent more time describing the role of guardian angel than actually showing that role. There was also a long discursion where the main character (Jonathan) gets separated from his charge and I was frankly kind of bored during this section. For me, his role as guardian angel was much more interesting.

Reading list: week nine

Let's see if I can remember everything . . this week was a good week for books.

Tess Hilmo, With a Name Like Love (Whitney book). This was a lovely book, about thirteen-year-old Ollie Love and her travelling-preacher father (who goes by the unlikely but apt name of Everlasting Love). Her family arrives in a Georgia town on a sweltering summer day, intending to just stay their usual three days for preaching, but Ollie discovers that a local boy, Jimmie, is in serious need. His mother's in prison for killing his no-good father, and Jimmie's in danger of getting sent to the foster system. Ollie doesn't believe Jimmie's mother is guilty, and she convinces her father that it's their Christian duty to stay long enough to clear her name and help restore Jimmie's family. There were a lot of things I loved about this story: there was just enough intrigue to keep things moving, but I liked the rich characters (for once, a middle grade girl who has strong relationships with both her parents), the unexpected things you learn about some of the townspeople, and the slow, warm, lyrical language of the book. It was arm and sweet and, I thought, wonderful.This is the kind of story that kids and adults alike can enjoy.


Bethany Wiggins, Shifting (Whitney). I enjoyed this book more than I expected to--the YA market is so inundated with paranormal stories right now that I was a little hesitant to pick up another story about a girl who can shapeshift. However, I think this story has a freshness to it, largely because the shapeshifting mythology is rooted in Navajo legend, rather than having the paranormal stuff rooted in more common European folklore. The story begins when Maggie Mae is moved to yet another foster home, in Silver City, New Mexico, just before her eighteenth birthday. There, Maggie has to not only confront the difficulties of a new school, but she has to deal with the shapeshifting abilities that she doesn't fully understand, and the fact that someone appears to be hunting her (or at least asking about her in suspicious and clandestine fashion). Not surprisingly, Maggie's also drawn almost instantly to the rich kid at school, Bridger. The romantic element was a little predictable, but well-drawn, and I liked both Maggie and Bridger. I also liked that Maggie was able to develop a support network in her new town after being essentially on her own for so long. The writing was strong and the pace moved along quickly (you'll notice how many books I read this week?). My only critique is that the last 1/4 of the book wasn't as engaging for me as the first 3/4, but that might be more due to my own preferences than any issue with the novel. I'm just not as into big show-downs with villains as I am the more ordinary complications of high school life and figuring out where you fit into the world.

Elise Broach, Shakespeare's Secret. A friend of mine recommended this book after telling me that the middle grade novel I'm working on reminded her of this one. I can only think that was a flattering comparison! I really enjoyed this story, about a 12 year old girl named Hero who struggles to fit into a new school after her Dad gets a new job working for a museum dedicated to all things Shakespeare. Hero befriends her neighbor, Mrs. Roth, who tells her about the mysterious disappearance of an antique diamond in the house Hero's now living in. Hero gets drawn into the diamond search, along with the cool neighbor kid, Danny Cordova, who doesn't seem to mind that Hero's not exactly popular. I thought the story was fun, interesting (lots of Shakespearean hints and clues to help them find the diamond), and tightly written. A great middle-grade read.

Shannon Hale, Princess Academy (re-read).

Dan Wells, I Don't Want to Kill You (Whitney). This is another book that I wasn't expecting to like, but did. I'm not a fan of horror--I usually avoid it when possible--and I hadn't read the first two books in this series. However, since this is on my Whitney list for the year, I dutifully picked it up. I was swept up almost immediately by John Cleaver's strong voice. (He's been compared to a teenage Dexter, but since I haven't seen the show I don't know how apt that is.) I do know that John has struggled with demons--both his own demons (he's a diagnosed sociopath who struggles to empathize with others) and real demons who've come haunting his town. In this book, John has called a demon to town--with the intent of killing her. But first he has to figure out who she is. The sudden appearance of a known serial killer in their town has John thinking he's found her, but, of course, things aren't what they seem. There was a fair amount of blood and gore in this story--also some descriptive embalming (John's mother is a mortician)--but I wasn't bothered by it quite as much as I thought I would be. Mostly, I got caught up by the story, which consistently surprised and unsettled me. The ending was particularly strong: both unexpected and unexpectedly moving.

Reading list: Week eight

This was apparently a good week for books.

1. This week, I read Orson Scott Card's The Lost Gate (Whitney finalist), the first (apparently) in a series. The book follows Danny North, of *the* North clan (a family of magicians who are apparently the descendents of the Norse Gods). Danny's place in the clan is tenuous, since his gift hasn't yet manifested itself and, at 11, it should have presented long since. A chance encounter with a young girl from another clan tells Danny that he does, in fact, have a gift: He's a gate-maker, a gift that will get him killed if his family finds out about it. Danny flees the compound, stumbles from one seemingly chance encounter to another, and finally finds himself in a situation where he can learn about his powers in (relative) safety. I liked the premise of the book--it was fairly original and well-thought out. I also found myself interested in the story of a young mage on the parallel world of Westil.

But . . . I never really found myself connecting to Danny. I liked him, but I never felt as invested in his story as I wanted. There were also a few things that happened early in the story that didn't seem wholly necessary to Danny's development as a gatemage. So--most of Card's fans would probably enjoy the story, but it's definitely not his best. (My personal favorite has always been Enchantment--of the ones I've read).

2. C.J. Hill's (pseudonym for Janette Rallison) Slayers (another Whitney finalist). For the most part, I enjoyed this story of Tori Hampton, a sixteen-year-old senator's daughter who goes to a dragon camp to indulge her inner geek, only to find out that she's actually a "Slayer" (and yes, Rallison is alert to the fact that the name is slightly melodramatic)--someone with the DNA of a dragon knight in her blood, DNA that was activated while her mother was exposed, during pregnancy, to a dragon egg in the DC area. Despite some of the campy elements of the story (the jealous rival at the camp, Tori's slightly stuck-up attitude at the beginning, the inevitable hot guys), I thought the story was pretty believable. Tori grapples with the real consequences of her new identity and struggles to fit in among her fellow slayers. There was also a compelling love-triangle, which I'm a sucker for, and the writing was fun and fast.

3. Shannon Hale, Midnight in Austenland (this one was purely for me). In this book, Hale takes us back to the world of Austenland, where, for a fee, single women can indulge themselves in a couple of weeks of imaginary residence in Regency England. As a fan of Austen, I can definitely see the appeal of this kind of vacation, even if the idea of a pretend romance (that you pay for) always makes me feel a little creeped out. I enjoyed the first Austenland, but didn't love it (it didn't feel fully polished), but I really enjoyed this one. That might be partly because I identified with Charlotte Kinder, the recently divorced mother of two who is still trying to come to terms with her own identity and trying to stop being such an agreeable doormat (essentially). Charlotte reminded me a lot of Catherine Morland, from Northanger Abbey--a very unlikely choice of a heroine. Over the course of the novel, she gets the chance to be a heroine as she stumbles upon what might be a murder at Pemberly Park. I have to admit that the murder mystery was my least favorite part of the story line. Because Hale set up so much of the story alluding to Gothic Romances and Northanger Abbey, I spent several chapters confused as to whether or not the mystery was real or just part of Charlotte's imagination (and that may have been Hale's point). In any case, the mystery wasn't as compelling to me as Charlotte's gradual evolution and romance (which actually surprised me--usually I can spot the love interest earlier than that).

4. Carol Lynch Williams, Miles from Ordinary (Whitney finalist). This book was a hard one for me to read--there's a reason why my preferences in fiction run to lighter fare! This book follows 13-year-old Lacey Mills through an eventful 24 hours in her life. Lacey starts the day hopeful that things are on the mend for her and her mother, as her mother is about to start a real job at the grocery store and Lacey has a job at the local library. As the day progresses, however, we learn more about Lacey's background: about her mom's schizophrenia (or similar disorder) and cutting; the reason why her aunt left; and the fact that her mom believes that her father talks to her (even though he died before Lacey was born). As Lacey's day unravels, Lacy has to confront some unpleasant truths about her mother and her own history and find strength she doesn't know she has to cope. I found this book deeply disturbing--as I think Williams intended it to be. I also wasn't entirely sure about the ending: Lacey goes through an episode where it's not clear if something supernatural or psychotic is happening, and it seemed out of character for Lacey and threw me, as it also wasn't quite in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. I also have mixed feelings about the voice--it was beautiful and well-done, but the voice itself seems middle-grade while the concept (and some of the stuff that goes down in the end) seems distinctly YA. I'm not sure who the book's target audience is. I have to say, if I were going to recommend a book for young readers on this topic, I'd prefer Claudia Mills' One Square Inch, which deals with a young boy's struggles with his manic-depressive mother. That also addresses mental illness, but in a way that's more appropriate for young readers (not so dark).

A week in books

I managed three books this week:

Marie Lu's Legend, which I quite enjoyed, once I stopped trying to look for Les Miserables parallels (she said she was inspired by imagining what Les Mis might look like today, but I think she was drawing on a superficial look at Javert and Val Jean's relationship). But enjoyed the main characters and I thought Lu did a nice job building the suspense and mystery.

Lindsey Leavitt, Sean Griswold's Head. Aside from the sort of grisly sounding title, this was actually a fun read. The main character, Payton Gritas, has recently discovered her father has MS, and her normally organized life goes into a tailspin. To help her, the school counselor suggests she picks a focus object, and Payton picks--Sean's head. As she studies his head (and him) she discovers all sorts of things she didn't know about the boy she's sat behind for years. While the MS angle adds some depth to the story, mostly I thought it was a light, quick read.

Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I had mixed feelings about this. Taylor's writing is gorgeous and I was often drawn in just by the prose. I loved the initial premise--Karou is an art student in Prague, who happens to have blue hair (it grows that way, after a childhood wish) and who was raised by chimaeras, part-beast, part human creatures, led by Brimstone who collects teeth of all sorts. Karou has a funky friend and a creepy ex-boyfriend and her life seems complicated enough between school and running errands all over the world to get teeth for Brimsone, not to mention the unexplained tatoos on her hands or her persistent sense of loneliness and not-wholeness. But then they discover a series of burnt handprints on doorways near all the portals Karou uses, and it's clear that the angels are back and have targeted the chimeras. From that point, the story gets more complicated. As I said, it was beautifully written and I enjoyed it on that level alone. Taylor also draws an intense romance. But I felt underwhelmed by the revelation about who Karou actually is.

Now, I'm working on Orson Scott Card's Lost Gate--and we'll see what comes next!

Reading list: week six

Given what I wrote last week, it should surprise no one that my first two books read this week were:

Scorpio Races (finished finally--it was beautifully written).
Girls Don't Fly: I love Kristen Chandler's writing: it's spare, a little quirky, and she does a great job weaving natural history into her works.

I also read:
Veronica Roth, Divergent, which I enjoyed (all but the ending)
Brodi Ashton, Everneath, which I keep feeling like I should have liked more than I did. The writing was solid, the plot had a great concept, but I just didn't connect to the characters like I wanted, and while I liked them, I didn't see this all consuming love-affair that the book envisioned. (It probably didn't help that I was sick, and therefore cranky).

Reading list: week 5

I finally finished my stack of library books, which means that this week I read two more Gail Carriger books: Changeless and Blameless. Sometimes the writing seems overly Victorian to me (or, I should say, faux-Victorian), but in general the series is a lot of fun, witty, and I love the late Victorian setting.

I'm almost finished with Scorpio Races (finally!). My slowness in reading is *not* a commentary on the book, which is fabulously written and which I've deliberately put off a few times because I knew I needed sleep and that book would not let me put it down.

I also started the first of my Whitney books: Kristen Chandler's Girls Don't Fly. I adored her book Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me, so I'm excite to see where she goes with this (also a little dismayed because I had an MG novel in my head that was somewhat similar to this! Oh well.)