Program: Scott Westerfeld

I’m still reading, and obviously not updating.  But I’m breaking the silence to mention a program happening at my library tonight: Scott Westerfeld will be there talking about his upcoming book, Leviathan.  And he’ll be showing off Keith Thompson’s gorgeous artwork.  I read the book, from a galley I picked up at BEA, and really enjoyed it.  So at this point what I’m really looking forward to is the Alan Cumming-read audiobook (who’s got a Barnes and Noble appearance tomorrow, so I’m really excited about my week.)

Review: Running Man

The Running Man – Stephen King

I had seen this recommended as a good readalike for the Hunger Games, that it deals with a lot of the same themes and ideas. Which is absolutely true.  I also liked that it would appeal to guys.  I found it a little hard to get into, and maybe it was a little ironic that I spent a few afternoons reading it while sipping a glass of wine in a fancy hotel lounge, but ultimately I enjoyed it.  Ben Richards is compelling, and his fight-the-man attitude would definitely resonate with teens.  And televised blood sport is not all that hard to believe. 

The one huge caveat with this book is that the introduction reveals the denouement.  You might as well read the last page as read the introduction.  Thanks for nothing editors!

(I’m both sick and crazy busy with work stuff that I can’t talk about yet, but am dying to share with the world, and so I’m trying to get any kind of backlog of anything done because if I don’t do it now I’ll never do it. )

Review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Jeff Kinney

Greg Heffley is a dork and kind of a jerk in that way kids can be to whoever’s smaller than them when they’re used to being picked on themselves.  Nothing really goes his way, but he doesn’t ever see his own role in his problems.  Despite all that, he has fun and acts stupid and hatches plots and gets right back up when things don’t go his way.

I’m not a pre-teen boy, so I can’t say I “get” this book.  But it’s funny and takes middle-school problems seriously.  And boys love it, so that’s cool.  Adrien Mole would be a good follow up for slightly older kids.

Review: The Spectacular Now

The Spectacular Now – Tim Tharp

Sutter Keely is both the life of the party and kind of a joke.  He’s that kid we all knew, who was always up for a good time and would often take things too far, but always managed to walk away from things unscathed.  His drinking is definitely a problem, though he certainly wouldn’t agree.  He is actually as charming as he thinks he is, but I still wouldn’t let him through the front door of my house.  Over the course of the book he begins to see the consequences of his behavior and the toll it takes on his closest friends, but whether he’ll be able to do anything about it is up in the air.

I think I’ve seen this book criticized for having too adult of a voice, that teenage boys would never speak like these characters do or want to read about them.  But I think older teens do, stoners of all ages do, but I still don’t know that those kids are ever going to pick this book up.  Because in the context of the story I get what it’s going for, but I think this cover is just awful.

I really enjoyed this book, mostly because Sutter is so likable and you really do pull for him to make something of himself.  But the end, however “true” to the character, felt false and unsatisfying to me.  In the guise of doing the right thing, I think he’s just copping out again and that the reader is cheated of seeing him realize that doesn’t work with the rest of the book.

Review: Night Road

Night Road – A.M. Jenkins

I had really enjoyed Jenkins’ book Repossesed, about a demon who escapes hell and tries to live as a teenage boy.  And so I was looking forward to her new vampire-road-trip novel.  But I was completely bored by this.  There were a few nice touches and I liked how the main character, Cole, describes hemes (don’t call him a vampire, he’s a hemavore) not as being immortal but as having souls that can’t be separated from their bodies.  Cole is a sad sack and has adjusted to having killer instincts by keeping every aspect of his life under tight control.  This is portrayed well, but isn’t a topic I enjoy the exploration of.  I also don’t feel like the cover or the tagline are doing this book any favors, but am glad it’s at least out there to talk to teenage boys about when they’re looking for a non-romantic vampire story.

Review: Evil Genius

Evil Genius – Catherine Jinks

I’ve had this review as a draft for almost a month.  Because I don’t have a lot to say about it but don’t want to damn it with faint praise.  In paperback, this is a big, fat book.  Other than that, it seems as if it would be an easy sell to kids who’ve outgrown Ender or who like the X-men or the idea of a training school for super villains.  But I was more enthusiastic about the book at the beginning than by the end and I think paring down would have helped. 

 

I’m going to try to post about the other handful of YA books I’ve finished recently, though I’m only enthusiastic about one of them.  And then the election came, and for awhile I was only interested in reading about current events.  And drawing even more of my attention away from reading has been a holiday craft project I’ve been consumed with.

Review: Sunrise Over Fallujah

Sunrise over Fallujah – Walter Dean Myers

Blame my recent lack of reviews on this book; I just could not bring myself to pick it up. Instead, I caught up on podcasts and worked on finishing my honeymoon cross-stitch project.

I’d never read Myers’ Vietnam War “classic,” Fallen Angels, so I don’t know how the two books compare. But they are linked by the narrator of this book, Robin, who is the nephew of the main character in that other book and writes a few letters home to him. Robin joins up at the beginning of the war and as a part of Civilian Affairs he’s not on the front lines, but once the first fighting is over there aren’t really any front lines. His unit is supposed to be working on gaining the good will of the Iraqis though as often as that means they play a pick up game of soccer, they’re trading hostages for detonators.

This is neither a bad nor controversial book. It’s just a boring one. Robin’s voice, especially in his letters home, was overly formal and did not ring true. Beyond that, it felt like Myers was checking off a list of points that he wanted to make about war and this war in particular. There was no deeper insight into the conflict or the lives of soldiers.

Teachers will probably assign this (a lot did over the summer) and it has enough complexity that it might be a good jumping off point for discussions. But it wasn’t gripping or illuminating.

Review: Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Eighth Grade Bites

Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Eighth Grade Bites – Heather Brewer

Vladimir is an orphan and half-vampire, he can sort of fly, uses sunscreen to deal with the sun, and is “allergic” to garlic. His guardian is a nurse who steals bags of blood from the hospital just before they expire. His father went against vampire society, Elysia, to marry his mother and went into hiding to protect the family. But both parents were killed in a suspicious fire when Vlad was 10. Vlad knows almost nothing about being a vampire and didn’t expect there to even be others of his kind. But now strange people are showing up in his town, a teacher is missing, and he’s beginning to learn a little about his father through his diary.

I was not captivated by this book, so that’s as much of a plot summary as I can manage. The plot’s forward movement depends too much on Vlad’s lack of curiosity and misconstrual of events. No one’s actions make sense. And I’m not interested enough in either the character of Vladimir or where the plot (there is an ancient prophecy about Vlad, probably something about being “the one”) is going. Are his parents really dead? Does Meredith like Vlad? I can’t say I care. The cover art is the best thing about this book, and the next in the series, Ninth Grade Slays, looks good, too. The problem is that despite his “super powers,” Vlad is just another boring 13-year-old.  Despite the interesting cover, this book hasn’t had much success at my library, I even had trouble giving a copy away.  But the reviews of it are generally strong, and I’ll keep it in mind when I have boys who ask for vampire books.

Review: Band Fags

Band Fags by Frank Anthony Polito

The main character of this book, Jack, is so lovable and heartbreaking as a queer kid trying to figure himself out in high school. I was friends with this kid, and while I managed to never date the type, most of my close girl friends all dated the same handful of handsome, effeminate, “asexual” guys. Your heart breaks for him knowing that he’ll find himself in adulthood, even though he’s still not quite there yet by the end of the book. It’s Jack’s book, but it’s also the story of his friendship with Brad, who is able to more easily (but maybe also superficially) come to terms with his sexuality, and all the things in their lives that bring them close and pull them apart. The plot mostly consists of watching Jack grow from pre-teen to college boy. But by the end, I was still sad they didn’t talk more about being in marching band (the cover got my hopes up).

There were a few problems I had with the book at the very beginning, the writing style was distracting and so were all the pop culture references. But it ended up being easy to acclimate to both and accept what the author is doing by writing in the style of a boy both precocious and clueless. There are lots of exclamation points. Over the course of the book, you become completely drawn in to Jack’s mid-1980’s world and I’m sad now to be done with the book.

This is another good example of how books for teens are different than books for adults about teens. Not that there aren’t teenagers who would enjoy this book, especially gay ones brave enough to get past the title, but the story benefits from having a reader who is looking back on youth with the benefit of age. The perspective isn’t one of that kind of looking back on youthful episodes at all, but reading it with some distance adds to the weight of the story. Jack’s life is filled with friends and acquaintances and in-jokes and shared memories. He hoards those memories like only teenagers (and maybe the elderly) do. If I were to go back right now and reread my yearbooks, I wouldn’t understand or remember half of what was written about me, but at the time it grounded me and helped me figure out my place in the world. Jack is still in the middle of all that and doesn’t realize that the rest of his life, the stuff that will really matter to him, has yet to happen. True for everyone, but even more so for someone unable to admit to the world or even to himself that he’s gay. And I think Polito really captures high school hierarchies in a way that most other authors don’t. It’s not all jocks and geeks and stoners: that sometimes pretty girls date or are friends with much geekier guys. That unlikely friendships happen, that you can have a lot of friends but still get made fun of and feel unsure of your place.

I want to give this book a hug; I really loved it.

Review: The Sixth Form

The Sixth Form by Tom Dolby

Plucked out of boredom and obscurity by wealthy, popular Todd and sexy, free-spirit teacher, Hannah, Ethan is a senior and new student at a prestigous New England boarding school. An intellectual and an artist, Ethan sees in his new life all the glitter and romance that was missing at home with his dying mother in California. But both Todd and Hannah want more from him than he can give, while giving him little of their true selves. Todd, because he’s only beginning to figure it all out himself, but Hannah’s over-reliance on Ethan grows selfish and sinister. Ethan’s journey is more about learning how fundamentally unknowable everyone is than figuring out anything about himself. Which is one of the shortcomings of the book: things happen to Ethan but he never grows or changes. Neither does he get knocked down a peg or two, his artistic pretensions are heralded as amazing by everyone around him.

The language of it was hard to get into and could have used some semicolons (but word on the street recently is that they’re a feminine kind of punctuation and falling out of favor. Well, a comma is a very different thing. Use a period if you must). I was about to put it aside about 50 pages in when I finally got a hang of its rhythms, and when the story got past the first, improbable stages of Ethan’s friendships. Because it’s never really clear what his appeal is. But my biggest problem with the story was that Ethan’s fear over keeping his relationship with Hannah a secret at all costs is never shown to be false: only an affect of her manipulations. Barry Lyga’s Boy Toy did a better job with showing the consequences of teacher/student relationships. Ethan never figures it out. Some of his teachers and administrators know or suspect what’s going on, and they keep it a secret so that he doesn’t get kicked out of school and lose his Yale acceptance. Even if Ethan is 18, that doesn’t seem like the correct response. Especially when the teacher in question is known to be a bit deranged and suspected of having a history of seducing students.

Some of the ambiguity may be because this is a “literary” novel written for adults, but I think it’s also lazy storytelling. It’s a rare, older teenager who would enjoy this book. Maybe Dolby gets a bit of a pass for writing interesting gay characters and I am in the minority of readers looking to heterosexual Ethan for signs of something worthwhile. The Secret History is a better pick for someone attracted to this story for it’s elements of fish-out-of-water in a dangerous and seductive new world, Boy Toy for the pedophile teacher angle, and even Prep, which I wasn’t a huge fan of, for dorky kid bumbling through boarding school awkwardness.

Review: Big Slick

Big Slick by Eric Luper

Andrew turns a gift for numbers and $500 he stole from his family’s dry-cleaning business into a seat at an illegal, high-stakes poker tournament. He’s in a good position with an ace and a king in the hole, a big slick, and he’s confident the pot will be his. He thinks if he plays smart he’ll have a future as a professional gambler. Even if from where he’s sitting, that future looks a lot like turning into a fat, middle-aged man.

Obviously being set up to learn some big lessons, Andrew goes about it the hard way. Starting with trying to hustle drug dealers, and then by trying to steal $350 from his best friend’s Dad without telling his best friend. Luckily, the path to enlightenment doesn’t toss him around too carelessly, and in the end, the solution to most of his problems is still an illegal one (though now with pretty low stakes.)

Luper has a talent for describing poker and making it interesting even to someone who knows and cares nothing about the game. I actually found myself disappointed that he didn’t give a play by play of more games, because he does such a good job with the climactic ones. And I probably learned as much about the dry cleaning business as I did about poker.

There were a few points where I thought I might put down the book because I really don’t have the stomach for stories where stupid characters make bad decisions and then get threatened and beat up. But Andrew has enough sense to get himself out of sketchy situations before it comes to that. There’s a mildly graphic sex scene towards the end of the book that may not make this an easy fit for all younger teens, but nothing too objectionable.

edited to add: The cover art is clearly horrible, maybe it will eventually come out in a better designed paperback. But don’t I see? There’s his goth-girl crush? And he’s playing poker, get it? It’s telling me what’s going to happen!