Review: Anything But Ordinary

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Stats:

Publisher: Hyperion Book
Release Date: September 11, 2012
Page Count: 336
Would Appeal To: Swimmers, anyone who has dealt with a family member's trauma

I'm sad this one got such mixed reviews on GoodReads!

Why You Must Read This:
  • Compelling plot. Bryce wakes up after five years of being in a coma. Everything is her different. Her once innocent twelve year old sister has become a punk rebel, her friends have graduated from college, and her boyfriend is with her best friend. Major betrayal issues from the start.
  • It makes you ask "What if?" This could happen to anyone. As Bryce is at the Olympic trials, she miscalculates her dive and hits her head on the pool, knocking her unconscious. Okay, so we're not all champion swimmers, but life-threatening accidents are very real possibilities. I found myself wondering what I would do upon waking up in her situation. Sure, a second chance at life is within reach, but could I accept the fact that no one thought I'd wake up and so everyone moved on, including the love of my life? It does make sense, thinking about how much pain the left behind family and friends went through with grief and acceptance, but that doesn't make the hurt any less. It's interesting to see Bryce navigate through all the loss she feels. She'll never get back those five years. The question is, how will she move on and start as a brand new person?
  • Carter. Carter is cute, smart, and a medical student who is Bryce's first new friend when she wakes up. He wants to be there for her if he'll let her. Not only does the reader see him in a protective role but also as a possible love interest. He is quiet in a way that many main YA guys are not and sits back rather than rushing her into a relationship. Some of the things he does for her, though little, are swoon worthy! He's got some pretty fabulous cooking skills to boot.
  • The family dynamics are realistic. Bryce's family has basically fallen apart in her absence, which is what you'd expect when a daughter and a sister has been so well loved. Without giving too much away, I enjoyed watching that dynamic again change as Bryce comes home from the hospital and figures out her new role in the family. 
  • The ending. I've been in love with endings lately. Tears will stream down your face as you read the last chapter, which says a lot about Avery's writing ability. I felt so connected to Bryce by the end of the story, and it isn't even in 1st person! Everything comes full circle in this book. I can't think of a more suitable ending. Seriously, the ending sealed this book's rating for me. 
What Bugged Me:
  • Greg, Bryce's old boyfriend. He's kind of a jerk. But knowing that I had such a strong emotional response to a character, again, reveals a great deal about the author's ability to mold amazing prose.
Final Verdict:
Anything But Ordinary reminds us that life is a miracle in which every second must count. A page turner that will rip your heart out (in the best way possible). 


Review: Unspoken

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Stats:
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Release Date: September 11, 2012
Page Count: 370
Would Appeal To: Fans of Maggie Stiefvater

Favorite Quotes:
"'Your soul is like the souls of a thousand monkeys on crack, all smushed together.'"

"'The photocopy machine overheated and broke down. I think I can still hear the sound of it sobbing and wanting to talk about its childhood.'"

"At first glance, Rusty was a masculine version of his sister--tall, dark, and incurably lazy. He had the same athletic frame, which he draped on walls and furniture as if simply too weak to support himself."

"He met her eyes, face calm. The oak leaves above him were already gilded, autumn coming to the woods like a king in a legend, touching all the trees with brightness."

Why You Must Read This:
  • Invisible friend come to life, anyone? Right from the start, this premise had me hooked. Kami has talked to Jared in her head her whole life, and sometimes she spaces out when having conversations with him. Her mom has always hoped she'd grow out of it, the kids at school used to think she was weird-- she even lost a best friend over Jared. But she's not willing to give him up. When he becomes a real person, one of the Lynburns who moves back to the spooky manor at the top of the hill, Kami practically has a mental breakdown. She isn't crazy, and she has to figure out how to live in a world that's scarier, now that he's an actual person she must interact with. 
  • I laughed out loud, in the gym! So I tend to start new books while I'm working out...let's just say I'm glad no one else was around. Within the first three chapters, I was cracking up. Kami starts a school newspaper in a cramped office with only her best friend Angela to keep her company. Angela's really only in it for the napping couch. Soon, the mysterious Ash Lynburn appears, a perfect interviewee for her story on "The Return of the Lynburns."
  • Magic. Not only are all of Brennan's descriptions magical and unique, but she weaves magic through the storyline in ways you won't even see coming until, BAM, they hit you!
  • Fun dialogue. I can't remember being this amused by dialogue since two years ago when I read Robin Benway's The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, and June. The characters' speech, from self-defense instructor (and older brother of Angela) Rusty to Kami's jokester of a father, brings the story to life and makes even the most minor characters sparkle off the page.
  • Kept me guessing. On more than one occasion, I found myself right there with Kami--unsure of who to trust. She is a reporter who needs to get to the bottom of mysterious events before someone--gasp--kills her! She only seems to be a little worried about the death part, thanks to her habitually curious tendancies. If you go into this story just knowing the invisible friend part (and the book jacket does an excellent job of not providing spoilers), you will be pleasantly surprised with the plot twists! Clever work, Ms. Brennan. I will be reading all of your other books.
  • Emotional. The plot wasn't all fun and games. I enjoyed the relationship between Kami and Jared. Kami's good at analyzing gestures and deciphering thoughts, but of course, she misreads certain cues, as does Jared. There was a surprising moment when the 3rd person POV switched to Jared, but I also liked getting into his head a little. I found myself rooting for the good characters but also sympathizing with the ones who are unsure of whether they can fully cross the line to what we might call "bad guy." I also had a strong dislike for Ash's mom. She made my skin crawl.  
  • Loved the ending. For once, abrupt equals AWESOMENESS! Your emotions might go haywire, but you will be pining for the next Lynburn Legacy book. 
What Bugged Me:
  • The only thing I can think of is that Ash comes from America and uses some British phrases, like "Can I offer you a lift home?" I haven't ever heard a U.S. teen say that particular sentence. This was not nearly enough of a discrepancy to make me deduct half a butterfly on the rating scale.
Final Verdict:
Unspoken showcases a cast of cooky characters with extreme loyalties whose adventures are both hilarious and nightmarish. A memorable mystery that causes eruptions of laughter and lack of sleep.   


Stacking the Shelves (#1)

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Hosted by Tynga's Reviews, Stacking the Shelves gives bloggers the chance to talk about what books were added to their shelves over the week:)

I'm a little late this evening, but I am in the posting mood! I finally used my Christmas Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble gift cards. Here's what I bought (click on covers for summaries!):






























What I won: 
From Julie Cross, signed

What did you get this week? I'd love to add more books to my TBR pile, so leave a comment and I'll check out your post! Have a great week (and happy Martin Luther King Day tomorrow if you happen to be in the U.S.).

Review: Meant to Be

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Stats:
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: November 13, 2012
Page Count: 290
Would Appeal To: Fans of Sarah Dessen, Sarah Ockler, Jennifer E. Smith
 Favorite Quotes:
 "'In this room, you will find a veritable feast for the eyes, with colors exploding like fat, ripe berries of passion all over the canvas. Taste with your eyes the juicy flavors of impressionism, paint swirling into itself like a delicious gravy of art...' My head hurts too much for me to turn and find out who's laughing at the 'berries of passion'-- or to point out the tour guide's use of mixed metaphor."

"I'm curled up in the most comfortable bed ever (seriously, it feels like sleeping in a hug)..."

"The last time I drank a latte, I decided the best way to study for the SATs would be to memorize the entire dictionary. My mom found me the next morning surrounded by multicolored flash cards that looked like they had been written by a serial killer."

"Jason's expression is hard to decipher. He looks very calm. Unfortunately, it seems like the kind of calm that comes before a tornado whips through your town and deposits three cows and a Pizza Hut on top of your house." 

Why You Must Read This Book:
  • Cuteness factor is through the roof. Seriously, I sighed at the end. I am not wanting for more because the ending was that perfect.
  • Jason, Julia's buddy on their junior class trip to London, is positively annoying. But...he has a ton of redeemable qualities. Let's face it-- most girls go for the bad guy. And Jason's not bad; he's the class clown (with a multitude of female admirers). He has a "rusty mop" of red hair, says the most embarrassing things in public, and continuously calls Julia "Book Licker." He breaks the rules, makes adults cringe, and blows off school (but is secretly smart). Plus, he sees Julia at her lowest points, mostly when she's tripping and/or falling into things, which she does a lot. Despite this, he displays little hints of humanness (like a love of the Beatles) and genius ideas for fun that allow Julia to loosen up and crash through the concrete concepts she's had of how life and love should go. 
  • Poor Julia--you've just got to root for her. Imagine if you lived your most embarrassing moment over three times a day for a week. That's pretty much Julia, klutz and social outcast. What's great is that she only slightly cares what the more popular girls think, and that's because one of them is the gossip queen of the school; however, she's not afraid to be on her own in another country. Julia's practically an organized adult living in a high school world, a history buff who highlights and tags the crap out of more than one edition of an English guidebook. This is why it's so fun for Jason to see how far he can push the boundaries. She over analyzes little actions, but for good reason. All the misunderstandings between her and Jason--and there are a ton-- are realistic and hilariously confusing. So many things go wrong, you just want her love life to go right! She carries on with virtually no friends and an antagonizing partner, just for the sake of experiencing London, the place where her parents fell in love.
  • Julia's one step away from being 3-D. She believes each person only has one MTB (Meant to Be). She buries her nose in Pride and Prejudice and dreams of perfect Mark with the slightly crooked tooth sweeping her off her feet because they had a backyard wedding at six years old. These elements brought Julia to life for me. All of her rule following made more sense because of her fantasies about love.
  • Clever plot. A loveless Julia suddenly has three boys to keep her on her toes in London. And there's a great twist that I never saw coming... 
  • Lauren Morrill knows how to write a kissing scene. 'Nuff said.
  • Descriptions of England are gorgeous. From the London Eye to Shakespeare's birthplace, this author flawlessly executes the "show, don't tell" rule when it comes to both scenery and characters.
What Bugged Me:
  • Slow start. Honestly, after the first three chapters, I couldn't figure out what all the author hype on the back was about. I thought Julia was annoying (she put asides in parentheses like this that interrupted her sentences) and that the similes were too frequent and trying too hard. Pretty soon, though, the ( ) dwindled and the similes were more natural, just another part of her personality. As soon as Jason dragged Julia to a house party, plot events turned interesting.
  • One character's motives predictable. It was a boy. Something he said tipped me off. But who's to say a little dramatic irony doesn't help the story? You're just left screaming at the pages, going, "Why didn't you read into that statement if you read into everything else?"
  • A couple of repeated words/phrases. "Distressed" was repeated three times in the span of a few pages to describe various objects (before page 28). Also, I love the phrase "like sleeping in a hug," but that was repeated as well. Maybe it was meant to show her character? The thankyouverymuch that Julia often thought and once said did not get on my nerves because it became very much a trademark slogan. 
Final Verdict:
Lauren Morrill's debut is a spunky, comedy-of-errors romance that leaves you laughing and sighing in the same breath. Warning: impossible to put down.


 

"Is There a Right Age to Read a Book?"

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I came across a really interesting piece on the Tor blog today called "Is There a Right Age to Read a Book?" by Jo Walton. In it, Walton introduces thoughts from both sides of the argument. 

Claire, the blogger responsible for The Captive Reader, suggests that while we won't get everything out of a book read too young (i.e., we'll enjoy the characters and plot, but miss the deeper themes and allusions), it does us no harm as we can always go back and reread things later. However, she does emphasize just how much of an effect the age at which we read things can have. I love that she uses Jane Eyre as an example: 

"I read Jane Eyre, one of Kaye-Smith’s ‘approved’ books for youths, when I was fourteen in school and hated it. Was this the fault of a too early introduction? Or perhaps a too late one? Would I at twelve, when for one brief summer I understood... the allure of gothic novels, have been more receptive to the absurdities of the plot and the odiousness of Mr Rochester that irritated me so much a few years later?"

THIS. A pained 16 year old me was fond of exclaiming "I HATE Jane Eyre! 'Oh, Mr. Rochester!' 'Oh, Jane!'" in tones of despair, and claiming that it was all just "a Victorian episode of Passions." Would I have liked it more at a less tetchy and pseudo-jaded age? Very likely. In a similar vein, I read Wuthering Heights as a senior and while I loved the creepy dilapidated houses and windswept moors and bogs, I was frustrated at how cruel everyone was to each other, and worked at such cross-purposes- intentionally or otherwise. When a college professor announced that this would be our next book, I accidentally let out an audible groan. She asked why I didn't like the book and I admitted "well, I didn't like anyone in it..." and waited for a stern rebuke. She just smiled and said, "that's ok, you're not really supposed to!" In later classes, we spent a lot of time discussing the characters selfish motives and the spidery evilness that is Nellie Dean. It gave me  a whole new appreciation for the book (and my namesake). 

To use another personal example, I read the first part of Great Expectations in sixth or seventh grade- namely the parts where Pip is still a boy. How clearly can adult readers recognize the horrible panic and gnawing guilt of having done something wrong (stealing a file and food for the convict, who was terrifying in his own right), and remember the fear of getting caught? Sure, they can understand it on an intellectual level, but does it resonate as well? 

Walton does make a good point about the feasibility of this "read first, understand more later" idea: for some people, there will be no reread. Some people (including J.R.R. Tolkien) are self-professed one time only readers, who get as much as they're going to get the first time around. For them, Walton suggests, maybe it is best to wait. 

This brings up another interesting point. How can one know when to read something? If a kid is lucky, they grow up in a family of readers, and/or with the support of teachers and librarians. If not, well, there's a kind of serendipity that happens with books sometimes, and internet savy kids could always make use of things like Goodreads for book recommendations, as well as recommendations from friends and peers. 

Did you read any books too early/late? Are you a re-reader? What books did you read differently at different times in your life, and did you notice your perspective having changed? 

A Word on Re-Reads

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"I maintain that reading and rereading is kind of like listening to favorite music that you haven’t picked up in a while—you’ll find all sort of things that you never noticed, but more than anything, you’ll remember yourself when you first listened to it. It often works better than pure recollection, looking back on who you were the last time you read a certain book." -Emily Asher-Perrin, Tor.com

I found this quote while reading one of Tor's many series, Magic and Good Madness: A Neil Gaiman Reread, specifically the American Gods portion. I loved reading through staff writers Bridget McGovern and Asher-Perrin's thoughts on the book (one of my favorites), seeing what elements and references jumped out to them, learning more about dozens of deities, and getting glimpses into the story I never would have seen on my own. It made me want to reread this book in a more... not serious, but maybe more curious, focused way- like the reading done in the best literature classes. I might even be tempted to start taking notes in my copy of the book. (The horror, I know!! Don't worry, I'm pretty sure I've got a spare).

I really agree with the quote above. I think there is much to be gained from multiple readings, both in terms of gaining a deeper understanding of the work and in terms of reliving great reading experiences on a more personal level, like listening to a well-loved album. I'm pretty sure that I'll be rereading things like The Hobbit, Pride & Prejudice, Outlander and Stardust for the rest of my life.

On a weird other hand, there are some things I am reluctant to reread for various reasons. Reading the last two Sandman books (again, thanks a lot Gaiman) wrecked my emotional high-school self to an embarrassing and slightly scary degree. The next year I read 1984 and felt like I was along for the ride in a more real and terrifying way than ever before. I loved. it but I'm not in a hurry to relive the soul-numbing dread of that ending anytime soon.

Reading The Compleat Moonshadow by J.M. DeMatteis was another raw teenage read that really got to me in the best and most powerful ways. It follows pretty much the entire life of Moonshadow Birnbaum, "born to a Brooklyn hippie, raised in an intergalactic zoo, and ejected at age 14 into a harsh, uncaring cosmos, is collected in this mammoth volume. Accompanied only by a grouchy alien furball, Moonshadow must confront issues of love, death, sex, and war on an odyssey through distant world and spiritual spheres." Maybe because this was one of the first graphic novels I read, maybe because it was so, so honest and emotional, I genuinely felt like I was experiencing everything through Moonshadow's eyes. When he hurt, I hurt. When he stood in wonder at the beauty of the cosmos or wept at the unfairness of the universe, I did the same. (Actually, I think this kind of predicted my obsession love affair with Doctor Who... huh...) 

Despite being one of the most profound reading experiences of my life, it's one I'm leery of repeating. Part of my brain tries to tell me that I'm just worried I'll be let down the second time around, that it can't have been so great. The rest of me knows better. I knew when I was reading it that this would be a slightly different book depending on the age of the person reading it, that when I reread it, it wouldn't be quite the same book because I wouldn't be quite the same person. I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that.

What books do you consider to be old friends? Do you feel the need to re-read The Great Gatsby to see if your English teacher was onto something after all, or to get ready for the Baz Luhrman spectacular? Are there any books that you don't want to re-read? 

Warm Bodies

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Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

R is a young man with an existential crisis--he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse. Just dreams.

After experiencing a teenage boy's memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and strangely sweet relationship with the victim's human girlfriend. Julie is a burst of vibrant color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that R lives in. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm Bodies is about being alive, being dead and the blurry line in between. -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads


You know when you find a book at exactly the right time, and things just gel? I can't remember the last time I was so pulled into a book, not just for it's likable characters or snappy dialogue, but because I cared so deeply about what was happening in the world of the book, in our world, or when I felt like I completely agreed with and understood the author's point. I love how well Marion uses zombies as a metaphor without seeming pretentious or heavy-handed- partially that's because his zombies seem original while still being familiar and often terrifying. I loved the language in this book, too:
  
“I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.”  

“There is a chasm between me and the world outside of me. A gap so wide my feelings can't cross it. By the time my screams reach the other side, they have dwindled into groans.” 


“Of course, if I don't eat all of him, if I spare his brain, he'll rise up and follow me back to the airport, and that might make feel better. I'll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we'll stand around and groan for a while. It's hard to say what 'friends' are any more, but that might be close.” 

If you haven't already guessed, while there is plenty of humor, most of it is of the very dark variety. Don't be fooled though, this is no cynical snarkfest. There is genuine heart here, under the tasty brains that will make you relive that day you owned the discussion in English class because you "totally get what the author is saying, man."

Then again, I say all that but COMPLETELY missed the bones of a famous play that are shallowly buried here. (Hey guys, did you know The Lion King is "Hamlet"?!) I think I'm glad I did, actually, I loved it on its own and might have been distracted if I knew to look for more references.

I love R. I love Isaac Marion. I love that I get to use the phrase ZomRomCom again to describe the upcoming feature film adaptation. Who would have thought that phrase would be resurrected post-Shaun of the Dead? Speaking of the King of the Zombies, Simon Pegg contributed a blurb for this book which I think sums it up perfectly: “A mesmerizing evolution of a classic contemporary myth.”

Warm Bodies shuffles into theaters February 1st.

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