Books I've Read This Year: 2011

"Happiest is he who judges and knows books." - Thomas Davies, 1845

It's that time of year again where I place all of the books I've read in one post so that they will be archived and I can finally clear out my sidebar. However, this year I'm also going to rate all of them. I know I've written reviews for a few, but I also flat-out disagree with some of them now, so I won't link to them.

No stars = don't bother

1 star = If you are holding it, I won't tell you to put it down

2 stars = I will hand this book to you

3 stars = I will beat you with this book until you read it

It should be noted: These rankings are based on how much I enjoyed them, rather than overall quality, which means the 2 star rating encompasses a large range and a 3 star rating doesn't have any set criteria, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But a very small grain, because I have excellent taste.

• 
  
•    Across The Universe
•  **Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The (Mark Twain)
•   *All The Time in the World
•    All These Things I've Done
•  **Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman)
•   *Anna and the French Kiss
•  **Beauty Queens (Libba Bray)
•   *Believing Brain, The-- NF
•   *Between Shades of Gray
•   *Blink & Caution
•  **Bluefish (Pat Schmatz)
•   *Bored of the Rings
•   *Brightly Woven
•  **Brotherband Chronicles: The Outcasts (John Flanagan)
•  **Cardturner, The (Louis Sachar)
•  **Charmed Life (Diana Wynne Jones)
•  **Chime (Franny Billingsley)
•   *Chosen One, The
•  **Cinderella Ate My Daughter -- NF (Peggy Orenstein)
•   *City of Bones
•   *Crucible, The
• ***Dark Lord of Derkholm (Diana Wynne Jones)
•  **Dash And Lily's Book of Dares (David Levithan)
•    David
•  **Dealing With Dragons (Patricia C. Wrede)
•    Delirium
•   *Demon Trapper's Daughter, The
•   *Divergent
•    End of the Line, The
•  **Every You, Every Me (David Levithan)
•  **Everybody Sees The Ants (A.S. King)
•   *Exposed
•    Family
•    Genetics For Dummies-- NF
•  **Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, The (Catherynne M. Valente)
• ***Going Bovine (Libba Bray)
•  **Half Magic (Edward Eager)
• ***Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling: Goddess)
•    Hereafter
•    History of Last Night's Dream, The-- NF
•  **How They Met (David Levithan)
•  **How To Be Alone-- NF (Jonathan Franzen)
•    How To Rock Braces and Glasses
•   *Huntress
•    I Am J
•  **I Am The Messenger (Markus Zusak)
•   *I Was A Teenage Fairy
•   *Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain - NF
•  **Incredibly Alice (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor)
•    Jekel Loves Hyde (contains hot, dark, and handsome Englishman, if that's what you look for in a book)
•  **Justice-- NF (Michael Sandel)
•  **Last Little Blue Envelope, The (Maureen Johnson)
• ***Little Brother (Cory Doctorow - link leads to free download. FREE DOWNLOAD.)
•  **Love is the Higher Law (David Levithan)
•  **Lover's Dictionary, The (David Levithan)
•    Lunch Box Dream
•    Matched
•   *Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Except for Millard. Millard gets 2 stars.)
• ***My Unfair Godmother (Janette Rallison)
•  **Name of the Star, The (Maureen Johnson)
•  **Near Witch, The (Victoria Schwab)
• ***Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
•   *Nightspell
• ***Paper Covers Rock (Jenny Hubbard)
•    Possession
•   *Post Secret
•  **Ranger's Apprentice: Halt's Peril
•    Ranger's Apprentice: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja
•   *Rock and the River, The (really good book, but only gets 1 star based on how I've set it up)
•  **Room: A Novel (Emma Donoghue- scary/disturbing as heck)
•   *Rule of Four, The
•    Scarlet Letter, The
•   *Scorch Trials, The
•    Secret of Rover, The
•   *Shatter Me
•  **Stardust (Neil Gaiman- personally, I liked the movie better)
•   *Stork
•   *Story Time
•   *Their Eyes Were Watching God
•   *Thief, The
•  **To Timbuktu --narrative NF (Casey Scieszka) 
• ***Tough Guide To Fantasyland, The (Diana Wynne Jones- really pisses me off there isn't a Kindle edition because I so want to have this with me at all times)
•    Travelers, The: Spader
•  **Variant (Robinson Wells)
•    Water Wars, The
• ***Welcome to Bordertown (edited by Holly Black)
•  **Westing Game, The (Ellen Raskin)
•   *What Happened to Goodbye
•  **When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)
•  **Wide Awake (David Levithan)
•   *Wildthorn
•  **Witch Week (Diana Wynne Jones- this is close to 3)
•    Witchlanders
•   *Wither
•   *World War Z (loads of people adore this book, but I didn't)
•    XVI
• ***Year of Living Biblically, The - narrative NF (A. J. Jacobs)

Comments:

You all know about my massive crush on the younger version of Neil Gaiman, but he really is a brilliant writer.

A few words on Diana Wynne Jones: I never read any of her books until this year, but had I done so when I was younger, the nostalgia factor probably would have bumped all of her books in this list up to a 3. The Tough Guide holds the record for book that has made me laugh the most and hardest. I completely adore it.

Also starring (pun intended) in this list is David Levithan. Just go to his section of the library and pick a book at random, really. And then pick another one.

Cory Doctorow is a genius. Going Bovine is...a masterpiece of thought-provoking hilarity. Mad cow disease. String theory. Music and Disney World and punk rock angels. What more could you possibly ask for? It is a book truly deserving of the Printz award.

The first half of Bordertown consumed my mind for an entire day. And it's a 500 page book, so it gets 3 stars even when the second half is completely ignored.

Paper Covers Rock is beautiful. Gorgeous. To the point that I read it out loud to myself the first time through, as weird as that is.

My Unfair Godmother, which I just read this past week, is clever and amazing and so, so real. Despite involving magic and wishes and fairy godmothers. We laugh when certain people in my book club clutch certain books to their chests, but I fully intend to do that with this book at the meeting tomorrow.

And then there is The Year of Living Biblically, my favorite nonfiction book ever. A man sets out to find out what's so great about religion (in the form of Judaism and Christianity), and decides to do so by making a list of all of the rules the Bible mentions, and then following them. It's emotional, relatable, and fascinating. It's downright hilarious. It's changed how and what I think about religion, and about people. (Plus I learned a lot about Judaism.) Read this book ASAP. Really. Regardless of what religion or lack thereof you associate yourself with.

"These people are wrong."

‎"THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong." - Neil Gaiman

Have I mentioned that Neil Gaiman is my middle-aged-man crush? (Don't laugh-my sister's is on one of our local weathermen.) But hey. The man deserves it.

Review: To Timbuku, by Casey Scieszka

“Literature is more than just paper, you know - it affects every aspect of existence.” - Al, The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers


This post comes to you less than a week after I stated I found it pointless to blog about books because I'm just going to talk about them at book club anyway. Clearly I've just been lacking in books worth talking about.


To Timbuktu is worth talking about.


It tells the true story of two people who, after finishing college, knew three things about how they wanted to proceed:


1. They wanted to leave the country.
2. They wanted to pursue creative projects (writing for Casey, art for Steven).
3. They wanted to be together.


They ended up teaching English in China for half a year, exploring Southeast Asia for a few months before settling in Mali where Casey researched the role of Islam in the education system on grant money and Steven drew portraits, painted education murals on the walls of schools, and both of them continued to teach.


This is the first book of its length (nearly 500 pages) that I have read in a single day in a very, very long time. While writing/illustrating the book, they used their journal entries (both written and drawn) to help them along, which results in a tone that I loved-- a combination between real journal entries, letters to home, oral storytelling, and regular fiction. All of the things I normally would have objected to in a fictional novel made sense in this case, given the perspective.


And then there were the pictures. My sister could tell you more about their actual quality than I could (she liked them a lot), but what I noticed was their role in the storytelling. Sometimes they included punchlines the prose left out. Sometimes they were placed on the page so as to play an active role in the progression of events. Sometimes they were simply illustrations whose inclusion I enjoyed. The cover does not say "Written by Casey Scieszka, Illustrated by Steven Weinberg." It says "Words by Casey Scieszka, Art by Steven Weinberg." They told the story together-- just using different mediums.


There are people who stopped in the middle of Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes (by Maureen Johnson) to look up plane tickets to Europe. I didn't look up tickets while reading To Timbuktu, but now all I want is to teach while travelling the world with someone I love--be they friend or boyfriend. (There's a teacher at my old elementary school who did exactly that with her newly-wed husband in Japan for two years, as a matter of fact-- says it was completely life-changing.)


Actually, upon finishing it I had a strange sense that I had gone on an amazing adventure myself, and as irrational as it sounds, I couldn't wait to get online to tell all of you about it.

More About That WSJ Article

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” - Audre Lorde


About a month ago I wrote a post concerning Meghan Cox Gurdon's article in The Wall Street Journal on the subject of increasing darkness in YA literature. This article instigated a massive Twitter campaign lead by Maureen Johnson against some of her points, and today I listened to the two women debate the matter on NPR.


Maureen did such an excellent job that I was literally applauding at one point, and several librarians and other authors (one of which was mentioned in the WSJ article in question) called in to share their thoughts. The third special guest of the segment was Madeline Kemper, a 13 year old recruited from Figment.  Let it be noted that I am very, very, very, very envious of Madeline Kemper.


One of the callers said that while some YA books are very dark and not for everyone, some teens need them- either so they don't feel so alone or to understand what their friends are going through- and that Gurdon has no right to call for those books to be taken away from them. Gurdon replied that she was doing no such thing. Because saying that such books are too dark to be on the market isn't calling for books to be taken away at all.


As I said in my first post on this subject, it is one thing to acknowledge that certain YA books contain things that not everyone would want to read, but it's quite another to say that those books shouldn't even be available in the first place. And that's something Maureen hinted at but never actually said.


What about the teens who don't cut themselves and have never been the victims of sexual abuse and don't know anyone who does/has, Gurdon asks? Aren't these books just glamorizing terrible things or jading us to the seriousness? I am one of these teens, and while I have been laughed at for apparently giving a summary of one such book with apparent casualness, I do not for one second devalue their existence nor the importance of the issues discussed. I can just talk about them more easily. How can that be considered a bad thing?


When a book is labeled YA, that yellow and red sticker does not say "This book is appropriate for 12 year olds." YA is a wide genre with protagonists ages 12-18. This does not mean that every YA book is intended for all of the ages within that range. Magic Tree House and Harry Potter are at entirely different reading levels, but they're still (at least the first few HPs) both shelved under Juvenile Fiction.


Then there's the whole argument of "parents don't want their kids reading x y and z." Gurdon mentioned something about wanting to "prolong childhood." I have no idea what that means, but keeping kids ignorant just to keep them sweet and innocent and pure is ridiculous. I'm not saying we should hand 12 year olds books full of violence, sex, or other potentially-disturbing content. I'm saying parents shouldn't limit their kids' reading just because they want them to remain their little babies forever.


However, if the reason behind the parental veto is that said parent knows their child (actually knows) well enough to know that he or she isn't ready for a given book, then that's fine. It's not a matter of "he/she has never heard of cutting before so he/she shouldn't read a book about cutting." It's a matter of "my child isn't emotionally mature enough to be able to handle this new information well." There are books I'd never recommend to my 12 year old sister that I read when I was her age because she's bothered by things I took in stride- and that's fine.


I've said it before that I read a few books in middle school that would have horrified many parents if they knew I was reading such things, and kind of disturbed me, too. But I read them and that can't be changed and after I had time to process said books, I was fine. There are things that will be shocking regardless of how old you are when you first discover them, and as much as we as a society prefer to protect our kids from anything that might make them less than happy, it's a part of life. And I'd rather have my kid read about those things in a book and then talk with him or her about it through the medium of literature than have them find out in a less "safe" or more embarrassing ("Olivia's Offspring doesn't know what ____ is hahahahahaha") way.


As for the caller who said "kids are moving straight from Spongebob to Twilight," perhaps I'm not the best counterexample to this claim considering that I started watching Spongebob after I read Twilight...but Daphne Unfeasible (Maureen Johnson's agent's alter ego) already wrote a great post about it. That caller really was just trying to promote his own book on air, which rather annoys me.


And then there's Scott Westerfeld's post about how not only do parents have a responsibility to talk to their kids about books rather than freaking out about articles such as this one, but teens have a responsibility to share their reading with their parents. To talk about books and what they mean to us.

Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

"In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris, and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together, they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes-fascinating, sometimes-exasperating boy fits into the life she’s chosen.

But Tris also has a secret: one she’s kept hidden from everyone, because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly-perfect society, she also learns that her secret might be what helps her save those she loves . . . or it might be what destroys her." - Shelfari's Summary

I agree that the summary makes Divergent sound like just another Hunger Games knock-off. A bunch of teenagers thrust into a highly-competitive situation, with the bottom scorers being eliminated? And ooh, romance. That's what I thought when I started reading it, too. But no. Not at all.

I realize that over the course of the year, I've said "Oh, I loved this book so much!" for every dystopian novel I've reviewed, other than Delirium. Divergent was way better than Matched, Delirium, and XVI. I'm choosing not to compare it to Wither (which I apparently didn't write a review for-- I loved it to pieces), since they're both amazing in different ways.

I have another post in the works about the world in greater detail, so I'll just say that it wasn't just an "Ooh, creative idea!" sort of dystopian world. This was a "Ooh, creative and engrossing and fascinating idea!" sort.

The love interest, despite sharing some physical traits with Mr. Paranormal Romance (blue eyes, dark hair, long-fingered hands-- and I got to the part about the hands a few days after I wrote the post), is not annoying. He's not Mr. Perfect, and he's not Mr. My Flaws Make Me Perfect. He really is, well, flawed. And it's that, ironically enough, that made him my favorite fictional love interest in a long while. If it weren't for the fact that I don't want to spoil his identity for you (who am I kidding- it's obvious from his first scene), I would refuse to call him The Love Interest, because while that's his role in the plot, he seems way more real and...complete... than just that.


To quote from another review of the book, "Tris never had some sudden, life-changing experience and then suddenly became sure that she was in the right place making the right choices. She had terrible doubts through to the end, and her success throughout the book was to keep ploughing on through her uncertainty." That's true, and I love it.


Reading Divergent, while completely enjoyable in and of itself, also made me realize some of the flaws in my own novel, and has inspired me to get started on another set of edits. (It may help that there are two short scenes in Divergent that are pretty much identical to two short scenes in mine, and Divergent did it better.) That, I think, is one of the marks of a great book, though: it makes you want to do great things yourself.

Review: The Battle of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan

So guys...I have a bit of a confession. And it's kind of embarrassing. You know how I wrote two entire posts about just how freaking amazing Ranger's Apprentice is and how I couldn't wait to read book 10, and how the books didn't get worse as they went along?

Well, book 10 has been out for a few weeks...and I only just now finished it. It was significantly less good than the others (still good enough- just not up to the standard that the rest of them set). It doesn't help that book 9 was possibly my favorite of the entire series (other than book 1).

The humor that I've always loved was still there, and general Ranger cleverness was still there, and the characters are still great and everything, but the writing disappointed me. There were many things I read and thought "That is not the way I'd have phrased it," or "that doesn't make any sense," or he'd use the same word twice within a paragraph without employing parallelism. There were also silly typos ("Or course," said Alyss), so maybe it was just poorly-edited.

He also brought in several characters that haven't been mentioned at all for several books (book 1 in one case, and book 7 in another), with very little explanation as to who they were. It'd have been nice to have a little bit of a subtle "hey, remember him?" paragraph rather than just assuming we did (because I didn't).

Then there's the plot (SPOILER WARNING). It's one thing to pit two hundred lumberjacks against an army Samurai who have been training their entire lives but the lumberjacks win because they're using Roman fighting techniques the Samurai weren't prepared for, but it's quite another thing to have an archer shooting at the emperor and have someone randomly just grab the arrow out of the air right before it hits him. There is no precedent for him to have that ability. It even says he didn't know how he did it and never would be able to do it again. I believe that's called deus ex machina, and deus ex machina is not a good thing.

Oh, and then there's this massive cat/leopard thing that all of these Super Strong Warrior Guys are terrified of. The cat has killed 17 of them. And who takes it down? Two girls, neither of whom are particularly well-trained.


The end, at least, made me very, very happy/

So a message to John Flanagan: Dude, you're awesome. I love your books. I usually read them within 24 hours of buying them, and that's usually on release day. But what happened with Nihon-Ja? 


(I've actually met the author, and he is nice, funny, and well-researched. I talked with him about my own novel for a few minutes while he signed my complete set of his. So that was cool.)

Star-rating withheld due to lack of impartiality from the influence of the rest of the series.

Link: Memento Mori

"Look back, and smile on perils past." - Walter Scott


http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/04/memento-mori.html


The above link leads to an article written by Cory Doctorow that goes along with my post about generation gaps. I thought it was very interesting and brought up several good points.
Coincidentally enough, I've also been dancing around the Little Brother PDF for my Civics book report, and...I'd forgotten just how awesome that book is.


As for other awesome things: Doctor Who last night was amazing. My grandparents are visiting so my grandpa decided to watch it with us having not seen "The Impossible Astronaut." At the end he looked at us and said "Did any of you follow that?"
My youngest sister said "No."
I said "Yes."
He said "Well at least someone did! I may have fallen asleep a few times in the middle."


Don't judge him for falling asleep, though-- I overheard him discussing the episode with my dad later. :)

How They Met And How They Parted

"(Yesterday) I read and enjoyed a book of gay romances recommended to me by my heterosexual ex-boyfriend. Because that's not strange at all."

(The book in question is How They Met and Other Stories by David Levithan, which is chockful of quotable material.)

"Knowing about life is really knowing how it should be, not just how it is." 

That's the only deep-sounding one I can find right now just flipping through (mainly because I marked that one this morning specifically to share it with all of you), but the thing I've noticed from all of the books by David Levithan that I've read is that his narrators are very, very real. Just the way he/they phrases things. The observations he/they make.

And I love it.

(And if you want more fun contradictions, think about your first "date" with your ex being just as friends. That makes no sense in about three different ways.)

26 Books, 66 Dollars

Our county's public library system has a huge sale once a year. Stuff is super cheap. Some of it is books that no one was checking out, some are in such crappy condition that the libraries just don't want them anymore, and some are over-stocks on things like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.


The first morning and afternoon of the sale are for school system employees, who get to take the books for free (assuming they're for the libraries). That evening (today) and the next day are $4 per hardback and $2 per paperback. My uncle's taking the day off of work tomorrow to hit the tables. Saturday is $2 per hardback and $1 per paperback, and Sunday is $5 per box (as provided by the sale), and $2 per bag (as provided). It's just a toss-up between whether you want first pick at a slightly higher price, or all of the books no one else wanted for super-cheap.


Some highlights from my picks are a lot of Tamora Pierce novels, Margaret Zimmerman Bradley's Avalon series (although I think two of them were written by her friend after Ms. Bradley died), American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and my favorite Garth Nix book (Lirael).


I was keeping my eye out for Cory Doctorow and Terry Pratchett (the former of which I love and the latter of which I've heard loads of good things about), but had no luck.


Another series I completed my collection of is the Rhapsody quartet (although it has a real name that's not Rhapsody-- that's just the name of the 1st one) by Elizabeth Hayden. If you like fantasy and have the time/inclination to read four fairly large books, I highly recommend it. Although I haven't actually read the latest one yet.


While I'm recommending books, I think a good series to mention would be The Icemark Chronicles by Stuart Hill. A couple people I convinced to try them out got bored, but I was obsessed with it a few years ago. Ishaera would not be what it is without them (although this re-write is considerably less thinly-veiled plagarism than my 6th grade version was). Yes, I read them when I was 11, but I still love them now, so don't let that stop you.


I freaking love getting good books for a low price. It's just that I don't have the shelf space to keep all of them. And I just got new shelves. 

Why Do We Write?

"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses." - George Bernard Shaw


This was recently re-posted on Rick Riordan's blog. I enjoyed it a lot.
http://rickriordan.blogspot.com/2011/01/top-five-misconceptions-about-writing.html

Personally, I write because I love it. Sometimes I do it because I'd go crazy otherwise, and sometimes I do it for the sheer joy and satisfaction.
Yes, I want to be published and have the satisfaction of seeing my name on the shelf when I walk over to Barnes and Noble after school, and yes, I want to make money off of my writing...but those are all just bonuses. Those are reasons why I want to be published. It's not why I write.


Besides, if I didn't write, I never would have met all of you lovely people from writing group and/or in the comments.


While rehearsing my piece for the Debate/Speech tournament (it's "In The Maelstrom," which you can find in my self-published anthology Thoughts on Life) on the 12th and 13th, the teacher acting as our coach asked me if I had written it out of some sort of depression or angst.
He also kept asking about the message I'd been going for when I wrote it.


I was incredibly unhelpful and told him that I honestly hadn't been going for anything, nor did it spawn from any particular emotion. I just felt like picking up a pencil and scribbling some stuff down, and that poem is what happened.


I was, however, perpetually living at some level of misery during those years known as Middle School, which is when I wrote it. Does that count?


It's become decidedly more awesome now that I've been working on it in a performance capacity. I hope to get a video of it at some point, instead of just me talking to the camera after each round like I did last time we had a tournament.

An Abundance of Quotes Part 8

"I never imagined myself being a writer. I always imagined myself actually being smart or something." - Christopher Paolini


"The truth resists simplicity." - one of the vlogbrothers. Hank says it in a recent video, but the context hints that John said it at some point before.


"Each day provides its own gifts." - Marcus Aurelius


"It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact." - Edmund Burke


"Know or listen to those who know." - Baltasar Gracian


“It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar” - John Green


"The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing." - William J. Broad


"You have to dream before your dreams can come true." - Abdul Kalam


"The joy of Alzheimer's: I can always make new friends, and I can hide my own Easter eggs." - my math teacher, who does not have Alzheimer's.


"You look like someone peed in your cornflakes." - Also my math teacher


(Guy in my math class): "Dude, are you racist towards Asians?"
(Another guy in my math class): "If by 'racist' you mean 'sexually attracted to,' then yes."


I'm cleaning out my binder and found some things I made note of, the conversation above being one of them. It's too bad I don't have any novel ideas that need a lot of modern teenage boys. Perhaps The Clockwork Experiment's eventual sequel can use them. 


Did I ever tell you guys that my mom has traced our lineage back far enough to know that my great x25 grandfather's name was Grimbaldus? He lived in the 1500s, and didn't have a last name.
We're also directly descended from John Alden & Priscilla Mullins (they came over on the Mayflower), closely related to Winston Churchill, and distantly related to John Adams, Princess Diana, and Sarah Winchester (of Winchester Mystery House fame).
I just thought that was an interesting bit of information for you to know.