Books I Read in 2012

• I don't rate books in these posts by quality, really, but just as me recommending things to people, so keep that in mind.
• 
  
• *** = GO READ THIS RIGHT NOW
• **  = I would hand this book to you
• *   = I would not tell you to put this book down
•     = Don't bother
• 
  
•    172 Hours on the Moon
•  **A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
•  **A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness
•    All The King's Men
•  **All The Right Stuff, by Walter Dean Meyers
•   *Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
•  **As You Like It, by William Shakespeare
•   *Assassin King, The (I loved the first 3 books in this series a lot, this one less so)
•    Bewitching
•  **Birth Order Book, The, by Kevin Leman (NF)
•   *Book of Blood and Shadow, The
•   *Children and the Wolves, The (This is not a pleasant book to read by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn't mean it's bad)
•  **Chopsticks,  by Jessica Anthony
•  **Cinder, by Marissa Meyer
•  **Deadly Pink, by Viviane Vande Velde
•   *Dreamsleeves
•   *Fame, Glory, and Other Things on My To-Do List
•   *Fault in Our Stars, The
•   *Glimmer
• ***God is Not One, by Stephen Prothero (NF)
•  **Great Gatsby, The, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
•  **Hacking Harvard, by Robin Wasserman
•   *Keeping The Castle
• ***Letter Q, The, edited by Sarah Moon (NF)
•    Lexapros and Cons
• ***Lies of Locke Lamora, The, by Scott Lynch
•  **List, The, by Siobhan Vivian
•  **Marly's Ghost, by David Levithan
•  **Miseducation of Cameron Post, The, by Emily M. Danforth
•  **My Name is Mina, by David Almond
•  **Nevermore, a novel by my boyfriend which I love a lot even though he hates it
•   *Of Mice and Men
•   *Old Man and the Sea, The
•  **Pirate Cinema, by Cory Doctorow
•    Pure
• ***Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
•  **Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
•  **SchoolGirls, by Peggy Orenstein (NF)
•  **Universe in a Single Atom, The, by The Dalai Lama (NF)
•   *Unwind
•   *What Boys Really Want
•  **Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick
•   *Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

GOD IS NOT ONE:

If you're at all interested in religion, read this. A lot of books now try to emphasize the similarities between religions in order to try and create harmony between them--the "different paths up the same mountain" approach. This book looks at religions as completely separate mountains, with totally different goals--of course Christianity is the only pathway to salvation, because other religions don't care about salvation. I love it a lot.

THE LETTER Q:

This is a book of letters by LGBT authors to their younger selves. And it is amazing whether you're LGBT or not. I haven't cried this much while reading a book since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and this was for much more meaningful reasons than the death of a fictional redhead. IT'S JUST SO FRIGGING HOPEFUL.

THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA:

From Amazon: "In this stunning debut, author Scott Lynch delivers the wonderfully thrilling tale of an audacious criminal and his band of confidence tricksters. Set in a fantastic city pulsing with the lives of decadent nobles and daring thieves, here is a story of adventure, loyalty, and survival that is one part Robin Hood, one part Ocean’s Eleven, and entirely enthralling.…

An orphan’s life is harsh–and often short–in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains–a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans–a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting."

DEAR GOD I ADORED THIS BOOK SO MUCH. IT IS EVERYTHING I LOVE.

Basically it just fits the criteria of "I will pull this off the shelf and follow you around, jabbering incessantly, until you agree to read it." The Gentlemen Bastards are amazing.

READY PLAYER ONE:

In which you get to live out all of your nerdy pop culture fantasies while accompanying Wade on his quest to win $200 billion through the world's biggest and greatest MMORPG ever. And when I say "all of your nerdy pop culture fantasies," I really do mean basically all of them.

After finishing this book I went home and spent a full hour relating the entire plot to my dad I was just that excited.

The Birth Order Book, by Kevin Leman

"I don't read self-help books. On any given day my self seems to need so much help that 200 pages of cheerful advice and end-of-chapter exercises miss the core of my dilemma. The real question keeping me up at night is this: What the hell is a self anyway? How did I get one and why is it so damn desperate for help?" - Adam Frank


Naturally, that is how I start a post about the self-help book I just finished.


Leman claims that birth order has a significant impact on how you turn out as a person--to the point that he gets scared if he's on a plane and the pilot isn't a functional firstborn or only child. This book outlines the typical characteristics of each birth order, how to deal with it yourself, how to deal with it in others, and how to take it into account when parenting.


With the exception of one of my sisters, his predictions fit my entire family almost perfectly. It's kind of freaky (in that halfway through the chapter on firstborns I was shouting "THESE ARE MY PEOPLE." And that's only a little bit of an exaggeration).


All of the psychology and analysis is interspersed with stories about his clients, and his own family. He's a likable enough person, and it's always amusing to be reading along and find something that describes someone you know to the letter.


The whole book is fascinating (to anyone who has siblings, anyway), and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in that sort of thing. My mom picked it up a couple days ago and decided that all five of us were going to read it, so we'll see what happens after I'm not the only one in the house with this Deep and Perceptive Knowledge about the Mysterious Secrets of Birth Order.

To Kill a Mockingbird, My English Teacher, and Terry Pratchett

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” ― Terry Pratchett

My English teacher has a lot of quirks when it comes to books (which is probably in the job description, but bear with me). For instance, she cannot go into a book store without buying a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and then giving it to either a student or a random person she thinks should have it. She worships that book, and would marry Atticus in a heartbeat if she was single and had the opportunity.


She also never keeps novels. She reads them, sure, but after she's finished, she gives them away.


I was thinking about that today, and how I own about 300 books, most of which are novels. Why am I hanging onto them, when almost everything I read is from the library or my book club?


Some of them I just haven't read yet.
Some of them are gifts from my grandma, and you can't really just give away a book if my grandma gives it to you. She's just that kind of person.
Some of them are ARCs, so it's harder to give them away.
Some of them are things me/my sisters have/will need for school.
Some of them I want to reread at some point, or save for my eventual children.
Some of them I just need to own. Need. My English teacher is not a fan of Harry Potter (and in telling us this she referred to it as science fiction-- I about exploded), so she apparently does not run into this problem. I am mentally incapable of giving away my copies. Just...no.


And then there are the rest--about 30--which I took to the used book store today. I felt immensely satisfied.


...And then I promptly spent all of the resulting store credit (plus some) on a copy of every Terry Pratchett book they had.


Funny thing: I'm looking at Goodreads' list of Terry Pratchett quotes (because I haven't actually read anything by him yet-- he's just next on the list), and I found this:

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.” ― Terry Pratchett

Imagine...

There is no quote today. There is only the existence of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, who make me smile.

I just started reading a book by Peggy Orenstein (author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, which I read last year) called Schoolgirls, and before page 1 even begins (there's about 20 roman numerals' worth), she tells a story about a teacher who gave her 6th grade students an interesting exercise:

Imagine you were born as a member of the opposite sex. What is different?

So obviously, I grabbed my journal and immediately started a list.

If I Were A Boy:

• My mother would never have made me wear dresses when I was little (which I passionately despised at the time, although I don't anymore).
• I'd probably have had to mow the lawn at some point in my life, but I'm sure I'd still have to do all of the same chores I do now as well.
• Better relationship with my male cousins who live close by
• Different friends, and different relationships with those who would remain the same
• Less worry in general from all sides about dating (also, probably later curfews)
• Less comfortable acting in different roles. When I was little, there was never anyone or anything I couldn't pretend to be. And I feel that while in my immediate family it would have been the same is I were a guy, it isn't nearly as accepted everywhere else.

But that seems like a pretty good list, compared to what the kids in the book came up with. Most of it seems kind of "well, duh." Most of the stuff in the book was about make up or hair or sports.

The odd thing, though, is that the author then asks what's "lucky" about being a girl, and the girls she talked to didn't have an answer. I'm not going to go into it here, but I think there are plenty of things. Less obvious than the advantages of being a boy, maybe, but they're there.

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.

Blurbs!

"People change and forget to tell each other." - Lillian Hellman


So about ten minutes ago the lady in charge of the Teen section at my local independent bookstore called my house (which sounds cooler than it was- she had already asked me via Facebook to call her at the store and happened to be busy at the time). 


Someone at the Penguin Group had contacted her about teen girls to read an early draft of a book coming out next fall to do blurbs for the back of the ARC.  (She's also getting in contact with the leader of my book club, but I'm conveniently forgetting about that until tomorrow when we have our meeting.)


Apparently I came up in conversation. In the sense that I am mentioned by name in a bona fide email from a person in a major publishing house. o_0 Although it's also a little weird that the bookstore lady knew my name and actually suggested me to her. I thought she just knew my face.


And then, as I just now realized, I sent my reply to the wrong address- the one for the bookstore instead of the Penguin Lady. Yeah, I'm smooth. 

BookTrack

"I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't." -  Kurt Cobain

I just discovered a really cool app that I can't use (because it's only for iPhone and iPad), but I wanted to tell you about it anyway. It's by BookTrack.com, which creates soundtracks for ebooks. The software knows which page you're on, and which music/sound effects/ambience to play on that spread. It even tracks your reading pace based on how often you flip pages so that it knows approximately where you are on the page (and there are ways to pause it, of course).

Among those either available or coming soon are a Sherlock Holmes novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, an Oscar Wilde story, Huckleberry Finn, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," Three Musketeers, "The Ugly Duckling," and...the sequel to I Am Number Four.

Okay then. I guess it was effective in rocketing them into the NY Times.

But still. That's really cool. I just hope they expand their platforms soon so that us non-Apple Drones can use it. Their FAQ pdf says it "will be available" on computer operating systems, Android, and "other devices," so...I'm bookmarking it.

Review: Chime, by Frances Billingsley

"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it." - Christopher Morely


I am such a hypocrite.


First, the summary off of Shelfari:

Before Briony's stepmother died, she made sure Briony blamed herself for all the family's hardships. Now Briony has worn her guilt for so long it's become a second skin. She often escapes to the swamp, where she tells stories to the Old Ones, the spirits who haunt the marshes. But only witches can see the Old Ones, and in her village, witches are sentenced to death. Briony lives in fear her secret will be found out, even as she believes she deserves the worst kind of punishment. Then Eldric comes along with his golden lion eyes and mane of tawny hair. He's as natural as the sun, and treats her as if she's extraordinary. And everything starts to change. As many secrets as Briony has been holding, there are secrets even she doesn't know.

There is a serious discrepancy of opinion on Chime in my book club, and having been thinking about it off and on since the last meeting, I thought I'd write a post supporting my position.


The main objection to the quality of the book is that it is exceedingly verbose. I don't have a copy, so I can't quote the most-often-used example, but take my word for it. That particular example is some of Eldric's dialogue, so I do not have an excuse for it. However, for some of the rest, I do.


There are several sections of narration self-acknowledged to be in the style of The House That Jack Built: 

"This is the girl called Briony. This is the girl called Briony who lived in a swamp that was being drained. This is the girl called Briony who lived in a swamp that was being drained; which angered the BoggyMan. This is the girl called Briony who lived in a swamp that was being drained, which angered the BoggyMan, who sent the swamp cough."

And so on for another three quarters of a page. Now I listened to the audio book, which is another form of storytelling so perhaps this sort of writing was not as annoying read aloud as it might be when written out. (I was kind of annoyed when looking the passage up on Google Books so I could quote it to you.)


That being said, since it's only used a few times, this style matches Briony's character. She makes references to the writing of novels repeatedly throughout the book, and has so many secrets that she's used to thinking to herself for long stretches of time. When in dialogue, such verbosity is not good. But when in narration, it's more excusable. (However, I'd be interested to see my reaction to the written version.)

Moving on to the things I loved about it.


Chime did an amazing job of what in the world of fiction is called "plants and payoffs." I was listening to this (while eating pizza and playing Diablo 2 back when my sisters were both out of town) in the afternoons while working on another editing swipe at my first novel in the mornings, and when I got to the end of Chime, I was practically salivating with jealousy of how well Frances Billingsley made it all come together. Then again, I was also reaching the end of a 13 hour car trip when I finished, so perhaps the happiness was for another reason altogether. With regards to that, I wish I had written this book.


Then there is Briony herself, who was great. She claims to hate herself and the world...yet the reader doesn't. She's one of the most unreliable narrators I have encountered, but it works so well. I knew something was up from the first few minutes of the audio book, and I knew which sections of her life smelled fishy, but I had no inkling as to the nature of the truth she was covering up. 


Briony's unreliability also allows there to be romance without it being the ridiculously cheesy and over-blown romance that we love to mock. It's romance about friendship rather than friendship about romance, if that makes sense. Again, something I wish I had written (even if I didn't always like Eldric himself).


So I recommend the audio book, and the textual version as well if you can put up with the style. It's an extremely well-crafted story, even if the quality of the actual writing through which it is told is subject to doubt.

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.