We enjoyed Eleanor & Park so much that I didn’t even hesitate about reserving Landline and I totally enjoyed it, once I understood the weird magic telephone. I enjoyed it so much that I stayed up very late to finish it last night.
She’s big on the retro, isn’t she? I like that.
(Little note to myself — count this for July.)
Lol
The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp is a cybil middle grade book, I believe. We listened to it on audio and you’d think the fact that it was read by Lyle Lovett would make this a slam dunk. It did not, my friends, no it did not (lol — I’m laughing at myself for typing that, which you would understand if you’ve read this book.)
He started slowly and it took awhile to warm up to him. The whole book started a wee bit slowly and then suddenly, we were hooked.
The language is fantastic. The vocabulary — holy hell, sports fans… remember those dumb assignments where you had to find five words you didn’t know (while reading some library book) and write the definitions and it was impossible because you already knew all of the words. If you have a kid like that, try this book. Brilliantly done. Really.
I’m not generally a fan of anthropomorphism, but in this case — I loved the racoons and the canebrake rattlers, and the armadillo and even that horrid porcine family. Oh and the cat. I liked him, too.
I’ve also got a nasty craving for a sugar pie…
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Oh look, another book from another shelter/DIY blogger! I know, you’re shocked, lol. You might be shocked to hear that The Nesting Place is one of my favorite books in the genre. Even though the blog, nesting place, is not my favorite — I like it but I don’t love it.
The book is one of my favorites because she includes photos of people with their feet on the table, laundry strewn around and crap like that. They’re still staged, pretty photos of a staged, pretty house but she’s right about the idea that some imperfections make a person feel more comfortable. That’s what happened with the book — I felt comfortable.
I was also amused by all of her stump tables, the section on putting holes in walls (lol), and I was fascinated by the entire series of homes she’s lived in. (And I thought I’d moved a lot…) (I also love what she did to the outside of the not perfect for us house. Brilliantly done — my partner liked it before the changes. I did too but we shall ignore her opinion on the updated version because she’s dumb.)
I don’t think anyone will necessarily LEARN anything from this book — unless you just hate your (rental or non-rental) home and think it’s the house that’s making you unhappy. In which case you might learn something from this book. Or at least get a glimmer of hope?
I really liked The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard St, the book and the character. TW liked the book but not the character. I guess that makes sense. Lillian could be a little unlikeable. Maybe. I just saw her as a flawed human being — flawed in so many ways because of her childhood. I loved the businesswoman Lil — she was awesome. No she wasn’t a nice boss, or a nice woman — so what, sue her (lol), she wasn’t any worse than her male counterparts was she?
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Tiffany Baker knows how to write quirky characters, quirky places, and really good (if not exactly happy) endings. Mercy Snow is Baker’s third book… third winner and I will never look at red mittens or maple sap without thinking of these characters.
We really enjoyed listening to The Rithmatist on audio. Except… it took a chapter or so to get into (alternate realities often do) and at the beginning or end of each chapter, they describe a rithmatic defense. It would have been nice to be able to see those lines as they were described. Instead, we kept going online later and looking at the drawings.
I don’t usually do this but… it was very Harry Potter-like. A boy. His father died. He’s at a boarding school. There are professors, some of whom the boy suspects of wrong-doing. There’s magic. There’s even a “symbol” — it may not be a lightning bolt on a forehead but… see, very Harry Potter-like. Which possibly explains why we enjoyed it?
The new Lauren Willig book, That Summer, reads like a Pink Carnation book but is not a Pink Carnation book. There are no spies. However, as with The Ashford Affair, there are some familiar names… Vaughn and Dorrington!
Charm & Strange should be called Dark & Twisted because it totally is. It’s also very good, though very dark & twisted.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on, though I suppose for teens who read a lot of fantasy/paranormal it could have been confusing… it’s not really about werewolves. It’s about horrible horrible things people can do to kids and how kids find ways of coping with those horrible things.
We didn’t have any books on audio so I decided this was the perfect time to grab Beauty Queens. Nope, I’ve never read it — which is crazy because I’ve wanted to read it since it first came out. But, I also had a very strong desire to hear it on audio. I’m glad I held tight to that idea. It was SO MUCH FUN on audio. Seriously.
Loved, loved, loved it. We even listened to the acknowledgements and the author interview at the end because Libba Bray is funny as hell. And awesome. She is very awesome.
Sassymonkey mentioned This One Summer to me recently on Convo and I decided I needed to read it. Though I didn’t love Skim as much as most people did, I liked it quite a lot and wanted to see how this one compared.
I liked this one even more (though based on some Good Reads reviews I read, I might be alone.)
I liked this one for the reasons that most people did not.
Growing up is hard. Growing up as a girl is really hard. And when your parents are dealing with their own shit, everything is even harder and weirder and confusing.
And you know what? Kids don’t always learn (immediately) from their experiences. I liked that Rose didn’t immediately and obviously learn the hard lessons. I suspect that what she went through that one summer will stay with her and help her become whoever it is she becomes. Kids don’t immediately grok why slut-shaming is wrong just because a friend says it’s wrong. That kind of thing takes time. Kids don’t immediately grasp the complexities of other people’s relationships and their opinions are formed around what they know of the world, so it made perfect sense that Rose might not see things from Jane’s point of view and she certainly would not have understood her mother or her father.
It was just one summer. Kids don’t evolve into complete and wonderfully deep human beings in just one summer. That was the truth, for me, of this book.
Oh yea, the drawings were wonderful — as you’d expect.