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Scumble

2010, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction /

When I realized Scumble didn’t quite pick up where Savvy left off, I was a little disappointed. I wanted to learn more about Mibs and not about another Savvy family. Once I adjusted to the idea that this was a different sort of story with different sorts of kids – I loved it. I was sad about Grandma’s jars… and happy that Rocket finally figured everything all out. I hope we see SJ at some point in another book, I’d like to know how that whole mess turned out. And, I’m very very interested in Gypsy – though all of these books have needed a problem to solve and I cannot see Gypsy having a problem to solve. I think she fit her Savvy right into herself so what story is there to tell…?

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Recycler

2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Young Adult /

I loved Cycler and was really looking forward to Recycler… Now that most of my challenges are pretty much finished (I’m glaring at you children’s libraries all over the northern suburbs) I’ve got time to read stuff I’ve really been looking forward to. So – Recycler.

What were Jill & Jack going to do, once their secret was revealed oh so publicly at Prom? That’s what we find out in Recycler… and I’m not sure I really approve, particularly regarding what happened with Ramie. I get it – and I think I get where the story is going (there IS going to be another one, right?) but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I’d hoped. Tie it all up nicely in the next one, please.

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Cracked Up to Be

2 Comments / 2010, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Young Adult /

I cannot believe how long it took for Cracked Up to Be to appear on my holds list. I reserved it ages ago – some darn teen checked it out and kept it for a very long time, didn’t she? Hmph. Teens should be more responsible than that… but not obsessively so. Which is kind of what this little book is about. The perfect girl who is so perfect that she’s having panic attacks… and then “something” happens and she gives up being perfect, gives up her friends, tries to push everyone away (and punish herself) because that horrible “something” that happened was her fault…

Excellent book. Depressing in that perfect girls, bad stuff happens to good kids sort of way. I wonder what RJ would think of this? She’s probably think Parker was nuts… sigh.

(Two more books to go in my Cybils Shortlist Challenge… I’m getting worried because as long as it took for me to get this one, it’s taking even longer to get these other two… people. Bring your books back to the darn library! People are waiting to read them!)

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Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Mystery, Women /

Hahahahaha!

When you first walk into our new library, there are some shelves just to the left of the door. I usually walk right past them without looking because… they’re on the left and I don’t shelf surf on my left, for some reason. Also, they’re not really near other books so it seems counterproductive to stop there for some reason. I don’t know… it’s probably just a matter of getting used to the new library or something. 

But one day, I stopped to look and one of the sections was devoted to mysteries and front and center was a mystery with “Flamingos” in the title. Wrought-Iron Flamingos, to be precise. I couldn’t resist and into the bag went Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos. It sat on the shelf for a long time before TW picked it up to read. She was amused by it and right about the time I was ready to read it – it disappeared. I couldn’t find it ANYWHERE and I thought it had gone back to the library and had just been left unshelved, or was shelved but not checked in. About the time I was ready to file a “we don’t have this anymore, could you please look on the shelves” request, TW found it hiding in her dresser. Huh.

So, I got to read it after all. And as I started reading, I told TW that this author should write a book about Cockatiels… well hah, she did write a book about cockatiels and both TW and her mom read it a few months ago! TW had not remembered the main character as being the same one in the Flamingo book (which goes a long way toward you understanding how TW reads books, doesn’t it? And also goes a long way toward understanding how TW cannot recognize someone she sees every year at BlogHer Con and talks to almost daily on the internet, doesn’t it?)

Anyway – I loved this book. I loved that Meg was embarrassed at having made the flamingos but embraced the idea after she realized just how many people WANTED them. People love Flamingo yard art, even if they pretend otherwise. I obviously love that Meg is a blacksmith and that she has crazy relatives. It was a fun book and I’m guessing all of her bird related Meg Langslow mysteries are just as fun.

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Mirabilis

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Queer, Women /

After spending several days complaining about the lack of books to choose from, I decided to work on getting my library reserve list back up to speed. I started with my Amazon wish list – it’s not really a wish list, it’s a holding place for books we’re interested in reading but can’t add to the library reserve list because our list is already really long. Then, I looked over the books I’ve read this year and looked for sequels or prequels that I’d like to read and reserved those. Then I looked at the Amazon “best of 2010” lists because I was really hoping to add some quality adult books – or maybe just adult books – or maybe just quality books. I don’t know – something that’s not too chick lit-y and something that’s not to YA-y. Then, I decided to look for some good lesbian literature and that’s where my frustration really began.

I sorted the Amazon lists by bestsellers, lesbian fiction, hardcover (because I was getting too many small publishers/self puplishers in the list and my library won’t have any of those) – only to find… my library has none of the 2010 lesbian fiction hardcover bestsellers… or worse yet, the bestsellers are all old… or lesbian detective mysteries. I like Jane Lawless but please, enough is enough. I wanted something else… something better.

It was late. I gave up for the night and decided I’d approach it from the women’s/lesbian bookstore direction and assumed I’d have more luck. I went to bed, without a book, and complained to TW about the problem. She said, “that book I just read is a library book – and it’s lesbian fiction.” Huh. Who knew?

Mirabilis is lesbian fiction, though it doesn’t really flaunt it and that’s the problem – there are a lot of great lesbian novels out there but for some reason publishers, authors, booksellers don’t want to label a book as lesbian fiction. (I wonder why… hahahaha)

Mirabilis is a story of a 14th century wet nurse who saves a town during a time of famine by feeding them all via her breasts, (well not all of them, she doesn’t allow the truly evil to nurse.) She’s able to do this because a rich pregnant widow is feeding her real, good food to make sure her milk is good enough for the soon to be born heir. A relationship develops between the wet nurse and the rich widow… gasp, a lesbian relationship!

Funny what you stumble upon when you don’t expect it.

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Chains

2 Comments / 2010, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites /

We listened to Chains on audio and it took a good bit longer to finish than I expected. For some reason I had it in my head that it was a short book, it wasn’t. It was pretty darn good, though. At first, I was skeptical. I like Laurie Halse Anderson’s contemporary YA fiction and I wasn’t sure she could pull off something about slaves just prior to and in the early days of the Revolutionary War but she did it. And she did it well.

I’ve got a little love/hate with the ending. I guess it did end as it should have (and goodness knows, she’d have needed another 400 pages to get us to another ending…) but I would really have liked to find out what happens next. Hah… good thing there’s a sequel… though reading the synopsis on Amazon leads me to wonder if I’m going to be happy with what happens next. I’m reserving it on audio now.

And with this book, I’ve finished the Middle Grade Fiction books from the Cybils Shortlist – they were all excellent choices, every darn one of them.

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Mistress in the Art of Death

2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, From the Stacks Challenge, Women /

Yipeee! I finished my From the Stacks (by color) Challenge today, with Mistress of the Art of Death. This was a good book to finish with – a long read, not because of the number of pages, but because of the complexity of the story. There was a lot to follow. I loved the ending. It would have been so easy to tie everything up in a neat and tidy (patriarchal package) – this way was better, much much better.

Long live King Henry II!

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Three More Cybils

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

All three of these were pleasant surprises. Very pleasant surprises.

Dinosaur Hunt is a short chapter/easy reader that’s way too easy to be in the short chapter book category – kind of like the Mo Willems books. It can’t compete with Mo, unfortunately, but I liked it an awful lot. A cute little dog heads out to hunt dinosaurs in the yard – and he ends up building a dinosaur out of every day stuff you find in the yard. I liked it. Fun. Cute. I like Max Spaniel.

And then there was Anything But Typical – I was not expecting such an awesome book in that particular package. It’s one of those softcover paperbacks that you see in school book order forms – Scholastic type. I hope a lot of kids read this, expecting it to be lighter and easier than it was. I loved the Storyboard storyline and the Storyboard convention. I liked the online girlfriend twist. I like that all of the characters felt very real to me. I think that’s tough sometimes when you’re writing about autism.

The biggest surprise of all was Heart of a Shepherd. I didn’t remember this being on the Cybils list. When it came out of the library bag, at first I thought it was a Christian fiction large print that we had grabbed for TW’s mom. But no, it wasn’t large print. It also didn’t seem like something TW would have just plucked from the shelf. I shrugged, but it on the cart and forgot about it… until I needed another book, checked my Cybils post and discovered that book was MINE. Huh.

It started on a ranch and felt like some sort of old fashioned “western” story. I thought that’s what it was for a few pages until the boy’s dad was being sent to Iraq.  Then I wasn’t so confused. And I was pretty much hooked. I have no idea why the author had the boys’ mother living in Italy but whatever, it’s a small piece of an otherwise excellent story. And in the end, it could have been a very nice large print Christian fiction for TW’s mom. If it had been in large print. I’m guessing there will be a lot of kids who turn their noses up at this one. Too bad because I liked it.

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Carter Finally Gets It

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

I didn’t expect to love Carter Finally Gets It… a book about a dumb male freshman? Please. Boys. Are. ANNOYING. In. HIGH SCHOOL. And Carter was annoying, as were his dumb friends. But Carter was also endearingly annoying in that he has no idea what he’s doing sort of way. It was cute. And funny. Also, it was a nice change from the books about dumb female freshman. Because Girls. ARE. Annoying. In. HIGH SCHOOL.

Loved the book. I wish I could convince all three of the younger kids to read it. Maybe I should get it on audio and force them to listen to it in the car…

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