Favorites

The Off Season

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Young Adult /

I was a little wary of The Off Season. I liked Dairy Queen pretty well but I was worried about the sequel. There were a lot of “issues” brought up in Dairy Queen and I just wasn’t sure the sequel would handle them the way I wanted it to. If anything, The Off Season was better than Dairy Queen.

I was particularly pleased with the relationship between DJ and Brian and how that entire thing played out. I was even more impressed with the handling of Amber & Dale’s relationship and how DJ adjusted to that. (Very very amused by the end, when the women were cleaning up Thanksgiving dinner to a cd by “Melissa something”. Ha. Excellent.)

I’d love to say “I can’t wait for the next book” but I’m worried. The curse of the third book might strike here. I’m thinking Murdock should quit while she’s ahead with DJ and family.

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May Bird and the Ever After

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I finished up May Bird and the Ever After on the plane yesterday and was glad this was the book I happened to be reading. I think I prefer children’s lit and young adult lit for plane rides. Light and easy but also sort of interesting. That’s what May Bird is. TW found it a little too dark but I thought it was fine and not nearly as dark as a lot of other books for kids. I wonder if the other books in the series are any good… I have to know what happens to May, Somber Kitty and all of these dead folks when they get to the Far North.

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Run

2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I hesitated to read Run because Patchett disappointed me so much with Bel Canto, I didn’t want to fall in love with a book only to have it come crashing down at the end…which is what happened with Bel Canto all of those years ago. Loved it, right up until the end and then hated it so much that I wound up hating the book. (I know, I’m one of the very few people who feels that way about Bel Canto. I’m odd, I’m used to that.)

Something else that made me nervous about Run… TW didn’t say one single word about it while reading it or after reading it.

Thank goodness. I wasn’t disappointed by the end. Wasn’t disappointed by any single word of it. Run. Was. Awesome. From the first page to the last page. I loved it.

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Kissing the Witch

3 Comments / 2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Queer, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Women /

Awhile back, Sassymonkey was trying to come up with books for a fairy tales challenge of some sort. I gave her some ideas but generally speaking, she came up with her list on her own. As I was searching, I realized I had never read Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins. Crazy, we read a lot of fairy tales around here. So, I reserved it.

And it was terrific. I really liked the way one fairy tale moved into the next. All of the connections between the women. Really excellent idea and one that should have been done before – or maybe it has and I’ve been missing it?

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Deliver Us from Evie

2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Young Adult /

I saw Lee’s review of Deliver Us from Evie and started to think I had never read it. So I reserved it at the library, a little M.E. Kerr every now and then is good for all of us, right? Turns out I have read it. But it was still fun to read it again. M.E. Kerr always does a good job of giving us characters who could easily be real. They don’t behave oddly, they feel exactly like the people in your family or in your school or your church or your neighborhood. They’re real.

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Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest etc…

2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

Do not let the fact that it took me more than a week to finish Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States stop you from picking this book up today. I loved it. Maybe because I’m a fan of dishwashing? Or maybe because I’m a fan of fringe jobs, fringe people, fringe lifestyles. Or maybe because it was just fun.

It left me with a longing to start my own 50 state challenge. It left me wondering which Italian restaurant he dished at in Gainesville. It left me disappointed that I had never stumbled across the Dishwasher Zine.

I loved the book and love Dishwasher Pete.

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The Titan’s Curse

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

We’ve been looking forward to Percy Jackson and The Titan’s Curse for a long time. But, when I started reading it – I was afraid I was going to be very disappointed. It took me a few chapters to really get into it, that hasn’t happened with any of the other Percy Jackson books.

Thankfully, once the Oracle spoke things picked up and I read it just as quickly as I could – putting it down only when I had to get some work done. Now I’m back to being excited for the next one. Did Riordan announce the title of Percy 4 yet? Darn – not yet, but very soon.

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An Abundance of Katherines

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

Remember when sassymonkey raved about An Abundance of Katherines? I sort of ignored her gushing over the book because she has this Brotherhood/John Green thing. Like she’d marry him. Which is wrong ’cause of the patriarchy but tells you just how strong her John Green thing is. People with that strong of a thing for someone tend to see greatness when the rest of us see uh less than greatness. But in this case, sassymonkey was right.

An Abundance of Katherines is good. It’s great actually. One of the best YA books ever. I hope it becomes a legend, a classic must read for teens in generations to come. It’s just that good.

TW and I listened to it on audio and that was fun. I’m going to pick up a copy of the book so that I can see the appendix and the footnotes – were the footnotes read out loud in the audio version and we didn’t realize they were footnotes? Were they the “asides” Colin shared? I am not sure but I think they were. Regardless, the book deserves a place on our bookshelves. Yours too.

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Vampires, Zac Efron and Liz

5 Comments / 2007, Books in Bed, Family Funk, Favorites, Kid Talk, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Because it seems as if all I’m blogging about are books and wii, I’ll toss in a kid story along with the “book talk”. How’s that? Soon I’ll blog about something else. I swear.

You know Bookburger right? I noticed a post there about the making of Twilight into a movie. There was much discussion about whether Zac Efron would make a good “vampire Edward”. I thought it was an “ok” choice, not terrible but not great and I said so on the Bookburger blog. Well errr I didn’t notice it but that post was a contest and because of my comment I won an audio version of Eclipse. How cool is that? It’s really cool because on someone’s blog – sassymonkey’s or Kit Cat’s – I said I was going to try and get the audio version because we might enjoy it more than reading the print version (the reviews are hit or miss for this one and we loved the other two.)

So anyway, the day I realized I won this audio book I picked up Liz from school. We were talking about her homework and from there we somehow started talking about her crafting. She mentioned that she really wanted to get busy knitting because she wants to knit a Zac Efron doll for A’s birthday – and to knit some clothes for him. (Heh. This is pretty amusing. How do you knit a Zac Efron doll? I guess we will ask Lorena and crew this weekend…)

I thought it was a weird coincidence that I had just found out I won a book based on a comment about Efron and here she was talking about him. So I told her about winning the contest and we discussed whether Efron would make a good vampire Edward. She doesn’t know the character but she thinks Efron would be a weird vampire. But, her biggest concern is something else…

She wants to know why characters who are named Edward are never bad. It just makes sense to her that all characters named Edward SHOULD be bad – the alliteration of Evil Edward or Edward the Evillllllll is just so excellent, writers should work on that. Quit making Edwards and Eddies and Eds the good guys. They’re evil – they have to be. Liz has deemed it so.

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