Young Adult

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

2013, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Young Adult /

I had planned to read Me and Earl and the Dying Girl last because it’s the book I’d meant to read before it actually hit the Cybils shortlist. But, Boy21 is still on my holds list and the other one I haven’t read isn’t available at my library and I’m either going to have to buy it or be content with not reading all of the books on the shortlist…

So, I read it ALMOST last and enjoyed it.

I was afraid I’d see too many similarities with The Fault in Our Stars but it’s not that book AT ALL. Not at all. Yea, a girl dies and these are teens and that’s pretty much the only similarity. I liked Earl an awful lot and I totally groked Greg. This one might make a better movie than a book… I can really see this as a film.

Good book, not the best — but good. Very good. I wasn’t disappointed at all.

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Three Cybil YA Fiction Books

1 Comment / 2013, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Young Adult /

I’m caught up with book blogging — and with reading the books from the Cybil short list. Thankfully since December is almost here giving me just a few very busy weeks to read three books. I can do this. Assuming those books are on my shelf… I should check, shouldn’t I?

Anyway, about these three. Some surprises, good surprises.

I expected to like The Theory of Everything. I like YA problem books and I’d seen some good reviews of this one. It was good. I liked the drawn journal type entries (the theories) — those were well done. Smart. I liked the happy ending where everyone cried. (And when I say happy I don’t really mean happy happy.)

The Storyteller. Oy. German. A lot of people die. And we’re supposed to maybe be confused by who was doing the killing. We’re also supposed to feel sympathy for the killer (which I did) and I think we’re also supposed to like Anna but I did not. Not one little bit. Which made it hard for me to really care about the rest of the characters as much as I should have.

Last but not least, the book I thought would be toward the bottom of my favorites list is now squarely in the top quarter – Endagndered. I didn’t expect to like Endangered nearly as much as I did. But I couldn’t help it. I liked Sophie and Otto (who is a bonobo). There were moments when I wanted to hate the book because NO WAY Sophie could have managed those things. NO WAY IN HELL. But I couldn’t help it — I liked her anyway and I cheered every time she made it past another obstacle.

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Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World

2013, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Non-Fiction, Women, Young Adult /

The last of the Cybils non-fiction about Temple Grandin. I was a little surprised since it seemed like Temple Grandin was every where a few years ago and I thought I’d probably be bored with this. I wasn’t. And, TW especially liked it, though that shouldn’t surprise anyone — Moo!

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Marie Antoinette, Serial KIller

2 Comments / 2013, Books in Bed, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Another book I saw something about, in October, and since I was getting a little tired of Cybils, I decided I should go ahead and read Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer. It looked amusing and fast — and it was both of those. It also made me kind of glad to hear RJ’s French club isn’t going to France. When Marie Antoinette is pissed off, she’s really pissed off. Not that you can really blame her, right?

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Two Cybils SciFi/Fantasy

1 Comment / 2013, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I’m kind of ODing on middle grade and YA books. This is what happens when I don’t read enough throughout the year… gah. The end of the tunnel, I can see it. I swear!

Planesrunner, the YA scifi I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, particularly since I had so much trouble getting past the first chapter, turned out to be a lot better than I expected. Physics is not my thing. Neither are books where ONE paragraph is more than a full damn page. Other than that — it turned out to be a pretty fun book. The airships made it great (and the solid female characters, in a boy story, too.)

Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities is Middle Grade scifi/fantasy and I had a hard time getting started with that too… what’s with all of the comic book superhero stuff lately? After about 30 pages, I was in and enjoying it. I particularly liked what happened with Polly, Captain Stupendous and Vincent’s mom. Super female characters in what’s mostly a boy story.

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Vessel

2013, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I wasn’t expecting to like Vessel as much as I did — it sounded a lot like another book I read recently… the one where the girl had a gem in her navel and that marked her as… whatever it marked her as.

This book was sort of like that — but better, I think. I do have a little bit of the love/hate with the fables. They were good but sometimes a little mixed up and not quite right in places. But, overall, excellent fantasy.

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4 Middle Grade and YA Non-Fiction

2013, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

More catch up book blogging — Cybil blogging, to be specific.

Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon was the book I didn’t expect to love because how many times can you read about this topic and learn something new or find it fresh and interesting. Or maybe that’s just me because chemistry and bombs are not my thing. However, this was better than I expected — not so much for the spy factor, but for the inclusion of the race toward the bomb that was happening in the USSR and in Germany. That made it more interesting than just a straight how we got the bomb (and used it) sort of thing.

I really enjoyed the Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War. I mean really enjoyed it. Those poor kids. I cannot imagine how confused they, particularly the older ones and not the babies, were.

I liked Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95 well enough. It was a little long but Moonbird himself is awesome. Which reminds me, I meant to see if there had been any more sightings since this book was written.

I’m not a big fan of books about the Titanic but I liked Titanic: Voices From the Disaster more than I expected to. It, too, was a little long but not so boring that I didn’t read it straight through.

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All The Graphic Novels — OK Not All Of Them, Just Seven

2013, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Young Adult /

I didn’t manage to read all of the graphic novels from the Cybils shortlist on Sunday like I’d planned but I did finish a bunch of them on Monday and Tuesday. Here’s what I thought about seven of them:

Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller — I liked it. I wasn’t sure at the beginning. The first couple of pages were dark and confusing but once I settled into the art, and the jumping between Annie’s life and Annie’s life with Helen, it was good. Very good.

Hilda and the Midnight Giant was cute. I like Hilda and her mom.

Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Big Bad Ironclad was pretty good. I grew up with a history nut for a dad so I have a fondness for these kinds of stories. Humor was nicely added to help make the story less dry than history often is made to be.

Little White Duck: A Childhood in China was super interesting. I didn’t expect to like this one as much as I did.

Friends with Boys was probably my favorite of this round of graphic novels. (What’s with all of the memoirs on the list this time?) Homeschool to High School, teen angst, a ghost. It’s all pretty excellent. The drawings were good, too.

Marathon should have been good. Instead, I couldn’t even finish (I tried though. I tried hard.) The drawings should haven’t helped the difficult to follow story but they just made things worse.

Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White was my second favorite of the batch. I liked the art. I liked the story. Hispanic family in Alabama during the 60s? Not white but also not black? Tough situation and super interesting.

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Every Day

3 Comments / 2013, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Every Day is the YA trouble book of all time — there will never be a YA trouble book that has more trouble than this one. It’s impossible.

Because A wakes up in the body of a different 16 year old every single day. This means A deals with every single YA trouble under the sun. It gets particularly problematic when A wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with Justin’s girlfriend and tries to figure out how he/she can have a relationship with Rhiannon (and Rhiannon tries to figure out how she can dump Justin and have a relationship with A.)

Oy.

It was interesting — mostly because we couldn’t figure out how this was going to end. Since A obviously couldn’t stay in someone else’s body. It did all wrap up with a neat, but sad, little ending. An ending I didn’t particularly like but an ending that made sense. As much sense as a book about someone who has no body of his/her own and moves around to a new body every day for his/her whole life can make.

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