Young Adult

May Bird and the Ever After

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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The Year the Gypsies Came

I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to read The Year the Gypsies Came. The first few chapters weren’t all that encouraging. Then suddenly, probably with the arrival of Buza and his stories, I was captivated. And then, when I saw the bad stuff coming, it was too late for me to decide not to read it.

Bad stuff in this book, lots of bad stuff.

I really enjoyed the book, I just wish… well, read it for yourself. You’ll see what I mean. But beware, it isn’t really a happy book.

Edited: I just realized this was a book I had on my A to Z list challenge. Yay me! (I’ll never complete the challenge but it’s one step closer.)

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Eclipse

Remember when I won a contest at Bookburger and got a free audio copy of Eclipse? TW and I have been listening to it in the car for ages. Finally, it was over today on the way home from breakfast. Finally. Thank goodness.

I officially hate Bella. Also Alice, though not nearly as much. I hate Edward and Jake, too – but not as much as I hate Bella. And also Alice. I would probably hate Edward, Jake and Alice less if Bella wasn’t such a whining, annoying, twit of a girl. What in the heck happened to the Bella in Twilight that led her to what she is in Eclipse? Whatever Stephanie Meyers was drinking when she wrote Eclipse, she should stay away from it if she writes another book in this series.

Sheesh.

I loved Twilight. I really liked New Moon. I wanted to like Eclipse but I didn’t – not even a little bit.

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Deliver Us from Evie

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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The Titan’s Curse

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

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

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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Prom Dates From Hell

A book with that title is my kind of book. I bet you knew that didn’t you? I love fun young adult fiction and Prom Dates From Hell was fun. Totally. I think everyone needs a demon and hell hounds to crash their prom, teach the “Jocks and the Jessicas” a lesson or two and let the geeks save the day. Awesome. Even if it was the geeks who, oh wait I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just go read it and have a laugh or two.

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New Moon

OK so I said I was reading What the Dead Know and here I am blogging New Moon instead. I wasn’t in the mood for missing girls, vampires and werewolves seemed like a much better idea. Besides, New Moon was another book I started but didn’t finish around the time of our trip to London and I was disappointed that I didn’t manage to get through more than the first 50 pages or so before I had to return it.

So, I read the rest of it in about 3 hours. It was just as good as Twilight – in some ways it was better. I really loved Jacob and I loved Emily, I’d like to know more about Emily and how she adjusted to living with the werewolves. And while I thought running off to Italy there at the end was a little much, I appreciate why the story went that way. I’m anxious to learn more about Bella’s “immunity”. When’s the next book due out? Oh, August 2007, cool! I can wait that long. Anyone getting a preview copy????

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Again with the Traveling Pants

The fourth, and what I assume, the final summer of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was good. Better than summer three, certainly. But – it was troubling. Not only have the girls really grown up, they really had issues. How can all four girls have SO MANY ISSUES? I mean, really, couldn’t just one of them have her stuff together? Wouldn’t that have been a nice thing to show to young girls? A girl who goes to college and doesn’t fear pregnancy? Who doesn’t find herself gaining a gazillion pounds and losing her confidence? A girl who isn’t having a fling with an older professor or pining away for a lost love? Just a girl who gets the job done and isn’t in trouble?

Oh well, that’s what happens in young adult novels. Problems, problems and more problems. Even the traveling pants couldn’t save these girls. Other than that, good ending to the series.

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