Vacation Hiatus

I'm taking a hiatus on account of a vacation. Pictures when I return.

How I Live Now

Author: Meg Rosoff
Reason for Reading: YA Reading Challenge
Rating: 4.5/5

How I Live Now is a book that sneaks up on you subtly and takes over all of the other things you thought you were reading at the moment. Daisy, our teenage narrator, travels to England in order to escape her evil stepmother and soon-to-be half sibling. She knows that she will be living with her aunt and cousins, whom she has never met.

The description of the book on the jacket cover is very vague. Actually, my description in the preceding paragraph is even more than you would know from the cover. I had no clue starting out where the book was going to head, and very subtly, the themes emerged. So I won't ruin your experience by telling you any more about the plotline. Rather, I'll share a few passages and you can decide if this is the book for you.

Introducing us to her story:

It would be much easier to tell this story if it were all about a chaste and perfect love between Two Children Against the World at an Extreme Time in History but let's face it that would be load of crap.

Meeting her cousin Edmond for the first time:

Now let me tell you what he looks like before I forget because it's not exactly what you'd expect from your average fourteen-year-old what with the CIGARETTE and hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night, but aside from that he's exactly like some kind of mutt, you know the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight in your hand when they meet you with a certain kind of dignity and you know from that second that you're going to take him home? Well that's him.

What it is like to have lost her mother:

It was times like this when I let my guard down for something like half a nanosecond, that Mom had a habit of strolling into my brain. Even though she was dead, which made people put on this sickening pious kind of face and say Oh I'm SO sorry, like it was their fault and in fact if everyone wasn't so busy apologizing all the time about asking a perfectly normal question like Where's your mother? I might have managed to get more information out of someone than just She Died To Give You Life, which is the party line on Good Old Mom.

I know, I know it's hard to accept a recommendation on a book when you haven't even been given a clue to the plot. But take my word for it, this is a book worth reading, and you're better off not knowing until you read it for yourself.

Other reviews:
Tanataba
Dewey
Stephanie

Monday Tidbits

*Just in case you haven't heard yet, the June Bookworms Carnival is up and you should definitely check it out.

*I have exactly four more days of work to get through before I get a vacation. All I can say is, thank god Monday is out of the way.

*I just got started watching Battlestar Galactica. How did I never watch this before?? I can't wait for the next disk from Netflix.

*It's Monday, so those are all of the tidbits for the day. You can look forward to more reviews this week, as I just finished Marie-Therese: Child of Terror and How I Live Now. I need time to collect my thoughts on those two marvelous books.

Weekend Fiction Break: The Fight

This is the part of the show where I post my own fiction.

Mom took my Metallica CD the other day and broke it in half in front of me to prove a point. Luckily she didn’t know I have it loaded on my iPod anyhow. So it’s not like I was heartbroken. I pretended to get upset, just in case she got wise and realized that it didn’t bother me and start asking too many questions. She still needs my help getting onto this marvelous thing called the internet (“I’ll learn how to use it one day,” she always says when I get annoyed at showing her how to double click on the icon and type in an address.)

So chances are good she has no freaking clue that CDs are irrelevant anymore except for the cover art that comes along in the package. She probably thinks the thing attached to my headphones is a Walkman complete with cassette tapes. That would totally be Mommy Dearest.

Back to the reason she broke my CD. Which I did buy with my own money, thank you very much. “And where does that money come from?” she screamed in my face.

“Dad,” I said, even though it isn’t like I keep each bill separate between what he gives me, what Mom gives me, and what I earn working at Suck-Mart. I just said it because she hates it when I bring up Dad.

“You think you can listen to this kind of music in my house?”

I shrugged at this one. We’ve gone over it before. Dad doesn’t care what I do as long as I don’t bug him when he’s spending time with Blondie du Jour.

“Well, you can’t.”

Like I said, I already knew that I had the music on my iPod, so whatever she was about to do or say next really didn’t matter.

“And you won’t be listening to this again.”

My mom, who most people aside from me know as a loving, caring, gentle person, took the CD and slammed it down on the side of my dresser so it bent. Then, viciously, she cracked it in half the rest of the way and I swear to God she looked happy. I mean, she wasn’t smiling or anything, but some part of her looked pleased with herself.

I started yelling, like I said to throw her off the track, but I also got a little hot at seeing her look happy. I said a number of things that I won’t repeat (although I don’t regret them). She said a number of things I won’t repeat either, although I can tell you that she probably regretted them. She always apologizes to me after we fight, because part of being extremely and excessively Catholic is feeling guilty for everything. Even yelling at your kids. Even when they have major attitudes, like me, and blame everything on their parents getting divorced. The fact that Mom got divorced makes her even guiltier.

So after she left my room, I played the Metallica CD she'd just broken on my iPod not because I wanted to listen to it at the moment, but because I could. Around dinner, came Apology Time, and I like usual I grunted in response, and when her apology started wandering around to the topic of Dad, I cut her off like usual and said “Yeah, whatever, I’m sorry too,” even though I really wasn’t. She wanted me to forgive her for divorcing Dad, and I am fifteen years old, not a freaking saint. Maybe when I’m older we’ll have this emotional reunion where I’ll say “I forgive you Mom for divorcing my father who cheated on you ONE TIME with a random stranger because he was drunk. Thank you for not forgiving him. Thank you for making me question the foundation of everything I believe about EVERYTHING. Thank you for teaching me how to be a STRONG independent woman by raising me yourself Monday-Friday and every other weekend. Thank you that I have two Christmases, two Thanksgivings and two birthdays. Thank you that I will be in freaking therapy all of my life. How could I ever repay you?"

But I doubt it.

Upstairs, mom is calling for me. Because she wants to check her email and the internet is broken. She thinks. Could I just help her this once?

Booking Through Thursday and Weekly Geeks

It's been a long, long week, so in thankfulness for the fact it is friday, I'm doing two memes in one post.

Booking Through Thursday

This week's question: A combo of two suggestions by: Heidi and by litlove

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

I have recently joined a book club at work, and we meet for about an hour and eat food, then discuss the book. Usually whoever picked the book will sort of guide the discussion, but it is kind of a free-flowing group, so it usually evolves into chatting time by the middle of our meeting.

So far, I've been to two meetings, and for one the pick was The Handmaid's Tale, which I had already read (and did not have time to reread). This month's pick was Entombed (read my review here). It was a book that I did not care for. I would not have finished it if not for book club, and I forced myself to sit and read large chunks of it when my other books were calling my name. I don't know if I appreciated it more, but I actually finished it.

Weekly Geeks #7
Let’s have Photos Week.

1. Decide what to illustrate and start taking photos: Most of you are book bloggers, so you may want to post photos of your favorite reading spot, your TBR pile(s), your local book store, your favorite librarian, your child reading, etc. You may want to post several photos of a certain topic (like all nine of your kids reading!) or a mixed bag of photos that are unrelated except that they’re bookish. Or you may want to post just one photo, it’s up to you. If you have a different type of blog, post photos of whatever you think is suitable.

2. Create a post of your photos.

3. Don’t forget! Also link in your post to another participant’s WG photo post. Weekly Geeks is a community thing, remember! If you’re one of the first finished, of course, you may have to add your link later. See if you can find someone you don’t normally read to link to.

4. Once your post is up, come back and leave a link to that specific post (not just your regular blog url) in the Mr Linky at the bottom of this post.

If you've read my blog for very long, you know that I have a puppy named Rusty, who is pretty much the cutest, smartest puppy in the world. In fact, just because I can, I'm going to post a picture of him right now. Awww... isn't he cute??

This right here would be my stack of review books. I was very curious how to obtain the free books I saw other book bloggers talking about. I followed some of their advice (especially Eva's great post here on getting free books) and now I've got a stack of my own.

This picture (even though it is a bit blurry) shows you the three loves of my life. My husband (trying to get Rusty to pose for me), my books (this is where I keep the books I'm currently reading) and my puppy (who is chasing a laser light under the coffee table).

Rusty's been getting swimming lessons. Yes, I know that it is supposed to be instinctive for dogs, but it doesn't mean they always like being in water.

Here is a video of Rusty's 1st swimming lesson. Okay, apparently you have to crane your neck to see it because I don't know how to rotate the video. But in this video, you can just see the conflict going on in his head. "I want the stick. But I'm getting wet. I don't know if I like this water stuff. Okay, I'm leaving. No, I'm going back. But I don't know about this..."


Other Weekly Geeks I've been browsing:

Melody (and her cute daughter)
Chris' bookshelves
Katrina
Melanie's pics from Ukraine

Graphic Novels Challenge and Sandman:World's End

I have been meaning to join this challenge for a while, actually. I got all excited when I saw that the challenge is being opened again for late arrivals. Instead of reading 6 books, you can read 3 between now and the end of the year.

And Dewey's offering an awesome contest to get everyone fired up about the Graphic Novels Challenge. If you comment on two posts at the Graphic Novel Challenge Blog, let people know about the challenge on your blog, and let Dewey know here, you can be entered to win a copy of We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin.

With that, I'm going to lead off with my first book review for the challenge. I spotted Sandman: World's End at the library, and picked it up at random. This is a bit unusual for me, as it is the eighth book in the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, and normally I'm a bit obsessive about reading series books in order.

Nothing to fear, however, as this book is a series of short stories, so no background knowledge of the other comics was needed. The context is that a group of travelers caught in a reality storm find themselves at an inn. It's called the Inn at the End of the World, and to pass the time, the travelers exchange stories.

This is Neil Gaiman, so the stories are anything but normal. An 18 year old boy runs for president... and wins. A businessman finds himself trapped the dream of a city. A fairy tells how he outwitted the dictator of a neighboring nation with the help of a mysterious man in black.

The stories sometimes branch into stories within stories... within stories... and I pretty much lost track of what level of "story within a story" the book got to. The entire book had beautiful artwork, but the first story was especially cool. Instead of the usual speech bubbles, the narration above each horizontal panel explained the story.

I'm starting to wonder if the day will ever come when I will dislike something Neil Gaiman wrote. I really hope that day doesn't come. Because, you know, the world might end or something.

Anyhow, I'd highly recommend this book, even if you haven't read the other Sandman novels.

Entombed

Author: Linda Fairstein
Reason for Reading: Bookclub at work
Rating: 2/5

Sometimes when I just want to watch some mindless TV, I enjoy watching one of the many CSI spinoffs. The police characters are generally stereotypes there to move the plot along, and I pay no attention whatsoever to what happens with their personal lives. The suspects and people they interview exist to give us clues to the mystery, and one can predict plot twists by how many more minutes are left in the episode. (Okay they've caught who they think is the killer, but its only 8:40. They've clearly got the wrong guy.)

I don't generally read many mysteries except for the Agatha Christie variety, but somehow I expected more from this book than to be a full-blown CSI episode. I really couldn't tell you a single detail about any of the characters and in fact, as the book progressed, I frequently lost track of who was talking. The clunky style kept me constantly a step behind.

The plot revolves around a skeleton found behind the wall of a college building where Edgar Allen Poe once lived. As it looks like the victim was likely entombed alive, Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper is immediately reminded of Poe's fiction. At the same time, her old nemesis, the Silk Stocking Rapist is back. She's determined to hunt him down this time and make him pay for his crimes.

I diligently read this book for my book club, but if not for the "I have to read it or I can't make it to book club", I would have put this book down about chapter 6 and not picked it up again. Like I mentioned, I didn't care about the characters. A scene where the main character is trapped in a similar fashion to the victim found in the wall made me annoyed, not sympathetic, because it seemed so improbable. Why bother? If a real villian wanted to hurt her, they'd have an easier time stabbing her or shooting her. Why the elaborate set-up?

What irked me the most was after I got all the way through the whole darn book, it just ended. No resolution for the personal situation going on. And one of the bad guy situations is only mentioned in passing as having been resolved. No details. Sadly, my reaction to the revelation of the villain was "oh good, the book's finally over no"

I will say, despite my hang-ups with the plot and characters, I did learn quite a bit about Poe. I'm always one for learning about history, so I did enjoy those sections of the book.

Most everyone in the book club had similar feelings as I did, (albeit they weren't all as strong, though) however, I was the only one who would not want to read more books by this author. Perhaps if you are a fan of the genre, you will enjoy this one more than I did.