Links For You

A very short links post…

Win a signed copy of your choice of one of Elizabeth Scott’s current books at Melissa Walker’s blog (and read the rest of the entry, too, it’s about the cover of Living Dead Girl). Go here for details.

Read some interesting stuff about the hardcover v paperback debate (publishing, not buying) from Editorial Ass, via Elizabeth Scott.

Don’t miss this essay from the New York Times about weird things found inside books! This link found via Lenore–check out her related story.

 

My Best Books of 2008

I read a lot of books in 2008. I kind of lost count, especially near the end, unfortunately, but I certainly read a lot of good books, and some less-good ones, though, as a rule, I don’t generally finish the sucky books.

Even though a lot of the books I read were solidly good, and others truly great, only some really stood out to me for some reason or another, and this is a list of those books. I decided to limit myself to my favorite fifteen books of the year, and that is the list you see below (in the rough order I read them, not in preference order). These are books I loved and books that left some sort of mark. These may not be the objective best books, and they may not be the books I’d choose if I’d written this post at some other time, but as of right now, these are my favorite fifteen (as of 21 December). What’re yours?

1. The Opposite of Invisible by Liz Gallagher
2. A Little Friendly Advice by Siobhan Vivian
3. Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
4. Song of the Sparrow by Lisa Ann Sandell
5. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
6. I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone by Stephanie Kuehnert
7. Honeybee by Naomi Shibab Nye
8. The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson
9. On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
10. Paper Towns by John Green
11. North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley
12. I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
13. Ten Cents A Dance by Christine Fletcher
14. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
15. The Comeback Season by Jennifer E. Smith

 

Review: Persistence of Memory by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Sixteen-year-old Erin Misrahe is diagnosed with schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities), and has spent most of her life institutionalized. Sometimes, she blacks out, can’t remember anything, and her violent other personality (referred to in this book as her alter ego), Shevaun, takes over. Now, she’s been symptom-free for eighteen months and she’s trying to become a part of normal society, living at home and transitioning gradually to a public school. 

She thinks her life is headed for normalcy–until it gets weirder than ever. She wakes up looking through someone else’s eyes, and it’s all crazy from there. She reconnects with an old friend, finds out a secret about a new one, and discovers that there’s a lot more to the world than what meets the eye. Shevaun isn’t part of Erin; she’s centuries old vampire who exists separately from Erin, but they have a connection no one understands. 

Persistence of Memory is yet another unsatisfying peek into Amelia Atwater-Rhodes‘ world. Why unsatistfying? Only for the best reasons–when you’re reading, you can feel that there’s a whole world behind these stories. The characters are people in it, and their roles in the stories that make it to publication are not their lives. I feel like Amelia Atwater-Rhodes knows their whole lives. She knows a lot more about this complete other world than makes it into her books. It’s pretty awesome, especially to know that there are so many other stories just waiting to be written or published! It’s frustrating, too, though, to see glimpses of fascinating places and people, but not to know the whole story. But, as I said, frustrating in a totally awesome way. 

In this book, the different parts of this world come together in a way they don’t in the other books. Witches, vampires, shape-shifters–it’s all here. We see glimpses of characters from other books, as always, and I love it. Amelia’s world-building is fascinating. Her storytelling is wonderful and imaginative. Her writing is fluid. Her characters (for the most part) are real people. It’s captivating reading. 

However, as much as I love this book (and all the others by this author), I do have some issues with its accuracy, mainly Erin’s mental health diagnosis. I know these aren’t issues that people not taking AP Psychology would have, but they bothered me. Erin, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually show the signs of schizophrenia, just dissociative identity disorder, so I’m not sure why she was diagnosed with it–especially because she’s under 18. Children can’t be diagnosed with schizophrenia; according to DSM-IV, which is a diagnostic manual of mental illnesses, sufferers must be 18, and Erin was diagnosed as a small child. 

My other problem with this book was Shevaun. I didn’t feel like we got to know Shevaun very well, or like her personality, from the glimpses we saw of it, made total sense. For example, it was mentioned that she didn’t kill unthinkingly, and she even felt guilt for some of her killing, but at other times, it seems like she was a cold-blooded, reckless killer. Shevaun didn’t make sense. Perhaps that’s just because of the limited viewpoint that the reader has, and I’m sure she makes sense to the author–but that didn’t translate 100% in the book. Amelia Atwater-Rhodes has said that she tends to overshare in her books before her editor steps in, but there needs to be a balance between oversharing and not revealing enough.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed Persistence of Memory. It was compelling and well-written and just fun to read as well. Addicting, even. Fans should not be disappointed.

 

Booking Through Thursday: Treat & Generosity

Do you give books as gifts? Sometimes, but only to people that I know will read them. A lot of people, sadly, don’t appreciate good books. 

To everyone? Or only to select people? Like I said, only the big readers! 

How do you feel about receiving books as gifts? I love books! However, a lot of the time people who know that either get books that aren’t really my kind of book or books that I’ve already read, if they know my tastes better. So my favorite bookish gift is actually a gift card to a bookstore so I can pick out my own book.

What is the best book you ever bought for yourself? Hmm. That’s a hard one. I don’t buy most of my books; they’re library books or review copies. Or if I buy them, they’re library books I loved so much I wanted to own a copy, and I’m not counting that here. So….Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Bought it, read it, loved it!

And, why? What made it the best? What made it so special? It’s one of my favorites. I don’t know why, I just love it. I love the story, the voices, both the authors are brilliant. I love the characters. I just love it. Wow, as a book reviewer, I should be able to articulate this better

 

The End Of Girl Week

Girl Week is officially over. Stop by the guestbook and leave your thoughts for Steph! I personally thought it was an awesome week, a total success, and I’m thrilled that it’s going to be an annual thing! I also wanted to leave you all with a few last links from Girl Week (some of which are, yes, for contest entries; the contests end tomorrow).

Don’t miss A.S. King’s guest blog about feminism and its facts and history. You can also read Steph’s review of The Dust of 100 Dogs. I can’t wait to read this one!

Win a signed ARC of Sarah Dessen’s Lock and Key here!

Elizabeth Scott also stopped by Girl Week, with an awesome guest blog about security and/versus soul mates.

Steph interviewed Megan McCafferty, author of the fabulous Jessica Darling books, here, and it’s fabulous. You can also win signed copies of the books here!

 

Review: Losers by Matthue Roth

Losers is a short, funny novel about a quirky Russian kid who can’t fit in with the rest of his high school. His best friend, Vadim, is a genius who should be even more of a social outcast than he is, but even he finds his niche before Jupiter does. Jupiter Glazer is lost, out of orbit.

He lives with his parents in a warehouse in Philadelphia, and it is not, he thinks, the most interesting place in the world. Then he discovers downtown. He discovers a whole new world outside of the warehouse and high school, a sophisticated world of coffee shops and those who frequen them. At school, too, he begins to be less invisible, at first as the school bully’s target, but then, suddenly, things aren’t the way they used to be. 

It’s not really about the plot, though. Matthue Roth’s novel is about the character and the voice, and it rocks. It’s hilarious. It’s more than a little crazy, yet manages to ring true. There are universal life truths in here among Jupiter’s escapades, and you’ll find yourself rooting for Jupiter wholeheartedly. And the writing! Even funnier. Descriptive and gritty and captivating. Matthue Roth can write. I already loved his book Never Mind The Goldbergs, so I expected this to be awesome, and it was. It’s a coming of age story that also falls into the madcap adventure category occasionally, and the result is a lot of amusement minus brain rotting. This is a short novel that packs a lot of punch and will provoke a lot of muffled laughter. Highly recommended.

 

Review: Leftovers by Laura Wiess

Leftovers chronicles the transformation of two best friends from kids to people who have done something. Something unforgivable, but, they believe, not for unforgivable reasons. We don’t know what when the book starts. All we know is that they are taking turns confessing on tape. They start with the backstory. They start with how they got to where they are, how they became people who could do what they did. 

Blair’s mother is all about image. She doesn’t care about Blair, and when they do see each other, it’s mostly in the company of other people who need to believe that their family is close. Blair’s father is having an affair. They are not the family they once were.

Ardith’s family is what it’s always been. Ardith’s house is the party house, full of drinking and sex and all sorts of things that wouldn’t go on in a place with normal parents. Ardith keeps padlocks on her door to keep out what goes on in the rest of her house. 

Blair and Ardith are best friends. They turn to each other when everyone else in their world fails them. The unfortunate circumstances and cruel people in their lives try to rip them apart, but their bond can’t be broken that easily; just changed, as they change, as does everything around them.

Leftovers is a very intense story. Horrible things happen to Blair and Ardith, and in the end, it’s simultaneously unsurprising and horrifying. Blair and Ardith are very real characters, and their story is disturbingly believable. Blair and Ardith are interesting to the reader, because, to me at least, they still managed to be sympathetic characters. They did something unforgivable, but they were also the victims in this story, in another way. As I read, I could not turn the pages fast enough (and thus have no idea what’s been going on in Chemistry for the past two days). It’s well-written, suspenseful, and kind of like watching two cars go toward each other, toward a head-on collision; you know something horrible is going to happen, but you can’t look away. The format of this novel is interesting, as Blair and Ardith alternate talking, sometimes talking in the present tense to the person they’re confessing to, and sometimes telling the story of what happened. Sometimes it’s in second person, too, which is an interesting effect with disastrous potential, but Laura Wiess pulls it off nicely. This is a powerful book that certainly lives up to the high standards set by Laura Wiess’s first novel, Such A Pretty Girl. 

 

Check Me Out On Teen Ink!

My article about a trip to Morocco is voted first in the Travel & Culture section today–check it out!

 

Awesomeness Alerts

Awesomeness Alert #1: The Story Siren is giving away books! There’s lots to choose from. Check it out here.

Awesomeness Alert #2: In the continuously awesome Girl Week, Reviewer X is giving away a signed copy of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle Trilogy! Check that out here. While you’re at it, check out Steph’s great interview with Libba as well. They discuss historical reasearch, the writing process, and lots of other awesome stuff.

 

Review: Fact of Life #31 by Denise Vega

Kat is not afraid of being herself. She’s an artist, an athlete, a receptionist at her mom Abra’s midwifery, and does yoga in the hallways at school to center herself. Kat’s not “original” in that cliche, unoriginal way; she’s just herself, and that’s a little different from most people. Sure, she might have self-esteem issues sometimes (don’t we all?), and she pays a little too much attention to the popular crowd at school, but she’s still Kat, and that’s why I love her. 

Kat’s life is imperfect, just like anyone’s. She’s crushing on popular Manny Cruz(who seemed sleazy, but…wasn’t? I didn’t feel like his character made complete sense). She has some problems with her best friend, Christy. Her relationship with her mother isn’t great; Abra pays more attention to her clients than her children. Fact of Life #31 is about all aspects of Kat’s life (friends, school, guys, family–just life), but her relationship with her mother is the big one. 

In Fact of Life #31, Denise Vega takes on a lot. A lot of characters, a lot of issues, a lot of stuff happening in Kat’s life, just like the crazy-hectic lives of most teenagers (not in content but in volume of stuff we have to deal with). And she does it really well. I absolutely loved Kat, and most of the other characters. This was a funny, honest, well-written book that I really enjoyed reading. Kat’s quirky without being a stereotype, and while she has the same issues as a lot of teenagers, she’s unique enough to make reading about it through her eyes interesting. This is a solidly good book. 

 

Lisa Schroeder’s Release Party (With Fabulous Prizes!)

I loved Lisa Schroeder’s first book, and her latest looks really great as well. It’s on my to-read stack for post-Cybils! You can check out my interview with Lisa here.

Lisa Schroeder is having a release party for her new novel Far From You. To find out more check out the info below:

Lisa Schroeder, author of I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME, is celebrating the release of her upcoming YA novel, FAR FROM YOU, and hosting a contest with LOTS of great prizes!

For three days leading up to the book’s release date of December 23rd, you can watch VLOGs and hear some excerpts read from the book. The VLOG schedule is as follows:

Sunday, December 21st – Liv’s Book Reviews -http://livsbookreviews.blogspot.com/
Monday, December 22nd – What Vanessa Reads -http://whatvanessareads.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, December 23rd – Lisa Schroeder, author - http://lisa-schroeder.livejournal.com/ andhttp://myspace.com/writerlisa
Help spread the word, and you might win a fabulous prize!

Copy and paste THIS entire blog entry into your blog between now and December 21st, then come back to Lisa’s blog at either Livejournal OR Myspace and leave a comment with the link to your blog and you will get TWO entries to win a number of prizes.

Wondering what you might win? Here is the list (there will be multiple winners):

~ An Advanced Review Copy of THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH, by Carrie Ryan

~ An Advanced Review Copy of SOMETHING, MAYBE, by Elizabeth Scott

~ Young adult novel GIRL, HERO by Carrie Jones

~ Young adult novel, THE POSSIBILITIES OF SAINTHOOD by Donna Freitas

~ Young adult novel, UGLIES by Scott Westerfield

~ Pair of YA fairy tale retellings by Cameron Dokey (BELLE and BEFORE MIDNIGHT)

~ TWILIGHT movie soundtrack

~ $15.00 Barnes and Noble gift card along with some Harry & David’s chocolate moose munch

~ And of course, a signed copy of FAR FROM YOU

For more chances to win, watch one or all of the VLOGs and leave a comment on that vlogger’s page, and you get another entry. That means if you post the schedule on your blog AND comment on all three VLOGs, you can have FIVE entries for the contest!

A live drawing with winners announced will be done by Lisa Thursday morning, December 24th, in a special holiday VLOG.

 

Recruiting For Guest Blogs

I am officially recruiting for guest blogs. If you’re an author or reviewer or anyone bookish (not just a reader, sorry), and you’d like to write a post for me on any topic pertaining to books or writing (specific books or in general–and if your topic isn’t bookish, talk to me anyway, it might still be awesome), send me an email with your idea! For authors–if I haven’t read your book, or if I don’t have it in one of my to-read stacks, see if you can get your publisher to send me a review copy. I’d prefer to be able to make some educated comments about the books of my guest blogging authors at some point (even if it’s after the guest blog), because this isn’t just a venue for bookish self-promotion. Also, it’d be great if you have a copy of one of your books or something to do a giveaway (but it’s not required). Thanks so much to any volunteers!

 

Six-Word Reviews

Oh, look, yet another long-lost post from the drafts folder. Enjoy! 

Inspired by Eva’s post at A Striped Armchair, I’ve decided to post some six-word reviews of my own! As you may know, I am a contributor to the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure, another reason why I like this idea.

I think I’ll save my thoughts from my to-review stack, but here are a few random comments on books I’ve enjoyed.

Girl pirates kick ass. Wonderful adventure! (Pirates by Celia Rees)

Annoying boy wizard has magical adventures. (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling)

Heroine must spend all day journaling. (Terrier by Tamora Pierce)

Friends take unorthodox paths in life. (Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain)

Lifetime thief must choose for herself. (Stealing Heaven by Elizabeth Scott)

 

Author Meme

So, I found this in my drafts folder from a really long time ago.  I don’t know if anyone will find it interesting at this point or not, but, if you want to, enjoy. Some of the answers are not what I’d say now (for instance, I’d include Christine Fletcher in #1).

Jordyn over at Page Numbered has tagged me for a new meme! Here it is.

1. Who’s you all-time favorite author and why? Eep. Hard question! I honestly can’t choose just one. I’m going to choose…five. With at least two favorite books each, because if an author has only written one book, then it’s a favorite book, not a favorite author. Also if only one of their books makes it into my favorites list, then they can’t count as favorite author. By those rules, my top five: Melina Marchetta, John Green, Scott Westerfeld, Rachel Cohn, Sharon Creech. Of course, that could change at any moment…I’ll stop now.
2. Who was your first favorite author and why? Do you still consider him/her among your favorites? Hmm, probably Ann M. Martin. I loved Babysitter’s Club books in first grade. She’s not still a favorite of mine, but I have some sentimental attachment.
3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favorite answers, and why? Most recent favorite author would have to be, hm, probably Brian James.
4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection? This does not include the rules of number one. First thoughts: See number one, add Lisa Klein, Tamora Pierce,  David Levithan, Maureen Johnson, Tara Altebrando, Isabel Allende, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Caridad Ferrer, Gail Carson Levine. After more thought: JK Rowling, Katherine Applegate, Stephenie Meyer, Justine Larbalestier, Libba Bray, Marianne Curley, Deb Caletti, Sarah Dessen, E. Lockhart.

The Rules: Link to the person that tagged you, post the rules somewhere in your meme, answer the questions, tag six people in your post, let the tagees know they’ve been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog, let the tagger know your entry is posted.

I’m tagging: Anyone who wants to be tagged. Who needs to follow the rules, anyway?

 

Waiting On Wednesday 12.17.2008

(What I’m really waiting on this week is an acceptance and loads of scholarship money from my favorite college. Cross your fingers for me. However, what you want to hear about is a book, so here you go:)

Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce

04.28.2009 from Random House

Beka Cooper is finally a Dog—a full-fledged member of the Provost’s Guard, dedicated to keeping peace in Corus’s streets. But there’s unrest in Tortall’s capital. Counterfeit coins are turning up in shops all over the city, and merchants are raising prices to cover their losses. The Dogs discover that gamblers are bringing the counterfeit money from Port Caynn. In Port Caynn, Beka delves deep into the gambling world, where she meets a charming banking clerk named Dale Rowan. Beka thinks she may be falling for Rowan, but she won’t let anything—or anyone—jeopardize her mission. As she heads north to an abandoned silver mine, it won’t be enough for Beka be her usual “terrier” self. She’ll have to learn from Achoo to sniff out the criminals—to be a Bloodhound. . . . 

This is the second book in the Beka Cooper series, and I absolutely loved the first. Also, I just love Tamora Pierce in general. Here’s to hoping this one will be awesome! Although I kind of hate the cover. The original was way more awesome.