Justine Larbalestier’s YA novel, Liar, received quite a bit of press in the book blogging world and beyond when it was originally published with a Caucasian girl on the cover, despite the main character being half African-American. It was subsequently reissued with the cover on the left, and while it was that controversy that alerted me to the book, what actually got me to add it to my ‘to read’ pile was when I read that it featured the ultimate unreliable narrator, since I tend to be quite fond of those types of storytellers.

Micah is a misfit. 17-years-old and living in New York City, she attends an unconventional private school, but doesn’t have much interest in academics. On the school hierarchy, she’s worse than an unknown – she’s something of a pariah, known for telling outlandish lies. But she promises us that she will tell us the truth. A fellow student, Zach, has been found dead, and Micah, due to her clandestine relationship with him, is a suspect. Did she kill him? Should we believe Micah? What is the truth, really? We have only Micah’s kaleidoscope-like point of view to tell us.

Ultimately, it’s up to the reader to decide, and there are many ways to take this story. For me, my pragmatic side won out, and I came away thinking it was an account written by a disturbed and mentally ill young person. Others may come away with a completely different notion of what this book’s about – and I won’t give anything away by going into more detail. With equal parts of suspense and teenage angst, I can see this book appealing to older teens. I can’t really say that I liked this book, but I wanted to keep reading, mainly to see if Micah would ever truly come clean, if we’d ever find out who – or what – she really is. Maybe we do, and maybe we don’t.

Applicable Reading Challenges: Support Your Local Library, 100+ Reading Challenge 

Book Rating: 3: Decent, but didn’t grab me in a big way.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from the library.

So, I’m probably one of the last people on the planet (or at least, in the book blogging world) to read Suzanne Collins’ smash hit Hunger Games series, much as I resisted the siren call (and biblio-peer pressure) of the Twilight series. YA Science Fiction? No, thanks.

But of course, time (and rave reviews from fellow book bloggers whose opinions I trust) wore me down and I decided a couple of weeks ago to get it over with and read the damn book, fully expecting to dislike it, or worse, be bored to tears.

Well, not so much.

In fact, I practically devoured the book, I literally could not put it down, and read it in the span of a few hours. I don’t think I need to rehash the plot, but suffice it to say that if you took bits of The Giver,  Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Running Man, and yes, even Twilight, and mashed them all together, what you’d have is The Hunger Games. I only wish I’d had the foresight to check out both the first and second books at the same time, since I took The Hunger Games home from work on Saturday and our library is closed on Sunday, so I had to wait A WHOLE DAY before I could continue on with Catching Fire, the second book in the series. 

Applicable Reading Challenges: Support Your Local Library, 100+ Reading Challenge, TwentyTen Challenge

Book Rating: 5: Excellent. This book has impacted me deeply, or has simply been a pure delight to read.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from the library.

One good thing about waiting this long to read The Hunger Games, is that by the time I came around, I didn’t have to agonizingly wait months and months for the second book. (I had the same experience with Twilight and New Moon.) My library’s Young Adult copies were all checked out, but by some serendipitous error, we’d gotten a Large Print copy of Catching Fire, which was actually on the shelf.  So by lunchtime on Monday, I was happily back in Katniss’ world, wondering how the nasties at the Capitol would get their revenge on her for cheating them out of her death, and whether she would opt for the stalwart Peeta or the resourceful Gale.

Now, I’m not usually one for blonds, typically preferring the tall, dark stranger-type, but I’m also the kind of girl who roots for the underdog (see my preference for Jacob over Edward as an example), so in this case, I am all about Peeta. He’s so good! And self-sacrificing! And hot! And at least I’m not alone in lusting after barely-legal teenagers. In fact, Googling ‘Peeta’ turns up TY’s Team Gale vs. Team Peeta post.  Her visuals do make me lean more towards Gale, though, as Henry Cavill just oozes sex appeal.

As for the book itself, it was good but mainly serves to build momentum for the last book in the trilogy, Mockingjay, which won’t be published until (gasp!) August. 

From reading these books, I’ve made the realization that I quite like dystopic fiction (The Giver and Never Let Me Go being two examples that I’ve read in recent years that I really enjoyed) and will be seeking out more of it in the future. Since I’ve been raving about The Hunger Games to anyone who’ll listen, I’ve had someone recommend The Windup Girl, which I’ve added to my list of books to read this year.

Applicable Reading Challenges: Support Your Local Library, 100+ Reading Challenge, TwentyTen Challenge

Book Rating: 4: Good, solid book that I would recommend to others.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from the library.

December seems to be a great month for reading book blogs. Great, that is, if you like adding a bunch of books to your wish list. In addition to the ubiquitous ‘best of’ lists, there are always hidden gems to find as people wrap up their reading for the year. One such instance for me was finding Alyce’s review for Laika, a graphic novel by Nick Abadzis (check out her page for some great photos of the real-life Laika). I immediately placed a request for a library copy and eagerly awaited its arrival. When it finally did come in, I forced myself to set it aside as a reward for getting through Beach Music.

Laika is the fictionalized account of the dog who became the first animal to orbit the earth. In the 1950s, during the throes of the Cold War, the Soviet Union set out to prove their superiority over the United States by launching a satellite into orbit, which they did with Sputnik I. Emboldened by that feat, Khrushchev demanded that the scientists surpass that success by launching another satellite to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and really show the world that the U.S.S.R. was the world’s greatest superpower. Of course, they couldn’t just put a second satellite into orbit, and with only four weeks, the scientists were put under enormous pressure to please their leader. They decided to send a dog into space. The Soviet space scientists had been using dogs in their experiments already, and from among them, a little dog named Laika was chosen to make the historic flight.

However, Abadzis begins his graphic novel with a man wandering the frozen wastelands of Siberia, having been released from a Soviet gulag with nothing but the clothes on his back. Miraculously, he survives, and goes on to become one of the leaders of the Soviet space program, and the Chief Designer for Sputnik 2. His story of survival is juxtaposed alongside Laika’s, from an abused stray to the symbol for the Soviet empire. At the same time, Laika gives us a snapshot of life under the Soviet regime during this time period, the ordinary and not-so-ordinary people living in this environment, their dreams and desires, which sometimes conflicted with their loyalty to (or fear of) their country.

A poignant story about humanity and the little dog who left her mark on the world, Laika will pull at your heartstrings and capture your heart.

Applicable Reading Challenges: Support Your Local Library, 100+ Reading Challenge, Graphic Novels Challenge, Historical Fiction Reading Challenge,

Book Rating: 5: Excellent. This book has impacted me deeply, or has simply been a pure delight to read.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from the library.

I saw Hope Larson’s graphic novel Gray Horses pop up on a few blogs over the past month or so, all praising the story and artwork, so of course, I had to get my hands on a copy and anxiously awaited the arrival of a copy through inter-library loan.

Gray Horses is a quiet, understated account of a French exchange student’s experiences living in the United States. By day, Noemie is an art student, finding her way in a strange town, alone and without the comforts of home. By night, she dreams of a young girl and the horse that helps her along a journey.

The tone of Gray Horses is soft and dreamlike, with subdued colors and simple drawings adding to the book’s otherworldly feel. The smattering of dialogue contained within is a mixture of English and French (with translations), a neat touch that felt true to how the character of Noemie would think.

Although I can see what appealed to other readers, it was a little too quiet and whimsical for me to connect to the characters or really be drawn into the story. That said, her new book, Mercury, looks quite interesting and perhaps would better fit my reading mood, so I’m definitely up for reading more from this obviously talented artist.

Applicable Reading Challenges: Support Your Local Library, 100+ Reading Challenge, Graphic Novels Challenge

Book Rating: 3: Decent, but didn’t grab me in a big way.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from the library.

I first read about Laura Whitcomb’s novel A Certain Slant of Light, not to be confused with A Certain Slant of Light by Cynthia Thayer, in a book where the writer did indeed get them mixed up, but ended up reading both. I thought I read about the mix-up in Sara Nelson’s So Many Books, So Little Time, or Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree, but Amazon’s nify Citations feature doesn’t list either one. If anyone can solve the mystery for me, please do.

So anyway, it’s been a few years since I’d added the book to my wishlist, but I had never come across it in bookstores and wasn’t so keen to read it to make one of my rare online book purchases. Serendipitously, one day I was browsing through a large special display of bargain books at a Border’s and was shocked and pleased to find a copy of the book in amongst the others. What made it even stranger was that it was the only copy of the book I could find there, while it seemed like all the others had multiple copies. It was meant to be! I gleefully took my find to the cash register, took it home, and promptly forgot about it. (As happens with too many of the books brought into my home.)

While perusing my bookshelves one evening late last month for a last-minute read for Carl’s RIP Challenge, I came across A Certain Slant of Light once again. I figured since it involved ghosts it fit the challenge, and was of a suitable length and subject matter that I could read it within a couple days in time before October 31st and the end of the challenge. Well, I was certainly correct in that assumption. I took the book to bed with me and within a few hours (and a little burning of the midnight oil) I had devoured the entire thing. I simply could not put it down and wait to finish the story.

And the story, for those of you who’d actually like to know, is about two ghosts, or beings of Light, as the one, Helen, calls herself. She has been dead for more than 100 years, haunting one person, unbeknowst to them, for a period of time before they die or she otherwise moves on, to a new “host.” One day, while observing the students in her current host’s high school classroom, she notices one observing her right back. The realization that for the first time in her post-living existence, someone is seeing her both frightens and intrigues Helen, and it isn’t long before she confronts him, a teenaged boy named Billy. But Billy’s body is actually being inhabited by another ghost, James, who found Billy’s body empty of its soul but able to receive his spirit. James and Helen are drawn to one another like moths to a flame, and it isn’t long before their passion ignites, setting into motion a series of events that neither one could have predicted.

For fans of Edward and Bella’s romance in Twilight, this ghostly couple’s ardent love for one another will make theirs seem lukewarm by comparison. And just as Twilight isn’t really about vampires in the traditional sense, A Certain Slant of Light isn’t really about things that go bump in the night. Instead, it is about the powers of guilt, forgiveness and love. It’s a wonderful book, and the only other thing I wish it had in common with Twilight is that book’s length. Helen’s and James’ pasts and presents are much too fascinating for the reader to be satisfied with what we’re given. But alas, that’s all we have. So just savor every moment.

And with that, a dual miracle has occurred. With four books read (The Forgotten Garden, The Observations, The Likeness and A Certain Slant of Light), I have actually completed a challenge, the first time in a very long time that I’ve been able to make that claim. And secondly, I am FINALLY caught up on my blog posts! Now let’s see if I can keep it that way.

I had seen E. Lockhart’s YA novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks at the library but really hadn’t given it much thought until I saw it show up on this year’s Tournament of Books and thought, hmmm, maybe this one is worth a second glance. I admit, I have a soft spot for books about boarding schools. Growing up, I had this weird fascination with them. I daydreamed about being able to attend one, and always felt more than mildly jealous when I’d read about girls who got to live that existence. Of course, I completely overlooked the fact that in most of the stories I read, said girls were typically tormented, miserable, and trying their damnedest to escape, and that were I to somehow find myself living that alternate life, chances are it would be miserable for me as well.

So anyway, that was the emotional baggage I brought to my reading of this book, and once again I was swept up into the WASPy world of New England prep schools. Frankie Landau-Banks attends Alabaster Prep, a private school for the entitled few. She gets involved with one of the school’s popular boys, joining his entourage and trying to fit in. But she’s a smart girl, and she uses her wits and intrinsic boldness to beat the boys at their own game. Frankie infiltrates their secret club, becoming the mastermind behind its greatest antics and proving that you don’t have to be a boy to have the power.

I think I’ve aged too much to be able to fully indulge my school fantasies, and so while I enjoyed the book, it isn’t one that I will rave about to my adult friends. Besides Frankie’s subversive escapades, there wasn’t a lot more to it, unlike Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty or A Northern Light, two YA books featuring strong female characters, that I continually recommend to other mature readers. I will recommend Disreptuable History to my 17-year-old niece and other teenage girls who need a strong antidote to the lovesick, self-deprecating Bella from the Twilight series, which is still going strong, by the way – we haven’t had a copy on our shelves since we opened last May.

Speaking of which, my library is celebrating its first anniversary next week with a bunch of special events. If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by and check us out!

I don’t remember how it was that I came to first read a book by David Sedaris (besides some vague recollection of randomly stumbling upon his books in bookstore) but I do remember when I first read a book of his. It was in a  hotel in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 2001. My husband and I had gone back to the east coast to visit family and so I could collect the things I’d put in storage in Halifax. I was luxuriating in the aptly-named heavenly bed and annoying Mike with my staccato bouts of laughter as I read Me Talk Pretty One Day. From then on, I was a fan.

Every so often I would check his appearances site to see if he was going to be in my area, whether I was living in Atlanta, Providence or Charlotte. But I was always too late (he’d been there last week) or I’d be out of town or otherwise unable to go. I consoled myself with audiobook versions and found that I enjoyed listening to Sedaris read his stories even more than I liked reading them myself. I even turned my husband into a fan. But after 8 years of  never seeing him live, I was beginning to think I was destined never to do so. Then, just a few weeks ago, I happened to visit his site again and saw he was coming to Atlanta on April 15th. “Buy Tickets Now!” the site said, and I gleefully clicked over to the Ticketmaster site, entering in my event info, only to have “no results found” come back repeatedly. Then I called Ticketmaster, who informed me that the show was sold out. Argh, not again!

But then my husband, my sweet, resourceful husband, began scouting Craigslist for some ticket-holders who were forced for whatever reason to sell their tickets. Lucky for us, we benefited from someone else’s misfortune (aka out-of-town business meeting) and scored a couple of lower mezzanine tickets for the event. Yes!

Which all leads me up to tonight, the night of the performance. I’d debated about bringing along my books, since I own them all, but foolishly thought that with an audience of approximately 2,700 people, there’s no way he’d be doing book signings. So we get there, and what do I see? A table set up for book signings, of course! No David Sedaris though, as apparently he was stuck in the ubiquitous Atlanta traffic. A Cappella Books was there, however, selling copies of his books. I figured I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to actually talk with Sedaris, so I bought a hardbound copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I justified since it is my sentimental favorite and I only had  the paperback version at home. We were told that he would be signing books after the show and so we went to our seats, wondering if we’d recognize any of the essays he’d share and waiting anxiously for the lights to dim. Finally, after a brief and mostly redundant introduction, David Sedaris came on stage. He was shorter than I thought he’d be. But that could just have been a trick of the stage and our location, as we were seated just close enough so we could just barely but not quite make out his facial expressions.

He regaled us with an hour or so of stories, beginning with the pre- and post-Obama election discussions he encountered around his home in Normandy and elsewhere abroad (no one believed we’d do it), and including other ruminations such as his trip to Australia and his encounter with the strange but wonderful kookaburra (which, now that I see photos of them, don’t look nearly as intimidating as they sounded), random and hilarious diary entries, observations on people who exaggerate the pronunication of certain foreign words (his favorite was an otherwise monotonous professor who said words like “Nicaragua” like some bad Antonio Banderas impersonator), and how his father liked to walk around the house in his underwear.

All too quickly, he was done. But before he opened it up to a short Q&A, he said that he would do something he typically does during a performance, and that’s recommend a book. Actually, in this case, an audiobook: Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. He then went on to play a portion of one of the monologues, A Lady of Letters with Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances for my fellow Britcom fans). The audience Q&A included questions about his quitting smoking (apparently it doesn’t really bother him), whether he Twitters (no, he doesn’t) and if he still uses a typewriter to type his manuscripts (no, he finally switched to the laptop Hugh bought him several years ago).

As soon as he walked off stage, Mike and I were making our way down to the lobby to the book signing area where I was about the 20th person in line. The whole time I’m in line I’m thinking of what I’m going to say. I know he doesn’t just sign the book and wave you on; David Sedaris is nicer than that. He’ll actually engage you in a conversation and spend a few minutes talking to you. Meeting David Sedaris is like meeting a rock star, or the literary equivalent of one; I was so nervous that I’d get up there and sound like an idiot. I decided I’d thank him for the book suggestion since during my time in line I’d remembered that Alan Bennett was the author of The Uncommon Reader, a book I thoroughly enjoyed, and see where it went from there.

The two women in front of me were talking to each other and texting on their iPhones, or more accurately, Twittering on their iPhones. For the 45 minutes or so  I stood in line behind them I got to hear for about 30 minutes what one of them had been entering on Twitter during the show, what she was entering as we stood in line, and what she was planning to enter later on. Now, no offence to all you Twitter fans, but I don’t really get the appeal. Granted, this is coming from the woman who took several years to latch onto the idea of keeping a blog and only got onto Facebook last year. But I digress. When they got up to talk with David, the Twitter-happy one of course gushed about her Twittering and even typed away on her keypad as she talked to him. Now I know I can be a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but to me, that’s about as rude as talking on a cell phone while interacting with someone else in person.

Anyway, finally it’s my turn and I get up there and tell him that I don’t Twitter either, that I can just manage to keep up with blogging. He asks me what I blog about and when I tell him books, he asks me what I’m reading. Now, you’d think I’d be prepared for this question. I get asked it often enough. But no, in front of David Sedaris, my mind goes blank and I desperately try to recall what I’ve been reading lately. I could have mentioned any of the books I’m currently in the midst of: the quirky short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Craig Thompson’s graphic travelogue Carnet de Voyage, the sci-fi novel The Sparrow, or even the fact that I’ve been slogging through Great Expectations for over a month. But no, none of those come to mind. What does? Fannie freakin’ Flagg’s Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, which I’m trying to read by tomorrow night’s library book club. Now there’s probably nothing wrong with Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven (I’m only two chapters in) and I’m sure Fannie Flagg is a wonderful woman and writer, but I would have preferred to come off as a bit less fluffy than that. For all I know he heard the name of the book and wondered what some conservative fundamentalist was doing at one of his shows. So while he doesn’t pursue that any further, he does ask me if I’d read The Lazarus Project, which no, I haven’t, but it is on my list and I did order it for the library. He raves about it for a few moments, saying that he was a little leery of reading it, thinking that it would be over his head but that he absolutely loved it. So that book has immediately shifted from my ‘want to read’ list to ‘must read’ pile. I got my wits back about me and made the comment about Alan Bennett, and then we talked for a couple minutes about audiobooks and he made another recommendation (writing it down for me so I’d remember – yeah, I’m keeping the note) for Tom Courtney’s Pretending to Be Me, which is a piece on poet Philip Larkin. My only recollection of Larkin is that he came across to me back in my early twenties as a stodgy crankpot, but that could just have been youthful arrogance. Another recommendation to add to my list.

That was it for our conversation, which lasted all of about 3 minutes. It was an absolutely fabulous evening and I hope I don’t have to wait another 8 years to hear him perform again.

Oh, as for the title of this post? Well, I was aware that Sedaris tends to write something quirky or nonsensical in his inscription, based perhaps on some obvious characteristic or something the person says. As I make my way back to our car, I open the book to the title page and read: “To Lesley – Diabetes is for Lovers.” OK, so he didn’t call me fat, but my neurotic side kicks into overdrive and in mere nanoseconds I’ve made the connection: diabetes = fat people = me = comment. But hey, if David Sedaris calling you fat won’t make you lose weight, what will?

One of the books under the Christmas tree for me this year was Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. It probably would have stayed longer on my ‘to read’ shelf if not for the ardent support given to it by one of my friends and coworkers, Kristin (the same person who recommended that I read Coraline). She actually brought her copy in for me to read, and when I told her I already had my own, she insisted that I read it right away. It was already sitting on my nightstand as one of my upcoming possiblities – but we all know how whimsical the nightstand pile can be, so it was no guarantee that I’d be reading it anytime soon without her harassment encouragement.

Well, her persistence paid off, and I was one happy reader. The Graveyard Book is written for a more mature audience than Coraline, but it’s not as dark or frightening. The story begins with a mysterious man who has broken into a house, killing its inhabitants, with the exception of a baby boy. The toddler has escaped and makes his way to a nearby historic cemetery. The cemetery’s incorporeal residents take him in as one of their own, with the assistance of another cemetery resident, Silas, who becomes the boy’s guardian, and a ghostly couple who take on the responsibility of being his parents.

The baby is named Nobody, Bod for short, and he grows up amongst the graves, a happy but mainly solitary child. From time to time, he manages to get himself into some sticky situations, but with the help of Silas and others, young Bod comes through mostly unscathed. When the outside world threatens to shatter the peace of the graveyard, Bod stands up to protect those he loves.

While I didn’t cry at the end like Kristin, I did thoroughly enjoy this tale and hope it is the first of Bod’s adventures that we get to read. Gaiman is true to form, creating characters who inspire real affection with a plot that is playful, melancholy – and pure magic. The story reminded me a little of A Fine and Private Place, a book written by Peter Beagle. Both feature cemeteries as places of refuge, not fear, but with the caveat that ultimately, graveyards belong to the dead, not the living.

The Graveyard Book was my first entry in the Dewey’s Books Challenge; her review is here. Although I didn’t really know Dewey, I saw her presence and impact all over the book blogging world, and know that she was a vital part of the community who will be missed. Thanks to those who saw fit to honor her memory by hosting this challenge.

My last book of the year was Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, a modern prequel to L.M. Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables. Many readers, myself included, have wondered about Anne’s life prior to arriving at the Cuthbert’s farm. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, Wilson wrote this book to provide an answer to those questions. Wisely, she doesn’t try to duplicate Montgomery’s writing style, and it’s clear that this is a modern interpretation, but it retains much of the magic and allure, thanks in large part to the character of Anne, who is just as charming and entertaining in 2008 as she was in 1908.

I managed to finish reading this book just in time to successfully complete the What’s In a Name Reading Challenge (Before Green Gables was my color selection) and it also counts towards the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge.

Recently one of the college students who works in our circulation department read and recommended a graphic novel called Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, which is actually a compilation of several volumes that were initially published in serial form. The beginning of the story is recminiscent of a traditional fairy tale, particularly Sleeping Beauty, but that’s where the tradition ends. What we are given instead is a collection of eclectic and eccentric characters, and a multi-layered, entertaining plot that keeps the reader guessing as to where it will lead. Bits and pieces of older stories are included, like the Bremen Town Musicians (one of my childhood favorites), Rumpelstiltskin and the Three Little Pigs, but the real appeal is in the original characters and the unusual plot twists. The artwork is fabulous - simple yet very detailed and expressive. There are several plot points that are introduced but not resolved, so my only wish is that the second volume of stories were readily available so I could keep reading about the residents of Castle Waiting. Still, even with the loose ends, this is a supremely entertaining collection.