2010 June » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2010

Posted by Anastasia on June 29, 2010 3 Responses »

Jun 292010

I meant to post this right when the registration post went up at the BBAW blog, but then I got, I don’t know, performance anxiety or something[1]. And then on top of that I didn’t know exactly which niche my blog fits into– last year I was nominated for Best YA Blog, which definitely fit me a year ago. But looking at my recently posted reviews? I don’t think “YA blog” is right anymore.

I mean, yeah, I still read a lot of YA books. But I’ve definitely gotten more eclectic over the past year, branching out into more genres outside of YA. I’ve been reading literary fiction! Historical fiction! Paranormal romances, military sci-fi, non-fiction, etc. etc. So, then, does Best Eclectic Book Blog fit me better? I’m gonna say “yes,” if only because I don’t feel like an exclusively-YA-review blogger anymore. The balance has definitely tipped over onto other genres, I think.

TL;DR: I’m registering Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog under Best Eclectic Book Blog for Book Blogger Appreciation Week!

My five posts:
1. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
2. It’s Too Late Now: The Autobiography of A Writer by A.A. Milne
3. Preacher vol. 1-9 by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
4. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi.
5. East by Edith Pattou

And there we are! Pretty eclectic, right? At least, I hope it is. Oh, now here comes the doubt again– let’s end this post on a high note. Funny Star Trek gif!

1. My horoscope totally says I need to get over my self-doubt and be proud of my creative outputs, so I assume it’s talking about my blog and BBAW, and how awesome is it that my horoscope actually fits me for once?! The key to getting a good horoscope is to obviously get the ones from the freebie local newspapers, not the ones from magazines because they suck.

Review: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Posted by Anastasia on June 28, 2010 4 Responses »

Jun 282010

108. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Publication: Picador (November 1, 2002) originally published 1998, Paperback, 219pp / ISBN 0312305060
Genre: Fiction
Rating:
Read: April 27, 2010
Source: Borrowed
Summary from Amazon:

The Hours is the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, a beloved friend of ailing poet Richard Brown, who one fine New York morning goes about planning a party in his honor; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

Review

This was the last book we read for my Virginia Woolf class last semester, and unfortunately when I started reading I was feeling pretty hostile. I had seen the movie previously and was bored to death, and furthermore I was all “someone’s trying to out-Woolf Virginia Woolf?!” which was silly but nevertheless how I felt. I almost didn’t want to read it, that’s how much antipathy I had towards The Hours.

Actually forcing myself to read The Hours, however, proved to be the correct course of action, not only because I had to write an essay about it, and writing about something I haven’t read isn’t a skill I’ve developed over the course of my schooling, but also because in reality it’s not really a book you can be hostile towards. The movie might have sucked, but the book doesn’t! It’s a really novel, and instead of being a copycat of VW’s books it’s really more of an homage. A really sweet homage, that not only pays attention to the author’s work but also to the author herself, and by the end I found myself falling in love with The Hours.

It’s not a perfect book. Some plot points didn’t really work for me, and I didn’t like the blatant rewriting of Mrs. Dalloway– felt too…obvious? Too much like a “look how it applies to today’s life stories, too!” thing. Something like that, anyway. And then also putting in direct quotes from Mrs. Dalloway! C’mon, that’s lazy. Mr Cunningham is a good writer, but sometime it felt like he was taking shortcuts.

On the other side of things, though, I could really tell how much he liked Virginia Woolf’s books, and how much he admired her and her writing. And that made me like him and his book, and so even if I didn’t like everything in The Hours I still really liked it as a whole work. If you’ve never read it yourself I would first recommend reading Mrs. Dalloway, because having a solid idea of what it’s about would help a lot when you read The Hours. And then you should watch the movie if you want, because I swear if you watch the movie first and then read the book all you’ll be able to see is Nicole Kidman’s stupid fake nose in place of Virginia Woolf, and Meryl Streep’s pinched mouth in place of Clarissa. And that makes for some difficult reading, if you don’t like either of those things. (Nobody else bugged me as much as those two did.)

And

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Other reviews: Another Cookie Crumbles | Bianca’s Book Blog | Sophisticated Dorkiness | Vulpes Libris

TSS (June 27): Summer slump redux

Posted by Anastasia on June 27, 2010 No Responses »

Jun 272010

I didn’t want this to happen again, like it did last summer, but unfortunately I’ve fallen in the summer slump, where reading books is somehow harder than it ought to be and nothing gets finished and writing reviews is like pulling my own teeth out with pliers.

Luckily my daily regiment of writing a review whether I like it or not is actually working out quite well– I’ve been filling out templates and prepping posts for the actual reviewing, and then I look through my drafts and pick a book that I have something to say about. If I keep at my rate of one review a day (and keep not being able to finish books), I’ll soon be caught up and won’t that be a fine thing?

On the other hand, I do need to start finishing books, especially these library books that are due back soon. On top of that I’ve got a literature class starting July 5 that requires I read about one-and-a-half books a week (plus essays), and if I can’t finish any of those books I’m screwed, grade-wise. Thankfully the books we’re reading are quite short, and they’re British humor books besides, so I shouldn’t have TOO much trouble there. Reading short books is my cure for reading slumps at any time of the year, actually; I recommend trying it if you’ve fallen into a summer slump yourself.

Books read this week:
136. Off the Map – Kika Kat & Hib Chickena [rating 3.5/5] %
137. The Salem Witch Tryouts – Kelly McClymer [rating: 3/5] %
137. A Dirty Job – Christopher Moore [rating: 4/5]
138. The Risks of Sunbathing Topless – Kate Chynoweth (ed.) [rating: 4/5]

Books reviewed this week:
70. Ready or Not – Meg Cabot [rating: 3.5/5] %
107. Vernon God Little – DBC Pierre [rating: 3.5/5]
110. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley [rating: 3.5/5]
135. Monster – A. Lee Martin [rating: 4/5]
136. Off the Map – Kika Kat & Hib Chickena [rating 3.5/5] %
137. The Salem Witch Tryouts – Kelly McClymer [rating: 3/5] %

Currently reading:
Medina Hill by Trilby Kent, possibly the greatest name ever given to an author. The book itself is slightly less delightful, but I’m hoping by the end I’ll be won over.

Review: Ready or Not by Meg Cabot

Posted by Anastasia on June 27, 2010 No Responses »

Jun 272010

70. Ready or Not by Meg Cabot
Publication: HarperTeen (May 1, 2007), Paperback, 336pp / ISBN 0060724528
Genre: Fiction, YA/Teen
Rating:
Read: March 20, 2010
Source: BookMooch
Summary from Amazon:

Top ten things Samantha Madison isn’t ready for:
10. Spending Thanksgiving at Camp David
9. With her boyfriend, the president’s son
8. Who appears to want to take their relationship to the Next Level
7. Which Sam inadvertently and shockingly announces live on MTV
6. While appearing to support the president’s dubious policies on families, morals, and yes, sex
5. Juggling her new after-school job at Potomac Video
4. Even though she already has a job as teen ambassador to the UN (that she doesn’t get paid for)
3. Riding the Metro and getting accosted because she’s “the redheaded girl who saved the president’s life,” in spite of her new, semipermanent Midnight Ebony tresses
2. Experiencing total role reversal with her popular sister Lucy, who for once can’t get the guy she wants and the number-one thing Sam isn’t ready for?
1. Finding out the hard way that in art class, “life drawing” means “naked people.”

Sequel to All-American Girl

Review

I’ve been putting off reviewing this because I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to say about it, but three months on and I’ve finally figured it out! Makes me wonder if I have things to say about books I read last year but never reviewed for want of something to say– might be interesting.

Ready or Not is an unusual Meg Cabot book, mostly because it’s so frank about sex and sexual relationships between teenagers. Initially this really put me off the book, because sex in YA books makes me uncomfortable for some reason. And I totally wasn’t used to Meg Cabot having sex in her YA books, because normally she stays away from anything going beyond a chaste kiss. But, after reading three extremely similar MC books in a row, I’ve become much more appreciative of this anomalous book, and I’m strangely proud of Meg Cabot for trying something new and, well, kinda daring.

It’s not that the sex in Ready or Not is descriptive, or anything like the sex you’d find in a Harlequin novel. But the whole storyline is about whether or not it’s okay for teens to have sex (it is), when they should have sex (when they’re ready), and how parents should deal with the whole thing (be supportive as possible and don’t play the shame game). It’s a really informative book– and I don’t mean that in a how-to way, more like think-about-these-things-beforehand. Plus it’s got stuff in it about using condoms and whatnot!

I suppose I just really like the idea that someone’s written about teen sex without making it something shameful, stressing the importance of only having sex when you’re emotionally ready and using protection when you do, and that it’s totally fine for girls to take control of their own sexuality and not depend on the boys to tell them the important stuff (if they ever do). And because it is a Meg Cabot book, it’s got humorous situations and the whole awkward teens doing awkward things storyline that lightens everything up. It could have been a much more serious (and therefor boring) book, but it’s not. And I really liked it.

And

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Other reviews: Debbie Winkler | Bookworm Burrow | Serenehours (spoilers at the end)

Review: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

Posted by Anastasia on June 26, 2010 No Responses »

Jun 262010

107. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
Publication: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (June 15, 2004), Paperback, 300pp / ISBN 0156029987
Genre: Fiction
Rating:
Read: April 26, 2010
Source: Borrowed
Summary from Amazon:

When sixteen kids are shot on high school grounds, everyone looks for someone to blame. Meet Vernon Little, under arrest at the sheriff’s office, a teenager wearing nothing but yesterday’s underwear and his prized logo sneakers. Moments after the shooter, his best buddy, turns the gun on himself, Vernon is pinned as an accomplice. Out for revenge are the townspeople, the cable news networks, and Deputy Vaine Gurie, a woman whose zeal for the Pritikin diet is eclipsed only by her appetite for barbecued ribs from the Bar-B-Chew Barn. So Vernon does what any red-blooded American teenager would do; he takes off for Mexico.

Vernon God Little is a provocatively satirical, riotously funny look at violence, materialism, and the American media.

Review

Vernon God Little is a tough book to review, especially since I don’t particularly feel like writing an essay about all the intricate little details in it. It’d be too easy to get bogged down in those details, so I’ll try to keep this short without half-assing it. How’s that?

Vernon God Little‘s a sort of spoof of how America is portrayed in modern media, where everyone is out only for themselves, wants to be on TV (especially starring in their own reality show). People aren’t portrayed realistically in VGL, but there are shades of reality to the characters that make reading VGL kinda scary. Because people do go nuts over the possibility of television fame (see: balloon boy and family), and Vernon’s story is, well…kind of possible.

Of course, the whole thing has a tinge of black comedy/drug-induced hallucinations to it, so it didn’t ever get so scary or serious I wanted to stop reading. And by the middle of the book the fact that everyone is so messed up was actually a little bit funny, so I didn’t mind so much that it was hard to read about my own culture portrayed in such a negative light. Unfortunately by the end I was tired of it all and wanted everyone to die, and I was sure they were going to– but then DBC Pierre pulled a fast one and everyone got happy endings instead. Oh well.

And that ending? Kinda boring. Honestly, by the time Vernon got to jail I just wanted the thing to be over with. It’s exhausting, reading about horrible people and their selfish ambitions. Even Vernon wasn’t immune to the insanity, and it was really tiring. And the thing with the death row reality TV show was just a little bit too off the wall for me, because while I might believe that people are more interested in being on TV than in justice, I don’t think we’d ever go so far as to have a show where people vote for who they want killed off first. Not unless we slip into a dystopian state first!

Vernon God Little isn’t my favorite book ever, and I doubt I’ll ever read it again. But I understand the usefulness of it: I may not have liked to read about Americans being selfish assholes, but ignoring the symptoms of a problem won’t make that problem go away. I think it’s important that I read more books like VGL that analyze modern American culture and where it’s going, although of course I won’t believe that those books are 100% right. Do I think Americans are like the characters in VGL? Of course not. But I do have to admit that there are elements of them in our cultural psyche, especially the one of wanting to be a little bit famous. Otherwise why would so many people start a blog?

And

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Other reviews: Reading Matters

I found this interesting tidbit on Wikipedia about VGL and DBC Pierre, which I think sheds some light on why VGL is the way it is:

Formerly an artist, cartoonist, photographer and filmmaker, and later accused of being a conman and thief following the wild, drug-fuelled international rampage of his twenties, Pierre wrote the novel in London after a period of therapy, personal reconstruction and unemployment. He states the novel was a reaction to the culture around him, which after his own reorientation in life seemed to be full of the same delusional behaviours and self-entitlements which brought his own earlier downfall.

Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Posted by Anastasia on June 25, 2010 10 Responses »

Jun 252010

110. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Publication: Delacorte Press (April 28, 2009), Hardcover, 384pp / ISBN 0385342306
Genre: Mystery
Rating:
Read: April 29-30, 2010
Source: Library
Summary from Amazon:

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950—and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

Review

I’ve heard really good things about the Flavia de Luce series, and so when I spotted this on the shelves at work I decided to grab it and try it out for myself. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I really did enjoy it and definitely want to read the next book!

Flavia as a character really surprised me. Her whole family is weird, but Flavia is a particular shade of weird that reminds me of Willard– like she’s just two degrees and an insult away from becoming a mass murderer. It’s an interesting experience, reading about a character like that; she’s almost an anti-hero except that she obviously does want to be a hero, even if she has to step on people on her way to becoming one.

(Everyone else seems to be reading her as a sassy, independent character who’s charming and likable and all that. So then why do I think she’s a sociopath? Because of how she gets revenge against her sister, mainly; it’s so calculated and potentially deadly– what would have happened if she ingested too much of the poison ivy by licking her lips?– it’s scary.)

I like that she’s super intelligent and doesn’t take nonsense from anyone, and that she can handle dangerous situations pretty easily and she’s basically a female Sherlock Holmes– I like that. But I’m just waiting for her to snap one day and do away with someone that’s annoying her.

Anyway, the mystery itself was really fun, in the Sherlock Holmes sort of way with layers of details and interesting historical things. None of the supporting characters were as complex as Flavia was, however, and that made the storyline outside of Flavia-solving-the-mystery a little boring. I may not have particularly like Flavia, but I liked reading about her solving the mystery, and even though she creeps me out I’m going to get the next book to read as soon as I get a chance.

And

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Other reviews: She is Too Fond of Books | Beth Fish Reads | Fyrefly’s Book Blog

Books what I read on vacation

Posted by Anastasia on June 22, 2010 No Responses »

Jun 222010

So I ended up taking a few more books than the original four I had planned on, but nothing insane. And I actually only ended up reading 3 (and a half)– kept getting distracted by my travel journal and the landscape, etc. But I was sure glad to have those books! There wasn’t a whole lot to do in our cabin, and we couldn’t even go outside because it was freakin’ HOT. And since I didn’t want to stare at the TV, and I didn’t have a computer to surf the web on, I read (and wrote in my journal).

I actually didn’t have that hard a time being unplugged as I originally thought I would. That first day– Saturday– was a little tough, since I kept looking around for something to Google on after coming across an interesting tidbit in a book. But there wasn’t anything, and so I just got twitchy for a little bit. By Sunday I was completely fine, and even sort of gloating about not needing to check my email any longer. On Monday, on the way back home, I got twitchy again thinking of all the emails I missed (78) and feeds that had updated in my absence (200+ new posts). I’m still kind of twitchy now, because I can finally Google everything I wanted to Google over the weekend, but I’m also feeling somewhat less dependent on my computer than I was before my unplugged weekend.

Anyway, I thought I’d do some mini-reviews on the books I read over my vacation.

135. Monster by A. Lee Martinez
Publication: Orbit (May 11, 2009), Hardcover, 304pp / ISBN 0316041262
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating:
Read: June 18-19, 2010
Source: BookMooch

Review

Okay, so technically I finished this the morning before we even left for the cabin, but I’m counting it anyway since I MEANT to take it with me. I just…sort of got caught up in the story! And it moves really fast, too, which is partly why I finished it so quickly. Well, that and the fact that it’s fun. It’s got a quick plot, quirky characters, and an intriguing world with the possibility for sequels if the author is so inclined (and I hope he is). Sometimes I thought it took shortcuts explaining certain character backgrounds, but then other times I was just glad it didn’t bog the main plot down with side info. I wish Judy had gotten more of the spotlight but the book is called “Monster” and so I can understand why he was the main character instead of her. But I really liked her. I hope she gets a book of her own.

136. Off the Map by Kika Kat & Hib Chickena
Publication: Crimeth, Inc., Ex-Worker’s Collective (June 2003), Paperback, 144pp / ISBN 0970910134
Genre: Travel Memoir, Non-Fiction
Rating:
Read: June 19, 2010
Source: Bought

Review

Off the Map would have been a book I’d have absolutely loved when I was a teenager and prone to thinking I was an anarchist, and while reading it now I don’t appreciate it in the same way my 15-year-old self would have I can see why it’s a popular travelogue for those who walk a different sort of path from the majority of Western society. And I can still appreciate it for other things than its anarchist/radical leanings; it’s a good travel memoir, about two girls going around Europe together and trying to figure out who they are and how they can best relate to each other and other people. It’s light on the repetition of who-what-where and heavy on the philosophical thinking, which isn’t for everyone, but for me was really refreshing after reading so many travel books about basically the same thing.

I also really liked how they traveled in a way so completely different from how I want to travel. They had practically no money, slept in squats and in fields, depended on the kindness of strangers for food and rides to and from places, and they didn’t even try to do the typical tourist-y things. Plus, their book was originally a zine they wrote in a squat in Italy and self-published! I admire people who make zines.

(But how horrifically ironic is it that a publication written by anarchists and published by an anarchist group is being sold on Amazon, where I in fact bought my copy? Is that funny, or scary? Both?)

137. The Salem Witch Tryouts by Kelly McClymer
Publication: Simon Pulse; Original edition (August 22, 2006), Paperback, 272pp / ISBN 141691644X
Genre: Urban Fantasy, YA
Rating:
Read: June 20-21, 2010
Source: BookMooch

Review

This is a cute book, and I mostly enjoyed reading it. It had some serious issues with slang, though (does anyone even say “kewl” anymore and mean it?), and there wasn’t enough about the OMG BIG SECRET thing to interest me in reading the next book. We got hints and foreshadowings and yet nothing really happened in the actual development of that plot point. Annoying! I did like that the protagonist was a popular kid trying to be popular in her new school as well, instead of the awkward teenager trying to remake herself like every other moving-to-a-new-city YA book seems to have. Pru’s a snob, and she has such a horrible name I’m not even sure how she got popular in the first place (surely she would have been teased for that), but she’s fun to root for and if the “kewl” bombs have slowed down in the second book I might read it after all.