books 28-32

oops. i've been negligent.

here's the quick wrap-up of the last five:

third girl from the left, martha southgate
rating:


this is about three generations of women hailing from tulsa, oklahoma. a grandmother, who witnessed the violent race riots in tulsa in the 1920s; a mother, who ran off to los angeles to be an actress, but only ended up with bit parts in blaxploitation films and a baby; and a daughter, who is working her way through film school in new york. the title comes from the mother's most memorable acting role -- third girl from the left in the fight scene in coffy.

boy meets boy, david leviathan
rating:


this little YA novel was described to me as "not a problem novel. more like a 'there are no problems' novel." it takes place in what amounts to an alternate high school universe where homosexuality is totally acceptable and the star quarterback doubles as the homecoming queen. it was fun and weird, and basically a typical teen love story, with some variables switched around.

birth of venus, sarah dunant
rating:


this is a great book about fifteenth-century florence. it's got the medici family, savonarola, the bonfire of the vanities, forbidden homosexuality, and a couple of plagues. it's fast and sometimes gruesome and really engaging. this book is all of what's good about historical fiction.

just listen, sarah dessen
rating:


i'm biased because sarah's my pal, but i really thought this book was great. lots of nice scenes, good dialogue, and what seemed to me like a very real plot. lots about music, and sisters, and friendship. also particularly impressive because it spans most of a school year, where most of sarah's other books are set during the course of a summer.

one of those hideous books where the mother dies, sonya sones
rating:


another YA, i'm really on a roll. this is another novel in verse, but quite a bit different from the one i read earlier in the year (a bad boy can be good for a girl). this is about a girl who is forced to live with her estranged father, a movie star, after her mother dies. funny and sad and i almost forgot it was written in verse.

okay, i think that's all i read. maybe? i might be missing one. or two. like i said, i'm really on a roll with these YAs i've been reading for my field experience.

book 27

gingerbread, rachel cohn
rating:


i can't even talk about this book because the narrator's voice annoyed me so much. the story itself was fine but i wanted to slap the so-called "protagonist" the entire time. i had to finish, though, because amy sherman palladino bought the rights and i wanted to try to figure out why.

i couldn't.

books 25 and 26

yes! i'm one-third of the way to my goal. and with all these YA novels i'm reading to pad the list... i just might make it.

better than running at night, hilary frank
rating:
i'm taking a break from rating right now. it's too much pressure.

i loved this book. the YA librarian i'm working with this summer sent me home on friday with a big stack of recommended reading and this one sounded good so i started with it. i pretty much couldn't put it down, which is a really awesome feeling when it's saturday afternoon and you finally don't have all kinds of ridiculous other things to worry about for the first time in a few months. it's about ellie, who used to be a goth and then changed her outlook and decided to go to art school. she meets a guy right away and embarks on this affair with him and he turns out to be an ass and she learns from it. my favorite kind of young adult novel, the kind where bad things happen, but they're normal bad things, and you're not left feeling like there's just no way that these 7800 terrible things could actually converge in one person's life in one week. if you haven't read much YA, you probably have no idea what i'm talking about. but if you ever saw that show touched by an angel, maybe you do.


the partly cloudy patriot, sarah vowell
rating:
see above

i was worried that this book would be a little too snappy for me, but i'm into american history and narrative non-fiction so i shelled out a dollar for it at the SCALA booksale anyway. i enjoyed it, and it was a nice break from fiction. sometimes i'm not really sure that i understand what point vowell wants to make in a particular essay, but it never really bothered me much. there's so much in this book that's funny in a really bittersweet way, like bush quotes from the 2000 presidential debates and such.

book 24

oh man. a book a day? if only it could always be this way.

how i live now, meg rosoff
rating:


another YA, which won some awards last year. it's about daisy, who hates her pregnant stepmother and goes to live with cousins and an aunt in england. soon after she gets there, war breaks out, and most of the novel focuses on that, and the way that war comes closer and closer to the main character, and how it changes her. really good, with lots of intense scenes. cool front and back covers, too.

book 23

love walked in, marisa de los santos
rating:


another recommendation from my sister. i started reading this back in march, but i had to set it aside for school, etc. it's about cornelia and clare. cornelia meets the man of her dreams who might not be the man of her dreams after all, and clare's mother is going crazy and clare, at age 11, is trying to keep everything together. the story is told in alternating chapters from each character's viewpoint. the two finally meet when cornelia's dream man turns out to be clare's father, to whom clare turns when her mother disappears. i remember thinking that the first third of it was a little too quippy, but once the stories intersected i really liked it. lots of twists and turns but it ends up sort of just where it should, i think, and without being saccharine. don't pay attention to the robots; this rating is totally arbitrary since i read the first hundred pages of this book over two months ago.

books 20, 21, 22

okay, it's time for me to get back on track now that school's over.

true notebooks, mark salzman
rating:


okay, so this was basically my perfect book. it's got humor, sadness, truth, and juvenile detention centers. mark salzman, one of my favorite memoirists, volunteers to teach writing to teen-aged inmates at a juvenile detention center in los angeles. the book is about him, but also about them, and lots of excerpts from their writing are included. i laughed, i cried, etc. i love mark salzman's non-fiction.

speak, laurie halse anderson
rating:


this is a young adult novel, and i've heard it called a "problem novels" which are those novels you hear about where the main character is bulimic and her sister is a cutter and her best friend is pregnant with her abusive married teacher boyfriend's baby and so on. but it's not nearly to that extent. it's about melinda, who is ostracized freshman year because she called the cops at a big party a few weeks before school started. there are hints all along that something terrible happened that night and it's all revealed at the end. it's painful at times, but really well done, and i think anderson's style is smart and spare. also, it took me no more than an hour and a half to read this, so it scores on that account. it won some awards a few years back. i'm working with some YA programming this summer at the public library, so you should expect to see lots of YA book reviews.

the girls, lori lansens
rating:


my sister recommended this to me and i had her keep it for me so that i could read it when i went to visit my family this weekend. this is an awesome novel that's written as the joint autobiography of the world's oldest living craniopagus conjoined twins (they're thirty). rose writes most of the story, with her sister ruby chiming in at times. the twins' different voices are handled really skillfully. there were a couple weak moments in the story but mostly it was just really nice writing and some very vivid scenes that i haven't stopped thinking about since i finished it. apparently lansens has written some films and another novel so i need to check those out.