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Argh, I read all of these books ages ago and kept meaning to review them and then didn’t. I’m going to keep these pretty short so I can make myself write them and then have this be done and stop feeling guilty.
Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Poppy, June 2011. 368pp. 9780316098250.
After sixteen-year-old Molly’s mother dies, she discovers that her father is none other than movie star Brick Berlin and goes to live with him in LA, leaving behind her friends and a maybe-boyfriend in Indiana. But Brick already has a daughter, Brooke, an aspiring actress herself, who doesn’t want to share her father’s already limited attention and affection with a Midwestern interloper. Spoiled rises above other rich-and-catty books with its spot-on humor, especially in its observations of the extreme consumerism and self-obsession of Hollywood and its inhabitants. But it’s not all hot yoga and cold shoulders in this story: characters have emotional depth, reasons for their behavior. They change over the course of the story and develop real connections with one another. Most of the major conflicts are wound down by the end, but the last few pages set up a sequel. 3/5.
Book source: sent by publisher
Destefano, Lauren. Wither.
Simon & Schuster, March 2011. 368pp. 9781442409057.
Rhine lives in a future where genetic experimentation gone wrong has limited the lifespan of men to 25 years and women to 20. Women are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to ensure the propagation of the human race. Dystopian stories were my favorite before they became the next big thing in YA and while I’m still finding titles I like, this wasn’t really one of them. It’s not a dystopian tale so much as a kidnapping story set in a dystopian-lite setting. I’m not even really sure that it makes sense that young adults would be so concerned about making babies in such a situation: I think we’d all be more likely to be living hard until we died young. I was also disappointed that so much menace and threat in Wither came from the disturbing ideas of what might be going on in the basement of the mansion where Rhine is imprisoned, but none of that was really resolved and seemed completely left behind at the end. Similarly, the Housemaster was really frightening and it felt like a lot of time was invested in making him scary–but then he’s completely abandoned at the end of the book. Maybe I went into this book with expectations too high, but I felt left down when I finished it. 2/5.
Book source: my library
Lo, Malinda. Huntress.
Little, Brown, April 2011. 384pp. 9780316040075.
The world is out of balance, and only Taisin and Kaede, seventeen-year-old girls who have been training to be sages (one with great success, the other entirely without), can mend things by traveling to the far reaches of the land and crossing over into the Fairy Kingdom in this tale inspired by Chinese influences. Huntress is very atmosphere-driven: the eerily oppressive feeling of the absent sun, the endless dripping of the rain, and the isolation and numbing quiet of the cold are all companions in their own right in the girls’ quest. The relationship between the girls grows in fits and starts, entirely entwined in the progress of their quest, and the alternating mix of discovery, reluctance, and passion is better developed than many. Unfortunately, the final task the girls must complete felt rushed and tacked-on, emerging and being resolved far after the major climax has passed. In spite of that, Lo still spins a lovely tale set in a rich world. 4/5.
Book source: requested from publisher
Roth, Veronica. Divergent.
Katherine Tegen Books, May 2011. 496pp. 9780062024022.
In a future Chicago, everyone is in one of five factions that live their entire lives based around a single virtue (candor, selflessness, learning, bravery, friendliness). For the first sixteen years, you live and work in the faction to which you were born, but when you become sixteen, you choose the faction where you want to spend the rest of your life. Beatrice has been raised in Abnegation, but when her time to choose arrives, she surprises everyone by turning Dauntless. She must face a brutal initiation and keep buried a potentially terrible secret about herself she has recently discovered. I think this was another one where I went in with too-high expectations, and while I wasn’t disappointed, Divergent didn’t blow my mind the way I was hoping it might. Am I getting jaded with all of the dystopian titles out now? I hope not because I do love a well-constructed dystopia. Anyway, this one has the brutality of the Hunger Games, if that’s what your readers are looking for, and while Beatrice/Tris was way too slow to catch on to the feelings the initiation leader has for her, their romance at least seemed grounded in respect for one another rather than just falling in love at first sight or for no particular reason or because of fate. Tris isn’t the Chosen One the way you see in a lot of high-action YA fantasy and sci-fi, but is, rather, one of many, and I’ll probably read future books to see how that develops. This is certainly a solid story, but it didn’t wow me the way I wanted it to. 3/5.
Book source: my library
Ruiz Zafon, Carlos. The Midnight Palace.
Little, Brown, May 2011. 304pp. 9780316044738.
Twins Ben and Sheere have been separated since they were infants, but they’re thrown together when an unknown evil enters their lives, bent on exacting its revenge. Together with Ben’s close group of friends from the orphanage in which he was raised, they must find out what is chasing them and why–and how to defeat it. This is another book that absolutely rocks atmosphere. Check this out:
The shadow of the storm heralded the arrival of midnight as a vast leaden blanket spread over Calcutta, lighting up with every burst of electric fury it unleashed. The fury of the north wind swept the mist from the Hooghly River, revealing the ravaged skeleton of the metal bridge. (227)
The book is just full of sentences and passages that make you feel the sweltering heat; make you see the packed, dirty streets; that make the place a very real thing. And there were some genuinely scary parts to this story. But while The Midnight Palace didn’t have the glaring plot holes of Ruiz Zafon’s Prince of Mist, the motivations of the villain, once they were revealed, still didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Fantastic setting, weak story. 3/5.
Book source: requested from publisher
August 9, 2011
Logo designed by and stolen from the Indie Librarian
I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life Project (now in its seventh round) this week. To quote the project wiki, “the Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.”
Today was another scattered day. It’s hard to really sit down and work on a big project when you’re only there for a couple of hours at a time and have eighty things to do. This week was also strange: I only worked thirteen hours (plus my Chicopee visit), so a lot of what I normally do in a week got left out. (more…)
July 29, 2011
Logo designed by and stolen from the Indie Librarian
I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life Project (now in its seventh round) this week. To quote the project wiki, “the Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.”
Instead of going to work today, I went on a field trip to the Chicopee Public Library in Massachusetts (about two hours from my library) to visit Erin, their YA librarian, whom I know from Twitter, and to observe a meeting of their anime club and steal as many ideas as possible. (more…)
July 29, 2011
Logo designed by and stolen from the Indie Librarian
I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life Project (now in its seventh round) this week. To quote the project wiki, “the Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.”
Today was a slightly scattered day at work. I also remain baffled by huge swings in turnout for my programs this summer. But I get to hang out with enthusiastic teen readers! (more…)
July 27, 2011
Over the last two months, I’ve been working on a guest post for In the Library with the Lead Pipe about YA lit. It’s been a great experience (I’ve never had an editor before!), and I’m really proud of the final version of the article, “Are You Reading YA Lit? You Should Be.” Here’s the intro:
I’m a young adult librarian, but I didn’t read young adult lit when I was a teen myself. I was a precocious reader and desperate to be treated like a grown-up, so I read books for grown-ups because anything else was just too puerile for someone as obviously mature and sophisticated as I. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties, working on my MLS and realizing that I wanted to work with teens, that I discovered there was a huge, glorious world of excellent YA lit that I had completely missed. Now it’s almost all I read.
Outside of YA circles, I sometimes find myself having to justify my tastes to others. Yes, a lot of why I read YA lit is because I work with teens. But even if I were to switch careers, I would continue reading YA lit because it’s good. That’s not to say adult lit isn’t, of course, but YA lit has a freshness that I really enjoy, and it rarely gets bogged down in its own self-importance. YA lit is also mostly free of the melancholy, nostalgia, and yearning for the innocent days of childhood that I find so tedious in adult literary fiction.
I think the reason some grown-ups look down their noses at YA lit is because they haven’t read any of it recently, so they don’t know how good it’s gotten—or how different it is from what they might imagine it to be. While there are still books that deal with Big Issues, the “problem novel” of the ’70s and ’80s has been eclipsed by more slice-of-life contemporary fiction, romances, fantasies, mysteries, sci-fi stories, and genre-blending tales that defy categorization. For as much attention as the Twilight series has gotten, it’s certainly not all that’s out there.
I talk about what YA lit is and isn’t, how YA lit is similar to and different from adult lit, recent trends in YA lit, and grown-ups reading YA lit (plus some suggestions for adults who want to give YA lit a try). It’s kind of long, but I hope you’ll read it!
I want to say again how awesome it was to work with Lead Piper Brett Bonfield and my guest editors Candice Mack and Nancy Hinkel. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to write this piece with their insightful input and to be an ambassador for YA lit to a wider audience.
July 27, 2011
Logo designed by and stolen from the Indie Librarian
I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life Project (now in its seventh round) this week. To quote the project wiki, “the Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.”
Today I did some non-work library stuff and then had my first day back at work after two days off. I also got some really good news today! (more…)
July 26, 2011
Logo designed by and stolen from the Indie Librarian
I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life Project (now in its seventh round) this week. To quote the project wiki, “the Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.”
Since I worked on Saturday, I had today off, so I’m going to talk about what I did on Saturday and the librarian-ish things I did today. (more…)
July 25, 2011
Last week my library did a Harry Potter movie marathon to get our patrons ready for the final film. It gave me some time to reflect on the books, the movies, and the cultural phenomenon that is Harry Potter, which all culminated in me feeling very conflicted as I drove to the midnight showing of the final movie. I almost didn’t want to go, as if in some way not seeing the final movie would mean it wasn’t all over. But I did go (with one of our children’s librarians and her husband), and I laughed and cried a lot and then after we went our separate ways, I sat in my car waiting for the traffic to thin out and then drove home along completely empty roads feeling thoughtful and sad and full of feelings I don’t have words for.
I’m certainly not a superfan–I have made no costume, have attended no cons, have written no fanfic–but I can’t deny that Harry Potter has been a part of my life, first as just a reader and viewer and now as a librarian. So, inspired by the bloggers at the Hub as they bid farewell to Harry, here are musings on my personal journey with Harry Potter and a few thoughts on the impact the series has had. (more…)
July 19, 2011
After returning home from ALA this year, I came down with a cold that I just haven’t been able to shake. It’s making catching up on my life and correspondence difficult, but I wanted to write down some of my impressions and thoughts from Annual before they fade too much.
Before I left for New Orleans, I spent some time thinking about what I wanted my conference experience to be like this time. Especially since the last time I’d been to Annual was also my first and I’d been a student at the time, I had a different perspective now that I have my own library to which I’m applying everything I learn rather than just trying to file everything away for later. And just by virtue of being in the field longer and finding more ways to get involved, I knew some of my responsibilities and experiences would change. (For example, in small groups, I was able to actually contribute ideas since I have hands-on experience that I didn’t have a year ago, and now that I’m on a committee, I had more official meetings that I needed to attend at specific times, which precluded me from attending sessions that looked interesting.) And for the first time, I was going to be rooming with a coworker, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
Anyway, my big goals this time were to be more fearless in just jumping into conversations and introducing myself and to learn more about YALSA and to find new ways to step up my involvement. (more…)
July 9, 2011
Last weekend my library hosted a Minecraft competition that has been my most successful program to date. I don’t think there are a lot of other public libraries out there who have done much Minecraft-related programming, so I thought I’d write about what we did, how we did it, and how it worked.
For the uninitiated: Minecraft is a “sandbox game,” which means it’s an open-ended environment in which the player comes up with his or her own objectives and then sets out to achieve them. In Minecraft, the world is made up of cubes of different materials and the player can harvest those materials and combine them in different configuration to build tools, other building materials, furniture, food, and different kinds of mechanisms. The focus of the game is exploration and creativity and people have done some really awesome stuff with it. (more…)
June 16, 2011
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