2011 book 165

Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall
OK, I know I solemnly swore to stop reading zombie books after I had some pretty freaky zombie nightmares, but this isn't really a zombie book--or well, it's totally a zombie book, but it's not a horror book. See, what happens is, it's the late 60s and there was a zombie outbreak but it was stopped pretty quickly. And soon afterward, the Mayhall family--a mom and three daughters--find a baby with his dead mother on the side of the road. And he's dead too. But not. Zombie baby!!! So they raise him up and he's not the usual zombie, and his story--and the story of the rest of the Living Dead--turn out to be pretty fascinating. And though this is a zombie book, it is really a book about family. And always having an escape route. A-.

2011 book 164

Carolyn Cooke's Daughters of the Revolution
This is getting great reviews, but I have to say I wasn't really feeling it. It's described as like, how things change when an African-American girl becomes the first girl at a boys' private school, and I suppose that's technically true, but really it's just sort of about . . . change. In general. In the 60s up through the present, sort of. Told mostly from the POV of the old-school head of the boys' school, and the daughter of one of the alumni. I wish there had been more of the first girl in the school, as she's really the only likable character. Maybe the other characters are sort of likable, but we never get to know them; there's no resolution to any parts of their lives as the narrative keeps skipping forward in time. Basically, I didn't get this book at all and have no idea what it was trying to achieve, and there wasn't enough of a plot to keep me interested. B-.

2011 book 163

Myra McEntire's Hourglass
So Emerson is a teenage girl who can see ghosts of the past, and also her parents are dead and she is generally troubled. Her brother hires a dude to help her, and of course he's affiliated w/ a mysterious organization, and of course he's also a hot young guy to be her love interest. Just once I'd like a book about a girl coming into her powers with like the help of her friends (a la Buffy) and not dependent on some dude she's all twitterpated about. Especially since Emerson's best friend is a really interesting and underused character. Now, from all this, things go in a way you might not expect, though at a certain point I realized where it was going was just as stupid as the usual YA paranormal romance cliches. It's all just underwritten, the motivation for all the characters' action is really weak, and the twists McEntire throws in are just silly. I was really disappointed here--the first quarter had a lot of promise and then things just got . . . not great. B-.

2011 book 162

Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides
Sometimes you just have to reread something awesome and today was one of those days. I've always found this book surprisingly lovely. Anyway, Eugenides has a new book coming out this fall and I'm psyched.

2011 book 161

Meg Cabot's Big Boned
Pretty much the same as the last one--you have to suspend a great deal of disbelief, but fun story and very likable characters. I could do without the really really bad fake song lyrics at the start of every chapter, though. B+.

2011 book 160

Meg Cabot's Size 14 Is Not Fat Either
Seriously, what crappy editor let Cabot use these names for this series? WORST TITLES EVER. I mean, for one thing, they don't let you know you're going to be reading a funny mystery series about a former pop star who now works in a residence hall, and for another, they're just embarrassing. Like I don't want to admit reading, let alone liking, books with these titles.

Anyway, this is a fairly satisfactory followup. I mean, the mystery is completely ridiculous and unbelievable (despite what I said about the last one) but the characters are so likable that I didn't really mind. B+.

2011 book 159

Meg Cabot's Size 12 Is Not Fat
I've never read anything by Cabot before--I mean, she wrote those Princess Diaries books, and the title of this is just awful--but everyone always says she's an entertaining writer and I wanted something lighter and more fun after slogging through Doc all week. So this is the story of a former teen pop star who's take a job as the assistant director of a residence hall in New York, and what happens when a freshman girl is found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Conveniently, the love interest/landlord is a PI, which bodes well for this series (b/c how many dorm murders can a former teen pop star realistically--or semi-realistically--solve?). Anyway, this was as entertaining as I'd been told and Cabot's voice is very funny. I'm off to read the sequel now. A-.

2011 book 158

Maria Doria Russell's Doc
Oh man, I have been reading this book ALL WEEK. It was one of the slowest novels I've ever read and I can't figure out why; parts of it are extremely interesting, and of course you really can't go wrong talking about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. Part of my problem with this was that at times it reads like a history book. I also think Russell's habit of giving elaborate backstories to even the most minor characters made things go on much longer than they needed to. I actually can't figure out why this got such stellar reviews in the press and on Amazon--like I said, parts of it are very good, but it's not at all a compelling read, as in I wasn't at all compelled to keep reading to find out what would happen (and spoilers: it ends before they even get to Tombstone, so the excitement is really at a minimum). Which isn't to say it was a bad book--like I said, there were some really good parts, and I especially liked all the dentistry. But my god, slowest read ever. B.

harry potter, etc

Sorry for the lack of posting--I'm reading a long and kind of slow book, and I'm not going to be done with it tonight either. To tide you over in the meantime, here are some links! (I've posted these on Twitter already, but what the hey, here they are again in case you missed them.)

On the literary merits of Harry Potter.

Speaking of HP, the whole Pottermore thing gets announced tomorrow--but was it leaked?

Literature Map is cool--type in an author's name and it'll pull up similar authors--the closer they are to the original author's name, the more likely someone is to like both of them.

2011 book 157

Jennifer Finney Boylan's Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor
The Falcon Quinn follow-up is pretty good, I guess. B.

2011 book 156

Jennifer Finney Boylan's Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror
A Harry Potter-ish book for the MG set, this book features young Falcon Quinn, who finds himself attending a school for monsters. But just like before, he feels like he doesn't fit in, b/c no one can figure out what kind of monster he is. Though some plot points are easily telegraphed, there are some surprises in store, and the large cast of characters is very likable (I was especially partial to La Chupacabra and a sweet little Frankenstein monster). B+.

2011 book 155

Mary Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Yet another book about a girl with memory problems! (Though this one came out in 2009.) Anyway, teenager Jenna Fox awakens after an accident with all sorts of memory and motor problems, but while we wait for her past to be revealed, we realize we're in some sort of near future and then things take a turn for the more interesting. I wasn't invested in the romantic subplot (the character of her love interest wasn't well-developed) and had some minor issues with the ending, but Jenna herself is a fascinating character. Apparently a sequel is coming out in August and it looks even crazier than this one. B/B+.

2011 book 154

Tracey Porter's Lark
Slight little novel about a girl who is kidnapped and killed, narrated through the voice of her former best friend, a girl she babysat, and her own ghost. Not much else to say besides that. B/B+.

2011 book 153

Cat Patrick's Forgotten
Yet another book about a chick with memory issues! In this one, teen London remembers the future--knows what'll happen years down the line--but at 4:33 every morning, forgets the present completely. She wings it with the help of her mom, best friend, and copious note-taking. But then a cute new boy come to school . . . and she remembers a funeral . . . and there's drama. On the whole, a very entertaining read, though I found the epilogue a bit cheesy. I actually find these memory-related stories very intriguing (though they don't always seem to be very scientifically accurate). A-.

2011 book 152

J. Courtney Sullivan's Maine
Sullivan (author of Commencement, which I liked a lot) manages a surprisingly entertaining sophomore effort. I say surprising b/c the description--three generations of women converge in a beach house--might sound kind of cliched and boring, but here, it isn't. Our women are 80-something matriarch Alice, plagued by past secrets and disappointments; her daughter Kathleen, a hippie-slash-recovering alcoholic; daughter-in-law Ann Marie, striving for perfection; and Kathleen's daughter Maggie, who's just discovered she's pregnant but is in a pretty lame relationship. I read a review complaining that Sullivan takes too long to bring the characters together, but I found her narrative effective--lots of backstory on their family dramas, and then things rachet up once they're together. Anyway, I liked the characters a lot, but thought the ending was a bit too abrupt--I'd have liked to see more resolution. I thought there'd be at least another chapter but then suddenly there were the acknowledgments and a reading group guide. A-.

2011 book 151

M.L. Welsh's Mistress of the Storm
Pretty good YA fantasy about a girl and stories and a malevolent wind goddess type. Not particularly interesting but readable enough. Highlights: a pretty cool librarian. I spent the first quarter trying to figure out when this was supposed to be set; the characters all acted and talked like olden times (and were named things like "Verity"), but the protagonist plays field hockey in school. Maybe they were just British? B/B-.

2011 book 150

Ann Brashares' Sisterhood Everlasting
After a couple of fairly lame books, Brashares has decided to return to her bread and butter and revisit the traveling pants girls, only it's ten years later and they're all 29. (And I had to read it, b/c I like those pants books.) Of course, most of them are still involved with (or obsessed with) the same dudes they were with back in high school, which, COME ON. Also, Lena is exactly as annoying and stupid as ever and Carmen is surprisingly boring and somewhat unlikable. I mean, when my favorite character is Bridget, you know something is wrong in the world of the magical pants. Though Bridget is surprisingly compelling in this one. Anyway, after drifting apart, the girls reunite in Greece, but things don't go according to plan (I actually said "What the F@&%" out loud at this plot point). Still, I kind of liked this, even though it's patently unbelievable as well as predictable, and frankly problematic from a feminist perspective (I have a lot to say about this, but as River Song would say, "Spoilers!"). Oh, and let me point out one last thing--each section starts with an epigraph, mostly cliched things from the Great Writers (Waugh, Whitman, White, etc)--but a couple are, randomly, from the Shins. Haha.

I dunno. B?

2011 book 149

S.J. Watson's Before I Go To Sleep
Another much-touted summer read that is definitely worth the hype, this novel is sort of like if 50 First Dates met Memento. OK, no, that makes it sounds kind of cutesy and it's definitely more in the Memento camp. It's about a woman who had an accident years ago and only hazily remembers her past and can't form new memories, so that every night when she goes to sleep, she forgets everything again, and wakes up confused and scared. When a new doctor encourages her to start keeping a journal, she discovers that her husband may be lying to her about a variety of things. The end is a bit drama-rama but I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. And I'm labeling it as a mystery but it's much more of a literary thriller (and it is full of thrills, for sure). A/A-.

2011 book 148

Tina Fey's Bossypants
I finally read this and it was as awesome and funny as everyone said! Plus, for the first time ever, I used the word-definition-lookup-thingie on my Kindle (I've already forgotten the word--something like "canegeegen"). Anyway, great read, even better than I expected.

2011 book 147

Peter Ferguson and Michael Buckley's The Fairy Tale Detectives
Fairly standard MG novel about two sisters who go to live with their grandmother after their parents disappear and find out they're descended from the Grimm family, blah blah, a town full of fairy tale characters a la Fables, blah. B-.