Guest Review – Little Sister Book Reviews! December 8, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: little sister book reviews, middle grade fiction
12 comments
Today I have a very special guest, my little sister! I asked her what she wanted her blog pseudonym to be and she said, “Bob”. Then I told her it should be a girl’s name and so she said, “Bobita”. Yeah, that’s my sister for ya! So I realized recently that I have very few books to recommend in the middle grade genres, and since Bobita is 10 years old and reads a fair amount, I thought I’d ask her about some of the books she’s read over Thanksgiving break. She’s caught the book reviewing bug and even gave me some advice on how I should ask questions.
Judy Moody Gets Famous! by Megan McDonald
Lu: What is Judy Moody Gets Famous about?
Bobita: It’s about a girl named Judy Moody who wants to get famous because she’s jealous of her friend Jessica Flinch. Jessica’s famous because she won a national spelling bee. So Judy Moody tried a lot of things to get famous, but none of them really worked. Her brother was reading the Guinness Book of World Records and one of them was the Human Centipede, so Judy Moody, two of her friends and her brother, Stink, tried to do the Human Centipede. They tied their shoelaces together and they tried walking to one of her friend’s house. While they were doing that Judy was in the front and Stink was in the back, but Judy Moody stepped on her friend’s foot and they all fell. He broke his pinkie and had to go to the hospital. While he was in the emergency room getting x-rays, Judy Moody and her brother went into the magical playroom and they met a little girl named Laura who just had a heart transplant and was in a wheelchair. Everything in the playroom was all broken. Judy finally came up with an idea to get famous and help people.
Me: Who was your favorite character?
Bobita: Judy.
Me: Why?
Bobita: Because she was clever for all the ideas for her to get famous.
Me: What was your favorite way that Judy tried to get famous?
Bobita: The Human Centipede. It’s where a lot of people get together and they tie their shoelaces together so they’re really long and they walk around for a couple blocks to try to beat the record in the book.
Me: Did you like this book?
Bobita: You should ask me if I would recommend this book.
Me: [glaring] Okay. Would you recommend this book?
Bobita: Yes, I would recommend this book. Because it was a very clever book. Judy tried a lot of interesting things to get famous.
Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park
Me: What’s this book about?
Bobita: The book is about a girl named Junie B. Jones who is just starting Kindergarten and has to ride the stupid smelly bus. She calls it the stupid smelly bus because she thinks it smells and it’s very loud and she doesn’t like it. The first day of school she hid in the cabinet because she didn’t want to ride the stupid smelly bus. When she thought everyone left, she came out and she looked in the cabinet and found some clay, and that is her most favorite thing in the world. So she got it out and she played with it on the ground and after she made something, it was covered with dirt and hair. She put it back in the little container and put it back in the cabinet. And then she pretended she was the teacher and was bossing all the kids around. There was this one boy named “That” Jim and she pretended to send him to the principal’s office. Then she got bored of being the teacher and went to the nurse’s office and pretended to be the nurse. Then she spotted some crutches, which are also her most favorite thing in the world. So she got the crutches and tried to use them, but they were too big, so she stood up on a chair to use them. But the chair was on wheels and fell away and she bumped her knee on the desk. So she pretended to call 911 and told them she hurt her knee. She wanted to run in the hallway, which is also her most favorite thing to do, so she ran to the bathroom, but it was locked, so she ran to the nurse and actually called 911 and said she was about to have an accident.
Me: Would you recommend this book?
Bobita: Yes, because it’s very funny.
Me: You don’t seem very sure of yourself.
Bobita: Well, I like Junie B. Jones, because it’s funny.
Me: Do you think you’re too old for Junie B. Jones?
Bobita: Yes, I do think I’m a little old for Junie B. Jones.
Me: So, Judy Moody is better for girls your age?
Bobita: Yes, because it is for girls ages 6-10 and I am 10.
Me: Anything else you want to say?
Bobita: Nope!
I edited Bobita’s descriptions just a little bit because she didn’t understand the concept of “Don’t give away the ending or anything too important.” I had a lot of fun interviewing my little sister and will probably do it again in the future! All my sisters like to read, so maybe I’ll get them all in on the game!
Any MG books you’d like to see my sister review? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see if our library has them!
Review – Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson December 7, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: anorexia, laurie halse anderson, wintergirls
10 comments
“I can’t remember what it’s like to eat without planning for it, charting the calories and the fat content and measuring my hips and thighs to see if I deserve it and usually deciding no, I don’t deserve it, so I bite my tongue until it bleeds and I wire my jaw shut with lies and excuses while a blind tapeworm wraps itself around my windpipe, snuffing and poking for a wet opening to my brain.” (209)
Review – The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud December 4, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: claire messud, new york, september 11
8 comments
The first thing I feel like I should tell you about The Emperor’s Children is that I almost stopped listening to it because there is not a single character in this book that I understood or liked. They all made horrible decisions and did horrible things to each other and were generally self important ass-holes. Excuse my French. But then, after a good five or six hours of listening, I started to be really interested in their stupidity. It was like watching a reality show and being sucked in, even though you keep saying to yourself, “I’m better than this!”
All of that is not to say that The Emperor’s Children is poorly written. If anything, it’s a little over-written, but the characters, though unbelievably frustrating, are also really believable. The novel follows several New Yorkers, all in their early thirties, in the year before September 11, 2001. Marina Thwaite, daughter of the famous journalist Murray Thwaite, Danielle Minkoff, a documentary producer, and Julius Clarke, a freelance critic, have been friends since they were students at Brown University and have little to show for their post-college years. Marina has been working on a book about children’s clothes (hence the title of the novel) for the past ten years. Danielle is moderately successful, but rarely gets to make documentaries about what she wants and Julius is just barely staying a float, often taking temp jobs to supplement his income.
Then in the summer of 2001, Ludovic Seeley and Frederick “Bootie” Tubb (Murray’s nephew) enter the picture and things are never really the same again. Ludovic is a “revolutionary”, attempting to dismantle the hypocrisy of figureheads like Murray Thwaite, who falls in love with Marina. Bootie moves to New York after quitting of college because of his disappointment in the system to work for his uncle and try to get an “in” to the elite society that his uncle dictates.
These characters are wheeling toward September 11, with no knowledge as to how their lives are going to change in the coming weeks. They are dismantling their own lives, rushing into marriages, entering abusive and adulterous relationships. They hurt each other and themselves and are the physical embodiment of the hypocrisy they deny. It’s amazing, really, how expertly these characters were created. I had to constantly remind myself that these people were in their thirties, but that seemed like just the point. They never grew up and were still children and not even September 11 changed that, though perhaps they were exposed for what they really were.
So do you have to like a character for a novel to be good? I might have said yes before reading this book, but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this novel.
So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile
Other reviews:
New York Times (The NYT book review is much more culturally aware than I am)
Ready When You Are, CB
Did you read and review The Emperor’s Children? Let me know in the comments section and I will link to your post here!
Note: This review was already published once, but there was an error with the page.
Monthly Round-Up! November 2009 December 3, 2009
Posted by Lu in Blogging, Books.5 comments
Another month has come and gone! It’s kind of unbelievable that Christmas is almost here, that I have most of the holiday shopping complete, that the semester is almost over! Right now I’m slacking quite a bit because I just can’t get back in the school groove after Thanksgiving break. It always seemed cruel to make us go back to school after Thanksgiving, they should have just ended the semester! But oh well, I can’t complain too much because I know that I’m only 4 papers away from home! And that’s very exciting news.
November was a great reading month (because of all the slacking I did):
- Stitches by David Small (Read it: Now)
- Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset
- City of Thieves by David Benioff (Read it: Tomorrow)
- Push by Sapphire (Read it: Now)
- The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Read it: Next week)
- Under the Skin by Michel Faber (Read it: Now)
- The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (Read it: Tomorrow)
- Genesis by Bernard Beckett (Read it: Next month)
- The Compound by SA Bodeen (Read it: Next month)
- The Untelling by Tayari Jones (Read it: Tomorrow)
- The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud (Read it: Next week)
- Hate List by Jennifer Brown (Read it: Next week)
- Man in the Dark by Paul Auster (Read it: Next week)
- Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (Read it: Now)
Total pages read: 4, 473
Challenges: I called all my challenges quits a couple months ago, but I kept one, the personal reading challenge. I wanted to read 100 books this year and I surprised myself by surpassing that goal this month and reading 106 books! Woo! I’m so excited about that!
I read a lot of really great books this month, but I think my favorites were Wintergirls, Stitches and City of Thieves. I’m looking forward to December and finishing up this semester. Also coming up: my one year blogging anniversary! I mean, can you believe that? That’s just ridiculous! I can’t believe I’ve been at this for almost a year. It’s been a wonderful year, that’s for sure.
What was your favorite book that you read this month?
TSS: 29 November 2009 November 29, 2009
Posted by Lu in Blogging, Books.Tags: christmas, Sunday Salon, thanksgiving
8 comments
Good morning, Sunday Saloners! I hope you had a fabulous holiday, if you are the Thanksgiving celebrating type, or just a fabulous week. I spent my week spending time with my family and friends, reading Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe and doing some Christmas shopping. I bought books for the holidays, especially books that I want to read! For my little sister K the older, who is 14, I got Going Bovine by Libba Bray, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater and Liar by Justine Larbalestier. K the younger is 11 and she will be receiving How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle . My dad will be getting Under the Dome by Stephen King. Don’t tell them! I’m still not sure what I’m getting my youngest sister, C (10), but I’ll think of something. For my mom and step-dad I got specialty salsa and a signed Paula Deen cookbook.
This week I reviewed Hate List by Jennifer Brown, The Compound by SA Bodeen and Genesis by Bernard Beckett, & Man in the Dark by Paul Auster. I featured poet Mona Van Duyn and her poem “Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri” on this week’s installment of Poetry Wednesday. Up next for review is The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud.
I still haven’t read the second part of Kristin Lavransdatter, because I left it at home. I’ll start reading it as soon as I get back and hopefully won’t be too late again. Still reading Brave Story, it’s good, but I just haven’t had an uninterrupted reading time to really get into the story. Which is difficult when the book is over 800 pages. It would be really nice if I could finish it and start another book this weekend! We’ll see.
I might be on the quiet side in the coming two weeks because it is exam time. I’ll be busy writing papers and doing research, but I will miss you dearly, I promise.
What are you reading today?
YA Reviews – Hate List, The Compound, Genesis November 27, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: australian, genesis, hate list, the compound, young adult
6 comments
I have three very different reviews for today: Hate List by Jennifer Brown, The Compound by SA Bodeen and Genesis by Bernard Beckett
Hate List by Jennifer Brown
This book is told from Valerie’s perspective, the girlfriend of Nick who opened fire on the crowded high school cafeteria. Valerie, shocked by what her boyfriend was doing, ran to stop him when he shot her in the leg and then shot himself. Valerie is either vilified or declared a hero by her classmates and community, but she is neither. She was terrified, and she didn’t set out to be a hero, but she never thought about killing the people on her Hate List. She might have said she wished they were dead, but she didn’t mean it, no more than anyone means it when they say that kind of thing. But Nick meant it. I felt so bad for Valerie and I applaud Brown for not making Nick into a purely evil villain. He did a horrible, evil thing, but he was kind to Valerie and he was a good boyfriend. The bulk of this book is told in flashbacks, with Valerie remembering the morning of the shooting and trying to survive at school the next fall.
I admit, I almost put this book down when I saw the Nickelback song quote at the beginning, and I thought that it dipped into the cheesy at some points, but for the most part I thought this was a really great YA novel that deals with an unbelievably difficult topic. We don’t often hear the people like Valerie’s story, the people that loved the murderers, before they were evil, before they crossed that line. Try to not cry when you read this book, just try.
So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile
Also reviewed by: Steph Su Reads, Early Word, A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy, Presenting Lenore, GalleySmith, Life in the Thumb, My Friend Amy, Linus’s Blanket
Anax is preparing her final exam to enter the Academy, all about Jasper Forde. The entire book is this exam and we discover more and more with each question that the examiners ask her about her world, one that is very different from our own. Plus, this book has an ending that will absolutely knock your socks off. Overall, I thought it was successful, but I thought that there were some parts that just didn’t make enough sense in an effort to keep the secret. When I first finished this book I was prepared to give it a slightly better review, but I’ve thought about it some more and I’m just not completely convinced. I had really high hopes for this one, and though I still enjoyed reading it and was really surprised by the ending, it didn’t quite live up to them. This might be one that I revisit in the future, though, to see if I like it better on a second reading.
So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile
Also reviewed by: Steph Su Reads, A Chair, A Fireplace, A Tea Cozy, I was a Teenage Book Geek, Presenting Lenore.
Okay, I really thought this book was too ridiculous and totally unbelievable, but I had a ridiculously good time reading it, so they balance each other out. Eli has been living in the compound with his family for the past 8 years after a nuclear fallout, but eventually things start to get a weirder and weirder as he realizes that his father is lying to him about something. Dun dun duuuuuunnn! Other than the complete implausibility, there was a lot to like here. Eli is a very believable character, who’s just a little bit mean and really emotionally torn up about the loss of his twin brother in the war.
So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile
Also reviewed by: I Was a Teenage Book Geek, Becky’s Book Review
Did you read and review any of these books? Let me know in the comments and I’ll link to your review!
Review – Man in the Dark by Paul Auster November 24, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: alternative history, auster, man in the dark, metanovellistic
9 comments
“There’s no single reality, Corporal. There are many realities. There’s no single world. There are many worlds, and they all run parallel to one another, worlds and anti-worlds, worlds and shadow-worlds, and each world is dreamed or imagined or written by someone in another world. Each world is the creation of a mind.” (69)
TSS – Epic List of Challenges! 22 November 2009 November 22, 2009
Posted by Lu in Blogging, Books, Challenges!.10 comments
Good morning! As you read this I am doing one of four things:
- Packing to go home for Thanksgiving
- Seeing New Moon
- Driving home!
- Finishing up my paper on “The House of Bernarda Alba”, which is a great play everyone should see.
I’m super excited for the holidays and looking forward to the break from class. What are your plans for the holiday? Anything exciting? I know that I’m excited about delicious food, like the bbq my grandmother cooks every year. Mmm. This week read quite a bit, mostly because I read three YA books that had very similar themes. I finished Under the Skin, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Genesis, The Compound, The Untelling and The Emperor’s Children. All of them were very good. I really didn’t know what I thought of The Emperor’s Children until the very last page, but I’m looking forward to sitting down with the review because it’s going to be an interesting discussion. Anyone read The Compound? That books is CRAZY. Just insane. The ending wasn’t really shocking, but the whole concept was wild. I still haven’t wrapped my head around Genesis to write a proper review of it, but it has an ending that will knock you off your feet.
I’m currently reading Man in the Dark by Paul Auster and I really like it so far. I organized all my books yesterday and they are beautiful.
Okay, now for the exciting news: CHALLENGES. Twitter and all the blogs have been alight with book challenges and it’s so tempting to join them all. I joined a lot of challenges last year, but was really disorganized and ended up only finishing a few of them. This year I plan on being much more organized. Here is a preliminary list of challenges I have joined:
Women Unbound: Hosted by the wonderful Eva, Care and Aarti, I finally decided to join the Women Unbound challenge! I’ve already read one book (The Untelling) and I’m looking forward to all the others. I am joining the Bluestocking level, which is 5 books, 2 nonfiction. I’m not sure what I’m going to read yet, but I will come up with a list soon.
AtoZChallenge: Last year I joined this challenge and I went for the most difficult level (reading an author and a book title for every letter of the alphabet) and I ended up just not having enough time/energy to keep up with it. So this year, I’m going to be a little bit more conservative and only join the A-Z Titles.
The Challenge that Dare Not Speak its Name: GLBT Challenge 2010. The amazing Amanda of The Zen Leaf is extending her GLBT challenge for an entire year and I’m really excited about this one. I was a little eager and already checked out a number of books from the library, including Geography Club, Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories, The Diary of Frida Kahlo, Virginia Wolf, and Bastard Out of Carolina. I signed up for the Pink Triangle level, which is 8 books. I’ll be doing a post on GLBT poetry for a blog tour for different genres, so keep an eye out for that!
Another challenge I’m really excited about is the South Asian Author Challenge hosted by S. Krishna. I’ve made a list for this one, including Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Chandra, Indra Sinha, Bharati Mukherjee. I’m reading 3 books for this challenge.
The TwentyTen Challenge hosted by Darren of Bart’s Bookshelf is a really fun challenge that I’m super excited to join. The challenge asks us to read two books in ten different categories.
- YA
- TBR
- Shiny & New
- Bad Bloggers
- Charity
- New in 2010
- Older than you
- Win, Win! (read books for other challenges)
- Who Are You Again (an author you’ve never heard of)
- Up to You!
Isn’t that the cutest challenge ever? I’m definitely excited about this one.
Woolf in Winter Read Along: I’ve already talked about this in the Sunday Salon, but I thought I’d mention it again!
I’d like to do the Dewey Decimal Challenge again, if The Novel World will host it again! If not, I might make it a personal challenge for 2010. I didn’t do very well, but one of my goals next year is to read more non-fiction.
Also: I’d like to reinstate my poetry challenge to start over in January (but anyone who has already joined the challenge will get to count their books and can continue with the already established time line if they’d like!). I am trying to get a little bit more interest, if possible! I’d love to see more poetry-love across the book blogging community 
. Interested?
Whew, that’s all. Thanks for sticking around! I’ll probably be joining more challenges as the year goes on, but that’s it for now. Have a great Sunday, everyone!
Review – The Untelling by Tayari Jones November 21, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: tayari jones, the untelling
9 comments
“I wanted to tell him that I knew how he felt, though I probably did not. How can you know what another person is going through when your own life is so different from his? People had done this to me often enough, telling they knew how I felt because they had suffered this or that loss, felt some sort of pain. The words were in my mouth to tell Lawrence that I knew what it was not to be able to make the family you want to have, not because you are a bad person or because you haven’t tried hard enough, but because you just can’t. I could predict his response, his words, polite enough, thanking me for my empathy, my generosity of spirit. And I could imagine his thoughts, that no, I couldn’t possibly empathize. Our situations were not the same at all.” (215)
Review – The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson November 19, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books.Tags: dystopian, future, mary e. pearson, the adoration of jenna fox
5 comments
“But with all the scenes, the birthdays, the lessons, the practices, the ordinary events that should have been left alone, what I remember most are Jenna’s eyes, flickering, hesitation, an urgent trying. That’s what I remember most from the discs, a desperation to stay on the pedestal. I see that in her eyes as much as I see their color. And now, in the passing of just a few weeks, I see things in faces I didn’t see before. I see Jenna, smiling, laughing, chattering. And falling. When you are perfect, is there anywhere else to go? I ache for her like she is someone else. She is. I am not the perfect Jenna Fox anymore.” (109)
