First Quarter Down!

My goal this year was 120 books, which means I need to read 30 books a quarter. First quarter down, and I've read 51 books. Clearly, I need a fourth job. Mostly, I'm just spurred on by Kayla's challenge that she could read one more book this year than I do. Au contraire!

1. A Solitary Blue - Cynthia Voigt
   A nice quiet book to start the year


2. Generation Dead - Daniel Waters
Ack! Hate!


3. It's Like This, Cat - Emily Neville
Nice, but not noteworthy


4. Repossessed - A. M. Jenkins
   Funny! Great premise, but didn't quite live up to it


5. Milkweed - Jerry Spinelli
This took me six months to read. Enough said.


6. The Underneath - Kathi Appelt
Nice enough, but I do NOT understand the hype


7. Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery - Susan Juby
Totally stupid


8. Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
Loved. So funny and smart.


9. Lock and Key - Sarah Dessen
Not my favorite of her books, but all the SD love started here


10. Love That Dog - Sharon Creech
Love That Book


11. Trouble - Gary D. Schmidt
A bit of a slow start, but I ended up loving it


12. Elijah of Buxton - Christopher Paul Curtis
Adding a new conflict 20 pages before the end and resolving THAT does not resolve the main storyline


13. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - John Boyne
Oh brother. Eye rolling galore. Also, people keep reaching that post by googling "did his mom have an affair." See! Not the only one who thought so!


14. I Know It's Over - C. K. Kelly Martin
    This book was . . . not very good.


15. Perfect You - Elizabeth Scott
I love Elizabeth Scott. Perfect YA romance fluff.


16. Graceling - Kristin Cashore
I still have such mixed feelings on this one


17. Wake - Lisa McMann
Only okay.


18. How to Ditch Your Fairy - Justine Larbalestier
Every book a reader and all that. I was not the reader for this book.


19. Stealing Heaven - Elizabeth Scott
More ES


20. Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles
Too swear-y to recommend, but I secretly loved it


21. How to Ruin a Summer Vacation - Simone Elkeles
I can't think of a female character I have found more unlikable


22. The Truth About Forever - Sarah Dessen
Sa-WOON. Just go read this now.


23. Madapple - Christina Meldrum
Not a favorite. Too weird


24. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Watery eyes at the end of this book


25. This Lullaby - Sarah Dessen
Third favorite SD book.


26. Bloom - Elizabeth Scott
Aw, cute. Read it in one afternoon.


27. The London Eye Mystery - Siobhan Dowd
Great British narrator


28. A Step from Heaven - An Na
Terrible on CD, not bad in book form


29. Brooklyn Bridge - Karen Hesse
Better than "Out of the Dust," which isn't saying much


30. Fade - Lisa McMann
A hundred times better than Wake. Read in one night. Beware the swearing


31. Jellicoe Road - Melina Marchetta
Loved! Wade through the first 150 pages. Worth it!


32. All-American Girl - Meg Cabot
My first Meg Cabot book. Forgetable.


33. Wintergirls - Laurie Halse Anderson
Unforgetable.


34. Ten Cents a Dance - Christine Fletcher
Historical Fiction at its very finest


35. Just Listen - Sarah Dessen
Had to stop listening to it on CD and read it because the narration was KILLING me. Seriously, the voice of Owen made me want to stab my eyes out.


36. Someone Like You - Sarah Dessen
Loved. Broke my dang heart


37. North of Beautiful - Justina Ched Headley
    I liked this, but not as much as everyone else in the blogosphere


38. Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Jeff Kinney
I'm sorry - booger jokes do not work for me


39. Taken by Storm - Angela Morrison
Surprisingly good. Thought the religion would be heavy-handed. Not so.


40. Ways to Live Forever - Sally Nicholls
Sad, but in a "I'm trying too hard" kind of way. I have no heart.


41. Hate That Cat - Sharon Creech
    Loved this one even more, possibly


42. Impossible - Nancy Werlin
A good read. Not the ten it could have been, though


43. That Summer - Sarah Dessen
My least favorite so far


44. Dreamland - Sarah Dessen
    Sad but so beautiful


45. Kiss Me Kill Me - Lauren Henderson
No one told me this book ended in the middle of the story!


46. Something, Maybe - Elizabeth Scott
Cute and extremely quick


47. Nation - Terry Pratchett
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.


48. Leaving Paradise - Simone Elkeles
This book was really good until the last five pages and then I was like "WHAT?! This ending is stupid."


49. It Sucked and Then I Cried - Heather Armstrong
If you've read her blog, you've read this book.


50. Summer of the Swans - Betsy Byers
Really, Newberry committe? Really?


51. Something Borrowed - Emily Griffin
    Can't recommend.

Book Trailers

Are you familiar with book trailers? I've seen them start popping up in the last year or so on the Internet and, like most things, some are really good and some are kind of terrible.

If you haven't seen any book trailers, they're pretty much exactly what you'd expect - a little video introducing the main storyline of a book, just like a movie trailer does. Some of them are made by fans and some are made professionally by the author's marketing group.

A few examples:

This is the book trailer for "The Hunger Games" and I think it's . . . not very good. And I loved "The Hunger Games."



This one, on the other hand, for "Love, Stargirl," is excellent, I think:



I think the idea isn't bad - it could be handy to send along to someone if you'd recommended the book to them. But they are also often poorly done and ruin your personal images of the characters and locations. I prefer the ones that don't include faces.

A few others if you want to spend 10 minutes on YouTube:
Graceling
Gone
The September Sisters
A Curse Dark as Gold

What do you think? Love them? Hate them? Never heard of them?

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

9 of 10: I loved this book. Extremely readable, likable characters, and more substance than you'd expect from a book that would generally be categorized as a young adult romance.

February and March quite accidentally turned into the months of Sarah Dessen. I read Lock and Key at the end of January and when I reviewed it, practically everyone who responded said I had to read The The Truth About Forever or Just Listen or This Lullaby. And because I do whatever you lovely commenters tell me to, I ran right out to the UT library and picked up The Truth About Forever and This Lullaby.

I won't bore you all by ranting on about how I love Sarah Dessen, but I will say that I have now read all but one of her books now and that last book is sitting in my library basket waiting to be read. So yeah, it's pretty obvious that I think she's terrific. And The Truth About Forever is far and away my favorite of her books.

In fact, when I went back to the UT library to pick up yet another of her books, I saw it on the shelf, sat down in the stacks and reread all my favorite parts again. I am a sucker for a good love story.

Macy's dad died a year or so earlier of a heart attack and her life is so shaken by this event that she goes to great efforts to control the rest of her life. She is a perfect student and has gotten herself a perfect boyfriend - a know-it-all/has-all-the-answers, but also nice guy, Jason, who is now off to spend the summer at some sort of brainy-kid camp.

After a few weeks of him being gone, she drops the bomb on him in an email, signing it "I love you." And whoa, does Jason freak out. He writes her back saying something about how they should take a break and reevaluate their relationship at the end of summer and see if they have similar views on their potential future relationship. Macy is not happy about this, of course; she can just see her perfect and controlled life crashing down around her.

In the middle of her breakdown, Macy accidentally lands herself a job working with Wish Catering and it is everything she is not - chaotic, unplanned, and loud - but its also surprisingly fun, and no one there really knows about her dad or her perfect persona. It's also a family business and one of the nephews who works there, Wes, is so good looking she can hardly believe it.

Wes turns out to have a girlfriend who is currently in jail, and she will be released at the end of the summer. So there they both are with relationships on hold until the end of the summer. To Macy's surprise, they become friends and one night, when they run out of gas driving the Wish van after a party they've catered, they start a rather strange game of Truth where they take turns asking questions about anything they want and then answering truthfully. She knows about why he went to juvenile detention for a few months the year before and he knows why she doesn't run anymore.

This book has several things going on besides the friendship between Wes and Macy and all the threads come together to make a really engaging and well-developed story. There were even some scenes so hilarious that I had to read them aloud to Bart (after giving him a rundown of the 200 pages previous to the three sentences I was going to read him; the man has a patient soul).

I lost a sibling when I was about Macy's age, and I know all too well about the awkwardness that comes after people find out that there has been a death in your family - the way there is nothing to say and the simultaneous desire to talk about it and to change the subject quickly - and Sarah Dessen captures that amazingly well.

Kayla read it before me and I kept texting her saying things like, "oh my heavens, I love this book so so much" and "sa-woon!" Kayla liked it so much that she traveled back in time and renamed her one year old baby Wes after the main boy. Or maybe her baby being named Wes was just coincidental.

When I wrote about Lock and Key, I said I liked Sarah Dessen but it wasn't like she'd shot to the top of my favorite authors list or anything. Except now she kind of has. I love her books because not only are they generally nice feel-good romances, they have so much character and depth to them; they don't feel fluffy.

I am ripping open the boxes of new Notable Book titles every day hoping against hope that an advanced copy of Along for the Ride, her new book coming out this summer, will be in there. So far no luck.

Dessert Desert

One of the goals Bart and I set this year was to only eat two desserts a week [Edit: This means two servings of desserts a week, not two nights a week where we can eat desserts as fast as we can shove them through our lips. If that means half a dessert four nights a week, great. If that means two desserts in one night, also great].

I won't lie and say it's been all fun and games; on a few weeks it has been a kind of lame thing. But really, overall, it hasn't been that big of a problem. It means that we generally don't eat desserts during the week and have one on Saturday and Sunday nights.

One of the things I've really liked about it is that it's made me realize how many sweets I eat without recognizing it. I'm certainly not going to waste one of my desserts on a handful of Hershey kisses. Some dry, disgusting cookies some one brought into work and left on the table? No thanks. Before this, I would have, though.

We're flexible about our desserts too - we do halves or even quarters (for instance, we've determined that two regular sized cookies is one serving, so when I had half a cookie last night, it was a quarter of a serving and only one-eighth of my overall weekly dessert budget).

And seriously, it is so fun on a Sunday night to say, "We both have one dessert left. What should we have?!" Nothing tastes better than your last dessert on Sunday night. This dessert last week? Divine.

Does this just sound insane or, like Kristi, do you find yourself thinking, "hmm, I could do that."

Time to Start Panicking

The worst part of coming back from spring break is that thing where suddenly projects, papers, assignments, and work comes crashing down.

That moment has come.

Excuse me while I go breathe into a paper bag.

But it'll be a really fast paper bag breathing session because I don't have time to panic.

Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher

9 out of 10: Ten Cents a Dance is great historical fiction; gripping story, excellent characters, unpredictable plot. I was really impressed with this book about pre-WWII Chicago and a profession I didn't even know existed.

I used to read loads of historical fiction, but now I generally find myself thinking "I would have loved this at twelve, but now it doesn't really do much for me." I didn't think that about Ten Cents a Dance - I loved virtually every second of it.

Even more surprising was to read a book set just before WWII and to have it seem completely new and interesting and surprising. How often can you think that about a WWII book anymore? Not often, friends. Not often.

Ruby is fifteen and has been working for several months now at the packing house in the Yards, putting pig feet in brine. She used to have a normal childhood, but then her dad died and they moved to a tiny pathetic apartment and her mom took a job at the packing house, until her arthritis got too bad for her to work anymore and Ruby had to drop out of school to take the job and keep the family going.

As you can imagine, it's not a job that would appeal to any fifteen year old, especially when her friends are busy doing teenager-y things. Ruby lives for the weekends when she and her best friend go dancing. She may not be the prettiest girl or smell the best (thanks to the brine and pigs), but she can out-dance every girl in Chicago.

At one dance, though a series of miscellaneous events, she meets Paulie, an extremely good-looking boy from her neighborhood who is notorious for his bad behavior (rumor has it that he killed a man, among other misdeeds); he's impressed by her dancing and tells her she can probably get a job at the Starlight, as a taxi dancer. Basically she'll just teach dance lessons, he tells her.

Ruby knows, of course, that there isn't a chance in the world that her mother would agree to this, especially if she knew Paulie was involved, but when Paulie tells her that she'd probably make around $50 a week (as opposed to the $12 or so she's making packing pig feet), she is determined to make it happen, even if she has to lie to do so.

She manages to get the job, lying about her age, and discovers by the end of the first dance that it's not actually dancing lessons, but more an opportunity for lonely men to spend a little time with a pretty girl, listen to some music, and maybe sneak a kiss or a pinch at the end of the song. It's not prostitution, but it's racy enough that she knows her mother would die of shame and the neighbors would never stop talking.

Ruby also soon discovers that the real way to make a profit is to go out after the dance hall closes with one of the fellows who came in - free dinners, nice gifts, clothing, jewelry, or cash. She tells her mom she's a telephone operator and she's working overtime to make extra money.

Of course, as usually happens with money, what once seemed a fortune to her, now seems hardly enough. After all, she needs a whole wardrobe of dancing dresses, shoes, jewelry, etc.

And as if keeping her real profession a secret isn't enough, she's also taken up with Paulie, a boy her mother certainly would never approve of, and so suddenly her life is completely full of lies about where she's going and where she's been.

But then, after a few months, her mother unexpectedly gets remarried to a man who, while not rich, is certainly comfortable and Ruby's mother wants her to quit and go back to school. But now the idea of going back to school and giggling over other fifteen year old boys seems a lifetime and a world away to Ruby. She's met people of all ages and races, she makes a considerable amount of money, she knows all the clubs and bars and restaurants in Chicago, and she has her own - albeit secret - life.

Even when Ruby makes stupid mistakes (did she really think she could borrow a white dress, go out for Chinese food in it, and not end up with a big slosh on it?) or gets herself into tricky situations, you can't not like her. She's so full of spunk and tenacity, that she is a terrific heroine. You just can't help wanting her to succeed.

And the details about Chicago's nightlife and the Yards are so real you can taste it; the setting is just unparalleled.

I was especially impressed by the way the story played out - except for the dress spilling, nothing really worked out how I anticipated. Every twist was a surprise.

Perhaps coolest of all is that it's based on a true story - the author, Christine Fletcher, found out that her aunt was a taxi dancer and involved with mobsters during that time period and the book is based loosely on those experiences.

If you have any inclination towards historical fiction, this book is not to be missed. It is a gem in every way.

Scar Shoulder

Some people have cool scars.

I have ugly scars.


Two days after I got home from my freshman year in college, my mom was going to Puerto Rico and I was supposed to drive her to the airport to catch her 8:00 a.m. flight. Stupidly, I stayed up until about 2 a.m. the night before with some friends from high school, so when my alarm went off at around 5:30 a.m., I was not exactly feeling wide awake.

I've always had trouble with dizziness and feeling sick to my stomach in the morning, so it wasn't unusual that I felt lousy that morning.

My bedroom at my parents' house is downstairs, right off the living room, and as I walked from my bedroom to the kitchen, I started feeling really dizzy. And then I passed out right into the fireplace. Our fireplace had a raised hearth made of tile that came to a sharp lip and I hit it with my shoulder. It cut right through my shirt and into my shoulder so cleanly that there was hardly any blood. Just a big freaking gash.

One trip to the ER, ten stitches, and three months later, I had this lovely reminder of the summer after my freshman year.

Anyone else got cool or ugly scars? Or at least a better story than being an anemic wimp who can't stay standing?

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

8 of 10. A gripping storyline, excellent characters, and some unexpected twists. Not quite as good as I wanted it to be, but still worth reading.

My favorite kind of fantasy is normally urban fantasy - the kind where magic occurs in the real, normal world. For me, it's usually far more interesting to watch how a completely ordinary person deals with magic when it starts happening in their decidedly non-magical life.

Impossible is just that kind of book and is perhaps more focused than any book I can remember reading on the mental dichotomy such circumstances would create for a person.

Lucy Scarborough is seventeen and has been raised by a charming set of foster parents (Leo and Soledad) since her mother is certifiably crazy and has been since Lucy's birth. Since passing her off to Leo and Soledad, Lucy's mother, Miranda, has been living on the streets, appearing in Lucy's life every few months or years and then disappearing just as suddenly. The only real thing she's ever gotten from her mother is a song - the popular Scarborough Fair folk tune - which describes a woman cursed to complete three impossible tasks.

Lucy discovers that it's not just a song, but a song about her family. Generations ago, her ancestor spurned the Elfin Knight's advances and he set her these three impossible tasks listed in the song (make a seamless shirt without needles, find an acre of land with sea on both sides, and then plow the acre with only a goat horn and plant it with a single piece of corn). If she didn't complete them, she'll go mad upon the birth of her daughter and the tasks will fall to the daughter.

No Scarborough woman has succeeded though, most recently with Miranda who obviously has fallen mad, and when Lucy finds herself pregnant also, she doesn't dare not take this curse seriously. If she can accomplish these seemingly impossible tasks before her daughter is born, she can break the curse and save herself and her daughter from the fate of their ancestors.

Lucy has a few things on her side, most notably her foster parents who, although a little skeptical, are willing to take any measures to help her complete these tasks, and Zach, the boy who grew up next door to Lucy and now is back from college for the summer and ready to give any assistance Lucy will let him offer.

Lucy is extremely likable and reacts much how I think many people would to such discoveries. On the one hand, her practical side is screaming how insane this whole thing is and that the best course of action is to just ignore it; on the other hand, how can you risk your life and sanity on the hope that it isn't real when so many things point to it being all too real? When you've watched your mother live for the last 18 years as a complete nut, how do you not take it seriously?

The third person narration lets you hear what many of the main characters are thinking and feeling about different developments in the storyline and I really enjoyed this. Sometimes it doesn't work that well, but for this story, a story that is so focused on the character development, it was perfect.

I really think the strongest part of this book is not the magical tasks or the curse, but the relationship between Zach and Lucy. It doesn't have the same sort of relationship drama that so many love stories have - there is no storming off or misunderstanding or sulky and hurt feelings. The curse provides the drama, so their relationship, growing from childhood friendship to love, gets to be the stabilizing factor in the story and that is both unusual and charming. At one point, when Zach is struggling with Lucy's pregnancy and she tells him to either be her friend or to just leave ("don't let the door hit you on the way out," she tells him), he doesn't slink off to think for a while about it. He steps right up to the plate and promises her he'll be the kind of friend she can depend on. And he does.

This book was well-written and easy to get into, but I found myself thinking occasionally that it wasn't quite as good as I wanted it to be. It was terrific, yes, but not mind-blowingly fantastic, if that makes sense.

Nancy Werlin is coming to the TLA conference later this month, so I'm excited to get to hear her speak. I'll definitely be looking for more of her books, since Impossible was an excellent read.

I Rather Fancy Myself with Facial Hair

You may be wondering why Bart and I spent a Wednesday evening taking pictures like this:


Good question! Today is The King's birthday - of Hola Isabel fame - and he loves fake mustaches. So Isabel has organized a host of bloggers to take pictures of themselves with fake mustaches in his honor.

And really, who wouldn't be honored to have these kinds of pictures plastered across the Internet in your name?

Frankly, I think facial hair kind of suits me; don't tell me you disagree!

Flying Solo

My dad has always traveled a fair amount for work (which is great for us, since it means we see him in Texas several times a year) and my mom has taken a lot of trips without him, both by herself and with us kids.

One summer we took a five week trip through Utah and Idaho and Oregon, four of which were without my dad. We came home one night early, driving all through the late afternoon and into the dark, and then opening the front door, laughing as my dad came running to the top of the stairs and soaking in the feeling of being home, in our own home, after five weeks away.

We've certainly taken dozens of trips with our entire family, but my parents obviously have no problem traveling or taking a vacation without each other.

I'm glad that Bart and I are the same way. Obviously, the two months in London, eight months after we were married, is probably the longest solo vacation I'll ever take, but we've done a number since then too and this summer holds the most solo trips for me yet.

In two weeks, I'm going to Houston for a few days for the Texas Library Association conference (I am super super excited about that - check out the list of authors coming).

And then in April, I'm going to Arizona to see Kayla for four days.

In July, I'll spend nearly in week in Vegas with my parents and little brother.

It goes without saying that I love traveling with Bart, obviously, but sometimes it is fun to go somewhere by yourself. I'm very much looking forward to these three summer solo trips.

And when Bart is in the midst of busy season as an accountant, I intend to take my children and go visit my parents for two or three weeks. If we live in Boston, it will be even more appealing, since we'll be escaping the barren winter of Massachusetts for the barren, but warm, desert of Nevada.

Love That Dog and Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

I am not much of a book-written-in-verse fan. I read Out Of The Dust when it came out and if the story hadn't creeped me out so much, I probably still wouldn't have been a big fan since the blank verse just did not appeal to me. But I loved Love That Dog and Hate That Cat. They are terrific books even if you think you won't like a book written in poetry.

I fell in love with Sharon Creech when I listened to Walk Two Moons on CD two summers ago and these two books have renewed my fervent fandom.

Love That Dog is about Jack, whose teacher, Mrs. Stretchberry, introduces the class to some famous poems and has them write responses to it in blank verse and then write their own versions of the poems they've enjoyed. The whole book is Jack's responses to what they've read or listened to in class and sometimes his replies back to Mrs. Stretchberry's critiques and encouragement (which you never see, since this is only Jack's words in the book).

Jack really falls in love with Walter Dean Myers, particularly his poem "Love That Boy," and writes his own version called "Love That Dog," about his own dog, Sky, which turns out to be so much more than just a simple poem about a friendly dog.

Hate That Cat picks up the next school year where Mrs. Stretchberry is once again Jack's teacher and they focus again on poetry, beginning with some of the poems they'd studied the year before. "The wheelbarrow poem again?" Jack writes. "Did you forget we read it last year?"

He also talks about his Uncle Bill who thinks it's only real poetry if it rhymes and has long grand lines. William Carlos Williams' poems about wheelbarrows and plums are just crocks, in Uncle Bill's opinion.

This year they learn more about specific literary devices, like metaphor and simile and onomatopoeia and alliteration, and Jack begins working them into his own poems with varying degrees of success.

I laughed aloud when they read "Poem" by William Carlos Williams and Jack said, "The title is POEM (Is Mr. William Carlos Williams a little lazy?)."

I can't wait to share these books with my kids, introducing them to a grand variety of wonderful poems and poets, methods of writing, and literary devices. That makes them sound like they might be those horrible kinds of books that "disguise learning with a story" but are really painfully obvious. Creech's books are nothing of the sort - discussing onomatopoeia is completely natural in context and blends right into the story.

The original poems - by William Carlos Williams, Edgar Allen Poe, T. S. Elliot and others - are in the back of the books, so you can look at them for reference.

These are very quick reads - you can knock each volume out in an hour or less. And you should. They're worth every second.

Even if you don't like poetry, I think you'll love these books. Just read them.

Spring Break

I should have been heading to the airport to catch a plane to Phoenix in about three hours, but alas, Kayla's husband came down with the plague, forcing us to postpone the trip until April. Fortunately, I have more than enough to occupy my spring break, thanks to my local library, the Austin library system, Inter-library loan, UT's library, and the Notable Books library.


North of Beautiful
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The White Darkness
Taken by Storm
Impossible
The Outsiders
Dreamland
That Summer
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a Novel in Cartoons
Hate That Cat: A Novel
The Gollywhopper Games
Need
Ways to Live Forever
Fearless
Oh. My. Gods.
Anne of Avonlea DVD
What Would Emma Do?
Dead Until Dark
Nation CD
One Whole and Perfect Day
Kit's Wilderness
Suite Scarlett
The Writing Class
Saving Francesca
Kiss Me Kill Me
Princess of the Midnight Ball
Sloppy Firsts:
House, M.D. Season Three
How to Ruin My Teenage Life

And this doesn't even count the 17 books I currently have requests on. What do you have checked out from your library right now?

***************************

Thanks to Lisa for the inspiration

Who Gets a St. Patrick's Day Gift?

I've mentioned before what an excellent gift-giver my mom is and this year, for St. Patrick's Day/Easter, she did not disappoint.



Of course, she keeps raising the bar - how can this be topped next year?

Also, you'll notice that this is yet another day of jeans and a black shirt.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

8 out of 10: It's a beautifully-written book, but hard to read and not something everyone will have an interest in.

Laurie Halse Anderson shot to fame ten years ago with her book, Speak. It got a National Book Award nod and went on to be on basically every YA list that exists. Then, last fall, she wrote Chains about a slave girl during the Revolutionary War. It too got a National Book Award nomination and went on to win the Scott O'Dell award for historical fiction. In January, she received the Margaret A. Edwards award for lifetime contributions to children and young adult literature.

And now, in a week, out comes Wintergirls, a book with a million positive reviews already about two girls with eating disorders.

Laurie Halse Anderson is having a good year, is what I'm saying.

The book follows Lia who has been struggling with anorexia for years - she's been in and out of a hospital for treatment twice, but it's made no difference. She tabulates the calories of every item of food she eats (or even sees, for that matter). She tinkers with the scale and weighs herself down with quarters to keep her parents from knowing how much weight she is still losing. She's moved out of her mom's house (her mom is a doctor) and in with her dad and step-mom who she thinks she can more easily convince that everything is okay.

Her friend, Cassie, has just died in a motel somewhere nearby of unknown causes. Just before she died, she called Lia thirty-three times. Lia never answered; they hadn't spoken in five months.

It turns out that several years earlier Lia had bet Cassie that she could be thinner and the two had been competing for that goal since then, Cassie via bulimia and Lia through anorexia.

Even Cassie's terrible death - alone, in a horrible old motel - isn't enough to stop Lia though, who continues to push her weight downward. But now Cassie is haunting her and, unlike Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol trying to get Scrooge to learn from Jacob's mistakes, Cassie is pushing her to continue her downward spiral into certain death by starvation, coaxing her to keep losing weight, keep lying, cheating and doing whatever she needs to do in order to avoid intervention.

It's tempting to say something like "I don't even need to say how great a writer Laurie Halse Anderson is. You don't win all those awards if you aren't a good writer." Except that many people who aren't really that great of writers do win all sorts of awards and get a lot of praise and popularity. So it should be said - she is a terrific writer, so good you almost don't even notice, until you realize you've forgotten you're reading; you think you're living the story yourself.

At the same time, I kept thinking as I read this book, "Who is this for?" It seems like if you suffered from these disorders, this book wouldn't tell you anything new. And if you're a parent or a friend, this book seems to really say "You can't do anything about it until they are ready - on their own - to choose health over being 85 pounds."

There were some parts (mostly the cutting parts), that I had to just skim because it was really too awful for me to read.

It's weird to read a book that you think is beautiful and brilliantly-written, and yet you still hesitate to recommend. It just really is not a book for everyone, but if the topic is something you can deal with or have an interest in, you shouldn't miss it.

*****************************************************************

Thanks to Kelly for loaning me her advanced copy of this book.

Why This is Not a Fashion Blog

Merrick has started doing a nifty little side-bar feature on her blog with a picture of what she wears every day. She'd asked me about doing it with her, but I said no because I guarantee I would fail miserably at taking AND uploading a picture of myself every day. I know myself.

Also, there is the teeny problem that I do not wear new cool clothing every day. Most days I look astonishingly similar to this:

I took this picture last Thursday night. Earlier in the day (that is, the part of the day before the temperature rose to 80 degrees), I had a bright green sweater on over the top. Embarrassingly, I had worn exactly that same outfit on Monday. Same shoes, same jeans, same shirt, same sweater, same hair.

In my defense, I did laundry on Wednesday night, so the shirt and jeans were clean again and just begging to be worn.

Also, except for going to work, I don't really do any of the same things on Monday as I do on Thursday (I totally did this same thing in college - wearing different things MWF and then repeating on TTh). And at work, it's mostly technology guys (if I see anyone, since I generally sit in my cube and see nothing but my computer), so I didn't figure THEY'D notice.

Anyway, that is why I'm not posting pictures of what I'm wearing. It would shock you to know just how many variations on black shirts and jeans I can wear. Or maybe it wouldn't.

Smugness

A few weeks ago, my wise sister Merrick decided to take my advice and read The Hunger Games.

Sadly, Merrick lives in Provo, where the public library appears to be frequented by nothing but crazed YA readers. I'd noticed the same thing when I lived there while I attended BYU and was placing items on hold so frequently that I memorized my library card number. When Merrick placed a hold for The Hunger Games, she was number 85 in line. THAT is crazy.

I somehow had the good fortunate to live only a few blocks away from a library that has both a very good teen collection and an apparently small YA reader group, leaving me the leading role of crazed YA reader.

I looked, just now, and saw that The Hunger Games has one request.

Graceling, which had 30 holds on it in Provo, has none at my library. None.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks has 11 requests in Provo. It has none at my library.

Twilight has three holds here (and eight copies), while there are five requests for it in Provo, even with 25 copies (and that doesn't include the two complete book club sets of it they own too). Fortunately I'll never have any need to check Twilight out of the public library, since Ralphie is my own personal Stephenie Meyer library.

Ah, it's good to live here.

This post also probably assures me a library in Boston with no teen collection whatsoever. Or waits of over a year to get any book ever. Or, you know, a CHARGE to even get on the wait list.

Weekend Snippets

This weekend Bart and I were "platoon leaders" at our stake's youth conference (basically a weekend of activities for LDS youth, some spiritual and some just for fun). We had a great time and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know some of the teenagers I hadn't ever met before.

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As happens to me so often, most of the teenagers we were with didn't know I was a leader and thought I was one of them. We were at a center for sick children doing some various labor yesterday morning, and about six of us were in the side yard, sanding down a bunch of child-sized tables and chairs and then staining them. Toward the end, a man came out and asked who the platoon leaders were so he could give us some further instructions about lunch and so on.

I told him I was, and after he'd delivered his message and left, one of the boys - age 14 or 15 - turned to me with his jaw hanging open and said, "I had no idea you were one of the leaders. You look like a kid!"

And then he turned to Bart and asked, "Didn't you think she was one of the kids when you got here??!!???" Imagine his surprise when Bart told him that, no, he hadn't thought I was one of the kids since he was, you know, married to me. This time, the poor kid's jaw was scraping the pavement as he whirled back to me, "You're MARRIED???"

Story of my life.

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One of the activities was a team-building relay course. Our team was matched against another team, both of which had 11 kids, leaving one person from each team without a partner. Each group had a married couple acting as platoon leaders and the wife (R) leading the opposing teams was a really really cute girl about my age with long dark hair. She looked like a movie star even in rolled-up jeans and one of the large conference t-shirts.

They asked me to team up with the kid left without a partner in our group and they asked R to partner with the lone kid on her team, which we both did. We were both the last pair on our team, so we had about fifteen minutes to stand there while the other five teams completed the relay.

The first part of the relay was a three-legged race, so we were all tied up in preparation for that. The boy paired with R, though, took the opportunity to spend the whole fifteen minutes we were standing there to keep his arm around R the entire time, even though there was no actual reason to do so since they were just standing there. Every time I looked over at them, he just casually had his arm around her shoulders, looking like it was the best part of the whole weekend (or maybe his life) for him. I'm guessing he was pretending not to know that her husband was standing just three yards behind, watching the whole relay, and probably as amused as I was.

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Part of the relay course consisted of putting your forehead on the end of a baseball bat standing on end and spinning around 12 times, before running across the length of the soccer field. After I did it, I was so dizzy that at first I couldn't even tell which way I was supposed to run and the ground kept bucking in front of me, but I finally found the white painted line and started running along it.

Except it was almost impossible for me to follow the line, and I found myself running almost forty-five degrees away from it.

The leader who was manning the baseball bats kept shouting, "Follow the line! Follow the line!" but I just could not. I tried to lean against the way I was straying, but that only made me zig-zag back and forth as if I was totally drunk.

Better, though, than my friend who ran about two steps and fell right over. She hopped back up, determined to make up the distance between her team and the other team, took another step and fell over again.

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It was a phenomenal time, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'd rather not, however, have the large set of bruises I have on the inside of my knee from the too-tight band we used to tie our legs together for the three legged race.

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

9 out of 10: Jellicoe Road is everything I could want in a book - mystery, great characters, a little romance, a strong ending. The slow start may put some readers off, but it was well-worth it for me.

I have to admit, I've been less than impressed with some of the Printz books in the past. A few, yes, have been terrific, but several of them have been just a little much (or little) for me.

When Jellicoe Road won the Printz award this year, I knew I planned to read it, but I still had doubts. Then I started seeing positive reviews for it pop up all over the Internet and I though just maybe it would be terrific. Then - proving once again that the personal recommendation is strongest - Elizabeth emailed me to ask if I'd read it and used the words "I really really really really loved it." We've talked books enough that I know we have a lot of overlapping book love, and I vowed to move it to the top of my pile (it was already sitting in my library book basket).

I'd been warned it was a slow start, but really I thought it was more confusing than slow. There are a lot of characters and I kept having to flip back to the beginning to figure out who people were. But, spurred on by the many good things I'd heard about it, I just dealt with it and moved forward. And you should too.

Anyway, with that unconscionably long introduction, here's the plot:

Taylor is an 18 year old girl at a boarding school near the Jellicoe Road (this all takes place in Austrialia - the author is Austrialian, so this makes sense). Nearby is a town and they call the students who go to the local high school the "Townies." Every school year, a group of cadets come and camp/live on some adjacent property.

There's a years-old war going on between the three groups; younger kids get kidnapped, supplies are stolen, and property is taken control of (bike paths, a garage, a club house, etc). And of course, people from the various groups secretly date each other. Of course.

Taylor has a lot of things going on besides the war - her mom left her in the town when she was young and she's never heard from her again, and her surrogate mother, Hannah, has disappeared (perhaps murdered by the serial killer who has been picking off victims for nearly two decades in the area). Three years earlier, Taylor ran away in an attempt to find her mother and was accompanied on the journey by a runaway cadet, Jonah, who, after three days, called the leader of his group who came and retrieved them both. Needless to say, she's gota lot on her mind.

Then, when the school year starts up again, she's put in charge of her school's fight in the war. She doesn't particularly want it, but she's not ready to give it up to the other Year Eleven kids who are trying to take it over. And worse, Jonah, the cadet who betrayed her, is the leader of the cadets this year.

Hannah, before she disappeared, had been writing a manuscript of some sort about five kids who lived on the Jellicoe Road two decades earlier. Taylor has peeked at the manuscript from time to time and realized it's not actually in order - it just kind of jumps around.

The book itself switches between Taylor's story and the story of the five kids (which is not in order in the book either). It's these two narratives, Taylor's full of flashbacks and the current war, and the five kids story, not in any apparent order, that makes this book slow-going in the beginning.

How do they connect? What happened to Taylor's mother? Where is Hannah? Who are these five kids? Why did Jonah cut their journey short?

It's a long book (over four hundred pages) and it comes together slowly, but so perfectly that I can't bring myself to return it to the library without rereading the second half.

On the other hand, Kelly, a friend of mine from the iSchool and whose reading tastes generally align very closely with mine, didn't really care for it, so I know it's not a book that will appeal to everyone.

For me, though, it was a complete gem. If you're willing to just trust the author to make it worth your while, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Reserve

There are a few various suburbs in Boston we've been looking into, and in my normal nerdy way, I was looking up the libraries in those areas to see their collections and circulation policies.

And one of them charges THIRTY cents to reserve an item.

I reserve a lot of books. I currently have 10 items requested from three different libraries.

Strike that suburb right off our list. I cannot live somewhere that charges me to reserve books.

Fly, You Fools

One of my goals for 2009 was to get in better shape. Part of that was to be able to run 3 miles by the end of February.

The end of February has come and gone and I haven't run three miles, but I am consistently running two miles three times a week, and I'm extremely happy about it. For now, I'm going to stay there, since it takes about the amount of time I want to spend running and also more than that starts to get boring. Maybe one of these days I'll try out three, but for right now, two consecutive miles feels like a big success to me.

A few things have made a difference for me, I think.

First off, I'm taking my iron pills virtually every day. I have one bottle at work and one at home, so it's easy for me to take them (weekends are the hardest for me to remember). This alone has changed everything. I no longer feel my lungs trying to burst open in my chest and I can't remember the last time I had a fainting spell.

I'm also getting a consistent seven hours of sleep a night and going to bed at a close to normal time on the weekends as well. I hate it when we stay up until two a.m. on Friday or Saturday nights. Yuck.

I'm also eating better than I have in years. I have a banana/blueberry/oat muffin every morning for breakfast and sometimes a fruit and yogurt smoothie to go along with it. Eating breakfast every single day is a big change for me (I haven't eaten breakfast most days since I was a sophomore in high school).

We also went off fast food this year, which means it is absolutely crucial that we have lunches packed for our ten or more hour days on campus and at work. I've made a big effort to cut down the carbs in our lunches and increase the protein-rich items without making it difficult to assemble. Right now it is generally a yogurt, string or Laughing Cow cheese, apples, carrots, pretzels, hummus, peanut butter sandwich, and a granola bar. Quick and delicious.

I feel stronger and better than I have in ages. I can run. This feels as miraculous to me as flying.

Free Things I Cannot Get Behind

As it's been approximately ten seconds since I last ranted on about something that really really bothers me, I figured it might be time to share a new one.

I am all for giveaways on blogs. Somehow I even seem to have fairly good luck with them, having won granola bars, an iTunes gift card, a necklace, a tank top, a purse, an amazon gift certificate and a number of books.

So yes, I'm certainly not complaining about the giveaways. What I am complaining about however, is when a giveaway requires you to post about the giveaway in order to be entered. You can't just comment, you have to tell everyone else who reads your blog about it.

(That Pay It Forward giveaway is totally excluded from this - I have no issues with that kind of thing (although I will never comment on them because I know I would stress about what to giveaway for 364 days and then finally send it out on the 365th day. Also, it would probably be an old dried-out muffin, so you wouldn't want it anyway)).

No, my ire is directed toward the giveaways where, in order to be entered, you have to post a link to THEIR giveaway on your own blog.

I don't mind at all if you can get extra entries for doing those things, but when the only way to be entered at all is to post about it, I am seriously annoyed. What happened to a comment being good enough? What about a contest being mainly for your normal readers, not just the ones who came on by for a chance to win and will never ever return?

I understand that you want some publicity in return for giving away stuff. But I also have zero desire to clog up my blog with a bunch of notices about "hey, look a giveaway at a random person's blog who you don't read and I don't actually read either. Um, that's all."

But then, maybe I'm just a total blog giveaway snob, like I'm a snob about so many other meaningless things.

Extra Bonus Sunday Breakfast

New favorite muffins in the whole wide world which I've made two weeks in a row and which we've eaten every day for breakfast. I will be making another batch tonight for this coming week. And we shall all rejoice.

Banana-Blueberry Muffins

• 1 cup wheat flour
  
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup oats blended in blender or food processor until more like flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 ripe bananas
  
• 1/3 cup reduced-fat (2 percent) milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup frozen blueberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease muffin pan. In a bowl, whisk together flour, wheat germ/oat flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugars with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. In another bowl, mash bananas with a fork (you should have 3/4 cup); stir in milk and vanilla.
3. With mixer on low, alternately add flour mixture and banana mixture to butter mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until combined. Fold in frozen blueberries.
4. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake until the tops of the muffins spring back when pressed gently, 25 to 28 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. Let cool in pan 10 minutes; transfer muffins to a rack to cool 10 minutes more.

From Everyday Food, pretty much my favorite recipe source of all time