Book Review: "Why We Took the Car" by Wolfgang Herrndorf

One thing I remember vividly my high school years is being one of THOSE kids. The kid that, no matter how small my class size (one year there were only about 25 of us) I didn’t get invited to anything. I can remember thinking why, if there were only 25 kids in my grade, I didn’t get invited to things. Freshman Mike Klingenberg is also one of those kids, which is one reason I love him so much. The other reason is his family is twisted that at one point he ended up with the nickname Psycho. I originally checked out “Why We Took the Car” by Wolfgang Herrndorf because European authors tend to be a little odd and who doesn’t love a good car-stealing joy ride? It’s a lot cooler and more interesting than just that, though, and has managed to become one of my fave books of this year. 

Summer break is supposed to awesome, filled with all sorts of wild and fun things. Unfortunately, Mike’s mom just went back to her spa (a.k.a. rehab), his dad took off for two weeks with his hot assistant (a.k.a. mistress), and Tatiana (a.k.a. Mike’s massive crush) didn’t invite him to her birthday party. Out of nowhere the weird new Russian student, Tschick, decides he and Mike should be friends and this is where the car-stealing joy ride comes in. They have $200, a barely functioning Lada, and no idea where they’re going; all they know is that they need to do something amazing and interesting and now’s the time to do it. The rest of the book is filled with odd balls, a random romance, two car crashes, a crazy man with a shotgun, and several run-ins with the police.

Book Review: Yay Classics!

The amazing thing about classics is how they manage to survive decade to decade. Seriously, how many things that were popular 10 years ago are still popular? (Not like One Direction popular but still being read regularly.) Barely anything. And some classic books are decades or centuries old! How great must a book be if it can still be so great years and thousands of other books later that you read it and love it? I also have the benefit of being an old fart so some classics I was lucky enough to have read when I was young, before they became classics. So, I'm going review some classics. And because this month is LGBT History Month, I'm going to give you some great LGBT classic books.

I am large, I contain multitudes

It's hard to describe Marcus Sedgwick's "Midwinterblood" in any other terms other than possibly one of the most amazing books I've read in a long time. Pardon me for being blunt. I tried coming up with some sort of cute/interesting intro to lead up to my review but nothing seemed to fit. There is absolutely no way to introduce it outside of it being amazing. At this point I'm not even sure how to describe the plot of the book and what happens without spoiling massive quantities of it; everything is connected to everything else in some deep way. The best way to describe it would be with a small quote from the book:

It cannot be... that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely? That we are not just one, but a multitude. (p. 250)

So it is that on a small Scandavian island where the mythical Dracula orchid grows, Eric and Merle, two souls in love, find then lose each other over and over and over again. Seven different stories weave together their tale of love surviving through the ages, through vampires and magic and war, going back to a time unrecorded by history. Only at the very end does the whole story become completely clear.  Only then do you see the end that is really the beginning.

~The Stacked Librarian

P.S. The title of the blog post is a Walt Whitman quote. It's from "Song of Myself." If you like Whitman, definitely read this book!

Comics by Girls for Girls

Let's just take a moment to celebrate some of the comics written by women, shall we?  They're awesome and deserve some recognition.  (Hooray for fully-fledged characters in realistically propotioned bodies!)  Some of my favorite graphic novels are:

The Plain Janes and Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci.  When Jane moves to suburbia, she decides to not make friends with the popular girls and instead befriends the Janes.  They soon call themselves the P.L.A.I.N. Janes and set out to make guerrilla art throughout their town.  In the sequel, Janes in Love, the Janes fall in love.  But nothing ever goes smoothly in the course of true love. 

Mercury by Hope Larson.  Josey lives in Nova Scotia in 1859.  Tara lives in Nova Scotia today.  These two girls' stories are intertwined by magic, betrayal, buried treasure, and first loves.  As much as I want to tell you more, I don't want to give anything away, either. 

Token by Alisa Kwitney and Joelle Jones.  Her dad's in love with his secretary with no time for her and high school sucks, so Shira starts shoplifting.  When she gets caught by a Spanish boy, they become friends and then more.  The art here is fun - I love the facial expressions on Shira's grandma and her best friend Minerva. 

Emiko Superstar by Mariko Tamaki.  Emi is facing the most boring summer of her teen life until she goes to the Freak Show, an underground performance art venue.  Emi falls in love with the idea of performing, but there's just one problem: she doesn't have a talent.  Wanting to be famous, she steals something she shouldn't.  And then things get weird.  Well, weirder.

Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks.  Maggie's starting high school after being homeschooled.  She's nervous, but she has her big brothers to watch out for her.  And a ghost that follows her.  Not everything is spelled out in this graphic novel, so take your time, enjoy the art, and don't be afraid to reread it. 

Pick one up and check it out! 

~ Book Ninja

Tucson Festival of Books Author Spotlight: A. S. King

Some authors find their groove and stay there--think Meyer (vampires), Rowling (wizards) or Paolini (dragons).  If you like their stuff you are set, unless they crash and burn after a few books!  A. S. King is definitely "groovy", but don't try to pin her down.  Since I can't reduce her books to one word, I will have to try two:  reincarnation and pirates, death and justice, bullying and Vietnam, and sexuality and fear.  And by all accounts, her new book coming out in October 2013, Reality Boy, is about reality tv show child stars and runaways.  Okay, I'm cheating a bit there but you get the idea!  What she lacks in consistency, however, she more than makes up for in ingenuity, and that is a rare talent indeed.

Middle School Mayhem

I read so many books that sometimes it's really hard to think about what to write about for this blog; other times, the universe just seems to pull out a topic and advertise it in neon lights. With arrows. And a fog horn. I was talking with a middle school teacher the other day and she was saying how there are so few good books for middle school students. My library is also currently working on a program called Middle School Mayhem. So obviously my post needs to be some of my TOP middle school reads. Without further ado, my fave middle school reads:

Advice to my Younger Self

Wouldn't it be great if you could warn your younger self against some of the really dumb choices you've made? In Gimme a Call, by Sarah Mlynowski, one girl gets that chance.

When high school senior Devi Banks drops her phone in the fountain at the mall, suddenly she finds that it will only call to one number--her freshman self. The first thing she does is to warn Younger Devi not to date Bryan, the boy who's just cruelly broken Older Devi's heart. She follows that up with all the things she wishes she'd done so she won't end up where she is--friendless, loveless, and about to go to a really bad college.

But Younger Devi doesn't understand why she has to study harder, join a million clubs, give weird advice to her friends, and most of all, ignore sweet and cool Bryan who really seems to like her. As she follows a  torrent of confusing advice from her older self, both girls find their lives changing around them. But are these lives the ones they really want?

Funny and a little brain-bending, this is a book for anybody who's ever believed that teenagers don't have regrets, and anybody who knows differently.

The Prince of Mist

After the Carver family moves from the city to a coastal area they encounter some mysterious happenings at their new home. There are strange stones, a graveyard and a creepy clown.  An old sunken ship off shore mysteriously reappears. An old man tells Max and Alicia an old story of revenge and how he sees life in three stages.  The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon takes place during wartime and starts out a little slow but soon builds up to be more frightening than I anticipated and I wanted to get to the end quickly.   I listened to the downloaded audio version from the library catalog and it had some wonderful sound effects such as crashing storms and ghostly sounds.  This added to the eerie and creepy factor of the book.  Instead of listening to the final chapters I read them and enjoyed the ending.