Book Review: Rigoberto Gonzalez & Benjamin Alire Saenz

Oh.  My.  Goddess!  The Tucson Festival of Books is right around the corner, and I’m getting excited about the Library’s participation, including my role as a moderator!  I’m honored to be hosting the program “Latino Writers in Conversation” with award-winning authors Rigoberto González and Benjamin Alire Sáenz, who will discuss their work, lives, and cultural identities.

Rigoberto González is the author of the Mariposa Club trilogy (the third installment, Mariposa U, will be published this year), which has some of the most hilarious characters.  Ever!  The Fierce Foursome—Maui, Trini, Isaac, and Liberace – are determined to make their own permanent mark during their last year at school by creating Caliente Valley High’s very first LGBT club, The Mariposa Club.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz is the author of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which instantly became my favorite new book of all time.  It is so beautifully written, it’s like poetry, but not the kind of boring, awful, class assignment poetry everyone pretends to like, but the kind of poetry that really moves and amazes you!  I almost did not want it to end, except, of course, I wanted to know how it ended…

This blog is from Toby Wehner, Library Associate at Joel D. Valdez Main Library.  You may see him in his tie-dyed shirts and rainbow sneakers on the Bookbike en route to Wingspan’s EON Youth Group for a monthly visit.

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!

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.

The Blue Pill? or the Red Pill?

What if you could change something fundamental about yourself with one little pill? People take medication for anxiety, for ADHD, for allergies, and that's just the A's. These are all pharmaceuticals that make your life easier to live. Well, what if there was a drug that could turn you straight?

In Love Drugged, by James Klise, there is. Fifteen-year-old Jamie has been trying to think himself straight, without success. Then he meets Celia. She's cool and funny and smart and beautiful, and he genuinely likes her . . . just not in that way. But he feels like he should, so when he discovers that her scientist father is developing a drug called Rehomoline, he thinks it's the answer to all his problems.

But can any pill, no matter how advanced, change something so fundamental? And even if it can, is Jamie going to like the person he becomes after taking the pill?

Edgy Reads

I was going to do a best-of-the-year post, but when I looked back at the teen books I read in 2011, I realized that most had something in common: they were pretty dark and disturbing. Dark content in YA literature got a lot of press this year, but in the end, it's a personal decision. If you're searching for books that push the envelope and give you that unsettled, is-this-really-okay-to-read feeling, give these a shot!

• After by Amy Efaw is the raw, unflinching story of the person behind the headlines:  Devon did something terrible, something so bad she can't even quite remember or believe it, even in her cell in juvie, where she has all the time in the world to reflect.

Project Costume Designer

Now that zombie season has officially ended I can actually start reading books that don't give me dreams involving being trapped in libraries & eating brains. Interestingly enough, I suddenly discovered I had started reading the girliest books possible: ones where fashion is practically it's own seperate character. I'm chalking this up to some sort of mild post-zombie apocalypse shock. The cool thing about these three books -- "Freak Show," "Lola and the Boy Next Door," and "Hollywood Nobody" -- is that the fashion isn't some magazine's idea of what'll be cool next year. Instead, it's all about declaring yourself awesome and wearing whatever makes you happiest, even if it's a mermaid outfit complete with Cheerio suction cups on your face.