Books read in November 2014

This month’s theme:  books that did not tidy up the story before ending, thus leaving me grumpily anticipating the sequel.

Winners this month:
Picture.  Nothing wowed me.
Middle Readers:  Greenglass House, Ambassador
YA: Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, Girls Like Us, Vango, 100 Sideways Miles, Hold Me Closer Necromancer, Necromancing the Stone.  (And yes, I just listed every single YA book I read this month as recommended.  Because they were all awesome.  It was a very good YA month.  If you are going to just pick one I would go with either Glory O’Brien, or 100 Sideways Miles)
YA nonfiction:  Dreaming in Indian
Grownup nonfiction: Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher.

Picture
Have you heard the nesting bird
Gray/Pak
Read for librarian book group
This is your book if you ever want to read a lot of bird calls out loud.

The Princess in Black
Hale, Hale & Pham
Read for librarian book group
Beginning chapter book for princesses who sometimes like to wear black and save the day.

Middle Readers
Greenglass House
Kate Milford
Read for librarian book group
Very thick, which bugged because it was in the company of other very long middle readers on the reading list.  However, unlike many of its contemporaries, this one was good.  Great for anyone who likes to imagine the fun they would have if their family owned a hotel so remote it needs a funicular to get to.  Mysterious visitors appear, stories are told, things happen.  It reminded me of a favorite from my youth, The Westing Game.  Very well done.

Ambassador
William Alexander
Read for librarian book group
Yeah, so this was an excellent half of a book.  I was all in for the whole thing, which is only part of the story.  My number one rule of writing a series?  Each book must stand on its own, with the successor being a nice surprise.  You can’t just leave major plot lines dangling and call it good.

When he publishes the rest of the story, I will be interested to see how our main character balances being the Earth’s ambassador to the universe’s diplomatic corps and see what happens with his mother and father and their impending deportation for being illegal aliens.

Get it?  Aliens/Aliens?  Very clever, that Mr. Alexander.  If only he had finished his book.

Young Adult
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future
A.S. King
Read for Mock Printz
Super fabulous feminist-forward novel of a girl just graduating from high school.  She’s struggling with a lot of things: the continuing ramifications of her mother’s suicide when she was four, her best friend’s distraction by a relationship, her father’s ongoing depression.  Oh, and thanks to drinking the remains of a bat (long story) she can see the future.

I was underwhelmed by King’s previous novel Ask the Passengers, and was ready to be similarly underwhelmed by this.  But I loved it, from the strong main character, the conundrum of what to do with her life, and the expert weaving of all the future sci-fi stuff.  Recommended.

Also?  Great title, no?

Girls Like Us
Gail Giles
Read for librarian book group
Were this not on my reading list, I would not have read it, being one of those assholes who isn’t interested in the lives of Special Education students.  And that’s why reading lists are great.  This was a quick read featuring memorable characters and a very solid story. Recommended.

Vango
Timothee De Fombelle
Read for librarian book group
Translated from the French, so I’m not sure if it’s a French thing to not really wrap up the book.  Although William Alexander didn’t bother to do so in Ambassador, so maybe it’s this year’s new thing.

Anyway!  Until the end, which seems to be more of a pause, this was a classic rip-roaring adventure story with our young hero a boy with a mysterious past, people chasing him, a love interest with a love of fast cars, cool 1930s things like Zeppelins,  chase and fight scenes, and shadowy figures.  I really liked it a lot.

100 Sideways Miles
Andrew Smith
Read for librarian book group
Packed full of the hilarious teenage boy humor that I’ve come to love in Andrew Smith’s work and was a great read.  It was good enough that part of it was read aloud to the boyfriend, who laughed gleefully. Great boy friendship, great differing readiness for sexual activity, great story in general.

Hold me Closer, Necromancer
Lish McBride
Set in Seattle, the story of a college dropout who discovers he just happens to have powers to bring things dead things to life.  This is troublesome, and not only because who wants to reanimate the dead?  There’s this already established necromancer, who isn’t too thrilled to discover someone with the same powers.  Luckily, our hero has an excellent group of friends to help him with all this new-found stuff.  Great fun.

Necromancing the Stone
Lish McBride
I had this book on hold before I was done with its predecessor.  Because Lish McBride can write.  More necromancing powers, more friends, more trouble.  Just as much fun as the first.

Young Adult Nonfiction
Dreaming in Indian
Charleyboy/Leaterdale
Read for librarian book group
Contemporary Native American Indian youth talk about what it is to be a contemporary Indian youth.  Uneven in tone, but I liked it for that.

Tomboy
Liz Prince
Read for librarian book group
Graphic novel memoir about a girl who only wants to dress like a boy.  And people have a lot of problems with that.

Grownup Fiction
Hmmm.  Apparently none.

Grownup Nonfiction
Stieglitz: Camera Work
Taschen
This book wasn’t exactly what I thought I was getting, being a compiling of the photography magazine Alfred Stieglitz produced in the early 20th century.  Thus, it featured many different photographers, not just Stieglitz.  There was also a very wordy essay (published in three different languages!) to read.  It did give me the names of a few more photographers to investigate, so that was good.

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
Timothy Egan
Read for Kenton Library Book Group.
A long and engrossing book about the dude who took pretty much every Native American Indian portrait we think of as classic.  For instance, the image of Chief Joseph I grew up with?  That was an Edward  Curtis.  Egan’s not overly (or at all) critical of Curtis asking the Indians to pose in traditional gear, which I know a lot of people have a problem with.  Instead, he focuses on Curtis’s dedication/obsession with trying to record as much of native culture and customs as he possibly could, before they became extinct.  In doing so he paints a portrait of a talented man never appreciated in his time.

Overall, a pretty depressing book, but well written and a good read.

Three sentence movie reviews: Mala Noche

A special showing with Walt Curtis in the audience and answering questions after, so this was a treat.  I love the attention to detail in this movie, the threadbare shirt, the blinking light in the kitchen, the signs in the store.  Someday I’d like to do a compare/contrast of the same streets today.

Cost:  $4.00
Where watched:  5th Avenue Cinemas.  (My first visit!  They had free popcorn!)

Poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1988/mala_noche.html

5th Ave Cinema

Despite living downtown and in close-in Southwest for a number of years before I moved to North Portland, I never made it to 5th Avenue Cinemas.  This is the movie theater on the PSU campus that I’m guessing is run by students.  They show an eclectic mix of films (aside from Mala Noche, Gremlens was playing) weekly on Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday afternoons.  Their windows display the films screened during the quarter.

A display in the theater.

The lobby.  When you pay your admission, you get free popcorn!  There are also drinks and candy for sale.

A peek at the screen.

Should you need to take notes, the chairs have desks.

This was a special screening with special people in attendance. There’s Walt Curtis on the left, with Satryicon bouncer Bruno and the nice guy who introduced them.  Walt Curtis wrote the chapbook that became the movie Mala Noche.  I’m unclear why Bruno was there.  You can read an interview that the Willamette Week did with Mr. Curtis by clicking here.  The article pretty much accurately captures what it was like during the question and answer session after the movie.

Four hours and I’m done. The making of Jalie 2920

Modern Domestic was having a sale and I wandered down and came home with a pattern and some fabric.  I’m after leggings that actually are a correct fit.  Ones that don’t bunch up at the ankle. And, with this pattern, if I want to channel my 80s self and make stirrup tights, I now can.  (I do not want to do this, but still.)

Here’s the mini-skirt fabric. I like it because it looks like math and the planets.

Here is my new elevated cutting table.  Those are Ikea bed risers (which sadly, they no longer produce) and the legging material laid out on my table.

There is not enough material.  
I later figured out that I had extended the pattern too far and should have kept it at its original length. So it was fine.
The material itself is this great Eileen Fisher four-way stretch fabric. It feels great and feels like it will last a very long time.  
Cutting out the skirt.  
And the finished product.  
The instructions for the skirt have a typo in them, but I did okay.  Also, I would suggest marking the leggings (I used masking tape and a ball point pen) with which is the back seam and which is the front seam.  Once you sew them together it becomes unclear which is the back and which is the front.  I also sewed a bit of ribbon in the back of both the skirt and the leggings so I could identify the back.

Three sentence movie reviews: Frozen

It’s too bad that children totally took over “Let It Go” and drove their parents crazy with their repeated singing, because in context, that song is an incredible show stopper.  Overall, this was a Disney film that hit every Disney Animated Film requirement in a pleasing fashion.  I did think a certain character’s sudden transformation from good to bad was rather abrupt, but otherwise, this was a great animated classic.

Cost: free from library
Where watched:  at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/frozen.html

Three sentence movie reviews: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

A great recommendation from Filmspotting, this is an uneven, yet very fun trip back to the 80s and features a very young Diane Lane and Laura Dern.  Perfect for its all-girl punk-rock exploits and interesting commentary about music, women, and women in music.  The music was good too.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_and_Gentlemen,_The_Fabulous_Stains

Not quite what the headline writer was going for.

I picture Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, resplendent in their explorer’s gear, sitting in front of a computer with worried expressions.  What’s this box? It’s so bright and shiny. It’s a web? Webs are much sturdier now than they used to be.  Have spiders gotten strong? 

(But really it’s a story about Lewis and Clark college and their difficulties with Yik Yak.)