Tag: books

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.

VACATION!  I had one.  I read  a lot.

This month’s highlights:

Picture:  The Right Word, The Farmer and the Clown, Viva Frida.  (It was a good picture book month)

Middle Readers: Sisters

YA:  The Story of Owen, Firebug.  Both are really excellent quasi-fantasy-but-not-in-the-lame-way books. (Where She Went is good, but I’ve already read that)

Grownup Fiction: Work Song

Grownup Non:  In the American West, the Eugene Atget book.

Picture Books
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus
Bryant/Sweet
Read for librarian book group
Picture book about the man who invented the Thesaurus.   Interesting story (did you know that the original versions of the Thesaurus weren’t alphabetical? They were arranged by idea.) and really fabulous illustrations.  I love this author/illustrator team.

The Farmer and the Clown
Marla Frazee
 Read for librarian book group
Worldless picture book that I enjoyed, and even laughed aloud at one point.  Although I’ve had a song from Oklahoma stuck in my head for days now. (Territory folks should stick together, territory folks should all be pals…)

Digby O’Day in the Fast Lane
Hughes/Vullamy
Read for librarian book group
Okay early reader.  I wasn’t a fan of the woman being spoiled and liking pink, though I’m certain spoiled women who also like pink exist.

Best observation made by person in librarian book group:  I feel like someone pulled out the manuscript  from 1952 from the cushions in their couch and published it.

Viva Frida
Yuyi Morales
Read for librarian book group
Beautiful picture book.  One I finished and thought, “I might buy this.”

Middle Readers
The Red Pencil
Andres Davis Pinkey
Read for librarian book group
Another tale told in free verse and yet another tale told in free verse that I found rather so-so.  None of the poems stood out on their own and I didn’t find the story as told, compelling.  The story itself was quite compelling, but the writing didn’t grab me.

Sisters
Raina Talgemeier
Read for librarian book group
Graphic novel that accurately captures that particular form of trapped feeling one gets when one has to continue living with one’s siblings, simply because they are siblings, even if they drive one crazy. Also great with portraying the awkwardness of transitions.

YA
The Story of Owen
E.K. Johnston
Read for Mock Printz
You know what sold me?  The first two paragraphs.  Here they are, so you can read for yourself:

Before the Thorskard came to Trondheim, we didn’t have a permanent dragon slayer.  When a dragon attacked, you had to petition town hall (assuming it wasn’t on fire), and they would send to Toronto (assuming the phone lines weren’t on fire) and Queen’s Park would send out one of the government dragon slayers (assuming nothing in Toronto was on fire). By the time the dragon slayer arrived, anything not already lit on fire in the original attack would be, and whether the dragon was eventually slayed or not, we’d be stuck with reconstruction. Again.

Needless to say, when it was announced that Lottie Thorskard was moving to town permanently, it was like freaking Mardi Gras.

Do you need more than Canadian dragon slayers, witty commentary, and a lively tone?  How about a female narrator who is intensely musical and thinks in symphonic tones, but is rather stunted when it comes to friendships?  How about fun retelling of history through the alternate reality of carbon-eating dragons?  How about  savvy commentary on all sorts of modern phenomena?  How about life as the nephew of the most famous Dragon Slayer in Canada?  How about a title that doesn’t really tell the whole truth of the story?

I’ve given you enough reasons to read this. Now go find a copy and read!

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ada Lavendar
Leslye Walton
Read for Mock Printz
I’ve read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the joke that goes with that title is that in Dave Eggers’s family they would always over exaggerate really mediocre things, lay the praise on thick.  Thus, a title mentioning both heartbreaking and genius was perceived by its own author to be a so-so piece of literature.

I do not think that Leslye Walton comes from the same school of thought.  I suspect that Walton thinks her book actually is full of the strange and beautiful sorrows of Ada Lavender.  However, what it is full of is a torpid plot that I don’t think ever really got going, magical realism done very badly, strange jumps in POV that I can’t figure out why they were ever acceptable.  Plus an eerily unfortunate plot device that is shared with a very popular Disney movie released just this year.

I don’t often find myself reading first novels and thinking, “whew!  This is very much a first novel!” but this was one of those times.  Each page I read made me want more than ever for it to be the last page.  However, I was tasked with reading to the end and read to the end I did.

Dirty Wings
Sarah McCarry
 Read for librarian book group
I never could quite put my finger on what made me uncomfortable in this book.  Both main characters were interesting, sympathetic and well written.  The plot was solid, if nerve-wracking.  I’m not sure, but maybe the woo-woo aspects didn’t work for me?

Interestingly, my copy of the book included the first chapter of the continuation of the story and I responded quite well to the switch in narrators.

Also, I’m not really seeing this is as retelling of Persephone.

Egg & Spoon
Gregory Maguire
Read for librarian book group
This book is a great example of an established author getting to do what no new author would be allowed to, namely natter on and on about things that are not vital to the plot.  His nattering, while well written, made this book a slog.  If moves were ever made about 13 year-old girls, this would make a fabulous film as the multitude of paragraphs of description could be absorbed by a few panning shots in each scene.  Fun story, fun growth of all, fun setting, just too much writing.  It was like being force-fed a delicious 10-layer cake.  A slice would have been quite satisfying enough.

Also, it didn’t work for me that Baba Yaga made references to things both in the future (Cheerios, etc) and her many amusing asides to historical figures/events had me wondering just why, exactly, this was published as a children’s book.

Isla and the Happily Ever After
Stephanie Perkins
I found the set up rather unbelievable (a US Senator sends his only son to an elite Paris boarding school for high school?) but enjoyable.  The Paris setting was very fun, the romance interesting and I though Perkins did a great job of capturing a very specific style of breakup.

Also, just so you don’t go pronouncing the main character’s name wrong like I did, it’s Eye-la. It derives from the word Island.

Where She Went
Gayle Forman
Having reread If I Stay in preparation for the movie, I needed to even things out and read the sequel.   I sped through it when I read it for the first time a year ago, so it was good to go back and catch details.  I really liked how the second half of the two-book series fleshed out the first one and tied everything up in a very nice way.

Firebug
Lish McBride
Read for librarian book group
Looking for a fun quick read with snortingly good humor sprinkled throughout?  Looking for an alternate world with fire starters and were-foxes and a dryad?  Looking for a magical mafia?  Looking for a quick and feisty plot?  This is your book.  It is a solidly really great read.

Grownup Fiction

Work Song
Ivan Doig
True confession time.  I’ve always stayed away from Ivan Doig because his last name made me think his books would be way too smart for me.  However, this came highly recommended by a book-reading friend (thanks Ben!) so I requested it from the library and opened the cover with much trepidation.

The verdict?  You shouldn’t judge an author by his last name.  This was a fun story set in Butte Montana just after WWI.  It’s full of all sorts of rollicking mining town details and has a gratifying plot that rolled right along.  I greatly enjoyed it and perhaps will be checking out more of Mr. Doig’s work.  

Grownup NonFiction

In the American West
Richard Avedon
Very large photos (maybe 12″ by 18″ inches?) of run-of-the-mill people living the “the west” in the late 70s/early 80s.  Simple portraits, great details.  Apparently when the photos were first shown, there was general hue and cry of outrage that “those people” were not the true westerners.  But they are and he captured them well: drifters, carnies, ranchers, coal miners, farmers, teenagers, mental patients, waitresses, what have you.

A really excellent book.

In Focus: Eugene Atget. Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum
Gordon Baldwin
I enjoyed this “In Focus Series” because it used the very accessible format of putting the photo on one page and an analysis on the facing page.  I learned a lot about Atget, who was a great photographer of buildings in early 20th century Paris.  He created these photos to sell to designers, painters, anyone who needed photos of buildings.

This month’s selection provides good examples of how to write children’s books in verse (Brown Girl Dreaming) and how NOT to write children’s books in verse (Miss Emily).

Top contenders:

Picture books: Nothing really blew me away, though all are fine.
Middle Readers:  El Deafo
YA: Brown Girl Dreaming
Grownup:  American Wife. (But I’ve been recommending this for years, so I assume y’all have read it by now.)
Nonfiction, children’s: Tiny Creatures
Nonfiction, grownup:  Bad Feminist, Many Are Called

Picture Books
 In New York
Marc Brown
Read for Librarian Book Group
Mostly I had the following sour grapes thought while reading this book:  “How nice that you found fame and fortune by creating Arthur and can afford to live in your lovely part of New York.”  But that’s just me.

Chicken Squad
Doreen Cronin
Read for Librarian Book Group
Amusing beginning reader.

Little Elliott, Big City
Mike Curato
Read for Librarian Book Group
Nice retro illustrations.
 
Middle Readers
Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere
Julie T. Lamana
Read for Librarian Book Group
Another forgettable/not right title (perhaps I should have a running list).  Forgettable title aside, I very much enjoyed this tale of Hurricane Katrina experienced by a 10-year-old.  It’s an interesting contrast to the other Hurricane Katrina book (Zane and the Hurricane) I read recently, and I thought this one was much more gritty and “real” in details.  I had trouble getting started, but once the hurricane got going, I wanted to keep reading.

Leroy Ninker Saddles Up
Kate DiCamillo
Read for Librarian Book Group
DiCamillo’s writing is good, but her illustrator is better.  Very fun story of a cowboy without a horse who acquires one.

*starred review*
 El Deafo
Cece Bell
Read for Librarian Book Group
Highly recommended.  The graphic novel story of how author Cece Bell lost most of her hearing and the way her hearing loss shaped her childhood.  Full of really fun and funny details and gently heartbreaking.

Through the Woods
Emily Carroll
Read for Librarian Book Group
Super awesome and creepy stories, richly illustrated.  I couldn’t read them before bed.

Miss Emily
Burleigh Muten, Matt Phelan
Read for Librarian Book Group
Rather twee and treacle-y story of Emily Dickinson having an adventure with some neighbor children.  It was written in verse.  I was not a fan.  The illustrations were disappointing too.
 
YA
*starred review*
Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
Read for Librarian Book Group
Books written in verse seem to be a thing now, but most of the stories could be told just as well if they weren’t written in verse.  Not this one.  The poetry could stand alone and the story that flowed from the verse was compelling.  Very well done.
 
Grownup
*starred review*
American Wife
Curtis Sittenfeld
Read for Kenton Library Book Group
This was a re-read for me and I loved it just as much as the first time I read it.  
Nonfiction, children’s
 *starred review*
Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes
Nicola Davis
Read for Librarian Book Group
I really loved the way this book talked about scale of things.  It was helpful to this reader who is much older than the intended audience.

Nonfiction, grownup

*starred review* 
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay
Some essays read like a bit too much like a comparative literature paper, but most are insightful and funny and manage to hit both high and low.  My favorite was “Typical First Year Professor.”

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Alexandra Fuller
Kenton Library Book Group
The story of a woman of English descent growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.  The writing was fine, the details were spectacular.  There were a lot of things to discuss at book group and it was the first book in a long time that we all liked.

50 Photographers You Should Know
Peter Stepan
I greatly enjoy seeing the works of good photographers and have decided to check out books of good photographs on a regular basis.  But which books?  Enter this handy guide to expose (hah!) me to many interesting photographers.  I especially loved the timeline feature.

Foodist
Darya Pino Rose
Pino Rose wants us to stop dieting and instead work on improving our food habits.  There is a lot of solid advice.

*starred review*
Many Are Called
Walker Evans
I didn’t even finish reading 50 Photographers You Should Know before I put this on hold. Evans concealed a camera in his coat and took surreptitious pictures on the New York City Subway during the late 30s and early 40s.   I loved seeing older women before plastic surgery became a thing and also the many hats people wore as a part of daily life.

There’s a lot of books listed here, most of the month was vacation for me.  And maybe also because I’m a compulsive reader.

Favorites:
Picture: nothing I was crazy about.
Middle reader:  West of the Moon
YA: Perfect Fifths (but only if you’ve read books 1-4 in the series).  If I Stay (which was a re-read) Noggin, which was bizzare and awesome.  Also the first 3/4 of Say What You Will.
Grownup:  Gone Girl.
Nonfiction:  The Family Romanov.

Picture Books

The Pilot and the Little Prince
Peter Sis
Read for Librarian Book Group
For some reason, there were three different levels (and fonts) of text on nearly every page in this book.  It was confusing and made the information very inaccessible.   Overall, a very frustrating book and one that people had trouble coming up with anything nice to say about it.

The Adventures of Beekle
Dan Santat
Read for Librarian Book Group
Cute story of Beekle, who is waiting to be someone’s imaginary friend.

Middle Readers

I Kill the Mockingbird
Paul Acampora
Read for Librarian Book Group
Solid (and short) tale of three friends who plan a gurulla campaign to get people to read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  Good adolescent transition (from eighth grade to high school) group of three friends novel.

Revolution
Deborah Wiles
Read for Librarian Book Group
A big book, but it turns out that most of it’s girth is due to pages that are mostly picture.  Interspersed with  history lessons is an interesting story of a white girl who witnesses Freedom Summer events in her own Mississippi town.  A solid historical fiction read, if reader can get past the number of pages.

West of the Moon
Margi Preus
Read for Librarian Book Group
Aside from being a beautiful book to look at, this is also one of my favorite books read this month.  Beautiful weaving of traditional Norwegian fairy tales with the narrative.  I also enjoyed the historical data in the afterward. 

Young Adult
Second Helpings
Megan McCafferty
We’re back again for another year with Jessica Darling, this time her senior year.  Will the push-pull with Marcus be resolved in a satisfactorily way? (Pre-reading)  I’m guessing no, because there are three more of these. (Post reading) Just as satisfying as the first book.

[I think at this point in the five-book series, the library starts shelving them in the adult fiction section, but I’m putting them here because we started out as YA]
Charmed Thirds
Megan McCafferty
Books three, four and five I read on vacation and they’ve all mostly blended.  McCafferty does a good job letting her characters grow up.  Sometimes the continued inclusion of high school acquaintances strains credibility, but otherwise this is a solid series.

Fourth Comings
Megan McCafferty
Books three, four and five I read on vacation and they’ve all mostly blended.  McCafferty does a good job letting her characters grow up.  Sometimes the continued inclusion of high school acquaintances strains credibility, but otherwise this is a solid series.

Perfect Fifths
Megan McCafferty
Books three, four and five I read on vacation and they’ve all mostly blended.  McCafferty does a good job letting her characters grow up.  Sometimes the continued inclusion of high school acquaintances strains credibility, but otherwise this is a solid series.

The fifth book had the advantage of being a book-length conversation between Marcus and Jessica.  It was the perfect payoff.

Say What You Will
Cammie McGovern
Ah yes, this book.  Which was so incredibly good. I particularly liked the slow build of friendship between Amy (born with cerebral palsy) and Matthew (currently pretending he doesn’t have a pretty extensive OCD problem).  I loved this book a lot (thanks Danielle!) and was excitedly telling people about it before I was done.  Which is a hazard sometimes, because books can turn on you.  This one did. It went on much too long with an entirely unbelievable and unnecessary plot development in the last third of the book.  However, there were so many good things about this book (it was funny, there was friendship and very complex social structures, good and bad times) I can’t not recommend it.

Noggin
John Corey Whaley
Read for Librarian Book Group
16 year old boy dying of cancer chooses to end his life early so his head can be frozen and attached to a better body when technology improves sometime far in the future. He’s thinking it will be 100 years or so, but when he comes back, only five years have passed.  Great conundrums throughout.  A solidly enjoyable read.

If I Stay
Gail Forman
Quick re-read before the movie viewing.  Still good.

This One Summer
Tamaki/Tamaki
Read for Librarian Book Group
Graphic novel written and illustrated by cousins about a girl and her summer at the lake with her family.  Packed with many telling details and a hilarious summer friend.

Grown Up Novels
The Chronology of Water
Lidia Yuknavitch
Read for Kenton Library book group.
Good writing, interesting story.  My edition came with an interview with the author which was enlightening.  Our paperback came with a modesty panel, although I didn’t realize until our discussion that’s what it was.  It was so well integrated into the design that I never noticed that there was a naked breast underneath.  I should tell you more about the book itself than the cover design and extras, but I’m feeling lazy.  Good writing, interesting story, like I led with.

Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
Expertly plotted suspenseful novel. I was hooked.  The diatribe about “cool girls” will stay with me for a very long time.

Nonfiction

The Family Romanov
Cadice Fleming
Read for Librarian Book Group
This was a very good book, an easily readable history of the last Czar of Russia and his family as well as the social and political developments which brought about the family’s end.  I enjoyed how so much history was imparted in a way that did not drag or bog down in details.  I came away from it thinking what a solid read it was.  Then we talked about it a few weeks later in book group and I remembered vividly so many scenes which caused me to revise my initial “very good” to “fantastic.”

Stubby the War Dog
Ann Bausum
Read for Librarian Book Group
World War I dog who becomes a mascot for his unit.  Manages to impart the horrors of war without scarring the children who will read this for either research or pleasure.  Good text-to-picture ratio and compelling story.

With only eight books read, this month, it’s clear summer projects have taken over.  I also enjoy how I read two of each category listed.  Symmetry appeals to me.

Recommended:
None of the middle readers blew me away.
YA:  Fly on the Wall (making this month three of E. Lockheart being on the top recommends list).
Adult Nonfiction: Wild
Adult Fiction: Landlines

Middle Reader
The Thickety
J. A. White
Read for Librarian Book Group
I wasn’t sucked into the world building of this world and thus never really took a liking to this book. It also did that thing that I hate where the book ends abruptly, trying to pull you into the sequel, rather than tying things up and getting you excited about what comes next.

The Great Greene Heist
Varian Johnson
Read for Librarian Book Group
This was hard to start, because of the constant references to this book’s predecessor, which I didn’t have time to track down and read, but once I let go of the fact I was reading the second book before the first, I completely enjoyed it.  It was not believable, in the super fun way that the Ocean’s 11 movies aren’t believable, but so, so fun.  Props for having so many distinct and well-crafted characters (and from so many different backgrounds).  A fun read for the middle school set.

Update!  The Librarians tell me there ISN’T a book before this one. What I attributed to references to the first book were actually a choice the author made to plop us down in the middle of the action and fill us in as the story continued.  Seeing as how I just assumed I had missed a book, I find this to not be a very successful literary method.

YA
Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything
E. Lockhart
Another good entry into the E.-Lockhart-can-really-write-a-good-YA-book pantheon. Gretchen wishes she was a fly on the wall in the boy’s locker room and gets her wish, learning much about the lives of boys, and her own life in the process.  It goes deeper than one might think from this description.

Sloppy Firsts
Megan McCafferty
I found this book odd, beginning with the title, which, I’m sorry, makes me think of the porn term “sloppy seconds” and seems an odd choice for a YA novel.  The main character is full of gripes for the entire book and also seems to hate all her friends but not have the ability to make new ones.  I did think the dialogue was pretty teenaged authentic, as was the level of angst.  Plus, I kind of liked that Jessica Darling was not really that darling.  Despite all these gripes, I was hooked by the end and have already ordered the next in the series.

An aside:  “Darling” as a last name is trending for me right now.  I think this is the third book in as many months using that last name.

Adult nonfiction
The Bookseller of Kabul
Asne Seierstand
Read for Book Group
Good for people who don’t mind reading about a big jerk of a man who rules his household as a tyrant.  Seriously, the bookseller himself was not a great guy, but Seirstand is quiet good at capturing details big and small of an Afghanistani family.  There were points where some of the family’s thoughts were recorded and I wondered how she captured those thoughts, but overall, this was an interesting read.  Although dispiriting from a female perspective.

Wild
Cheryl Strayed
People have formed their opinions and drawn their lines in the sand.  And now I’ve read it, so me too!  You can find me firmly on the side of: liked it!  I loved the writing (that horse scene will stay with me forever) and the pacing and the change and growth.  Though I think it was stupid to attempt a very long backpacking journey without once going backpacking, or even packing up the backpack with all the supplies, I also found that to be quite refreshing.  I myself tend to bog down in preparation mode and maybe I should skip or abbreviate that part of a journey now and then.  So count me as a fan.

Adult fiction
What’s Your Number (AKA 20 Times a Lady)
Karyn Bosnak
Oh how authors must despise the movie/book comparisons that appear once a book has been adapted into a feature film.  But I can’t help myself, I saw the movie first and adored it and could keep from comparing it to the book.

Firstly, let me say that the original title, 20 Times a Lady is so much better than What’s Your Number, which was the movie title.  However, the title was the only thing I thought was better in book form than movie adaptation. The two are very different.  I found the book Delilah (she was named Ally in the movie) to be unsympathetic and the things that I loved in the movie (the sister relationship, the interplay between Ally/Colin, the mother daughter relationship) to be almost entirely absent in the book version.  So this is the rare case when I recommend the movie over the book. But I thank Karyn Bosnak for writing the book that could then be adapted into a very good movie.

Landlines
Rainbow Rowell
Oh Rainbow Rowell, you are so brilliant.  Here I am reading a perfectly serviceable portrait of a marriage in trouble and then you go and layer onto that pleasant-but-familiar plot something rather unexpected that completely works.  I also appreciate how different your four books about relationships have been and can heartily recommend them to many, many people. I can’t wait for you to write another one.  Maybe for your next adult novel you will get a cover that is just as good as your YA covers, because this one is not really happening.

I’m not going to count how many books I read this month.  It was a lot.  It had to do with the fact I front- loaded the picture books for July Librarian Book Group, while reading the picture books for the June meeting in June.  Oh, and also getting completely obsessed with E. Lockheart/Emily Jenkins.  Also, there were a lot of middle readers on the Librarian Book Group list and I found them underwhelming, so I kept putting them down and picking up other things.  Anyway, highlights in each category:

Pictures:
Elizabeth Queen of the Seas
Sparky!
Here Comes the Easter Cat

Middle Readers
I didn’t love any of them.  I didn’t really at all like two of them.

YA
Ruby Oliver Quartet that begins with The Boyfriend List
The Disreputable History of Frankie Laudeau-Banks

Grownup
Mister Posterior and the Genius Child
(yes folks, I just recommended nine books and six of them were by the same author.  Who also wrote a recommended book last month (We Were Liars).  She’s a damn fine writer.

Pictures
Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas
Cox/Floca
Read for Librarian Book Group
I love when books tell me a quirky detail about something I never would have known existed.  This is the tale of a very special member of the Christ Church, New Zealand community.  Incredibly darling illustrations and a great story.  Highly recommended.

Sparky!
Jenny Offill
Read for Librarian Book Group
Hilarious picture book about a girl who picks an unusual pet.  People without access to children should just request this from the library so they can experience five minutes of funny.  Or purchase it, if you would like funny to live in your house.

The Noisy Paint Box
Barb Rosenstock
Read for Librarian Book Group
Picture book of Kandinsky’s life which also discusses his Synesthesia.  Nice story of following your own path.

Josephine
Powell/Robinson
Read for Librarian Book Group
Picture book of Josephine Baker’s life.  I found the text informative and the illustrations sub par.  I would also have liked to see a picture of Josephine Baker in the book itself.

Handle with Care: An Unusual Butterfly Journey
Bruns/Harasimowicz
Read for Librarian Book Group
Young reader nonfiction about butterfly wrangling.  Interesting.

Gravity
Jason Chin
Read for Librarian Book Group
Picture book explaining the concept of gravity.  Very bright and vibrant.

Here Comes the Easter Cat
Underwood/Ruedn
Read for Librarian Book Group
Adults with no children in your life!  Grab this and read it, just for the five minutes of funny.  Great illustrations and fun for any person familiar with cats.

The Cosmobiography of Sun-Ra
Raschela
Read for Librarian Book Group
Pleasantly weird.

Number One Sam
Pizzoli
Read for Librarian Book Group
I was underwhelmed by this, but I think it would be great for early readers and I’m all for the message.

Letter Lunch
Gutieriez
Read for Librarian Book Group
This concept was so bizarre to me that I put this away to read again later, thinking I had missed something.  But no.  Children go searching for letters, in the landscape, in the store, so they can…Eat them?  I still don’t really get it, but the illustrations were very pretty.

Middle-Reader
Caminar
Skila Brown
Read for Librarian Book Group
Story of a boy in 1980s Guatemala caught in the crossfire of politics.  Told entirely through poetry.  I wasn’t overly enamored of the poetry, but the story eventually grabbed me.

The Riverman
Aaron Starmer
Read for Librarian Book Group
This had a great opening chapter and then went downhill from there.  I had problems with the plot, with the alternate world, with the characters. Probably good for middle school readers who like semi-creepy science fiction.  There’s a boy main character.

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave
John Boyne
Read for Librarian Book Group
WWI fiction!  I’m a fan!  Solid kid-navigating-adult-situations kind of book with interesting (although completely normal) characters.  Good for middle school and up.

Note.  This title is awesome and I would rather it had been used on a contemporary YA novel.  Just sayin’

The Night Gardener
Jonathan Auxier
Read for Librarian Book Group
I really despised this book because the characters spoke in a completely modern way.  Just because Auxier throws in a “dinna” now and then doesn’t make them sound back in the day of the Irish potato famine.  It also was a slog.  However, I’m not sure young readers would be so picky.  So give it to anyone who likes a strong sister/brother narrative, creepy happenings and mysterious figures.

Also, I hope the publishing world works through this foil book cover thing rather quickly.  Much like Tease I had to be careful how I positioned this while reading because it reflected light back into my eyes in an uncomfortable way.

YA
And We Stay
Jenny Hubbard
Emily, having suffered tragedy at her high school, is now attending a boarding school in Amherst, Massachusetts, home of that other Emily, the dead poet.  Our Emily finds her way through the realities of her existence by writing poems and learning about dead poet Emily.  Having lived in Amherst, I didn’t get a huge sense of place from this novel and I sometimes found the Emily/Emily name thing to be confusing, although this was a satisfying read. Points for including my favorite Dickinson poem, which begins, “This quiet dust..”.  Also, I feel as though the title could have been not so forgettable.

The Boyfriend List
E. Lockheart
Footnotes!  So genius!  Perfect for mapping the mind of a smart and funny teenage girl as well a sneaky way to explain to the reading audience who AC/DC and their ilk is, without stopping the narrative.  I adored this book from the hilarious main character, her loving and somewhat self-absorbed parents, plus the very real female friendships.  The back-and-forth jumping around in time chronology was sometimes hard to follow and I got confused about who the various boys were, but I think that made the experience that much more authentic.  This is YA gold!

The Boy Book
E. Lockheart
I read books 2-4 of the Ruby Oliver Quartet in a very short amount of time.  Thus, it all blends together, making three separate reviews impossible.  Instead, I will highlight what I love about this series in total

• Ruby Oliver is a very fun character.  She’s full of life, and has an iron will that keeps her going through all of her many troubles, some which she brings on herself, some which are dumped in her lap.
• Footnotes!  They are the perfect way to capture Ruby’s digressive mind.  E-reader alert!  You might get endnotes, not footnotes.  If you read the actual books you will have the joy of actual footnotes right there on the page. The endnotes are annoying to flip back and forth to.
• Friendship.  Over the course of the four books, Ruby Oliver’s friends wax and wane in a very realistic way.
• Parents.  Her parents are hilarious, both overly interested in their only daughter and completely self-involved.
• Funny sayings.  You too will not be able to think about “Reginald,” “Pod-robots” and many other Ruby-isms without smirking.
• Movie recommendations.  Ruby Oliver loves movies and many of her footnotes are lists of movies that fit a particular category.

The Treasure Map of Boys
E. Lockheart
I read books 2-4 of the Ruby Oliver Quartet in a very short amount of time.  Thus, it all blends together, making three separate reviews impossible.  Instead, I will highlight what I love about this series in total

• Ruby Oliver is a very fun character.  She’s full of life, and has an iron will that keeps her going through all of her many troubles, some which she brings on herself, some which are dumped in her lap.
• Footnotes!  They are the perfect way to capture Ruby’s digressive mind.  E-reader alert!  You might get endnotes, not footnotes.  If you read the actual books you will have the joy of actual footnotes right there on the page. The endnotes are annoying to flip back and forth to.
• Friendship.  Over the course of the four books, Ruby Oliver’s friends wax and wane in a very realistic way.
• Parents.  Her parents are hilarious, both overly interested in their only daughter and completely self-involved.
• Funny sayings.  You too will not be able to think about “Reginald,” “Pod-robots” and many other Ruby-isms without smirking.
• Movie recommendations.  Ruby Oliver loves movies and many of her footnotes are lists of movies that fit a particular category.

Real Live Boyfriends
E. Lockheart
I read books 2-4 of the Ruby Oliver Quartet in a very short amount of time.  Thus, it all blends together, making three separate reviews impossible.  Instead, I will highlight what I love about this series in total

• Ruby Oliver is a very fun character.  She’s full of life, and has an iron will that keeps her going through all of her many troubles, some which she brings on herself, some which are dumped in her lap.
• Footnotes!  They are the perfect way to capture Ruby’s digressive mind.  E-reader alert!  You might get endnotes, not footnotes.  If you read the actual books you will have the joy of actual footnotes right there on the page. The endnotes are annoying to flip back and forth to.
• Friendship.  Over the course of the four books, Ruby Oliver’s friends wax and wane in a very realistic way.
• Parents.  Her parents are hilarious, both overly interested in their only daughter and completely self-involved.
• Funny sayings.  You too will not be able to think about “Reginald,” “Pod-robots” and many other Ruby-isms without smirking.
• Movie recommendations.  Ruby Oliver loves movies and many of her footnotes are lists of movies that fit a particular category.

My Life Next Door
Huntley Fitzpatrick
Fairly normal teen romance with daughter of uptight trust fund state representative falling for second son of very large family next door.  A goodly amount of interesting wrinkles made this a fun read, though I never doubted what the ending would be.  I also couldn’t help nothing that the author is the mother of a large family and couldn’t help but wonder how many of the snide comments made to the mother of the large family in the book were comments she has experienced herself.

Addendum.  In posting this review I noticed a sequel is in the works and found myself much more excited than this review might indicate. And I think this book is sneaky that way.  It seems to be pretty standard, but in the end it’s compelling.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Laudeau-Banks
E. Lockheart
I’ve put off writing this review because this book hit every one of my “perfect” buttons and the main reason I loved it, I can’t even tell you because it will spoil the plot.  But here are the things I can tell you about.  I love Frankie:  Smart.  Beautiful by way of awkward, so she’s aware of the difference.  Really spot-on writing, both from the adolescent perspective and layered adult commentary, which doesn’t overwhelm the plot.  Various hijinks.  A lot of main character processing and observing.  Fun with words.  Made me want a sequel, while simultaneously hoping that Lockheart never writes a sequel because this book is so perfect as a stand-alone.  When I told the librarians I was obsessed with E. Lockheart’s Ruby Oliver they all squealed that I must read this book.  And they were right.

Grownup
Macbeth
Wm. Shakespeare
Bad dude.  Badder lady.  Looking forward to seeing the stage play.

Mister Posterior and the Genius Child
Emily Jenkins
Who’s on an E. Lockheart/Emily Jenkins kick?  Me!  That’s who!  Told from the perspective of Vanessa, a third grade girl at a private school called Cambridge Harmony, it was so chock full of solid detail and observations it immediately transported me from my summer vacation, right back into the school year that had just ended.  I felt like I was back at work again.  Yet I persisted.  This book was funny, in a “safe for public transportation” way meaning you will smirk, but the guffaws will be kept to a minimum.  I also loved the adults’ reactions to Vanessa’s actions and comments as they tell you much more about what the adults are wrapped up in.  This was a really solid novel.

My favorites:
Picture books:  Maple
Middle Reader:  The Nightingale’s Nest
YA: We Were Liars, Mostly Good Girls
Grownup: Nothing wowed me.

Picture Books
Junkyard
Mike Austin
Read for Librarian Book Group
Great transformation picture book.  Reminded me a little of the Boston Harbor Islands.

Maple
Lori Nichols
Read for Librarian Book Group
Very fun growth of tree (Maple) and girl (also Maple).  If you are like me you will exclaim aloud the name of the second tree when it makes its appearance.

Big Bug
Henry Cole
Read for Librarian Book Group
Good comparison of big/small.  Great colors.

Middle Reader
The Nightingale’s Nest
Nikki Loftin
Read for Librarian Book Group
There is much to discuss with young readers in this book, so I heartily recommend it for classroom book groups.  Early-teenaged boy dealing with loss encounters a girl also dealing with loss.  Full of magical realism, vivid scenery and memorable characters.

Hidden
Dauviller, Lizano, Salsedo
Read for Librarian Book Group
Good entry into the Holocaust for upper elementary.  It’s  a graphic novel and the large heads were somewhat distracting, but I think they helped put some distance from the Holocaust for the young minds who will be reading this book.

YA
Mostly Good Girls
Leila Sales
I adored this book because it perfectly captured the general hilarity of two best friends.  The conversations between them are worth the read.  It’s teenager girl patter to a T.  Also, it does a nice job of capturing the subtle transitions that happen as friends change and grow.  Very well done.  I’m disappointed that Multnomah County Library doesn’t have her 2011 book called Past Perfect, because I can’t get enough of Sales writing.

The Here and Now
Ann Brashares
Girl time travels from the future to the present to live permanently with other time travelers because things aren’t going so well in the future.  I found it only mildly successful from the sci-fi aspect.    Overall, it didn’t blow me away.

We Were Liars
E. Lockheart
Read for Librarian Book Group
There are books that are good and then there are books that take you along an interesting path only to suddenly spin around and point you in another direction. And you realize the bits of this and that you’ve been encountering on said path are actually clues and wham/wham/wham/wham they all suddenly drop into place and you are reading an entirely different book that is even better than the one you thought you were reading.

This book is like that.

And I loved it.

And I really wasn’t able to do much after I finished it.  It took some digesting.

Going Over
Beth Kephart
Read for Librarian Book Group
I’ve not ever read any YA novel set in Berlin Wall-era Germany.  So that was interesting.  The Romeo and Juliet-style story (the wall kept them apart, not their parents) was interesting and the book had solid subplots.  I was interested to note that I didn’t feel terribly attached to the characters, yet I found myself in tears at the dramatic conclusion.

Tease
Amanda Maciel
Read for Librarian Book Group
A book about cyber bullying (and slut-shaming) but from the perspective of one of the perpetrators.  I found the stubborn resistance of taking responsibility by the main character to be an effective hook that kept me up past my bedtime reading.  Overall, a very engrossing novel that is quite successful at what it’s doing.  There was talk in the book group discussion of wishing it would have delved deeper into why slut-shaming/rape culture is the way it is, and, I agree I agree we need a book about that too, but this is not that book and this book is a good book for what it is.

That said, the foil cover was really distracting as I was reading by lamplight.  I had to hold to book a certain way so the light didn’t reflect back into my eyes.

On the Count of Three (aka The Burmudez Triangle)
Maureen Johnson
What happens to three best friends when two of them fall in love?  Filled with authentic teens, great long distance romance, and much awkward falling apart of friendship.

Grownup Fiction
The Thousand Dollar Tan Line
Thomas/Graham
The first Veronica Mars novel!  I found the writing clunky, but enjoyed continuing to live in the Veronica Mars world.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz
Read for Kenton Library Book Group
This was a plodder for me.  I did not enjoy the jumping back and forth between characters.  I wanted more of Oscar, and more of his sister, not so much traveling back in to his mother and grandfather’s time.  That said, I liked learning about the Dominican Republic and I thought the characters were great.  There was a goodly amount of non-translated Spanish, which I found difficult, but interesting.  In the book group there was a vehement discussion if including non-translated Spanish did a disservice to the reader.  I figure if you want to read about Dominican culture, you probably need to wade through some Dominican slang.

Good stuff this month.  Except for one YA that I felt very ambivalent about, the rest of these books were ones I would shove at you with varying levels of excitement.  If I had to pick just one, I would tell you to read This Song Will Save Your Life which hit every single teenage-girls-are-awesome buttons.  I’m mildly obsessed with Leila Sales, the author.

Picture books
The Scraps Book
Lois Ehlert
Read for Librarian Book Group.
Book about the author’s process in making her books.  Full of fun detail.

Middle Readers
The Crossover
Kwame Alexander
Poetry! And Basketball!  A tale of a middle school basketball star with a twin brother (who also plays) a dad who is a former pro-ball (in Europe) player and a mom who is the principal of the middle school.  The story unfolds in many short poems.  Very excellent.

Young Adult Books
Grasshopper Jungle
Andrew Smith
Read for Librarian Book Group.
For the first half of this book I was completely in love with the horny stylings of the narrarator.  The Iowa town was great, the friend/girlfriend were great, the love triangle was fabulous and I loved the descriptions of the school and teachers.  It was also funny on every single page.  But somewhere in the middle I suddenly didn’t love it as much and by the end I was just at a simple “like” which was too bad because it was headed toward five-star status.  But you should read it if you like gonzo plots, adolescent boys being very frank about sexual desire, adolescent boys who are trying to figure out their feelings–possibly romantic–for their best friend*, sci-fi stylings, or books about small town Iowa.  Also if you like funny.

Overall, I recommend. Maybe because I read it so fast I lost interest?  I can’t put my finger on what happened.

*This angle right here was enough for me to read the book.  Boys thinking they might be attracted to other boys, but still love girls isn’t something I see a lot of.

The Theory of Everything
Kari Luna
This won the Oregon Book Award for YA and I can’t say I loved it.  Was she hallucinating or was she experiencing breaks in the fabric of the universe?  It wasn’t super clear to me and I felt uncomfortable.

This Song Will Save Your Life
Leila Sales
My favorite kind of tale:  girl finds her “thing,” boy is superfluous. It reminded me a lot of the movie Whip-It in all the best ways.  This is a fun read and will resonate with anyone who has felt out of place in school, but at home when music is playing.

Grownup Books
Lessons from the Borderlands
Bette Lynch Hustead
Read for Kenton Library Book Group.
Essays written by a woman living in Eastern Oregon, who grew up poor in Idaho.  There were things I could relate to, which makes for good essay reading.

Story of a Marriage
Andrew Sean Greer
Beautifully written tale from the perspective of a woman living in San Francisco in the 1950s.  There were a couple of surprising turns I didn’t see coming.

This is Between Us
Kevin Sampsill
Reading this I couldn’t help but think repeatedly, “Is this how guys think?”  Because if it is, I have vastly underestimated the amount of time they are thinking about sex.  And that’s with studies being published telling me they think of sex every six minutes or so.  This book is a tale of a five years of a couple’s life.  A lot of sex.  A lot of thinking about sex.  I found it rather hot, though weird that the guy who wrote it is the guy who introduces the authors for readings at Powell’s.