Month Two: May Best of Books

So, I've just been toying with the Best of the Best Challenge, and suddenly I find that finishing is actually a possibility. Of course, I've been clearing off the long-hanging fruit, so the eight books remaining might be harder to finish, but on the plus side I do have Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge to help me along. Also, the three audio books I have going should complete in the next week, so that will give me a big jump as well.  Hmm.  Anyway, here's what I've got:



Sugar Changed the World, Marc Aronson & Marina Budhos. The history of sugar, from its discovery to its spread through its role in colonization and slavery, as well as its indirect effects on industrialization, science and republic-building. The authors do a good job in balancing personal details (both of their families were directly affected by the sugar business) and the facts, which helps in comprehending the sometimes horrific events chronicled.

How They Croaked (reviewed)

Geektastic, ed. by Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci. I loved the explanation for this anthology, that Black and Castellucci wanted to collaborate on a Klingon/Jedi short story and the only way to sell it was to make the anthology it belonged in, and I enjoyed most of the other short stories describing different teenagers with varying passions. Lyca's story left a terrible taste in my mouth, though, involving the protagonist getting away with a horrible and illegal example of cyberbullying. Being a geek doesn't make it OK to violate other people, even if they are more popular than you.

Chain Reaction, Simone Elkeles. I'm too old to really appreciate this YA novel, with its short, alternating boy/girl chapters and the universal assumption that sex should start as soon as you TRULY love someone. Probably several years before you've heard of birth control.  I found the poor choices of both protagonists depressing, even though the author protected them so they'd grow up to have children like themselves.

My Boyfriend Is a Monster #1, Evonne Tsang: Very fun graphic novel about a sport jock and a geek who find romance over their egg-baby. Just as they admit their mutual liking, a zombie apocalypse strikes the city and they must run for their lives (as one does).  The words and graphics both respect the characters but never take themselves too seriously. My older son and I are eagerly awaiting more from these writers. I actually tried this on my NOOK, but I couldn't read the text and felt I couldn't really appreciate the pictures. My device is not really made for pictures.

Where Things Come Back, John Waley.  Two brothers in a family unique in its own happiness and unhappiness know without speaking that they are united together as they face the world. This story tells of the summer when one disappeared, leaving the other always one step off, not knowing how to react or how to trust anything. It was almost unbearable to read, even when the second story about the college boys crazed with religion caught up and revealed the answer to the disappearance. The ending left me miserable, because I don't think it was real. But I hope my sons are as close as those brothers were.

Daybreak, Brian Ralph. I read this twice, because my library system had the first volume but I felt the ending couldn't be right, so I ordered it from Seattle Public Library and found out the ending.  My favorite part is how the book speaks directly to the reader, although you are relegated to a following role so that you don't make many decisions, except at the very end. I'm impressed that now I've enjoyed two zombie stories, including this definite horror version.

Pavement Chalk Artist, Julian Beever. I read this while my fifth graders browsed the pictures, admiring the technique and special effects as well as the visuals.  It's a fun description of fascinating ephemeral pictures.

Infinite Kung Fu, Kagan McLeod. This martial-arts graphic novel enthralled my seventh grader but only barely kept my interest. I suspect it lost me on some of the fight scenes, which he loved but which left me cold, especially since I could never tell who was winning so they didn't actually advance the plot at all. I kept forgetting who was who, mainly because I couldn't remember what the main characters looked like.

The Influencing Machine, Brooke Gladstone. A very interesting meditation on what reporting is and isn't, and its inherent weaknesses -- since reporters are people, news can never be without bias, and pretending or attempting to be balanced brings in its own biases. The cartoon format enhanced and underlined its points, keeping the book interesting, although not enough to get my seventh grader to read it.

April Family Pick: Feynman

Feynman still reigns as the coolest physicist, and the Cybils Graphic Novel finalist and graphic biography Feynman by Jim Ottaviani (art by Leland Myrick, coloring by Hilary Sycamore) helps him maintain that reputation. Starting with his childhood bedtime stories, which emphasize process and understanding over vocabulary (and accuracy), the comics follow present his progress from a stance of smug reminiscing, writing as if Feynman were telling these stories about his education, his wives, and his work.


The pictures kept the characters identifiable for me, with Feynman's beaky nose and wavy hair identifying him from high school through the Challenge investigation. Since my weak visual skills often has me scrabbling to identify who is talking in a graphic book, this consistency helped a lot.

P received a copy as his birthday present from his dad, so we made it the April Family Book Club choice, although it took us until almost the end of May to have the meeting.  P actually stalled out in the middle of the book, and I agreed that at age eleven I also would have found the story of Feynman choosing which university department best suited his career dull, and the bits about his girl-chasing and second marriage incomprehensible. So we talked about what age to read things, and then more about his adventures in youth (tricking the guards at the Manhattan Project, finding the bad valve by pretending to read design documents, safe cracking).  We spent a lot of time figuring out the safe cracking parts, in fact.

Overall, we decided it was a good book for YA and up, but only recommend the first half to the elementary crowd. I'm not sure why it's a Graphic "Novel" since it seems to be a nonfiction biography, but then the nursery rhyme book also ended up in this category so clearly I'm missing something.

Tuesday Started This Week

Wow, this week didn't really seem to have a Monday, so I completely missed the weekly check-in that Sheila at Book Journey does, where everyone notes what they read, are reading, and intent to read. Teach Mentor Texts echos this with a concentration on children's books. I missed them both!

I finished a handful of books:

• Matched (NOOK, YA)
• The Know-It All (NF, well, memoir)
• The Reading Promise (NF, again, memoir)
• Me and the Pumpkin Queen (kidlit)
• The Wives of Henry Oades (fiction)
• Daybreak (graphic novel)
• Pavement Chalk Artist (nonfiction, memoir)
• Infinite Kung Fu (graphic novel)
• The Iron Duke (NOOK, urban fantasy)
• Brook Street: Thief (NOOK, romance)
• Daughter of the Forest (SF)
• The Influencing Machine (NF)

This clears out several books that I have been dragging around for weeks months, as well as some NOOK reading for the plane.


What am I still reading? Well, I have two lists, the books I'm carrying around and what I've actually been reading.


First, what I've been reading:

• Angelfall, Susan Ee. NOOK. (Cybils) Infiltrating the angel stronghold now.
• Willie Mays, The Life, The Legend, James S. Hirsch. Well, I started to read this, and now it has vanished completely. It's a huge hardback library book, so I have no idea how this happened.
• Shattered Bonds, Dorothy Roberts. Description of how the flawed foster care system systematically undermines Black families. I was really enjoying this until I put it down somewhere and it ... vanished completely.
• Angel's Flight, Nalini Singh. I picked this one in frustration over all my serious nonfiction books hiding from me.
• Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater. This is for the Best of the Best Challenge, but I like the characters and I don't think good things are going to happen to them.

I have bookmarks in but have completely ignored:

• The Galacteran Legacy: Galaxy Watch, Michelle Izmaylov. (RML) Who can she trust? Well, the wrong people, obviously.
• Bunheads, Sophie Flack. (Cybils). I'm picking this back up any day now.
• Infamous Scribblers, Eric Burns. I started this in Atlanta, but am scared to pick it up again in case my house eats it (see above).
• Smart But Scattered, Peg Dawson & Richard Guare.  Where to start to fix things.
• The Same Stuff as Stars, Katherine Paterson. Nothing is so bad that a social worker can't make it worse.
• Honored Enemy, Raymond Feist & William R Forstchen.  Nemesis has backstory.
• Knight of a Trillion Stars, Dara Joy. Isn't it hot when he literally rips her clothes off? Wait, no, because she's trying to get away.
• The Catholic Church in the Modern World, E.E.Y. Hales. Pope looks bad when he condemns liberalism.
• Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx. Old guys at lunch in the first story.
• The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall. Audio. Skye has a nervous breakdown.
• Young Fredle, Cynthia Voight. Audio. Fredle is outside and getting by.
• The Ring of Solomon, Jonathan Stroud. Audio. With 7th grader. CD 2. Queen of Sheba is introduced.
• Beauty Queens, Libby Bray. Audio. This is great! CD 7. 

What will I read next? I've got a pile of Best of the Best books next to a comfortable chair, and maybe I can read 8 more in the next month. Hmm.  I'm eyeing  Jane, Bronxwood, and Leverage. I have a Perry Mason for bookclub, and a pile of library books that I acquired somehow.

Challenges:

1. Cybils: 54/73.  Finished Feynman.
2. Global Reading Challenge: 13/21. No change.
3. Where Am I Reading?:  19/50. No change.
4. Science Book Challenge: 1.141/3.14159. No change.
5. Reading My Library:  Finished one, which is good. On Ks.
6. Eclectic Challenge: 7/10. No change.
7. Best of the Best: 17/25. Wow, this is a lot better than I thought.

Back to the Library

Well, I have slowed down the flood of incoming hold books, but my library exposure is still very high. If I were a bank, the feds would shut me down. But I'll keep dancing happily until the due-dates crush me like a bug.

This week I dragged some kids along with me to the library, and to my joy X wandered about and collected his own towering stack. That kid is my favorite!  I restrained myself to about four books, two holds and two impulse buys:

• Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine.  The enthusiastic review by Jenny's Books, combined with the months of inactivity on my Science book challenge convinced me to throw this on my hold list. Also, I expect it will say things I want to hear, which is always warming.
• The Temple of Texts, William H. Gass.  The next up on my TBR list, which I'm lagging on sadly. I can't even remember how it got on there two years ago, but it looks like a book of essays, which I do like.  Maybe past-me knew what she was about.
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling, Maryrose Wood.  I've been meaning to read this book, it's been proposed for my book club, and it was on the tempt-me shelves. How could I resist?
• Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, Gail Carson Levine. Even my poetry-phobic kids enjoyed the canonical poem by William Carlos Williams, and I bet they'll enjoy this collection of false apology poems. Maybe I'll even get them to make their own... nah, won't happen.

This brings me to a total of um, 64 items out on my card, plus a few ebooks that I'm in denial about. The good news is that this is not higher than last week! The bad news is that it isn't lower, either.  Oops. So no prize for me this week. Sigh.

I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures.

Family Matters

I'm visiting with my dad this week, so reading time is a bit limited, although I sneak some in when he's watching TV or something. I tried to concentrate on finishing stuff this week.

On Mondays Sheila at Book Journey invites people to report on what they read, what they are reading, and what they will read.  Teach Mentor Texts echos this with a concentration on children's books.

I finished a handful of books:

• Within the Flames
• Where Things Come Back (YA)
• Dark Passage (YA)
• My Boyfriend Is a Monster (YA)
• Grimspace (NOOK)
• Geektastic (YA) (NOOK)
• Chain Reaction (YA) (NOOK)
• The New York Mormon Singles Halloween Dance
• Weedflower (kidlit)
• How They Croaked (kidlit) (audio)

This clears out several books that I have been dragging around for weeks, as well as two books about to vaporize from my NOOK. 


What am I still reading? Well, it's still a bit ridiculous:

• Bunheads, Sophie Flack. (Cybils). I'm picking this back up any day now.
• Daughter of the Forest, Juliet Marillier. I have put this down somewhere with about 20 pages left. Oops.
• The Galacteran Legacy: Galaxy Watch, Michelle Izmaylov. (RML) Hey, the author was like 17. Much of the plot now makes sense.
• The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs. Letter S. His wife is pregnant! His head may explode.
• The Wives of Henry Oades, Johanna Moran. From the TBR list.  I find the trials dull and their home life fascinating.
• Infinite Kung Fu, Kagen McLeon. For Best of the Best, but the boys still have it.
• Angelfall, Susan Ee. NOOK. (Cybils) Still no sign of baby sister.
• Matched, Ally Condie. NOOK. Ha! I got new copy today!
• Smart But Scattered, Peg Dawson & Richard Guare.  Where to start to fix things.
• The Same Stuff as Stars, Katherine Paterson. Nothing is so bad that a social worker can't make it worse.
• Honored Enemy, Raymond Feist & William R Forstchen.  Nemesis has backstory.
• Knight of a Trillion Stars, Dara Joy. Isn't it hot when he literally rips her clothes off? Wait, no, because she's trying to get away.
• The Catholic Church in the Modern World, E.E.Y. Hales. Pope looks bad when he condemns liberalism.
• Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx. Old guys at lunch in the first story.
• The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall. Audio. Very independent kids.
• Young Fredle, Cynthia Voight. Audio. With male fifth grader. We just finished Darwin.
• The Ring of Solomon, Jonathan Stroud. Audio. With 7th grader. CD 2. Queen of Sheba is introduced.
• Beauty Queens, Libby Bray. Audio. Just with me. CD 5. 

What will I read next? I've got a pile of Best of the Best books next to a comfortable chair, and maybe I can read 13 more in the next month. Hmm.  I'm eyeing The Scorpio Races, Jane, and Leverage. I have a Perry Mason for bookclub, and a pile of library books that I acquired somehow.

Challenges:

1. Cybils: 54/73.  No change, but I did finally review a book I read last year.
2. Global Reading Challenge: 13/21. I've asked my friends for South American recommendations.
3. What's In a Name?: 6/6. Need to review the last ones.
4. Where Am I Reading?:  19/50. Need to review Massachusetts (I've read three), Montana, Arkansas and Utah books. And finish the Vermont and Wyoming books. I'm falling behind, but catching up on reviews would fix that.
5. Science Book Challenge: 1.141/3.14159. Memoirs, but nothing scientific, although Sugar Changed the World had a bit. 
6. Reading My Library:  Finished one, which is good. On Ks.
7. Eclectic Challenge: 7/10. Well, 8, but I need to review one. Reading literary fiction by Proulx. And the next book club book is a mystery.
8. Best of the Best: 13/25. Hey, I'm over half way. This is a surprise.

Library Explosion, Redux.

Remember how I completely misjudged the speed of my library holds two weeks ago? Did you think I learned anything? HAHAHAHA. I got so many books last week I gave up before writing a library status. Now I've got a tottering pile of Best books, four different audios going in the car, and a pile of other books I wanted because they looked shiny. Oh, and my Reading My Library quest sent me off to get six new books from the next batch of shelves.

Luckily I recovered this week by mostly ordering up COMIC BOOKS, in honor of seeing The Avengers on Mother's Day. Oh, and a few new Best books, and a book that may take place in South America, because I'm falling behind on my Global challenge. At this rate I'll never get back below my age...

So, I got ten more things from the library, including 2 Best of the Bests, that Caribbeans book from New and Interesting, Joss Wheden's X-Men books, a bunch of The Ultimates, and whatever else my seventh grader snabbled before I could record them. Oh, and a Perry Mason for my book club.

This brings me to a total of um, 64 items out on my card, plus a lot of ebooks that I'm in denial about. That's actually even more than the age the 5K organizers a few weeks ago thought I was, so I need to take action. I have made a bargain with myself (I already broke it once) that if my library exposure is less than my age, I can buy a book that week. 

Bad Ways To Go: How They Croaked

It was good.  (Complete review by my fifth grader)

My fifth grade son and I just completed the audio version of How They Croaked, which we both also read last year. Written by Georgia Bragg and read with relish by L.J. Ganser, it gleefully and gruesomely recounts the last days of a variety of famous people, with emphasis on the horrible and failed medical practices that ended them. Ranging from King Tut through Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, stopping by famous presidents such as George Washington (very bad final days) and less famous ones such as James Garfield (the assassination that wouldn't have worked if his doctors hadn't tried so hard), the chapters featured mostly famous people with a few surprises.


Each chapter gives a brief history of the featured corpse, with an emphasis on any traits or habits that contributed to their eventual demise. The end of the chapters feature macabre lists riffing off something previously mentioned, from synonyms for "dead" through symptoms of radiation poisoning. The historical and medical details seem sound enough, although I thought Bragg emphasized Curie's preference for her experiments over her children a bit more than the biographies I've read would agree with.

As an audio book in the car, it works very well. Tracks never went over five minutes or so, each chapter ran about three tracks, so it was always easy to find out place (I currently have four audio books running in the car, depending on the audience). If both my sons rode with me, X happily jumped into whichever chapter we were on, without worrying about who died while he was at swim practice or whatever. It's a fun book to read or listen to.

Happy Mother's Day

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day, either enjoying being pampered or enjoying pampering someone. I myself am the proud parent of two wonderful boys who like the excuse to make me breakfast in bed. This year was their best effort yet -- I put in a last minute request for a breakfast burrito, which P heroically made (the first time he's scrambled an egg, I believe). The meal also included pancakes cooked to my liking, which is different from how X normal eats them, crispy bacon, and a large cup of milk.

They still need some work on kitchen clean-up, but at least almost everything ended up in the sink, so I just avoided the kitchen until Monday. In the afternoon we went to see the Avengers, and X paid for popcorn (my brother paid for the tickets -- thanks K!), and we went out for dinner. Also, they let me read through dinner, since they know how much I like that. My family rocks!

On Mondays Sheila at Book Journey invites people to report on what they read, what they are reading, and what they will read.  Teach Mentor Texts echos this with a concentration on children's books.

I finished a handful of books:

• A Bride's Story, Vol 1
• Deadlocked (Stackhouse 12)
• Sugar Changed the World
• Blood Red Road
• Feynman
• Earwig and the Witch (audio)

I'm apparently developing a fear of actually finishing a book, so my currently reading list has stretched to two pages on Shelfari. I can't even fit them all into my reading bag, and that's ignoring the four books on audio I keep in the car (I know have a car-bag to hold all the CD cases).

• Bunheads, Sophie Flack. (Cybils). I'm picking this back up now.
• Daughter of the Forest, Juliet Marillier. For book club, I haven't read two middle chapters. Book club consensus was that there were too many pages for the story.
• The Galacteran Legacy: Galaxy Watch, Michelle Izmaylov. (RML) Hey, the author was like 17. Much of the plot now makes sense.
• Weedflower, Cynthia Kadohata. Must read these RML books faster.
• The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs. D-G. Letter G, and the memoir part is getting stronger under the surface. Luckily the back info lets me know that his wife will get pregnant.
• The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, Elna Baker. Now she's skinny but still Mormon.
• The Wives of Henry Oades, Johanna Moran. From the TBR list.  Wife #1 has now met wife #2. The neighbors arrest them for being Mormon.
• Where Things Come Back, John Corey Whaley. The lost brother makes this so sad.
• Infinite Kung Fu, Kagen McLeon. For Best of the Best, but my sons keep stealing this.
• Angelfall, Susan Ee. NOOK. (Cybils) Sneaking into the angel's home base. 
• Matched, Ally Condie. NOOK. Argh -- my library copy expired when I was 25 pages from the end.
• Chain Reaction, Simone Elkeles. NOOK. I hate when authorities are unfair and people let them get away with it.
• Smart But Scattered, Peg Dawson & Richard Guare.  Where to start to fix things.
• The Same Stuff as Stars, Katherine Paterson. Nothing is so bad that a social worker can't make it worse.
• Honored Enemy, Raymond Feist & William R Forstchen.  Nemesis has backstory.
• Knight of a Trillion Stars, Dara Joy. Isn't it hot when he literally rips her clothes off? Wait, no, because she's trying to get away.
• The Catholic Church in the Modern World, E.E.Y. Hales. Pope looks bad when he condemns liberalism.
• Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx. Old guys at lunch in the first story.
• The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall. Audio. With female fifth grader.
• How They Croaked, Georgia Bragg. Audio. With male fifth grader. We just finished Darwin.
• The Ring of Solomon, Jonathan Stroud. Audio. With 7th grader. CD 2.
• Beauty Queens, Libby Bray. Audio. Just with me. Hilarious but gory.

What will I read next? I've made a pile of Best of the Best books next to a comfortable chair. I'm eyeing The Scorpio Races, Jane, and Leverage.

Challenges:

1. Cybils: 54/73.  Mostly big books left now.
2. Global Reading Challenge: 13/21. I'm now scouting the library tempt-me books for South American choices.
3. What's In a Name?: 6/6. Need to review the last ones.
4. Where Am I Reading?:  19/50. Need to review Massachusetts (I've read three), Montana, and Utah books. And finish the Vermont, Arkansas and Wyoming books. I'm falling behind, but catching up on reviews would fix that.
5. Science Book Challenge: 1.141/3.14159. Memoirs, but nothing scientific, although Sugar Changed the World had a bit.
6. Reading My Library:  Falling behind again. On Ks.
7. Eclectic Challenge: 7/10. Well, 8, but I need to review one. Reading literary fiction by Proulx.
8. Best of the Best: 8/25. The fun part is how many of these books X steals from me.  

Blood Red Road: Mean Sisters

I know other people have loved this YA Fantasy Cybils finalist, but not me. I found the characters repellent and useless in Moira Young's Blood Red Road. I'm not sure which sister is more repellent,  Emmi or Saba, although I guess we can hope that Emmi could change as she grows up. Saba is slowly learning to be less awful, but not less self-centered or dependent. The world building also didn't make sense; I dislike books with a single magical artifact which serves only to break the suspension of disbelief -- it's a huge crack in the post-apocalyptic setting.

At the start of the book, Saba is firmly established as an emotionally deficient person, who has resented her baby sister for nine years for causing the death of their mom. No, Saba is not ten or eleven at this point, which would make this stunted psyche palatable; she is eighteen. An eighteen year old who still holds an infant responsible for the death of its mother is not a very likable character. Anyway, we soon see that there are other reasons to dislike Emmi, so maybe I shouldn't judge Saba too harshly.


Saba spends the book trying to rescue her beloved twin brother who got kidnapped in the first section. She does this despite the assistance of Emmi, who at nine years old doesn't understand that she is not actually in any way an asset to this expedition. Yes, she can use a sling shot, but she also has no attention span, drops things, and has the stamina of a child, slowing down the more robust adults who are racing against the clock to save her brother. Oh well, at least she offers Saba the chance to grow emotionally, and after all, secondary characters aren't there for themselves but to offer Saba opportunities for growth or interaction. Emmi probably only kills two people with her antics, so not much harm done, right? Saba keeps trying to leave her somewhere safe, and is treated as a monster for not wanting to bring her kid sister into various war-zones.

Saba finds a love interest. We know he is her love interest because a magical doo-dad heats up whenever he is around. Also, he has good abs. Saba insults him horribly by not showering him with complements all the time (all the other characters frown so the reader can't fail to notice what a loser Saba is), but he is heroic enough to forgive her once she starts kissing him. I found their love affair emotionally distasteful, but understandable as a pair of lusty teenagers.

At the end of the book, I'm still wondering how awful was the death of Mercy, the neighbor woman who kindly took in Emmi only for the the girl to steal her horse and leave her injured and alone. At the end, the kids decide not to return to see how she fared, because that would be the decent thing to do, and the entire family avoids decency like the pustulent plague. Maybe the sequel addresses this.

The only thing I liked was the voice -- the sparse sentences and tone helped carry me through the story even when every member of this family accepted the love of strangers while selfishly backstabbing them or stealing their stuff. They are the kind of people that make for good stories, but I'd hate to actually encounter them. Probably the main problem was that Mercy was the person I could most identify with, so even though her part was tiny I never got over how the sisters used and discarded her so casually.

My seventh grader liked it a lot; he thinks people make tough choices in a post-apocalyptic world and I'm judging the girls too harshly. He found the plot fast moving, and that's the mark of a good book. 

Best of the Best Books: Month One

A list and a deadline -- what a great excuse to abandon all useful activity and build towers of books on my coffee table! The Best of the Best Challenge gives me enough options that I don't feel constrained, but good lists from which to pick my choices. It runs from April to June, and I started a bit late, so I've alrady given myself permission to fail -- if I don't get to 25 books, I'm still happy.

Zahra's Paradise, Amir & Khalil.  Based on an anonymous blog chronicling the upheaval in Iran after the corrupt 2009 elections, this graphic novel follows a family trying to trace their missing younger brother, who disappeared the day of the big protests. It's definitely a book for adults, although older teens would appreciate it; the grimness of the prison and graveyards might be too graphic for younger readers.

Scarlet, Brian Bendis & Alex Maleev. Gory pictures, drug paraphernalia, and the dark subject matter make this also a book for older teens, as young Scarlet starts her path of revenge and murder after the police cover up paints her boyfriend as a drug dealer after a corrupt cop guns him down. Definitely a powerful story, but not a good choice for middle school kids. Oops.

Wandering Son, Shimura Takako. Gentle story of several fifth graders who view each other's clothes with envy, which is problematic when the kids are different sexes.  Although I sometimes had trouble telling the characters apart (I'm not a very visual person), I felt for the awkwardness and friendship the children felt as they struggled with their unpopular enthusiasm in a confusing world -- boys can't wear dresses, but the school is putting on a cross-dressing play?

Thor: The Mighty Avenger 1 & 2. It was a bit relaxing to read a straight-forward comic book, with manly heroes and admiring and occasionally clever female sidekicks. Oh wait, that's the normal stuff? Anyway, bright colors and big bad guys made these two books popular with me and my 7th grader.

Ghetto Cowboy, G. Neri (audio). The 5th grader really got into this story of a trouble making boy who learns responsibility by stealing a horse back from the mean Philidelphia police. Although the start was hard for him to hear, as Cole piled problem after problem onto his life (Neri, did the mom really have to kill that horse?), he relaxed and enjoyed the fixes Cole made after he found the stables. Of course, now I've assigned him an essay on the book, so he hates it again.

Bride's Story 1, Kaoru Mori.  I do love it when the two main characters are such different heights; I can tell them apart! Kaoru's story of nomads on the Silk Road has lovely pictures and a slow but engrossing story line that had the 5th grader climbing into my lap to read scenes. I'll leave this out for the kids to read, now that they can get past the title (which did not grab my bachelor boys).

Not Much To Report

Every week Sheila at Book Journey invites people to report on what they read, what they are reading, and what they will read. I'm not very good at knowing what I'll read next, but I usually keep track of what I read and what I'm reading.

Also, at Teach Mentor Texts they do another roundup that concentrates on children's books. That includes all my audio listening this week, as well as one lonely YA. I didn't actually finish much this week.

I finished three books:

• Misfit, Jon Skovron. Cybils YA.
• The President's Vampire, Christopher Farnsworth. Horror.
• Dead Reckoning, Charlaine Harris. Reread, paranormal.

We also went through several audio books, all kidlit:

• The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Jeanne Birdsall.
• Escape to Witch Mountain, Alexander Key
• Ghetto Cowboy, G. Neri

I'm at a ridiculous 20 19 (finished one!) books for my currently reading list, but that's mainly because I'm not liking the book I absolutely have to finish, so I keep sneaking off and starting other things. Three different kids have three different stories going in the car, requiring delicate judging on instances when I'm accompanied by more than one passenger. Plus the book with adult language that I listen to when alone in the car.


I have to say, everyone is really liking the audio book kick we are on. I'm choosing them so the older kids enjoy the younger stories, since their books get priority. The only hold-out is N, who claims that listening to the radio gives him a headache, unless he picks the station. He actually picked the Witch Mountain book, but changed his mind when he saw how popular it was.  Remembering what track we are on for each book is a bit difficult, though.

• Blood Red Road, Moira Young. (Cybils). I'm not enjoying this, but I shouldn't read anything else until it is done, because it is overdue.
• Bunheads, Sophie Flack. (Cybils). This isn't due yet, so I put it back on the shelf.
• The Galacteran Legacy: Galaxy Watch, Michelle Izmaylov. (RML) The Earth is doomed!
• The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs. A-C. He is getting smarter.
• The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, Elna Baker. She's fat but she's still a woman. 
• The Wives of Henry Oades, Johanna Moran. From the TBR list.  Husband gives up on wife #1 and moves to California.
• Where Things Come Back, John Corey Whaley. The brother just disappeared.
• Sugar Changed the World, Marc Aronson & Marina Budhos. For Best of Best challenge.
• Angelfall, Susan Ee. NOOK. (Cybils) I should put this on my son's NOOK. 
• Smart But Scattered, Peg Dawson & Richard Guare.  Where to start to fix things.
• The Same Stuff as Stars, Katherine Paterson. More death. Angel never gets a break.
• Honored Enemy, Raymond Feist & William R Forstchen.  Backstory is kind of dull.
• Knight of a Trillion Stars, Dara Joy. Wow, the alpha-male non-consensual stuff is really unsexy.
• The Catholic Church in the Modern World, E.E.Y. Hales. Italian history and the pope.
• Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx. Old guys at lunch in the first story.
• Earwig and the Witch, Diana Wynne Jones. Audio. Very popular.
• How They Croaked, Georgia Bragg. Audio. With male fifth grader.
• The Ring of Solomon, Jonathan Stroud. Audio. With 7th grader.
• Beauty Queens, Libby Bray. Audio. Just with me. The author reads it, so I know the expression is authentic.

What will I read next? I've made a pile of Best of the Best books next to a comfortable chair. I'm eyeing The Scorpio Races, Jane, and Leverage.

Challenges:

1. Cybils: 52/73.  Finished Misfit, now on Blood Red Road. 
2. Global Reading Challenge: 13/21. Asia complete. Still need 5 American books.
3. What's In a Name?: 5/6. Hey -- Escape to Witch Mountain counts!
4. Where Am I Reading?:  17/50. Need to review Massachusetts (I've read three), Montana, Utah, Oregon, and Oklahoma books. And finish the Vermont, Arkansas and Wyoming books. I'm falling behind, but catching up on reviews would fix that.
5. Science Book Challenge: 1.141/3.14159. Still no science.
6. Reading My Library:  Falling behind again.
7. Eclectic Challenge: 7/10. Well, 8, but I need to review one. Need a mystery book now.
8. Best of the Best: 7/25. I'm pretty much doomed, but it gives me an excuse to bury myself in books. Maybe the 48 hour Reading Challenge will save me.

NOOK Reading, Lately

Since books I read on my NOOK do not pile up on my bedside table, especially the books that I borrow from the library and which magically go "poof" after 21 days, I find that I forget them completely. Which is sad, really. So here is the whirlwind tour of some books I've been chugging through on my cherished reader, which my favorite sister (and her family) gave me for my birthday last year. Religion is unimportant in all of these, to check in with my May theme.

Let's see, my unreviewed NOOK reads include a paranormal anthology, a middle grade book, a military science fiction novel, a mystery, a fantasy, and a regency romance.

Angels of Darkness. Four very different authors write stories about angels. Nalini Singh gives an angsty story about a depressed vampire learning to love an angel. Sharon Shinn goes back to her angel planet of Samaria and has a bitter woman learn to trust through forcing a blind angel to trust her. Meljean Brook reunites two lovers, and Ilona Andrews, the only author whose worlds don't have angels anyway, bring new meaning to the idea of co-dependency. Mostly fun stuff; Shinn's story was my favorite.

Bigger Than a Bread Box, Laurel Snyder. This was not quite the book I expected, although it was very well done. It's the story of a girl whose parents are separated and she has to deal with abruptly moving down to live with her grandmother in a new city without any idea of when or if she'll ever go home. Oh, and she finds a magic bread box, which delivers her any wish that fits in the box, although it takes her a while to wonder where it gets the stuff. I started the book expecting the emphasis to be on the nifty magic trick of the bread box, but that's really just a metaphor for how things in life magically appear and disappear, such as her faith in her family (disappears) and her companionship with her little brother (appears).


Kris Longknife: Daring, Mike Shepherd. I'm starting to think the joke is on me with these books. One thing I've always liked is how they toy with the ridiculous stereotypes of women, with the main character pausing in her awesomeness to joke with her female rival about which boys they wish they were sleeping with or whose hair looks better. But I kept getting the feeling in this book that it wasn't a joke, that the author really thought women would have those conversations with a straight face, but that just isn't possible, right? I must have just been very tired while I read it. I also got bored with the constant references to everything being the fault of the Longknife family's love of trouble, even when the situation had nothing to do with Kris.


Pirate King, Laurie King. I read this last year sometime; it's the latest Mary Russell book (my book club read the first one this year). Mary runs off as a movie assistant to avoid some annoying stuff back in London, so we don't get any Holmes until midway through the book. I remember being confused that none of the family stuff from the previous books got mentioned, but maybe I had forgotten how things were resolved. Not one of the best, but an entertaining read.

Stardust, Neil Gaiman. I saw the movie in the theater when it came out, so I knew the general shape of the story, but Gaiman's version is different enough and my memory dim enough that I just vaguely knew who had happy endings. Somehow the enslavement of the star by the hero was much more upsetting to me in the book; I never really got over it and felt that he didn't ever understand what he did or why it mattered. So his happy ending didn't satisfy me; he still seemed like one of the bad guys who should get some kind of come-uppence.

The Naked Viscount, Sally MacKenzie. This silly and fluffy Regency never tried to take itself seriously as a historical, but instead wandered about having fun with its premise and characters, which never deepened enough to cause any worry about their happiness or safety.  Occasionally the quest for jokes over continuity jarred, but in general it was a cute way to spend an hour or so, with spy hijinks alternating with hot sex.

Girl Power: Misfit

Finally I finish another Cybils books, a YA finalist in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Jon Skovron's Misfit disappeared with my seventh grader for a while, and he returned it with a strong recommendation. I didn't find the cover all that appealing though, so I procrastinated on the start and let myself get distracted along the way.

But the cover fooled me; it's not misleading, because the book does deal with Catholic fears of demons and exorcisms; Jael's father, an ex-priest, keeps her enrolled in Catholic schools for good reasons, but the story isn't a simple one of priest=good, demon=bad (or vice-versa).  Instead, everyone is an individual and makes individual choices, whether they are human and bound to Earth, demon and bound to another plane, or a half-breed with access to both worlds. And Jael is not just a kid with superpowers, she's an adolescent whose father isn't sure how to know when she is grown up, a motherless child whose father still hasn't figured out how to talk about the wife he lost, a Catholic schoolgirl figuring out what she believes and who she can trust. I liked the variety with which people dealt with faith; some people believed foolishly and shallowly, others with heart and soul, and still others dealt with skepticism and questions.

At the end, the book made me look at the roles of a parent and an almost-grown child, the strengths of love in family and friendship, and the worth of loyalty. It's a book that affirms the important things about being human.

For religion month, this book shows a good variety of beliefs among the characters, from devout Catholics to crazed religious zealots through questioning youths and cynical atheists. But for all of them, religion is a real and powerful force in the world.

Sing it: We Are America

The last Cybils Poetry finalist did not really work for me. Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers put together a beautiful book, We Are America: A Tribute From the Heart, that combined Walt Whitman-like verses with painterly art depicting scenes from American history, concentrating on the common people who built this country.

Unfortunately, and this says a lot more about me than about the book, I couldn't really connect. I always felt like I was reading in a cathedral or a museum, with constant reminders to be quiet and reverent. Strong immigrants stood proudly next to victims of prejudice or oppression, and the need to be educated interfered with my ability to appreciate the words or the art. I also couldn't keep my fifth grader interested; I believe he also sensed an attempt to force learning on him and he squirmed away with more than his usual distaste for poetry. So it's undoubtedly a beautiful book, but shallow me could not appreciate it.

I'll go back to Lear nonsense or something.

Growing Up: A Wizard of Mars

Nina and Kit have worked together for years before Diane Duane's A Wizard of Mars starts off. No longer the youngest, hottest wizards, they are moving up in their hierarchy while also worrying about grades in their more difficult high school classes. Nina's dad expects her to keep track of her younger sister, whose grief over their mother's death manifests itself in losing herself on another planet far far away studying star maintenance.

Kit wrangles with his sisters, the one at home shameless borrowing all wizardly perks to help her shop, and the one coming back from college still unsure whether his powers stem from Satanic bonds or not. But he's distracted by the lure of Mars, a research project that calls to him more and more directly. When Mars tests him with a series of projections based on Earth fantasies about the Red Planet, I was very glad that my recent viewing of John Carter helped me keep up. (I had a great time and I recommend the movie if you can still find it somewhere.)

Most of all, both kids are growing up. Everyone has been teasing them about being boyfriend and girlfriend for so long, but would it be so bad? Both approach this delicate question from their own perspective, and Kit gets a bit distracted when a gorgeous Martian princess decides he's her long lost lover. Oh, and also the Earth almost gets destroyed, but that's really just par for the course for these two.

Duane's Young Wizard books (this is the ninth) are fundamentally about real kids who just happen to have their own connection to the magic of the universe. The magic parts seem fuzzy; the books always manage to have the spell to do what needs to be done, but the kid parts are solid, so that the problems they face in the real world help keep their wizardly dilemmas important as well.

Religion in May: Neither kid draws on religious beliefs for strength, although magic involves a good One and the evil Deceiver. Kit's family attends church as a matter of course. So it's not about religion, but it's there positively in the background.