Some More Best Books

Although the challenge is long over, I'm still working my way through the 2012 Best of the Best ALA lists. Whenever I finish I'll probably start the current years -- it looks like it won't be 2013, though.

Super Human, Michael Carroll.  This Best of the Best choice took me forever to get to, much to my son's chagrin, since he recommended it highly. In fact, we saw the next two sequels at the bookstore before I even finished this one. My favorite part was the world building, which was done with pleasing subtlety. The details of the super-hero rich world, with both smart inventors and heros with special powers, is revealed through the matter-of-fact actions of the main characters, both super and non. But the very end, where the basic foundations and morality of the society are questioned, throws everything into doubt in a very interesting way. I'm very glad I have the next book waiting for me. (I wrote this last December or so, and I have to admit I haven't yet started the next one, although I know where it is. I am looking forward to it, though.)

Curse of the Wendigo, Rick Yancey. Narrated by Steven Boyer. This horror story was far too grim for us, with the eleven year old dropping out early and even the fourteen year old saying I could listen ahead without him. The dead baby floating in a sea of excrement in the last disc was just the last and worst of a series of really gross scenes that kept throwing me out of the story. It got so that we just hung out waiting for the next icky thing. Nice vocabulary, though. Both boys think I'm insane for insisting on finishing it.

 

Scorpio Races (audio) Maggie Stiefvater.  Narrated by Steve West and Fiona Hardingham. X and I have both read and enjoyed this novel before, and P had fun listening along, although he didn't blink when I listened ahead without him. The dual narration worked very well, which at first I worried about. I could hear where the narrators made some different choices than I had when I read it, but not in an annoying way. Both X and I noticed the love story much more in audio format, although I'm not sure whether that's a rereading thing or an listening thing. Also, I'm a sucker for British accents saying "Sawrn" or "Puck Connolly." This one is highly recommended as a written or audio book.

Reading My Library: N-O-P

I suddenly noticed that my Reading My Library books were coming due, so I hurriedly read them all, which mostly broke me out of a reading slump. I'm amused at how I lean towards fantasy, but then the call of the Where Am I Reading Challenges lures me back to realistic fiction, which is more likely to take place in an actual place.

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.  Although Naylor's writing is fresh and realistic, creating two believable girls with their circle of friends, I felt that the book as a whole was unbalanced. The story of two Kentucky school girls from the richest and poorest counties given a chance to visit and learn from each other was enough; throwing in a mining disaster wasn't necessary.

Sparrow Road, Sheila O'Connor. A pleasant story of a girl confronting issues of identity and family in an interesting environment. I'd like a little more detail to the setting, and as an adult I found her whining and her mother's secrecy very annoying, but I don't think either would have struck me as a child reader.

Bread and Roses, Too, Katherine Paterson. A fun historical fiction set around the textile strike in Massachusetts in the early twentieth century. The two main characters were the bookish member of an Italian immigrant family and the illiterate son of a drunk American; they bounce off each other several times before ending up together in Vermont for the duration.

Lucky Breaks, Susan Patron. Unfortunately I read three books very quickly, and they all involved a bit of children behaving badly. The plot followed the familiar pattern of a child being a pill (betraying a friend, being reckless and rude), learning from her mistakes with the helpful assistance of a cadre of compassionate friends and family, and resolving to Do Better. On the other hand, I really wanted to hand this book to my niece so she could read it -- I think she'd really like it.

Marching On

Well, I guess February happened. I don't seem to remember most of it. There are scattered blurs -- my nephew had a wonderful birthday weekend that we all celebrated down at the indoor water park, and one of my best friends for the past decade or two came for a visit, a rare and treasured event. And there were a few other birthdays, but mostly I ran in circles and didn't get much done. I didn't even read much, although I spent a lot of time picking up old comfort books and reading through my favorite bits.

I've started listening to old favorite stories in my car. I'm ambivalent about listening to new things, but I usually like hearing books I've previously read. I think it's because I can't control the speed, so if it's fresh territory then I want to fine tune the pace -- speeding up if the plot is gripping, slowing down to savor a moment or to dread the next stage.

I'll go sign in at Book Journey's round-up of what people have read, are reading, and will read. I'm eligible again for Teach Mentor Texts since I really only read kidlit books.

This week I read:

• Lucky Breaks, Susan Patron. RML choice. Good but not to my taste.
• Bread and Roses Too, Katherine Paterson. RML. Interesting history of Wobbly strike.
• Sparrow Road, Sheila O'Connor. RML. Child meets father.
• Scorpio Races, Maggie Streifvater (audio). Best of the Best.
• A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold (audio). Comfort.

Earlier in February I also read:

• Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet 3), Nora Roberts
• Vision in White (Bride Quartet 1), Nora Roberts
• Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet 4), Nora Roberts
• Celebrity In Death, J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)
• Gone, Michael Grant. YA.
• The Ninth Circle, R.M. Meluch
• The Enemy, Charlie Higson. YA.
• Dearly Departed, Lia Habel. YA
• Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet 2), Nora Roberts (for book club)
• Every Day, David Levithan. YA
• Twenty and Ten, Clair Huchet Bishop. kidlit
• The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight, Jack Campbell
• The Spanish Marriage, Madeleine Robins
• Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack, Wendelin van Draanen. kidlit
• The Shadow of the Wind,  Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Under the Mesquite Guadalupe Garcia Mccall. YA
• Fleas, Flies and Friars: Children's Poetry from the Middle Ages, Nicholas Orne

What am I currently reading? Technically I have 23 books open, but really I'm only trying to read about three. Well, five if you count the NOOK books.  Most books are just for browsing, and then there's all the books left over from the summer that I'll get to REAL SOON NOW.

• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. (NOOK) Back from the library, and I'm enjoying it a lot, especially as it intersects with other books involving morality (which is a lot of them).
• Some of the Best From Tor.Com 2011. (NOOK) This is from my favorite review site.
• Nexus, Ramez Naam. (NOOK) For book club.
• Bloody Jack, L.A. Meyer. She's just become a he and set off to sea. Secret Santa present.
• Steel's Edge, Ilona Andrews. A Christmas present from my dad. Thanks!
• The King of Attolia, Megan Whelan Turner. A delicious reread.
• A Temple of Texts, William H. Gass. I like reading essays by people passionate about reading, but it slows things down a bit when either I haven't read or I've actively disliked what he's raving about.
• Serpent's Shadow, Rick Riordan. It's sad how much Sadie annoys me. It also slows me down.
• Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs (audio). My car book.
• The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Martin Gardner. Dipper. I am also not a political extremist.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Dipper. Back to the city. Except I suddenly can't find it.
• Senrid, Sherwood Smith. Dipper. I'm a bit dubious about the escape plan.
• War With the Newts, Karel Capek. Dipper. I see action on the horizon!
• Abraham Lincoln: Prairie Years, Carl Sandburg. I like this Lincoln, who just turned 18.
• A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays,  Laurie Lecomer. Good description of different developmental areas.
• Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey. Paused.

What will I read next week? I now have a sense of this, since I'm regulating my page intake to about 100 pages a day (not counting book club books:

• Marathon, Boaz Yakin & Joe Infurnari. Cybils, in my book bag already.
• My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor. Due next Saturday, so it jumps ahead.
• Blackwood, Glenda Bond. (Tuesday) Another Secret Santa prezzie.
• Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler. (Friday) Best of the Best.
• Frost Burn, Patricia Briggs. Probably as soon as it hits my NOOK.

2013 Challenges:

1. TBR Double Dog Dare: Eleven books from my shelves. And my library books comfortably fit in their crate now.
2. Cybils: 5/74. I just put another one (Marathon) in the bag.
3. Where Am I Reading?: Twelve down, so I'm on target.
4. Crazy Quilt Colors: 2/9. I got White and Blue already!
5. Science Book Challenge: Need to re-sign up.
6. Reading My Library: Three more, and the next batch is out.
7. Best of the Best 2012: 38/25. About to read Why We Broke Up, and picking out the next audio.
8. Summer Reading Goal: The next one is working its way up the stack.

Stacking the Shelves at the Library

I like the rhythm of my Saturday library days, especially on the weekends my boys spend with their dad. Then I sleep in a bit, head off to say hello to MY dad around lunch time, and then dive into the library for some quality time with the shelves.

Of course, with this TBR Double Dog Dare going on I can't make many commitments to the new friends I see, but just flirting is fun too. And today it was time to refill my RML bag, so I spent a leisurely afternoon poking through the next six shelves to see what there was to see. I can tell that I've been missing bringing home everything I see, because I was most drawn to books that I know are on my TBR list.

Oh, I had snuck in a few days earlier to pick up an audio version of Cry Wolf, which is totally not cheating because I own the paper copy but I don't like to read while driving. I'm very safety conscious. And frugal -- I didn't want to hire someone to read my copy aloud.

I got:

• Summer of the Gypsy Moths, Sara Pennypacker. I love her Clementine books, and I trust I'll like her older book as well.
• The Young Man and the Sea, Rodman Philbrick. He's another author I trust.
• Olivia Kidney and the Secret Beneath the City, Ellen Potter. I've never read her earlier books.
• A Dog's Way Home, Bobbie Pyron. The only book I've never heard of before; I'm hoping it works for my read-America challenge.
• Cold Cereal, Adam Rex. I'm expecting strangeness and poignancy.
• May B, Caroline Starr Rose. I've heard a lot about this book, but I forgot it was in verse. Dang.
• Shadows in Flight, Orson Scott Card. I bet my kids want this one, and if they take until April to finish then I can read it too!

This left me with 49 items out on my card, a large step over my age. So I didn't get any new picture books or audio CDs, which are what are propping up my numbers. I've got the books part mostly under control

I bought several ebooks, but I'm going to avoid reading them until later. They were too good bargains to let slide:

• Nexus, Ramez Naam is for book club, so I'll read it this week. The library had it, but too quickly, and then everyone else wanted it to. Thanks for going on sale at Barnes & Noble!
• The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater. She is on my buy-if-possible list.
• The Emperor's Edge, Lindsay Burokers. With a recommendation from a trusted friend, and a tiny price tag, how could I resist?
• Frost Burn, Patricia Briggs. Who am I kidding? Unless my life is absolutely stress free over the next week, and this will not happen, I'm going to dive into this brain candy as soon as it appears on my NOOK this Tuesday. I need some happy endorphins, and Briggs gives them to me.

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. And I think I'll sign up at Tynga's Stacking the Shelves, which asks for all the books acquired. I'm hoping that I control my book-buying better than my library browsing, but at least the NOOK acquisitions won't topple my house!

Crazy Quilt Colors Challenge

Since I enjoy challenges that encourage me to pick up books I otherwise might not encounter at all, I'm signing up for My Reader's Block's Color Coded Challenge. She lines up nine colors, and I try to read a book with some shade of each color sometime this year.

If I ever start reviewing books around here again, I'll put them on the review page. Clearly that is a long shot. I'm much too busy staring at the walls of books I intend to read any minute now to either do any reading or write about it.

Anyway, the colors are:

1. Blue: Succubus Blues, Richelle Mead
2. Red: Redskin & Cowboy, G.A. Henty; Ruby Holler, Sharon Creech
3. Yellow: Crucible of Gold, Naomi Novik
4. Green: Blood on the Verde River, Dusty Richards
5. Brown: Heaven and Earth, Nora Roberts
6. Black: Blackwood, Gwenda Bond
7. White: Vision in White, Nora Roberts
8. Other (mostly mixed colors): Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot, Anna Branford
9. Implied (patterns): Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses, Chris Nashawaty

Hey, I got White and Blue already! Go me!

Two Space Operas In Different Universes

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible, by Jack Campbell. I'm enjoying Campbell's long string of military science fiction, following a war hero forced back into active service after a century in frozen sleep. The writing is fairly stilted, but I like the sincerity and think that it matches the earnest, boy-scoutish demeanor of the main character. I'm also enjoying the blend of gender-neutral society -- this space navy doesn't blink at having women in combat, in command, and in the marines -- and a traditional gender confusion between Black Jack and his wife or any other important female character. In true Heinlein fashion, the women usually know more but are careful of the men about it.

I got a tickle out of the cover, which shows a heroic captain with a big gun and shiny space armor, especially in light of the conversation between Jack and his wife, where she tells him that if he dies she'll carry on by writing a best-selling memoir about her life with him, complete with a cover showing him doing something improbably heroic, "maybe in battle armor. With a gun." Hey, maybe it will turn out that she was writing this whole series!

Killbox, Ann Aguire. I'm also enjoying Aguire's very different space opera story, with the characters leading the rebellion that cracked open society. At this point they are trying to patch things together again, an effort made complicated by the enormous alien invasion heading their way.

The contrasts are delicious -- Jax and her friends are more mercenaries than professional soldiers, and even when they are fighting for the government they don't really understand the military as a society. Jax and her lover decide to break up while they serve together, since they can't work together professionally. But they do it with angst and drama, each worrying that the other is secretly relieved to be alone again. The character's emotions often feel much more honest and realistic -- closer to how people really feel rather than how they should feel in the best of all possible worlds.

I'm enjoying both series, although they tickle very different parts of my brain.

Please Send Gumption

A frequent comment to my blog (especially from people here from the comment challenge who need to say SOMETHING even when I'm too dull to give you anything to talk about) is that I sure do read a lot of books at once. Which is true.

But that's partly because there are books I'm reading because I like reading them, and books I'm reading because I want to have read them. If I'm lucky, each book is both, but sometimes this is not the case. And I usually don't like to read too much of a book if I'm not enjoying it, so I try to make sure I've got some books dangling as carrots -- if I read a bit of that book that I want to have read, then I can read some of that book that I want to be reading.

And even in the the books I'm reveling in reading, I sometimes have reasons to try to go slow. For example, I like to read book club selections over a few days so I have time to have a few thoughts about them. I like to spread comfort books out over any time I need comforting in. All of which means that if I'm going to read 200 - 300 pages in a day, often I want to spread those out among the book that I'm not really enjoying (Shadow of the Wind), the book I want to cleverly notice foreshadowing and all the funny bits in (Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict), the book from a good author but with a really annoying premise (The Spanish Wedding), and the book where the author might kill off a bunch of people for an added emotional punch (Faith, Hope and Ivy June). And I'll force myself through a bit of the dull parts of The War With the Newts in between these options. So there's a week in which I'm reading four, maybe five books depending on which is on top.

I'm still on track with C.B.'s TBR Double Dog Dare. My library list is under my age and I have room to pull a few CDs to play in my car.

I'm also up to date with the Comment Challenge. Some days my comments are fairly lame, but I managed to get up a blog post or two for other people to comment on if they get desperate.

I'll go sign in at Book Journey's round-up of what people have read, are reading, and will read. I'm eligible again for Teach Mentor Texts since I read two kidlit books.

This week I read:

• Succubus Blues, Richelle Mead. NOOK. Fun book I got from Felicia Day's book club.
• Tears of the Sun, S.M. Stirling. Worst page:plot ratio I've seen.
• My Year With Eleanor, Noelle Hancock. NOOK. Fun memoir.
• Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. RML book that I felt through in a bit too much drama.
• The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, Trenton Stewart. For my family book club.
• The Borrowers Afield, Mary Norton. Hey, I finished this! 

What am I currently reading? Technically I have 23 books open, but really I'm only trying to read about three. Well, five if you count the NOOK books.  Most books are just for browsing, and then there's all the books left over from the summer that I'll get to REAL SOON NOW.

• Dearly, Departed, Lia Habel. NOOK. I think this was a Felicia Day pick that I fell behind on.
• The Spanish Marriage, Madeleine Robins. NOOK. Argh, it's a romance based on stupidly keeping secrets. OK, he just has a misunderstanding that he's too dumb to talk about, but anytime the heroine thinks "oh, I just realized I can't tell him this secret for some goofy reason" I know the book is not going to win me over. 
• Shadow On the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I'm really not enjoying this book, which seems to stop and congratulate itself on its own beauty every few paragraphs. Yes, it's beautiful writing, but the vanity is wearying.
• Fleas, Flies, and Friars, Nicholas Orme. I got another copy from the library, and I won't lose this one!
• Gone, Michael Grant. I've read his humor, now I'll try his drama. Highly recommended by my eighth grader.
• The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater. (audio). I wonder if the boys would notice if I snuck ahead without them...
• A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays,  Laurie Lecomer. The importance of early intervention.
• The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Martin Gardner. Dipper. I am also not an aesthetic relativist.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Dipper. Big chase scene.
• Senrid, Sherwood Smith. Dipper. Is the sister nine or sixteen? I'm a bit unsure.
• War With the Newts, Karel Capek. Dipper. Still very slow.
• The Enemy, Charles Hudson. NOOK. I got it back.
• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. (NOOK) Another expiration failure.
• Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey. Paused.

What will I read next week? I now have a sense of this, since I'm regulating my page intake to about 100 pages a day (not counting book club books:

• Among Others, Jo Walton. I have to find this book so I can reread it for Foolscap next weekend.
• Under the Mesquite,  Guadalupe McCall. For Tuesday. From the Best of the Best lists.
• Twenty and Ten, Claire Bishop. For Thursday. I got a copy from Scholastic, but of course I've read it before.
• Every Day, David Levithan. For Friday. For the Cybils finalist list.

2013 Challenges:

1. TBR Double Dare: Eight books from my shelves. And I've turned in more library books than I check out.
2. Cybils: 4/74. I'll start one this week.
3. Where Am I Reading?: I've signed up, and read seven states already.
4. Science Book Challenge: Need to re-sign up.
5. Reading My Library: Another one down! (Faith, Hope and Ivy June, by Naylor.)
6. Best of the Best 2012: 36/25. We're currently enjoying Scorpio Races. I start Under the Mesquite soon.
7. Summer Reading Goal: The next one is working its way up the stack.