my co-worker is brilliant!

I was talking to a co-worker just now, and she asked what I thought of Ender's Game, so I started to go on about it, enthusiastically. As you do. She said she thought it was like Harry Potter, which surprised me. I was inclined to disagree, until she mentioned the parallel between Ender's army of misfits and Dumbledore's Army. So now I'm very amused, and I think my co-worker is a genius.

Meg Cabot and Center Stage!

It's lame to have a blog post that's just a link to another blog post, but here you go - a link to a post on Meg Cabot's blog, in which she waxes enthusiastic about dance, especially Center Stage, though she mentions Ballet Shoes and the re-make of Fame, too.

Gossip Girl, singular

It drives me crazy when I read references to "Gossip Girls", plural, in connection with the TV show or series of books. It's a Gossip Girl, singular, to whom all gossip is sent. No one knows who the person is. Person. Singular. Sorry to be a grouch, but when even Michael Cart gets it wrong, it's time to start the revolution.
OK. Maybe "revolution" is going too far.

Princess Diaries

I went on a binge of reading the last five Princess Diaries books - I'd been waiting until the end of the series before I caught up. While I deplore the way that Cabot had to give J.P. a character assassination to make Forever Princess plausible, overall it was a really good effort. I particularly like the ways that as Mia and her classmates got older, they gained more perspective (both on the dumb things they did as freshmen and sophomores, and on each other as friends). The Ling Su/Perin relationship was a nice touch, too.

responsibility over time

I have a sizable database of all my school stories (which I collect, as you might know). Occasionally, I go on the fence about whether to include the Private series, or Ally Carter's series about the Gallagher Academy, or the Chestnut Hill series, or the Royal Ballet School Diaries. All of these were written in the last five years, but they're not exactly Girlsown. Ultimately, I threw these recent books in, but I haven't been happy about it.
I realized tonight that I haven't had much worry about including the books about younger girls (Royal Ballet School Diaries and Chestnut Hill). I think that's because these girls are young, so it's not much different than Clare Mallory's books about Merry (written in the late 40s/early 50s), or Brent-Dyer's or Blyton's books that focus on young characters (written between the 20s and the 1960s).
But the books about older people (I mean 17- and 18-year-olds here) are different. In books published before 1970 or so, it was assumed that by the time you were in the 6th form, you were sensible and responsible and self-controlled and things. (Of course, this wasn't the case in real life, always, but that's not the point here). In contrast, Reed in the Private series, or (good heavens) Jenny Humphrey in the It Girl series are fairly irresponsible.
Of course, they can be. When they're 18, they'll go off to college, and then they'll start working out what they want to do with their lives, and who they want to be. But girls from an earlier generation - basically, girls in most Girlsown books - start this process three or four years earlier.

P.S. For the sake of my reputation, I should mention that I don't own any It Girl books. I mean, enough is enough. Besides, Jenny's one of the most boring characters in the Gossip Girl books, so why read a spin-off about her?

Wonder Wheels

This morning, as I threw together some breakfast, the SO and I were chatting (as we do) about a range of topics. Somehow, discussion of a new book led to a reference from Scrubs which led to me remembering this weird subplot about boxers vs. briefs in an old book I'd read one or six times, Wonder Wheels.
So over breakfast, I skimmed this book to refresh my memory. It's about a guy who works at a grocery store, but lives for his time at the roller rink (the book was published in 1979). He meets this girl, and of course they fall in love. I'd remembered that she gets killed by an abusive dad, but no - it's a possessive and crazy boyfriend, who kills himself and her in the car by carbon monoxide poisoning. Whoa. Our grief-stricken hero goes on (and rises above, blah blah blah) to have a fabulous skate to the blessedly fictional song "Calliope Girl", and he gets the skating job he wants.
Anyway, I was gobsmacked when I realized that the author of this little gem is Lee Bennett Hopkins. Hopkins is best known for the dozens of children's poetry anthologies he has edited, so it was startling to see that he'd written Wonder Wheels back in the day.

perfect size 6 figures

I was appalled to read reports about the revamped Sweet Valley High books - see here and here for details. Why update the books, when fashion is cyclical anyway? As the links point out, the brand names in the original series were made up, which (slightly) extended the shelf life of the books.
But I'm beyond cranky about how the Wakefield twins lost their often-mentioned "perfect size 6 figures" in the rewritten series. Now, they are size 4. Given that they're 5'6", size 4 seems underweight for them.

Meghan's world

Jean Feiwel, the publisher who released Ellen Emerson White's Long May She Reign and is re-releasing the first three books in the series, has some fairly inexplicable taste in book jackets. She decided to re-release the books with covers that are versions of famous paintings. The results are less than appealing to the average teen.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind any of these paintings, especially Christina's World. But what on earth was Feiwel thinking?

Pagan's Daughter, etc.

I read Pagan's Daughter this last week. It doesn't come out here in the States until November (under the title Babylonne, btw), but I've been keen to read it for months now. So I bought a used copy from Australia.
Its origin - it came from half a world away! - is one of the more interesting things about it, sadly. I just never cared about Babylonne. Although Isidore wasn't my favorite character in Pagan's Scribe, I was delighted to see him here, especially when he was talking about the recently-deceased Pagan.
If I hadn't bought it, I would have been eagerly waiting it for another seven months, and the letdown would have been even greater, so it's as well that I bought it now. I'm not even sure that I can recommend it as a library purchase. It's not that I hated it, because I didn't. Catherine Jinks, the author, is a medieval scholar - and you can tell from the text, which seems determined to teach the reader every blessed thing about Languedoc's religious sects in the early 13th century. It's not that I'm opposed to medieval history, of course. I quite like it, and more to the point, I've studied it. But this will be a hard sell, even to fans of the books about Pagan.
Speaking of those books about Pagan - as I mentioned a few days ago, I'm determined not to re-read any books this month. So although I'm longing to go back and re-read the books about Pagan, I have to wait until Tuesday. I consoled myself yesterday with Gerald Morris's Parsifal's Page, which I had to read for a book club. And now I'm filling in the time by reading more by Mercedes Lackey.

romance for guys

I was just asked to find a good romance for a young adult (an older teen). He wanted something like The Notebook. Turns out it is very difficult to find one! I avoided books from a female perspective, which knocked out 90% of the romantic teen fiction right there. Nearly all the rest were about gay romance, and I wasn't sure that would fly here. So I opted for 24 girls in 7 days, and Stargirl, and a few others.
But - where are the romance books for straight guys?

among the tear-soaked

I've been reading some of Margaret Peterson Haddix's books lately. Despite the name of this blog post, I didn't read the Shadow Children series. Instead, I read Leaving Fishers, Double Identity, and Takeoffs and Landings. I liked Leaving Fishers, of course - it's about a girl who joins a cult, and cults are on that quirky list of topics (which also includes school stories, books about nuns, and books about mills) that I will nearly always enjoy. Double Identity was pretty good. I suspect that objectively speaking, Takeoffs and Landings wasn't great, but oh my goodness, it made me cry. It was told my a brother and sister in alternating chapters, and after the first 50 pages, I cried through all the brother's chapters. Thank heavens it was late at night, and no one was there to see me sob my way through this book.
After the Haddix-fest, I went for a re-read of Peter's Room. I've gotten a bit bogged down with it, though, so I picked up The Honour of the House (talking of school stories!) to read over lunch yesterday. Last night a friend was telling me that he wants to read the Little House books (if you're reading this, Mark: seriously, don't do it unless you read The Long Winter, and probably not even then), and that made me want to pull out Farmer Boy for a re-read. So that might be next.

weird coincidence

The strangest thing about reading Long May She Reign is that I was horribly sick, as I'd mentioned. Not so strange in and of itself (though the sickness made for the worst travel experience I've ever had), except that last time I was joyously reading a new addition to my Ellen Emerson White collection, I was sick then as well. At the time, I'd asked whether there was some weird karmic debt that I had to pay so that I could read a book I'd wanted for so long. Now I wonder that even more.
Funnily enough, it was the same sort of 48-hour stomach bug. Horrible.

a different, better fourth book

The last time I posted (sorry for the delay!), I'd been cranky about Megan McCafferty's disappointing fourth book. I'm pleased to report that Ellen Emerson White's fourth book about Meg Powers, Long May She Reign, is much better. I'm not sure how she maintained Meg's voice over all those years, or successfully bridged the gap between 1989 (when the third book about Meg was released) and 2007, but she did. I suspect I'll have more to say about it later, but it's late. Also, I was very sick when I read it, so I'll wait until after I finish re-reading it. I suspect I'll have a clearer view of the book then.
It really has been a long time since I posted - I don't think I've ever gone so long without blogging here. My vacation seems very very long ago. As it happens, I'd brought quite a few books along, but read only one or two. It was extraordinarily difficult to find time to read, and the vacation was tiring and stressful. (How much of the stress was due to my churlishness varies, depending on whom one asks). If I ever needed confirmation that I could never be on Survivor or Big Brother - and I didn't, I assure you - this last vacation would have clinched the matter. Reading is my default activity when I am stressed out, as an almost sure-fire stress reliever. So if I can't read - well, turns out it's not pretty. Especially with odd eating patterns added to the mix.

Kissing the Bee, and D.A.

I'm not sure why Kathe Koja is so underrated. I read Kissing the Bee in one sitting tonight (not difficult, because it's such a short book) and was very taken with it. I liked Talk just as much. Kissing the Bee, in particular, had a precision of language rarely seen outside a Cynthia Voigt novel, which was well suited to Dana, the main character. Koja has the gift of knowing when to stop - a lesser author might have stretched this book for another 50 pages, but the length (it was almost a novella) was just right.
Talking of novellas I've enjoyed, I read Connie Willis's D.A. this week. It was almost too slight in retrospect, but at the time, I really liked it. It wasn't Bellwether (easily my favorite Willis novel, more even than To Say Nothing of the Dog), but it had some similarities.

in the interests of full disclosure...

I feel I should mention that I absolutely can't stand books that feature a protagonist who takes a literal journey, and in so doing learns about himself or herself.
Why is this relevant? Well, Guyaholic features one of these journeys. To add further, um, depth, Mackler had V get lost once or twice on the trip. See? She got lost! That's similar to V's confusion about - oh. Yeah. You sussed that out already.

more about Mackler

I've posted about Carolyn Mackler before, more than once. It's a miracle that I like The Earth, My Butt..., because wow - I just finished her new book, and Mackler has to be one of the most stilted writers on the planet. No one anywhere speaks or thinks like one of her characters. It's just not possible.
Here's a sample at a fast-food restaurant (Guyaholic, pp. 118-119):
"...the guy behind the counter says, 'What do you want?'
I stare at him.
'What do you want?' he asks again.
What do I want?
I want to forget."

Oh, good heavens. As the folks at Television Without Pity would say, shut up, Carolyn Mackler. Why did I read the book, you ask? Professional obligations, my dear.

ETA: My SO thought that he might think something like "I want to forget" (though he's wrong, and he said so), but my quotation above was chosen at random, and for brevity's sake. For a longer sample, try pp. 138-139. I tensed up when V pulled off the highway to go to Whole Foods, but didn't start grinding my teeth until "I can't believe I'm admitting this, but after a thousand miles of Pringles and pretzels and Pop-Tarts, I'm actually craving something real." Again - whose internal dialogue sounds like that?

the saddest death

I read HP 7 yesterday, and it was good. I still think the character who came back to life (no spoilers here!) was a cop-out. I wasn't moved by that death, or the deaths of major characters, as much as I was moved by one character's literal march toward death, and especially by the character who died while joking around, who had always been a favorite of mine (my other two favorites survived, thankfully). Yesterday I thought the epilogue wrapped things up a bit too neatly, but today I'm okay with it. My favorite part, by far, was the radio broadcast.
I re-read Harry Potter books up until the seventh one came out, so now it's strange to read anything else. It doesn't help that I'm reading Warrior Woman, a shockingly bad pulp novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's more plot-driven than Survey Ship, which isn't a compliment here, not where MZB is concerned (my favorite MZB is Thendara House, after all, which is all about character development).

back to the Forest

I picked up Autumn Term by Antonia Forest the other day, because I wanted a book to read over lunch (handy, working in a library!). So then, inevitably, I was sucked into re-reading almost the whole Marlow series again. I skipped Thuggery Affair, because, well, it's Thuggery Affair, and Peter's Room because I couldn't find it on the shelf. I can't imagine a thief breaking in just for that one book, but that was the hardest for me to get. Bother.
The SO brought home a fun preread yesterday: 21 Proms, edited by David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft. I'm only a few stories into it - I was underwhelmed by the Cecily von Ziegesar story, but really charmed by a few others. It often seems as though unknown authors write better for short story collections - they have to earn their way in by talent, instead of by their name.

Stand down

This is my own stand down, because - yes, I'm sick again. This time, a particularly hellish stomach flu, which started around 5 am Friday morning. I'm still queasy. So I was going though a really awful morning on Friday, what with the flu and all, and then I was convinced I would get a package in the mail that day. And I did - Welcome to Vietnam and Stand Down by Zack Emerson. I hadn't had the opportunity to read Stand Down for about seven years - for a while, it was over $100 on abebooks.com, and no nearby libraries own it. So I've been re-reading the Echo Company series and The Road Home this weekend, and wondering whether this flu was the karmic price one has to pay to own books one has wanted for so long.

a mighty handy oracle

I'm sick (it's depressing, in retrospect, to think of how many posts in the last year have said this). Mostly getting over it, though, which is good. I finished Victoria Hanley's The Light of the Oracle tonight, in my quest to find new female fantasy authors. It was a mishmash of the usual: teens save the day, traces of Anne McCaffrey, and an overworld suspiciously like Marion Zimmer Bradley's. The SO tells me that a bunch of authors have a similar idea, way back to Lovecraft, but I think it's more like MZB.
Then I read the first book in Kate Brian's new series, Private. It was cracktastic: a mix between a boarding school story, Gossip Girl, and Harrison's Clique series. Much better than M. Apostolina's Meri Strikes Back, which I read this week, but which didn't live up to Hazing Meri Sugarman. The sequel to Private comes out next month, yippee!
Forgive my fangirl chatter - I'm too sick, and tired, to come up with anything insightful tonight.