2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge

Dated Jan 1, 2010 to Dec 31, 2010
Completed:

J. Kaye is once again hosting the Young Adult Reading Challenge next year, this time with multiple levels! I am going to sign up for the Just My Size level - 25 books. I have a ton of YA books I want to read. It should be no problem to reach 25 even if I manage to cut my reading in half next year like I want. The challenge doesn't require us to make a list, so I'm going to leave that blank this year and just add links to my reviews as I go.

Chicken With Plums, by Marjane Satrapi

-4.5 Stars

Recommended by: n/a

[First, before I begin this review, I wanted to let you all know I'm trying to organize a resources tour in December for the GLBT Challenge. If you're interested in posting about GLBT books within a certain genre or category, see this link. We can use all the help we can get!]

This is my last review left over from October!!

In Chicken With Plums, Satrapi writes a biography of her great-uncle, the famous Iranian musician Nassar Ali Khan. When Khan's tar breaks, he falls into a depression and lays in bed wishing for death for a week. At the end of that week, he dies (this isn't a spoiler, it says so right at the beginning). Satrapi presents each day of his final week, with flashbacks to earlier parts of his life that lead up to his current predicament. Through these memories, we come to understand Khan's heartbreak and his loss of will to live.

Oh my. This is the third book by Satrapi I've read, after Persepolis and Embroideries, and it has earned its place at the top of the list. At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to like the book, but as the narration twisted and I came to understand more about a lifetime of frustrations, cyclical depression, and the outpouring of soul into music, I really empathized with Khan. Then, the end twisted around in a direction that I didn't foresee at all, and I cried. It was beautiful. The love! The passion! The pain! Oh...and the artwork...so beautiful. The second to last panel, with the Angel of Death at the funeral, staring intently at a specific mourner - oh, it made me cry so much. It was such a lovely and heartwrenching book!

I really, really love Marjane Satrapi's work. Each new book I read, I love more. She has such a sense of character. She can take a person and strip them down to their essentials in order to splash out a portrait of them on paper. By the end of each of these books, though they aren't long and don't take long to read, you really feel like you know the people she discusses. You know them as individuals and you recognize in them the people you know personally. It's brilliant. If you haven't read any of her work yet, I highly recommend that you do. It doesn't really matter where you start - they're all wonderful!

Below are some panels from this book. Click to enlarge as usual.

Have you read this book? If you have, let me know and I'll link to your review here.

*****
This book counts towards my 100+ Challenge.

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

-5 Stars

Recommended by: n/a

A mysterious man sneaks into a certain house and kills all the family members except the youngest - an 18m old toddler whose name is never known - who manages to escape into a nearby graveyard. The ghosts there adopt him, name him Nobody (or "Bod" for short), and raise him the best they know how. Because Bod is adopted by spirits, he walks the line between the living and the dead, and can see things that most living creatures can't see. As he grows up, he starts to realize his life is anything but normal, but when he tries to interact with the world outside the graveyard, he discovers danger beyond the cemetery's borders. The man who tried to kill him as a baby is still out there, and time is running out.

I loved it. Just loved it! This is my new favorite Gaiman book, topping Stardust, which I read during April's readathon. It was so much fun to read, the illustrations were gorgeous, and all the various plotlines were well tied up at the end. One of the qualms I tend to have with Gaiman's books is that the endings are too neat, or too easy for the characters. The obstacles they have to overcome are rarely hard ones, at least in the books I've read. But I didn't feel like that in The Graveyard Book. Bod has to battle some pretty scary monsters/people, he has to learn about himself and grow while he does so, and he loses some important things in the process. It's balanced and fair.

What an excellent book! So good that after I was done reading, I immediately handed it over to my 9 year old so he could read it before I had to take it back from the library. Of course, one might wonder about my parenting skills when I hand off a book dealing with murder, ghosts, and monsters to my young children. However, there was nothing morbid, gory, or terribly scary about The Graveyard Book. It wasn't cutesy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely a children's book. It had just the right atmosphere for Halloween, fun and adventurous without me having to worry about giving my son nightmares (like Coraline did).

Last year, I decided I was very on the fence about Gaiman. I enjoyed Coraline (the first thing I read by him) but hated American Gods (read right afterwards). I didn't try him again until Stardust, which was excellent. Now, I love The Graveyard Book. For awhile I thought maybe I just enjoyed his young adult and younger books, but I think I've gained enough confidence now to go try Anansi Boys. Hopefully my second experience with his adult books will squash the bad experience with American Gods!

Other points of view:

- Rebecca Reads
- Farm Lane Books
- Kyusi Reader
- Steph & Tony Investigate!
- Nan's Corner of the Web
- The Eclectic Reader
- Kiss a Cloud
- Necromancy Never Pays
- Chain Reading
- Mari Reads
- Everyday Reads
- Stella Matutina
- Book Nut
- Page 247
- It's All About Books
- Valentina's Room
- Rhinoa's Ramblings
- Nothing of Importance
- Stainless Steel Droppings
- The Written World
- The Little Bookworm
- Ready When You Are, C.B.
- Multi Genre Fan
- Puss Reboots

Have you read this book? If you have, let me know and I'll link to your review here.

*****
This book counts towards my RIP Challenge (post-dated) and my 100+ Challenge.

GLBT Challenge 2010

Dated Jan 1, 2010 to Dec 31, 2010
Completed:

I am so happy The Challenge That Dare Not Speak Its Name will be year-round in 2010. I am signing up for the highest level, the rainbow level, which asks for 12 or more books. The reason I'm signing up for this level is because it means I can read as many GLBT books as I want next year and keep adding them to the challenge list! I finished up this year's GLBT Challenge within 6 weeks, so everything I've read since has not gone towards the challenge. As my goal next year is to read 20-25% GLBT-related books, I really like the idea of an "as many as you frickin' want" level to this challenge. :D

Having said that, I'm not picking specific books for my list. Instead, I'm going to put up some of my ideas. I may read all or none of these.

Fiction:

There are YA, adult, classics, GNs, etc in this list, so I'm just putting it in alphabetical order by author.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Claudine at School by Colette
Boy Midflight by Charlie David
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Maurice by EM Forster
Seeking Sara Summers by Susan Gabriel
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Geography Club by Brent Hartinger
Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne
Wide Awake by David Levithan
Hero by Perry Moore
Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters
Rage: A Love Story by Julie Anne Peters
Summet Avenue by Mary Sharatt
Hotel World by Ali Smith
Without Sin by J. Tomas
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
Affinity by Sarah Waters
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction:

Gay America: Struggle for Equality by Linas Alsenas
Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell
I'm Looking Through You by Jennifer Finney Boylan
The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde by Merlin Holland
One Teacher in 10: Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Story by Kevin Jennings
Virtually Normal by Andrew Sullivan

Non-GLBT books by GLBT authors:

Howard's End by EM Forster
A Room With a View by EM Forster
If Not, Winter by Sappho
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Freshwater by Virginia Woolf

Obviously I am severely lacking in the nonfiction and GLBT author areas, so I'd love any suggestions. I'd also love suggestions for GLBT-themed graphic novels, or GLBT books from/about non-white cultures!!

I'll add links to my reviews below.

Sunday Salon - Random

For the first time in a long time, I'm at a complete loss as to what to talk about for the Sunday Salon, so I guess I'll just give a brief overview of what's been happening this week.

First, I finished my NaNo novel. I'm still editing it, but I hit 50,000 words on day 8 (after skipping day 7 completely), and finished the novel the day after that. It sucks, but it's supposed to suck, right? I'm still working on it.

Second, our kittehs are cracking me up. We bought a kitteh-toy laser printer to have them chase around. Christabel (our older kitteh) doesn't do a lot of chasing, but Ash will run all around the room. He's got amazing turnaround speed, and can do several fast circles before he loses sight of the beam. I'm having too much fun with this.

Third, I'm still working on getting the GLBT Challenge blog fully set up, but it's in its preliminary stages right now, and you can sign up for next year's challenge as of today. (PS - I should say that I haven't sent out invitations to those of you who said you wanted to help with the blog yet. I'm still in the prelim stages and promise to contact you soon.)

Fourth, because I finished NaNo so quickly and am still catching up on reviews, I've decided to try to tackle my nemesis book again - Ada by Vladimir Nabokov. So far I'm through Ch. 9, and after the first 6 chapters, it's gotten a bit easier. Wish me luck.

I'll try to be back with a real topic next week.

Weekly Reading Journal:

Received this week:

• Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters (via B&N): I loved Between Mom and Jo so much that I wanted to get more of Julie Anne Peters' works. This was a reward to myself for finishing my NaNo novel, along with:
• RAGE: A Love Story by Julie Anne Peters (via B&N)
  

Added to my TBR pile:

• Luna, Define "Normal," & By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters - Yes, I'm totally on a Julie Anne Peters kick this week.
• Sold by Patricia McCormick: I saw this National Book Award finalist while I browsing the B&N shelves for my Julie Anne Peters books. It's about a girl who is sold into prostitution in India, and her journey to try to reclaim her life.
• Paris Times Eight by Deirdre Kelly (recommended by Trish): Trish's review of this memoir really piqued my curiosity.
• The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi (recommended by Vivienne): I can't say it better than Vivienne did, so I'll just send you out there to see why this fascinating book is now on my list.
• Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (recommended by Nymeth): I'm ashamed to say that until Nymeth's review, I hadn't even heard of this classic. Must rectify.
  

84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff

-3.5 Stars

Recommended by: n/a

84, Charing Cross Road is a collection of letters between Helene Hanff and a group of people in London. The bulk of the letters are to Frank Doel, one of the proprietors of the bookshop at that address. However, there are letters to other employees at the shop, plus members of Frank's family as well. The letters start in October 1949 and go through October 1969.

When I received this book, it was a lot shorter than I expected. I'd only discovered recently that it was nonfiction rather than fiction, and that it was in epistolary format. I admit, at first I wasn't thrilled with the book when I began to read it. I kept forgetting to look at the dates, so time would pass more quickly than I'd realized and I'd have to go back. Plus, I really didn't understand Helene's voice. She came across as brash and strange to me, the worst sort of American. Towards the middle, however, I realized it was a joking voice, and that I'd been taking her too seriously. Once again, I'm sure this was a problem with me reading so fast during readathon. This is a book I definitely want to revisit, though I probably wouldn't have except for the end.

Spoilers going forward, so please skip if you don't want to know.

The reason this book really struck a chord with me instead of being forgettable was the abrupt end to it. Somehow, though I hadn't thought I'd cared much about these people at all - I hadn't gotten to know them well enough through letters - when the sudden letter came that Frank had died, I had a jolt of tears come to my eyes. I hadn't realized their correspondence stopped because of death! I should have, but I didn't. For twenty years, these two people wrote back and forth, never meeting, never talking about much other than books, and yet they formed this longterm friendship that devastated me with its end. I hadn't realized how powerful the book was. It crept up on me. I want to go back and read this more slowly, paying more attention to the dates and the side characters that only got a letter or two dedicated to them. I want to understand more about these lives.

Other points of view:

- The Bluestocking Society
- Serendipity
- Rebecca Reads
- Book Gazing
- Things Mean a Lot
- Care's Online Book Club
- At Home With Books
- Book Nut
- Bart's Bookshelf

Have you read this book? If you have, let me know and I'll link to your review here.

*****
This book counts towards my 100+ Challenge.

4 Graphic Novel mini-reviews

Originally, I was going to have separate reviews for these graphic novels (two of which I read during the Readathon and two in the week afterwards), but I realized I'm generally pretty bad at writing reviews of GNs. Terrible. So I'm doing a post of mini-reviews for these four books.

Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry

-3.5 Stars

Challenges: 100+
Recommended by: Gavin

What a strange, strange book. Fern Britten is a private detective and works alongside a slightly lewed and quite unusual partner, Stewart Brulightly. Most of their work deals with marital problems until the day Brulightly suggests they only accept more exciting cases. When a new client comes to them asking for them to look into the supposedly-suicidal death of her fiance, the pair get in way over their head.

I'm still shaking my head at this one. If you know about Brulightly and his unconventional identity, you'll understand what I mean. He was just such a weird concept! But even beyond the strange partnership, the book threw me for a loop. I'm not good at mysteries. Unless they're really obvious, I never figure out what's going on in advance. I couldn't even begin to guess on this one. It's so well written, with so many plot twists and turns and secrets uncovered, that it kept me riveted from start to finish.


On the other hand, I'm not a huge fan of mysteries, so they tend to slip from my mind after I've finished reading them. I remember very little from the book, though that might be attributable to reading at readathon pace. The artwork was gorgeous, and again, Brulightly's role in the book was just an extra surprise to make the book unique. This is a good book for people who like mysteries, and a fun one for those of us who only dabble in the genre every once in awhile.

***

The Dreaming by Queenie Chan

-2 Stars

Challenges: RIP (post dated), 100+
Recommended by: Well, technically Eva didn't recommend the book, since she didn't like it, but she brought it to my attention and it sounded interesting enough to try.

Twin sisters Amber and Jeanie arrive at an exclusive boarding school in the Australian outback, where their first impressions are not great. There are secrets in the air, and they're not allowed to claim twinhood because the woman in charge is anti-twin (no one seems to know why). They begin to have twin nightmares, and then a classmate goes missing.

This is a first in a manga series, and I thought the idea of a creepy book about twins and boarding schools would be a good place to give manga a second chance, but sadly, it didn't work for me. I just don't like the art style, I guess, and the plots in both mangas I've read seem too flippant for their plot descriptions. I had no connection with the characters, who didn't seem to have personalities at all, and I can't even remember which classmate goes missing. I had to look at the back of the book to even remember the name of the twin sisters. So yeah, completely forgettable. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't anything I'd ever like to try again. Oh well.

I don't want to turn you away from it, though. I think there's just something about manga that I don't get. From what I've seen around the blogosphere, if you're a fan of manga, this is a good series. Don't discount it because of me.

***

Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

-4 Stars

Challenges: 100+
Recommended by: Eva

Kim Cameron, otherwise known as Skim, goes to an upclass private girl's school, where she's a bit of an outcast because of her looks (overweight, half-Asian), her muddled attempts to be Wiccan, and her best friend's aggressive anti-social attitude. When a classmate's boyfriend breaks up with her and then kills himself, the school forms a society geared toward suicide prevention. They aggressively try to "help" people like Skim, who don't conform to the prep-norm. While avoiding the mob of girls intent on making her into one of them, Skim begins to question many things about herself, including her sexuality. But falling in love isn't very easy - and the person she falls in love with is off-limits.

I did not expect to find what I found in this book. The relationship Skim had fallen into made me a bit uncomfortable, and I'm glad it ended the way it did. Sorry, I know that's vague - trying not to give away spoilers here. I enjoyed reading through Skim's journey, and how uncertain it was. The artwork and minimal dialog/narration helped contribute to that air of uncertainty, as though the book intended to make the reader feel as unsure about what was happening as Skim was. There were times when I wasn't quite sure I understood what I was reading, and had to reread to get a better idea. I really appreciated that parallel of form and story. It's an impressive way to approach the graphic novel form.

I love that Skim worked hard to take control of her life and her identity. I loved that she grew and realized what was good and what wasn't about her life. I appreciated riding along her journey. I kind of wish there was a second volume, so I could keep going with her.

***

Gray Horses by Hope Larson

-4 Stars

Challenges: 100+
Recommended by: Eva

Noemie is a French exchange student in Onion City. She goes through the usual adjustments to a new culture and a new language, and makes a new friend named Anna. At the same time, she's followed by a photography student who seems to have a crush on her. Honestly, I don't know if this had so much of a plot as just an impressionist-like journal of Noemie's start in America. It was cute. I've been an exchange student in France, so I know how confusing the beginning of an exchange program can be - and I was part of a group! I couldn't imagine doing it alone.

The artwork is gorgeous. I particularly liked the thematic dreams that Noemie has while she's trying to get through her first nights of jet lag. This is a simple, relatable tale, plus I loved all the French scattered throughout (it was translated, though, so you don't have to worry about not understanding if you don't speak French). Very enjoyable.

***

Have a good Friday the 13th, everyone!!

Other points of view:

- Page 247 (Britten and Brulightly)
- A Striped Armchair (The Dreaming)
- The Written World (The Dreaming)
- Rhinoa's Ramblings (The Dreaming)
- Regular Rumination (Skim)
- Nothing of Importance (Skim)
- Words by Annie (Skim)
- Page 247 (Skim)
- Stuff as Dreams are Made On (Skim)
- A Striped Armchair (Skim and Gray Horses)

Have you read any of these books? If you have, let me know and I'll link to your review here.