this fleeting dream

Book Review: The Treasure Map of Boys, by E. Lockhart

2012-02-05T22:59:00.000Z

This book is the third in a series and therefore this review will inevitably contain spoilers for the first book, The Boyfriend List, and the second, The Boy Book.

If you thought Ruby Oliver’s life was complicated and dramatic before, just you wait.

It gets worse.

This term, Ruby has to:

Become Noel’s bodyguard
Continue trying to be friends with Nora whilst Nora is crushing on Noel
Attempt to evade her mother’s fashion choices
Run a bake sale
Deal with losing her job
Finish her therapy ‘treasure map’ homework
and make a decision about Jackson, who has broken up with Kim, and is taking an interest in Ruby again.

Ruby’s panic attacks are also getting more and more frequent, which was interesting to see her deal with, especially because they are increasingly happening when other people have put her in a difficult position and she doesn’t know how to deal with it. You could argue that in The Boyfriend List, some of Ruby’s problems were her own fault. Yes, she found it difficult to think straight after Jackson broke up with her and got together with Kim, but most of the drama would never have happened if she hadn’t kissed Jackson at the Spring Fling. By this time, Ruby is definitely trying to consider other people’s feelings, what she wants, and how to get it, as Doctor Z reminds her to do.

This means that she starts to stand up for herself and decide what rules she wants to live by, rather than going along with everyone else’s. It was fantastic to see Ruby taking on more responsibility and really starting to be more assertive, making decisions, and telling people how they made her feel. When she was working on the bake sale she even reminded me a little of Frankie Landau-Banks, who, as anyone who has read The Disreputable History... will know, has no problem making decisions and taking action.

I also loved Ruby’s devotion to using the word ‘spankin’, and her fondness for Robespierre, the pygmy goat. I also thought that it was great that we got to learn a little bit more about Dr Z., who has only appeared in Ruby’s therapy scenes in the previous two books. I also, as usual, loved the boys! Noel behaves a bit badly but is still generally wonderful, Finn is really cute (in fact I'm thinking that I might like Finn as much as Noel! Gasp!), and just wait until you meet Polka-dot (heehee)!

I thought that The Treasure Map of Boys was just as good as The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book, if not better. I’m really looking forward to reading Real Live Boyfriends, the last in the Ruby Oliver quartet, especially as it deals with the topic of what love actually is.

If you’ve read The Treasure Map of Boys, highlight below to read some brief thoughts about my favourite part of the entire novel, and please feel free to comment. If you're reading on an RSS feed this may not work so click away now if you haven't read the novel!

‘I’m sure you have feelings, Jackson,’ I told him. ‘I just don’t think they’re very deep.’

Reader, I punched the air. What a put down! And so true. Not that I think it’s entirely Jackson’s fault. I mean, obviously he behaves terribly, and doesn’t treat his girlfriends properly. He cheats and declares love when he obviously doesn’t feel it. But it’s not his fault if he’s not cut out to do the love thing, if his feelings for others don’t run that deep. He just needs to realise this, get some independence so he’s not using girls to prop up his ego, and have casual relationships with girls/women who are fully aware of what they are getting into. But still! Go Ruby!

(I told you it would be brief)

Book Review: The Boy Book, by E. Lockhart

2012-01-30T18:36:00.000Z

Love that face. Photo by richardghawley

Social leper and famous slut Ruby Oliver is back at Tate Prep for junior year ¹, and whilst trying to make amends with her former friends, get through therapy, and decide what boy she’s interested in, she has further potential debacles to deal with, such as:

Being friends with Meghan
Choosing an activity for November Week²
Being able to afford the activity for November Week
A new job at the Zoo
Protecting Nora from boys who want to pass topless photos of her around the school
and Meghan’s relationship problems.

Of course I loved The Boy Book! I’ve actually read it twice – after I got The Treasure Map of Boys for Christmas, I couldn’t resist a re-read so that I was properly prepared. Ruby’s adventures continue to enthral me, and whilst reading The Boy Book I developed even more of a crush on Noel than I had before. If you want to talk ships, I am definitely on the Ruby and Noel boat. I just loved reading their Hooter Rescue Squad e-mails. I also liked finding more out about Meghan, Tate Prep in general, and Ruby’s former friendship with Kim, Nora and Cricket. It was great to see Ruby try to make wiser decisions and be a better friend. Also, I really want to go on my own Canoe Island trip.

Each chapter begins with an excerpt from The Boy Book, a guide to boykind created by Ruby and her former friends, Kim, Cricket and Nora. It was mentioned briefly in The Boyfriend List and I think it works really well to tie the two novels together and to reminds us how Ruby feels about having lost the friendships she used to have.

If you enjoyed The Boyfriend List I’m sure you’ll love The Boy Book – it’s basically more of the same, which is why writing this review is so hard. I’ve already gushed over the wonders of the setting, Ruby’s parents, etc, in my review of The Boyfriend List, so check it out if you need more convincing to read the Ruby Oliver series.

Read an except from The Boy Book and other related information.
Jo's review at Once Upon a Bookcase
Clover's review at Fluttering Butterflies

¹ Which I think is the third/second-to-last year of high school? Somebody American correct me if I’m wrong please!

² An outdoors themed week at Tate Prep in which participation is compulsory.

The Magazine Reading Challenge 2012

2012-01-30T17:12:00.000Z

Photo by elvissa

I am a subscriber to the wonderful Mslexia magazine, and I have been for ooh, about three years now? I'm onto my fourth edition of their Writer's Diary. Have I read more than maybe two of the magazines cover to cover?

No. Usually when a new one arrives I read the most interesting sounding articles over lunch or breakfast, then plonk it down on my TBR pile. And don't pick it up again. Therefore I am starting a new reading challenge, The Magazine Reading Challenge, to encourage myself to read them properly.

The Rules

1.You don't need to have a stack of literary magazines to join this challenge. Any magazine or journal will do. From Poetry Review to Ambit, Slightly Foxed to newbooks, Bitch to Marie Claire - whether it's published weekly, quarterly, biannually, or whenever the editor feels like it, it all counts. Self-published zines count too. As long as they're presented in a magazine format, it doesn't matter whether they're print copies or viewed online.

2. You can set your own targets. Mslexia is published four times a year, so my goal to read one edition for every two months should set me on the road to TBR demolition nicely. If it goes well I may upgrade to one a month later.

3. Sign up with your blog address in the linky below following the format 'Name (blog name)'

4. If other people actually sign up to this, I'll post an update post with a linky for reviews. I don't think magazines get much attention in the blogging world, so this could potentially be something really exciting.

I've made the rules short and sweet in case I'm doing this by myself, but feel free to share suggestions in the comments below if you think there's something I've missed!

Reading Challenges 2012

2012-01-29T22:53:00.000Z

2011 didn't go so well on the reading challenge front. As you can see on my Reading Challenges 2011 post, I completed four challenges and failed to complete three.

The Fantasy Reading Challenge was easy, as it only required three books. The New Author Challenge was easy too, as most of the books I read qualified, and I already had most of the books I needed on my TBR for the GLBT and Book Blogger Recommendation challenges.

I think the flaw in my plan was my commitment to getting my TBR down. I didn't have a lot of time for reading last year and so I only read 21 new books. I counted re-reads for the challenges but that didn't help much - I was still trying to cover all the challenges with as few books as possible. My TBR didn't have enough British multi-ethnic YA on it, basically. I hit the library for a few books but I was also working under my rule that I must read three owned books to every library book (another method I use to try to get my TBR down).

My TBR is still at over 160 books. I gained too many books and read too few for it to shrink last year. So although I really enjoyed participating in all those challenges last year, and despite the fact that I'd like to join some of the horizon-broadening challenges and to support the British Books Challenge again (I love British YA, as evidenced here), I can't. I really, really need to get my TBR down. I just don't have the space for any more books. My room is far too crowded and now I'm receiving the odd review book, I need to redouble my efforts to shrink the TBR. Therefore I am limiting my reading challenges this year to those that I can complete just with books from my TBR.

New Author Challenge 2012

This was easy, and it's nice to be able to just read down the linky and see when people have reviewed books by authors I've read so that I can comment on them. My goal is 15.

1. Night School, by C. J. Daugherty

2012 Young Adult Reading Challenge

I've got 27 YA books on my TBR so it should be easy to read enough for Level 1, The Mini YA Reading Challenge – Read 12 Young Adult novels. Plus I've read three already! Great start to 2012!

1. The Boy Book, by E. Lockhart
2. The Treasure Map of Boys, by E. Lockhart
3. Night School, by C. J. Daugherty

I'm signing up for level 2: 11-20 - A Friendly Hug. Further motivation to get working on my TBR!

And finally, I'll be posting about it shortly, but I am running my own challenge, the Magazine Reading Challenge. I'll go into more detail in the other post, but basically, I have loads of literary magazines sitting around and have I read more than about two cover to cover? NO. This is a challenge specifically intended to get my magazine TBR down and to encourage me to review them too!

Book Review: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

2012-01-26T00:03:00.002Z

Fantastic interview with Markus Zusak, the author.

I honestly thought I'd read enough fiction set during World War II for a lifetime already (yes, despite being 24 - I read quite a few books in my early teens, mmkay?), and therefore I wasn't entirely looking forward to reading The Book Thief. But I read good review after good review, and then it was one of the books on the Book Bloggers' Recommendation Challenge list last year. So it ended up being my last book of 2011, and what a book to end on.

The Book Thief is about a nine-year-old German girl called Liesel who goes to live with foster parents after the Nazis take power, her parents being communists. The foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, a couple whose own children have grown up and moved away, live on Himmel Street, one of the poor parts of Molching, a place filled with colourful but still sympathetic characters. There are a few twists: one, the narrator of the story is Death, who warns the reader in the very first chapter that he will see the book thief three times, two, Death has a habit of 'spoiling' bits of the story, and three: Liesel has a habit of stealing (sort of) books.

The setting and the culture are described with just the right amount of detail. The information given is never superfluous, and I think that's because Liesel is the focus of the story. We know what is relevant to her life and to the lives of her friends, and nothing more. Almost everything that she wouldn't understand until she is older is left out. Instead the many pages of The Book Thief - 554 in my copy - are devoted to characterisation, to building and shaping and growing the characters, to developing their histories.

I hadn't actually read a novel that looked at life from the point of view of ordinary German citizens during the war before. All the others I've read were about Jewish people trying to escape the Nazis, and/or British soldiers or civilians. It was really interesting to read a book set 'on the other side' as it were, especially as Death, as the narrator, is brutally impartial. It was also interesting to read a book where the narrator referred to events well in advance of them actually being entirely described. It reminds me of Brecht's suggestion that actors summarise events before they are presented on stage, in order to remind the audience that they are watching a play and that the events are not inevitable. Yet even though you know what happens to Himmel Street from page 22, it's still devastating when it does all come to an end. I sobbed over the last few pages, and then I smiled, because I had just finished reading a really good book.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Loved But Never Wrote A Review For

2012-01-24T23:47:00.000Z

This is my seventh Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week there is no topic, in order to give people a chance to make up their own, or to use one from before they started joining in. I chose, from week 62:

Top Ten Books I Loved But Never Wrote A Review For

This is a pretty easy one for me because for the first couple of years I was a very slow poster and only reviewed a few of the books I read. Most of these I would have to read again in order to write a properly considered review, so this is a great chance to write about them without having to wait until I have the time to re-read.

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez

I remember I got this from my university library as a 7-day-loan. The woman who checked it out for me said "You'll never read this in seven days". Hello, challenge! I did indeed read this in seven days, and it wasn't hard, because it was so enjoyable. Unfortunately all I remember at this point is that there were lots of people with the same or really similar names, and one girl went off into the sky and was never seen again. Not enough info for a proper review.

2. Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter

This was my favourite out of all of the books by Angela Carter that I've read. Again, I barely remember it, just how brilliant I thought it was. It's about Fevvers, a blonde, Cockney woman with wings, who is the centerpiece of a travelling circus. So much fun!

3. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

This is a famous retelling of the Arthurian legends from the point of view of the women involved. I didn't love this as much as I thought I would but I still loved it, mostly because of the ending, which really spoke to me. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read it in my mid-teens, when I was more into long fantasy novels and pagan stories, rather than when I was twenty and mostly over that phase.

4. Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Dracula is brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a bit goth (okay, more than a bit). I had no idea what to expect before I read it, but it certainly wasn't a hilariously camp adventure in which a woman saves the day with her knowledge of (at the time) modern technology. The bit where they bribe a group of working-class men with beer? I laughed so hard. Plus there's a vampire and all that.

5. Wise Children, by Angela Carter

I feel like I should add at this point that I pretty much love everything by Angela Carter unless I don't understand it (and sometimes even then). Wise Children has been described as the most accessible of her novels, and I would agree, although I didn't enjoy it as much as Nights at the Circus or The Magic Toyshop. It's about the lives of twins Dora and Nora Chance, and their weird and wonderful family, who are all involved in showbusiness in one way or another.

6. A Round-Heeled Woman, by Jane Juska

This is a memoir about a woman in her fifties who decides, basically, to start having more sex. But it's also about literature, and how much she loves it. It was really different and really interesting to read.

7. Lucia, Lucia, by Adriana Trigiani

Lucia is a young seamstress working in a New York department store in the 1950s, who breaks off her engagement to her childhood sweetheart for a stranger who promises her all the glamour her own life appears to be lacking. I loved the period setting and the details about sewing and food.

8. The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters

I don't know why I have yet to read any other books by Sarah Waters! This is a story about four people, after and during the Second World War, told backwards. I really, really enjoyed it and remember that it made me want to eat lots of soup. It just seemed like an appropriate accompaniment for some reason.

9. The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold, by Francesca Lia Block

I had a phase of reading quite a lot of Francesca Lia Block books and most of them I don't remember much about because they're all so short and similar, but I really liked this one. I love fairy tale retellings in general and Block's writing style really suits them. Her retelling of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves', 'Snow', really stuck with me.

10. Hard Love, by Ellen Wittlinger

I would like to review this properly, but it was such a pain getting this from the library the first time (had to get an inter-library loan) that I'm not going to do it again. It's about two zine makers, John and Marisol, who become friends and how their friendship and lives progress. A spanner is thrown in the works when John develops feelings for Marisol, who is a lesbian.

Book Review: The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

2012-01-18T21:56:00.000Z

Trailer for the film.

The Princess Bride is two stories in one. Firstly, it purports to be an abridgement of 'S. Morgenstern''s 'classic tale of true love and high adventure' in which Buttercup, the most beautiful lady in the world, thinking her true love Westley is dead, agrees to marry Prince Humperdink, who only wants to kill her and frame another country for her death so that he can have a war. Secondly, it is the story of how the original relates to the narrator's life, the narrator being a fictionalised version of the author, William Goldman. In addition, the 25th Anniversary edition includes an introduction, and a first chapter from the sequel, both of which include a lot of detail about fictional legal battles and problems with publishers.

I was really looking forward to reading this book because I enjoyed the film, and because fairy tales are one of my greatest obsessions. My reactions to the book were inconsistent though - sometimes I was loathe to put it down because I thought what I was reading was particularly fun or clever, but at other times I rolled my eyes and wondered what the point of it all was. It wasn't that I loved the fairy tale parts and hated the parts that were supposedly explaining how the 'original' The Princess Bride related to the author's life, like many reviewers seem to. My favourite parts were from the fairy tale - the climb of and battles on the Cliffs of Insanity, because it was exciting, and the visit to Miracle Max, because it made me laugh. But the introductions and interjections from the narrator were interesting, although they could have been better, more concise, less repetitive. I could appreciate the satirical references to the publishing industry and academia.

Maybe I'm too much of a fairy tale fanatic to be wholly impressed with The Princess Bride. I've read so many great retellings, reworkings, parodies, and original stories that The Princess Bride just seems a bit clumsy in comparison. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it, and that I wouldn't read it again. It is an enjoyable, slightly-subversive, take on the fairy tale genre. Yet it didn't have that spark that books I truly love have.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I'd Recommend To Someone Who Doesn't Read British YA

2012-01-17T23:48:00.001Z

This is my sixth Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is "Top Ten Books I'd Recommend To Someone Who Doesn't Read X", and I decided to entitle my list:

Top Ten Books I'd Recommend To Someone Who Doesn't Read British YA

I wasn't sure at first what to choose as my 'X'. I don't consider myself expert enough on the subject of YA in general to pick ten books out for someone who isn't a fan already, but then I remembered that I have a much longer history with British YA than with just YA in general - going all the way back to when I was an actual teenager!

As much as I love reading about all the things they have in the USA that we don't have here, like alternative high schools and proms and New York, British YA (or 'teen fiction' as it is more commonly known here) is my favourite. Opening up a book in which young people spell colour with an 'u', go charity shopping (not thrifting), heap scorn upon (or secretly love) The X Factor, and/or drink tea more often than coffee feels like coming home. Fictional British teenagers are also much more likely than fictional American teenagers to go to house parties/sneak into nightclubs and get drunk. FACT. Plus (mostly thanks to Sarra Manning) we have the hottest hot indie/art boys!

So if you like bad behaviour and British slang, read on, and read more British YA/teen fiction! Most of these are contemporary, because that's what I read (and write) most of the time, but I've tried really hard to pick out a couple that aren't.

1. Let's Get Lost, by Sarra Manning
Isabel is the Queen of Mean at her school, and is determined to stay at the top, even after her mother dies. Then one night at a party, she meets Smith, a ridiculously drunk student who mistakes her for his friend, and everything starts to change. I am planning to re-read and review this book soon, I keep thinking about it. (Okay, now I have retrieved it from its usual shelf and put it on my TBR, hehe)

2. Della Says: OMG, by Keris Stainton
Della gets asked out by her crush, but then the next day, she discovers that her diary (in which she was constantly writing about how much she fancied him) is missing. She gets a Facebook message with a photo of one of the most embarrassing pages, but she doesn't know who's got it. I enjoyed this so much, and am considering re-reading it soon as well!

3. Hard Cash/Moving Out, by Kate Cann
Kate Cann is really, really good at writing convincing teenage boys. Moving Out, originally titled Hard Cash, is the first in a trilogy told from the point of view of Rich, a broke art student, who is fed up of living with his similarly-poor parents and is in lust with posh Portia. Kate Cann is also well known for the Coll and Art trilogy, and Fiesta is a great summer book, I've read it several times. I also enjoyed Leader of the Pack.

4. French Letters and French Leave, by Eileen Fairweather
Okay, if you're not British or know nothing about the Eighties you may not understand half of the references in this pair of novels. But that's okay, because there are SO MANY jokes that there will still be plenty left for you. Maxine Harrison is a girl who decides that it's a good idea to tell her French penpal that her dad is the Head of London Transport, when actually he's a bus conductor. Then he announces that he's coming to visit.

5. Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman
In a world dominated by the dark-skinned Crosses, a rich Cross girl and a poor pale-skinned Nought boy dare to be best friends and maybe fall in love. A gripping and devastating thriller.

6. Extreme Kissing, by Luisa Plaja
I read this a couple of years ago, and I don't know why I haven't reviewed it yet! It's a really fun story about best friends Bethany and Carlotta, and a madcap day out in London that changes everything. The twist at the end I did not see coming, and I keep remembering it and thinking how genius it was.

7. The Diary Of A Crush Trilogy, by Sarra Manning
Because although, objectively, they're not as good as Let's Get Lost, or Nobody's Girl, once you fall in love with Dylan you will never be the same again. Art boys forever!

8. Girl Meets Cake, by Susie Day
Another one with loads of cute boys, Girl Meets Cake is a light-hearted read about a girl who invents an imaginary boyfriend to make herself seem cooler. All goes well until her friends start sending him messages, and she starts getting e-mails from someone calling himself Mysterious E.

9. Witch Child, by Celia Rees
This was a bestseller when I was a teen. It's about a girl in the 17th Century called Mary who has to leave her home after her grandmother is found guilty of witchcraft. She goes to America with the Puritans, but finds herself in trouble when people in her new town start accusing her of being a witch.

10. Night School, by C. J. Daughterty
This is cheating somewhat as it's the last book I read! Middle-class miscreant Allie is sent to a posh British boarding school, where at first everything seems very elegant and proper, but secrets abound.

Book Review: Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

2012-01-13T22:33:00.000Z

Interview with Malorie Blackman at the Cheltenham Literature Festival 2011.

Callum and Sephy have been best friends ever since they were small children. Callum is a light-skinned Nought, poor, underprivileged, living in a small house with his parents and elder brother and sister. Sephy is a dark-skinned Cross, the daughter of a wealthy politician, living in an enormous mansion with her parents and sister. Their mothers were friends once, yet now they're not supposed to see each other, and so for the last few years, Sephy and Callum have been meeting in secret.

Now Callum has won a place at Sephy's school, with a few other Noughts, and Sephy is delighted. She doesn't understand why Callum might be nervous, why he gets angry when she talks to him in public, even when she gets in trouble. Callum is worried, not only because the other Noughts at school are dropping out, but because his brother might be getting involved with terrorists. Will Callum and Sephy ever understand each other? Will they even survive long enough to be happy?

The first thing I have to say about Noughts & Crosses is that it's definitely a thriller. I was gripped right from the start and I barely put it down in the couple of days it took me to read it, but then it took me several more days to recover from the ending, I was so shaken and generally depressed by it. Needless to say, if you like uplifting reads, this might not be for you. If you like to be absorbed by a book and to spend time figuring out how you feel about the characters and their choices, then I think you should pick up Noughts & Crosses.

Being a thriller, it's fairly light on the description, but we still get to know the two central characters well as they narrate alternating chapters. Most of the other characters remain quite enigmatic, but I don't think that's a problem. Sephy and Callum are children/teenagers so their parents, siblings, and teachers wouldn't explain things to them all the time, or talk to them about what's troubling them.

I really liked that the differences between Sephy and Callum weren't as simple as one being a rich Cross, and the other being a poor Nought. Although Sephy is immature and spoilt, like everyone assumes she is, her parents marriage is falling apart, and she isn't close to any of her family members. Callum, on the other hand, starts off as a member of a tight-knit family group, and it's his family loyalties that lead him to make bad decisions.

The one thing that bothered me about Noughts & Crosses is that the culture is exactly the same as our present one in the UK. An alternate history was hinted at a few times, to explain why Crosses were dominant. In this history, Africans, rather than Europeans, had spread out across the world, pillaging and colonising, and if this had happened, the unnamed country in Noughts & Crosses probably wouldn't have the same political system as the UK with the Queen and Prime Minister, people probably wouldn't be spending pounds, important people probably wouldn't wear suits, black probably wouldn't be worn to funerals and so on. Maybe the author thought that flipping black and white was enough of a change and that altering the world of the story too much would alienate readers, and she didn't want to get bogged down in the details that an alternate history novel would demand, but a few imaginative changes could have made the world much more vivid and interesting for me.

I wouldn't recommend Noughts & Crosses if you're looking for a detailed alternate history, but I would recommend it generally to anyone looking for an absorbing read. It's a novel about racism, seeing things from both sides, the fact that things are far from black and white (expressed beautifully as we see how different characters interpret and react to the same situation), and most interestingly, growing up.

Who grows up the most in the novel? I actually think it's Sephy, though she's by far the most immature character for most of the story. Callum only goes so far in maturing, and then he sort of abandons the notion of seeing the world in its true complexity, though he never goes as far as his brother Jude. If you've read Noughts & Crosses, what do you think?

Noughts & Crosses is the first in a four-part series of novels. The edition I read also included the short story 'An Eye for an Eye', which is set after the events in Noughts & Crosses, but before the sequel, Knife Edge. The other two books are Checkmate and Double Cross.

See also: Get Writing with Malorie Blackman - a video recorded for BBC Blast filmed in one of my local libraries and on the high street! (I got so excited over this, because I am a nerd)

Monday Amusements 2

2012-01-09T23:05:00.015Z

In late 2010 I posted my first round of Monday Amusements on this blog. I intended to make it a semi-regular feature...and didn't post a single one in 2011. But now it's 2012, and January, traditionally a time to start new efforts, or at least to try again, and I want to be able to share all the book-related fabulosity that I stumble across with like-minded folk, so I'm going to give it another go.

Unfortunately I was ill just before Christmas and this scuppered my plans to get all the reviews for the books I'd read up by the end of the year. Hopefully I'll be posting the last couple of 2011's book reviews in the next few days. After that I'll post my Top Ten of 2011, but for now, enjoy these links.

Photo by eflon

Spread the Word are rerunning their amazing free mentoring scheme for young writers, Flight! If you're a writer aged between 18-24 and live in Greater London you should definitely consider applying (closing date: 30th January 2012). I went on a course with some of the mentees from the previous programme and it seemed like it was a fantastic experience for them.

If you would like a reading challenge with minimum commitment, the 1001 Books community on Livejournal intends to review every book recommended in the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. If you sign up, you'll be assigned a book by the moderator to read and review. Once you've reviewed your book, you can request to be assigned another. I think it's a great idea and if I manage to get my TBR down, I'll be joining in.

I've really enjoyed reading the winning and shortlisted entries to Mookychick's Feminist Flash Fiction competition.

Spread the Word are now running a competition too - just write 300 words inspired by the picture here (closes 2nd March 2012). If you write fiction that takes a longer form, the Mslexia 2012 Women's Short Story competition is also open (closing date 19th March 2012).

Finally, what will you be doing on February 4 2012? Celebrating National Libraries Day?

Book Review: A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray

2011-12-15T22:47:00.000Z

Photo by Lin Pernille Photography

Gemma Doyle is bored of living in India with her parents, wanting desperately to go to London, to school and to parties. It's after yet another argument with her mother that she runs off, only to collapse, pulled into a vision of her mother, killing herself to escape a monster from the shadows. A vision that it turns out, showed her the truth. Her father is devastated, drowning his sorrows in laudanum, and they move back to England, where Gemma is sent to boarding school, to be trained, like most of the other girls there, as a proper society wife.

At Spence, the school, she has to share a room with scholarship student Ann, who is endlessly teased by Admiral's daughter Felicity, and her best friend Pippa. They turn against Gemma too, until she discovers a secret Felicity has been keeping. But can she keep her visions secret from her new friends? Does she want to? And should she be paying attention to the dire warnings from Kartik, a young man she met in India, who has followed her to tell her that she should ignore the visions, and certainly never try to bring one on?

I really liked the atmosphere in A Great and Terrible Beauty - it's a mixture of so many things. There's gossip, bullying, vying to be in the in-crowd, and all that typical teenage stuff. But there's also magic, concern for one's reputation, prudery, lust, and rebellion. I found some of the descriptions a bit annoying, verging on purple prose in places. This didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the book though, as I liked the characters and the Victorian-girls-vs-the-patriarchy plot line so much, and I can appreciate that it's a hard thing to try to recreate the narrative voice of a girl from 1895, whilst trying to make her and her friends relevant to modern teenagers. The whole book is written in present tense, and I just have to say, props to Libba Bray for pulling that off, as I usually drop into past tense after a couple of paragraphs of writing and have to convert the earlier sections to fit.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes reading about girls with magical powers who want to use them and take charge of their own lives, boarding-school stories, and or the Victorian era.

PS. I'm afraid my reviews are getting shorter and not going through so many drafts because I'm running out of time to fit them all in before the end of the year. Apologies to all.

Book Review: Valencia, by Michelle Tea

2011-12-12T18:26:00.001Z

Michelle Tea gives some background to her memoirs and talks about her move into writing fiction.

Valencia is a memoir by Michelle Tea, about her time living in San Francisco, falling in and out of love with a succession of girls, going to various nightclubs, parties and gay pride marches, and losing several jobs. It's split into chapters but is told in quite a stream-of-consciousness style - she'll start out telling one story but will diverge into telling us umpteen other people's stories in between. I wouldn't read this if you require a plot to get along with a book, because the narrative here isn't going anywhere, it's just a continuous description of things that happen and people the author knows.

I wasn't expecting to laugh a lot whilst reading Valencia, but although some parts were sad and some of the people described were troubled, other parts were hilarious. There are so many strange but still very real characters, and the author tells us what she was thinking at these times in her life in a really deadpan way. For example, at one point, she has a job at a courier company, and she wants to lose it, but they won't fire her. The way she talks about why she won't just quit, rationalising what doesn't make sense at all, is so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

I thought the introduction to this edition was particularly interesting (I studied life writing - nerd alert), because Michelle Tea writes about how writing about her own life has frozen it in time. With time and distance, we view things that happened to us differently, and she says this process has happened slowly for her, because when she performs extracts from the book, she has to inhabit the way she felt at the time, and cling onto it.

Valencia was easy to read but not absolutely compelling - it would probably be more interesting for people who are involved in similar 'scenes', and who have more in common with the ambitionless, hedonistic characters. I'm not sure whether I'll read it again, but it has reminded me of how interesting the everyday can be when described with intelligence and humour.

Book Review: Candy, by Kevin Brooks

2011-12-12T00:29:00.001Z

Photo by __Wichid__

Joe's whole world changes when he meets Candy outside King's Cross station. She's so beautiful and charismatic, and he becomes happily obsessed straight away. Even when he meets the terrifying Iggy, who easily intimidates them both, he doesn't want to believe that there's something strange going on. He doesn't care that she could be dangerous, that dangerous things could be happening to her. All he wants is to spend more time with her, but she's already made a big commitment to something else: heroin.

I found Candy to be extremely easy to read. That's the thing that struck me the most about it. Sometimes, when I'm reading a book, I feel the urge to take a break from it, to get my entertainment in other forms - listen to music or watch a film. Not so with Candy. The writing just flows. I don't think the book would work if it didn't have this quality, making it compulsively readable - Joe knows his relationship with Candy is doomed, we know it's doomed, but we still want to know how it all comes to an end.

The characters are vivid, if not especially original - Joe lives a pretty quiet life in the suburbs with his father and older sister, Gina. He plays in a band, The Katies, although he lacks the passion of the other band members. Candy ran away from the same town, making a few naive and sad mistakes that lead to her downfall.

The story is quite simplistic, there aren't many twists and turns, and I think it's Joe's style of thinking that drives the story. He acts impulsively, going against good judgement, but we can understand why he does it, although I don't think Joe loves Candy as much as he loves the idea of her - they barely get to know each other.

I enjoyed reading Candy, though I don't think I'll read it again. I would recommend it, and I would like to read more books by Kevin Brooks in the future, but the world of Candy isn't a place I can see myself wanting to return to. It didn't have that quality that makes me return to a story.

Top Ten Tuesday: Childhood Favourites

2011-12-06T19:13:00.000Z

This is my fifth Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is...

Top Ten Childhood Favourites

I've tried to put this list in chronological order, but I don't actually remember what age I was when I read them! Here's my best shot. Links go to my reviews or to Amazon.

1. The Wishing Chair, by Enid Blyton

I ended up liking this series more than the more famous The Faraway Tree series, even though it's really similar. I think there was a bit more drama with people trying to steal the wishing chair, and I remember liking the characters better. They visit some of the same lands that the children from The Faraway Tree visited, and I thought that was cool.

2. The Secret Island, by Enid Blyton

Four kids run away to live on an island. It's the first in the Secret series, and I don't really remember them that well but I read them over and over.

3. Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh

I read this over and over and over and over, and you can find out why if you read my review!

4. The Diddakoi, by Rumer Godden

This is about a orphaned half-Romani girl (Diddakoi) called Kizzy who lives with her grandmother in an orchard. When her grandmother dies, Kizzy is fostered and, as you'd expect, has trouble fitting in with her new family, and at school, where most of the other children are horrible to her. If you read just one of the books on this list, make it this one.

5. Double Act, by Jacqueline Wilson

I've actually only read this once. I couldn't bring myself to read it again because it made me cry so much. It's about twins called Ruby and Garnet, who are completely inseparable, and how they stop being that way.

6. The Illustrated Mum, by Jacqueline Wilson

This is about a girl called Dolphin, her sister, Star, and their mother, Marigold, who has a not insubstantial number of tattoos (hence 'Illustrated Mum'). Other people think Marigold is weird but Dolphin adores her, despite her strange moods, tendency to go out all night, and obsession with Star's father, Micky. Things start to get more and more difficult when Marigold is reunited with Micky, and Star gets a boyfriend. Dolphin makes friends with this boy called Oliver who spends his school break times in the library to avoid getting bullied which I so would have done if I'd had the choice.

7. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

As I wrote in my second Top Ten Tuesday post, this is probably the book I've reread the most.

8. Matilda, by Roald Dahl

Another book that is in 'well-loved' condition. I read Matilda over and over and thought it was completely unfair that I had to put up with other kids being mean to me at school without developing any magical powers. I thought the film adaptation was really good, but it was pretty close to the novel, no Harriet the Spy.

9. What Katy Did At School, by Susan Coolidge

I never read any of the other Katy books, this was the only one in my house. Basically, this girl called Katy (which always really annoyed me as a child, I was fixated on the idea that the prettiest spelling was Katie) goes to boarding school with her sister, Clover. There's a bit of drama over washstands, and a Society for the Suppression of Unladylike Conduct - a club against flirting! That would never fly in a YA novel these days! My favourite parts were the descriptions of Katy and Clover's going-away presents and Christmas boxes, Sometimes I would try to find things I owned that were similar to the things they got in their boxes and put them all together and pretend I was at boarding school and had just got them in the post.

10. Little Women, by Louisa May Allcott

Or rather, half of Little Women. I only found out a year or so ago that the first half of it was published first, under the same title, and I must have read one of those copies, handed down from my mum's childhood library. D'oh. But I read that half innumerable times, loving Jo and hating Amy. I would have been so furious if anyone had dared to destroy anything I'd written.

Book Review: Ironside, by Holly Black

2011-12-05T21:38:00.000Z

Photo by Jon Mountjoy

This book is the third in a trilogy and therefore this review will inevitably contain spoilers for the first book, Tithe, and the second, Valiant.

On the darkest day of winter, Roiben will be crowned King of the Unseelie Court, and as terrible and terrifying as the Unseelie Court can be, Kaye can't resist going down to celebrate. Kaye's known that she is a faerie for a few months now, but the ways of the fey, especially the court customs, are mostly a mystery to her.

Just as they are to Cornelius Stone, who is still recovering from his sister's death and the time he spent in the Unseelie Court as the human pet of the former queen's knight, and later king, Nephamael. He's desperate to find out how to protect himself from the fey, so that they can never hurt him or his family again.

But whilst Corny is nervous and prepared, Kaye is rash and wild, and her official declaration of love to Roiben ends with her being given an impossible quest - to find a faerie that can lie. No such creature exists, and so Kaye is forbidden from even speaking to Roiben - a task that proves increasingly difficult as Silarial, Queen of the Seelie Court, is still determined to win the war and rule over Unseelie.

My favourite sequels are those that make me feel like I'm slipping comfortably into a familiar world, and I definitely felt that when I read the first few pages of Ironside. It's difficult to comment on the characterisation and world-building, because most of the characters and many of the locations were introduced in Tithe and Valiant, and Ironside provides more of the same atmosphere. I liked Kaye better, but I still didn't feel that I understood her as much as I understood Corny and Val. However, the plot was fantastic. It was a fun and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy of Modern Faerie Tales, and I was gripped the whole way through.

Although this series had a shaky start, the engrossing world, dark elements, and plot drew me in and kept me interested. I can see why these books, particularly the first one, have had mixed reviews, but if you like dark fantasy, and don't mind teenagers doing things that many adults would disapprove of, I would recommend the Modern Faerie Tales. I'm really looking forward to reading more from Holly Black in the future.

that awkward moment...

2011-11-27T21:33:00.001Z

Photo by Alex E. Proimos

...when you have ten new books (courtesy of the Atom Bloggers Party) and no shelf space whatsoever as your books are already multi storey and double parked. You already have books in shoe boxes in your wardrobe. What are you going to do?

a) pile them up on your bedside chest of drawers, under the other books already on it, creating a teetering tower of 14

b) leave them in the bag you brought them home in and just move them around your room when necessary to, er, move

or

c) ??????

I don't know what c is but it'll have to be that.

Book Review: grl2grl, by Julie Anne Peters

2011-11-27T17:21:00.004Z

Photo by ilouque

grl2grl is a collection of short stories about LGBT characters, mostly girls, hence the title, grl2grl. There are ten stories in the collection, and each is very different from the next, dealing with a range of issues, from coming out to being dumped, abuse to abstinence-only education. I often describe short stories as being either complete stories or snapshots from a character's life, and there are both kinds here. Julie Anne Peters tries to give each character a distinct personality, and I think that she succeeded, although the narrative styles are quite similar in some of the stories.

My favourites were 'Can't Stop The Feeling', which is about a girl who is trying to pluck up the courage to go to a meeting of the Gay/Straight Alliance group at her school, 'TIAD', about a girl who has just been dumped and goes online to a chatroom for advice and companionship, a story I really liked as I thought it was quite original - and 'Two-Part Invention', about a violinist who's in love with the cellist she plays with at summer music camp. I just love musician stories.

I don't think that every story should have had a dramatic impact - the presence of happy endings and sad endings and ambiguous endings makes the collection more interesting - but some of the stories I liked less were a bit too much like a tiny snippet from a life, with nothing really happening in them. Overall, however, the insight into the minds of the characters was compelling and sometimes really affecting.

It's a very American book, a lot of the things referred to don't really exist this side of the pond - I have only heard of a couple of schools with Gay/Straight Alliance groups here, and there are only a couple of summer camp organisations. But if you've watched American teen movies then this shouldn't cause much of a problem.

I think that in a perfect world, every library would have a copy of grl2grl. I think it's one of those books with the power to make troubled teenagers feel as if they're not alone, and as the stories are indeed short, it would be great for reluctant readers. My only complaint would be that it's such a skinny little volume, and it left me wanting to read more from the author. But that's fine, as she's already written novels!

Book Review: Valiant, by Holly Black

2011-11-25T20:19:00.002Z

Photo by cosmicautumn

This book is the second in a trilogy and therefore this review may contain spoilers for the first book, Tithe.

Val has a quick temper and a tendency to respond to insults violently, but when she walks in on the worst of all insults, and sees her boyfriend and her mother kissing and getting undressed, all she can think to do is get away. She goes to the hockey game that was supposed to be a date, and then she doesn't go back. Homeless in New York City, she meets friendly, strange Lolli, and Dave, her infatuated friend. Lolli is immediately welcoming, Dave is more reluctant, and his brother, Luis, is against Val's presence from the start. Luis is guarding a secret, one it turns out Lolli is all too happy to blab - Luis can see faeries, and works running errands for one, a troll. Lolli is addicted to a mysterious faerie drug, and also all too happy to lead Val into the troll's lair...

The troll, Ravus, is an exile from the Seelie court, which is how Valiant ties in with Tithe, and it does so beautifully, introducing a vivid new cast of characters, and including brief appearances from Kaye, Roiben and Silarial. The story is tightly focused around Val and her development, which is realistic and appropriately paced, but it also firmly advances the plot of the trilogy.

Like Tithe, Valiant is laden with atmosphere. Yet in terms of build up, Valiant is the opposite of Tithe. I felt it was almost too slow to get going into the plot, although I could appreciate the proper introduction that we got to Val's character, after the rush that was Tithe and my discomfort with Kaye's characterisation. I think that the pacing and characterisation in general were much better than in Tithe. The motivations of the characters were definitely clearer.

Another way in which Valiant is dramatically different to Tithe is that whereas Kaye and Roiben's romance had a bit of a whiff of the ol' insta-love about it, the romance that develops in Valiant is more like slowly burning lust that turns into love. I also liked that the romance wasn't the whole of the plot, in fact most of the time there wasn't any romance, as Val was focused on trying to avoid her previous life. I'm trying not to spoil the plot but Valiant is billed as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast and it's the only retelling of Beauty and the Beast I have liked thus far, being devoid of Stockholm Syndrome, which I can't stand. Give me insta-love any day of the week over Stockholm Syndrome. Or better yet, give me Valiant, which has neither. Hurrah.

On the subject of plot - it was totally gripping, I loved it! Valiant had me doing something I hadn't done in a long time - staying up late to finish the book! I just could not bear to consider sleep until it was done. All in all, I thought Valiant was a brilliant second book, it left me desperate to read Ironside and find out what happened to our motley heroes in the end.

Valiant is definitely a book for older teens - it's got swearing, sex, and the consumption of fairy drugs. Plus plenty of other stuff some parents may disapprove of, like teenagers with dyed hair and piercings. To me, all this stuff makes a book a must-read, but your mileage may vary...

Now It All Makes Sense, or, Book Review: Harriet the Spy

2011-11-22T17:46:00.001Z

edenpictures at flickr went around taking photographs of places from Harriet the Spy - I am quite jealous. This is the corner on which the Dei Santi Grocery Store, part of Harriet's spy route, is supposed to be.

One book that I should have included in this post, but forgot to, even though I was reminded to reread it by seeing the author’s birthday written in my diary, is Harriet the Spy.

Harriet the Spy was one of my absolute most favourite books as a child. My copy has been so well-loved that both corners of the front cover have big creases through them, and the cover actually reads “har___t the spy” as a big piece of the glossy top layer has peeled off. The spine has a great big crease, and several little ones.

I was totally in awe of Harriet, every time I read the book. I thought it was amazing that Harriet spied on people, and wanted to be a spy and a writer when she grew up. My previous obsession – magic tricks – was almost completely eclipsed by an interest in spying. After being disappointed by the film, I proceeded to hold a grudge against Michelle Trachtenberg all the way through her time in Buffy. I was not put off obtaining a few items of tie-in merchandise, such as a spying pack that included a folder and a notebook made to look like Harriet’s in the film. I got a few books about codes out of the library. I bought another at a school book fair. Filofax were bringing out a couple of different versions of FunFax, the Filofax for kids, each year, and of course I had to have the spy one. I was too timid and sensible to start up a spy route of my own, but I used to open my bedroom window and sit on my bed for half an hour at a time, making notes about what I saw in the back gardens and on the little bit of road that I could glimpse.

I remembered all these things before re-reading Harriet the Spy. I didn’t expect to discover that it had influenced me even more than I could remember.

Harriet the Spy is the story of Harriet M. Welsch, an eleven year old girl who has been encouraged by her nanny, Ole Golly, in her dreams of becoming a writer when she grows up. Ole Golly told her that she needs to find out as much as she can about everything, and Harriet takes this to mean everyone. Harriet is almost constantly making notes on everything she sees, hears, and thinks, at home, at school, and even when she goes out for egg creams. She even has a spy route scheduled into her daily routine, so that she can spy on several of her neighbours. Her comfortable life is severely disrupted when firstly, Ole Golly leaves, and secondly, her classmates get hold of her notebook.

At the time I didn’t really care much about the moral of the book because I knew I would never let anyone know I was writing about them. I’m sure that I learnt some things from it, however, as I religiously avoided gossip until adulthood. Rereading Harriet the Spy, it seemed like a startlingly strong message for a children’s book to have, it’s not sugar-coated in any way, but demonstrated starkly, just like the message in Nobody’s Family Is Going To Change. I think that this is what is so great about Louise Fitzhugh’s writing – it’s entertaining, but she doesn’t hold back, she warns the reader about the world, and offers them hope for surviving it.

I gasped when I read the description of Ole Golly’s yellow room – yellow used to be my favourite colour. Maybe The Boy With The Purple Socks is behind my switch to a love of purple? When I read the words ‘egg cream’ I remembered imagining an egg yolk floating in cream. Later I thought maybe it was an old term for ice cream. I had totally forgotten all this. It’s neither (via Purple Socks). And like Harriet, I have practically always seen writing as my WORK. I used to tell my parents that I was WORKING without any recollection of Harriet doing the same thing.

Basically, I am a bit Harriet, and Harriet is a bit me, in a chicken and egg kind of way. I had a fantastic time discovering this, and you should all go read Harriet the Spy, now. Me? I'm going to read the sequels - I had no idea they existed until recently. A new treat.

Harriet-related links:
'Unapologetically Harriet, the Misfit Spy' at NPR - radio show discussing the novel and how unusual it was at the time it was published.
'Confessions of a Starvingartist: Louise Fitzhugh’s “Harriet The Spy”' at Canonball - a much better post than mine about the way the writer has been influenced by the book.

Top Ten Tuesday: Unread Books on My Bookshelf

2011-11-15T19:50:00.000Z

/pile on the floor/shelf/bedside chest of drawers...

This is my fourth Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is...

Top Ten Unread Books on My Bookshelf

This is the easiest Top Ten Tuesday so far. I have many amazing books on my TBR, and it's nice to get to write about them and remind myself that they are there and I should get on and read them! I tried to avoid writing about books I've mentioned in other Top Ten Tuesday lists. Links will go to Amazon until I actually read and review the books and can link to my own reviews.

1. Out, by Natsuo Kirino

(length of time on TBR - at least three years)
I first read about this on a book forum, lots of people were raving about it. It's crime fiction and apparently quite gruesome so it's not exactly waving for my attention from the shelf (plus there are other books in front of it so I can't actually see it anymore - haha).

2. Wayward Girls and Wicked Women, ed. by Angela Carter

(length of time on TBR - at least three years)
I've owned this for ages but like all short story collections, it's doomed to linger on my TBR, despite Angela Carter being one of my favourite authors.

3. Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

(length of time on TBR - at least three years)
I LOVE FAIRY TALES. I LOVE ANGELA CARTER. I WANTED THIS BOOK DESPERATELY. WHY HAVEN'T I READ THIS???? WJ%^EOJ"£! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

4. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

(length of time on TBR - too shameful to mention)
There are people I'm actually kind of avoiding out of shame at not having read this yet. I loved David Mitchell's first two books, they propelled him into my favourite author category but this is a giant hardback and thus a committment that requires about two weeks with not much else to do. Okay, maybe just one week, it's not Ash: A Secret History (which has over 1000 pages and did take me two weeks of rushing home after school and reading as much as possible until bedtime to complete).

5. No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories, by Miranda July

(length of time on TBR - at least three years)
My sister actually really wanted to read this and she borrowed it from me so it's actually technically on her bookshelf at the moment, but I haven't read it.

6. The Good, The Bad and The Undead, by Kim Harrison

(length of time on TBR - over two and a half years)
I read Dead Witch Walking, the first in The Hollows series, last August. At least I reviewed it so I won't have to read it again before I read book two.

7. The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones

(length of time on TBR - over two and a half years)
My MA tutor recommended this to me. I finished my MA in 2009. Le Sigh.

8. It's So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style, by Michelle Tea

(length of time on TBR - just under two years)
I read this review and desperately wanted to read it. I got it for Xmas...2009. I hang my head in shame.

9. The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy

(length of time on TBR - over one year)
I got this because Sarra Manning recommended it in the back pages of Nobody's Girl and I am a big fan of Sarra Manning. I haven't read it yet. It just doesn't fit into any of my current reading challenges. It doesn't even fit into the one I am planning to run next year.

10. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray

(length of time on TBR - about one year)
I've heard many good things about this but still it lingers on my TBR. Not for long though, as I have to read it to complete the Book Blogger Recommendation Challenge! Whoo! Finally a book on this list that I'm actually going to read soon! Wayhey!

Book Review: Tithe, by Holly Black

2011-11-15T19:18:00.001Z

Photo by a.pitch

When Kaye and her mother move back into her grandmother's house, Kaye takes the opportunity to call on some old friends. There's Janet, and her brother Corny...but there are also three faeries she hopes to find. But the faeries don't come when she calls them, and even leaving out milk for them doesn't bring them to her window. She starts to doubt that they were real, but then, whilst out with Janet and her friends, she sits on an old carousel horse. Kaye imagines it coming to life, imagines what it would be like to ride it, were it alive, and then, for just long enough for Janet's boyfriend to see, it does start to move. Kaye runs away from the group, and it's whilst she's on the way home that she hears strange sounds coming from the woods. She goes to investigate, and that's where she meets Roiben, a faerie knight. He's wounded, and she helps him, relieved to know that the fey are real. With his silver hair and strange presence, she can't get him out of her mind.

Soon after, Kaye finally meets two of her old friends again and finds herself entangled in a plot to ensure the freedom of the solitary fey, who will be bound to the service of the Unseelie Court for seven years if the planned Tithe - the sacrifice of a human - goes ahead. Kaye's friends explain that they intend to trick the Unseelie Queen, Nicnevin, by having Kaye taken to be used as the Tithe, Kaye, who is actually a faerie, but has been disguised as a human all her life. At the last minute, Kaye's real self will be revealed, ruining the Tithe, but Kaye doesn't want to wait. Kaye wants to discover what being a faerie means now.

This is actually the second time I've read Tithe, here are my initial thoughts on it, as included in a Goodreads review. I gave it four out of five stars:

I would have loved this had there just been a bit more to it. It seemed more like a snapshot than like I was pulled into the world of the story. I liked all the details that were there, there was just too much missing, like it was pared down to the bare minimum to make a good story. I felt like there should have been some flashbacks or some other device to show us what Kaye's life was like up to the point where Tithe begins. The characterisation was good, the story worked, but I wanted to become absorbed, and sometimes, you just need more pages for that, to be in the world longer. People with a shorter attention span or tendencies to imagine that they are the protagonist (something I grew out of) will probably adore Tithe.

The pacing was also uneven, what we get of the story feels right as we read it, description balanced nicely with action, but it jumps too often, and there was little time given to showing us what the protagonists actually thought about all that was going on. The action takes place over a couple of days, but it slows down often enough that I felt more reflection from the point of view characters would have fit in nicely.

Despite my initial misgivings I liked it enough to want to read the second in the trilogy, Valiant. I reread Tithe this year before continuing with the series. I enjoyed it more this time around, possibly because I expected the concise storytelling, and could just let the lovely descriptions wash over me without wishing there were more actual scenes to the story. I do still think that there could have been a bit more to it, and I still didn't entirely empathise with Kaye's character - she's too much of a drifter. She gets curious and asks questions, but doesn't demand that they are answered, and she typically goes along with what other characters want without thinking about it much. Maybe that's the effect of a survival mechanism developed to help her cope with life following her mother around from nightclub to bar to nightclub. This improves towards the end, when she works something out before anyone else.

The level of description in Holly Black's writing is perfect. The descriptive sections are fairly brief, but every scene has atmosphere and the details about the faerie courts are great, I could easily visualise them in my mind. The moral questions raised in the story fit very well within their context. Like humans, the faeries vary in terms of personality and regard for ethics, but all of them have dark aspects. The fairies are not benevolent spirits - many of them see humans as lesser beings, toys. It's very much a book for older teens because of this - there's plenty of death and pain.

I've finished reading both sequels and I loved them, so I would happily recommend Tithe to fans of dark fantasy, fans of dark faeries, older teenagers, and people who, like me, prefer to read books for older teens. My review of Valiant, the second in the Modern Faerie Tale series, will follow shortly.

Book Review: Monsoon Summer, by Mitali Perkins

2011-10-19T19:05:00.000+01:00

Photo by jjreade

The one time Jazz tried to take the initiative and help someone, it went wrong. Since then she's avoided all acts of charity, taking a back seat, along with her father, as her mother shines in the charitable spotlight. But this summer, the whole family is leaving Berkeley, California, and going to India, so that Jazz's mum can help out at the new clinic at the orphanage where she spent her first four years. Jazz is convinced that she's going to hate it, not only because she's going to feel out of place and useless, but because she'll be missing working at her business with her best friend Steve, whom she is secretly in love with.

In India, whilst the rest of her family find ways to help at the orphanage, Jazz refuses to set foot in the place until she absolutely has to. But even school is strange and new, and when she's seeking comfort, it's hard to resist the delicious tea made by Danita, their fifteen-year-old housekeeper. As Danita prepares their dinners, they get talking, and soon Jazz is finding it more and more difficult to resist the urge to try to help Danita as she struggles with decisions about her future, and that of her sisters, who have grown up in the orphanage together.

Let's be honest. The plot of Monsoon Summer sounds totally predictable, doesn't it? And it is. There are no grand surprises, I saw almost every turn coming, but it was still a lot of fun to read. Jazz is a convincing teenage girl, a bit self-centred and opinionated, with wavering self-esteem. I liked the details about the orphanage, the academy where Jazz goes to school, and her relationship with Steve. My favourite character was probably Jazz's brother, Eric, and his obsessions with bugs and football (I refuse to call it 'soccer', because I'm British).

Although I enjoyed reading it, one thing that really bothered me was Jazz's reaction to being stared at whenever she went out in public. She wondered why she was attracting attention wherever she went for such a long time and it didn't make much sense, considering that she knew full well that she looked more like her white father than her Indian mother. I think that the author was trying to shoehorn in a point about self-esteem and body image issues that didn't quite fit, and it seemed especially forced when I thought back to the way questions about cultural standards of beauty were woven so spectacularly into the fabric of Born Confused. I also thought that Danita was a little too perfect, but her relationship with her sisters was great and it brought some serious issues into the book.

Monsoon Summer is quite fast paced, I read it quite quickly and was easily absorbed whenever I picked it up. Although I didn't love it and probably wouldn't read it again, I think it's an easy, accessible read and many readers would enjoy it.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Covers or Titles That Made Me Buy Them

2011-10-18T10:50:00.002+01:00

This is my third Top Ten Tuesday post, you can read the first here and the second here. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is...

Top 10 Books With Covers or Titles That Made Me Buy Them

It was quite difficult for me to come up with ten books, I had to go through my 'read' shelf on Goodreads. I don't tend to buy books based on titles or covers, I choose them because I've read a good review, or the synopsis has intrigued me. I haven't actually read the first two in the list cover to cover yet.

1. Chronicles of King Arthur, by Andrea Hopkins
Okay, I confess, it wasn't just the title, it was the price. This was in a library sale, thus, 50p. I was obsessed by the legend of King Arthur when I was a kid so I bought it for old time's sake and because I feel like I need to refresh my memory when it comes to all things Arthurian.
2. Eyes Like Stars, by Lisa Mantchev
Just look at that cover. Look at it. Even if the novel's rubbish I think it's still money well spent and I'll just have to frame the dustjacket and use the book as a doorstop! (I really hope it's not rubbish)
3. The Diamond of Drury Lane, by Julia Golding
On to books I've actually read! The cover is just so bright and theatrical, I couldn't resist picking it up and reading the blurb. Then I took it home. My review is extremely overdue (I read it last April). It's a great read, intended for the 9-12 age group, but I loved it.
4. What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn
I liked the cartoony cover and the description was intriguing. It's a fantastic book. I read it last May (pattern emerging?). It appears to have been reissued with a new cover, which I suppose they've chosen to make it look more serious and literary, but I think it looks bland.
5. Notes from the Teenage Underground, by Simmone Howell
I saw the words 'teenage' and 'underground' and thought 'ooh! This could involve teenagers engaging in subcultural activities!'.
6. Diary of a Chav: Trainers V. Tiaras, by Grace Dent
Do I need to explain this one?
7. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin
The cover is really eye-catching, with bright green and pink, and the blurb convinced me to take it home.
8. All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman
The cover just looks vaguely surreal but that title - wow! It immediately made me wonder, because you could interpret that title several ways.
9. Ten Things I Hate About Me, by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Another big bold cover, with an eye-catching title that sounded like a reference to Ten Things I Hate About You, one of my favourite films.
10. The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, edited by Alison Lurie
'Fairy tales'? 'Modern'? I had already read and loved quite a few modern fairy tales, so how could I say no?

Book Review: Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan

2011-10-16T22:14:00.003+01:00

Photo by uitdragerij

When Nicola Lancaster arrives at the Siegel Institute Summer Program for Gifted Youth, she doesn't plan on making any friends. Her only goal is to find out, by taking the archaeology class, whether she actually wants to be an archaeologist or not. She spends the introductory lecture drawing and writing notes about the other students, but Katrina sees her sketches and grabs her notebook, passing it around to some of the other students. It's easy for Nicola to be friends with excited, friendly, Katrina, but she finds Battle Hall Davies more confusing, intriguing, and beautiful. Nicola is plain and boring, or so she thinks. Battle could never be interested in her...but of course she's wrong.

A book about a girl who has decided to spend the summer at, well, school, may not sound exciting, but I really enjoyed Empress of the World. It's quite a short book, with only 214 pages, yet it covers Nicola's entire time at the Siegel Institute. It's written in sections that have the date, time and location at the top, like diary entries, and there are quite often several days between these reports, which sometimes include passages in a handwriting-style type, like actual diary entries. Sometimes the gaps were a bit off-putting, but Nicola usually summarises what she's been doing. I really liked the characterisation, Nicola was an engaging narrator, and I thought Katrina was fantastic, her weird fashion sense making her definitely my favourite character. The minor characters were nicely drawn, but not so intriguing that I wished they were the focus of the story instead. I have to confess that I don't entirely understand why Nicola liked Battle so much. I think her personality was overshadowed somewhat by Katrina's, it seemed less clear, but maybe that's the point. She is supposed to be mysterious, someone that Nicola can't quite work out.

This is one of those books that I read and then thought "Was this really supposed to be controversial?". Okay, there's some drinking. And Nicola and Battle are both girls, and their relationship does get physical, off the page. But they're at a summer camp for intelligent, studious teenagers! And they all do their homework! Some people's children.

I wouldn't say Empress of the World is a must-read, it's a nice way to spend an afternoon or two, but I didn't find it to be unputdownable. I don't think it's supposed to be a thriller, but it's a gentle story of self-discovery and romance, not an emotional rollercoaster ride that keeps you turning the pages.

Sara Ryan has also written comics featuring Battle and Katrina: Me and Edith Head, a prequel to Empress of the World starring Katrina, and Click, which is about Battle with a small appearance by Katrina, and takes place in the time between Empress of the World and the sequel/companion book, The Rules for Hearts. I definitely want to read The Rules for Hearts - it sounds like a good story, and I think it would help me understand Battle more.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Want to Reread

2011-09-27T22:23:00.002+01:00

This is my second Top Ten Tuesday post, you can read the first here. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is...

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread

(links go to my reviews or to Amazon pages for the editions I own, where possible)

1. The Boy Book, by E. Lockhart
I have already reread The Boyfriend List so that I could review it, and I'm planning to reread this fairly soon so that I can write my review and then move on to the next two books in the Ruby Oliver series with it fresh in my mind.
2. The Magic Toyshop, by Angela Carter
I originally read a bashed up copy from my university library, and a couple of Christmasses ago I got this lovely hardback edition and I haven't read it yet! I love The Magic Toyshop, it's probably the best piece of literary fiction with a teenage protagonist that I've read.
3. The Cheap Date Guide To Style
This isn't a fiction book, this is a style inspiration book. I got it out of the library years ago, and got my own copy because it became clear that I needed it in my life permanently! Every time I read it I feel reinspired to dress up and have fun with clothes.
4. The Harry Potter series
I can race through a Harry Potter book like nothing else, but I've never actually reread the whole series. I've read the first book a couple of times, and read at least half of The Order of the Phoenix more than once. But I was never one of those people who had to reread all the previous books before the new one or the new film came out, because I usually had too many other books on the go already. I'd like to re-read them all in sequence though, and I'd quite like to listen to the audiobooks.
5. The Diary of a Crush trilogy
I need to review these, plus, I need to read them whilst listening to Belle and Sebastian as is suggested at the front of each book. A few years back I decided that first I was going to geek out shamelessly and watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, alternating episodes as they would have originally been shown on US TV, and then I was going to reread Diary of a Crush whilst listening to Belle and Sebastian. I finished The Great Buffy Rewatch (as I termed it) earlier this year but I have yet to move on to DoaC.
6. Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell
For a long time this was my favourite book but I haven't reread it in years because my copy went MIA. It was a really nice copy that I got for 10p in a library sale, too. Best 10p I've ever spent.
7. Saving Francesca, by Melina Marchetta
I remember that I absolutely loved this book and possibly even referenced it in my MA portfolio but I can only vaguely recall what it's about.
8. Notes From The Teenage Underground, by Simmone Howell
I've got a weird craving to reread this. Possibly because I reread Everything Beautiful for Body Image and Self-Perception month last summer, so the quality of Simmone's writing is still quite fresh in my mind.
9. Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan
Ditto for the weird craving, I don't know, it was a really sweet book (not a pun referencing the cover...oh okay yes it is) and I'm just in the mood!
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
I have this cute little hardback edition that I've had since I was a kid and traditionally reread every year, I don't think I have done it this year yet. It doesn't take very long so hopefully I'll squeeze it in soon.

plus bonus point 11 for the list because I just thought of another:

11. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
If I was to write a list of most reread books, I think this would be number one. I have reread the Diary of a Crush books, and bits of the books (seriously, sometimes I just find myself picking one up, opening it at a random page, and reading on from there) so many times I've lost count, and Alice gets done almost every year. But I adored The Secret Garden when I was a child, and when I was a teenager. Out of all the books that I've owned since they were new, it's the most damaged, purely because it's been read so much. I haven't reread it in quite a few years though, and I should.