Hi, Again & April Reading Wrap-Up

Long time, no post, am I right?

Turns out moving across the country, hunting for a decent apartment, and applying for jobs can really take a toll on the blogging.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But, now I’m back and ready to rumble.

April is over. May is here. And I now get one whole glorious year without having to see that Justin Timberlake  “It’s gonna be May” meme everywhere I turn. PRAISE.

As for reading, April was a good month. Here’s what I managed to finish:

Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon  

 

I had never heard of Gabaldon’s Outlander series, but heaven bless the Tumblr user who strayed from their theme and posted a gif of Sam Heughan on my feed.

One look at that man and you best believe I signed up for a free trial week of Starz real fast. After finishing the series shamefully quickly, I bought the first two novels. Overall, I really enjoyed them, and despite the frightfully high page count, finished them quickly. I’ll definitely be reading Voyager before the next season premieres in September.

 

Fear the Drowning Deep by Sarah Glenn Marsh

I’m not normally one for supernatural ocean creatures, but I received this book in a giveaway by the publisher, and the beautiful cover kept calling to me.  Set in the mystical Ile of Man in 1913, the novel follows Bridey Corkill — a young fisherman’s daughter with a paralyzing fear of the sea — as she tries to uncover who or what is behind a string of disappearances in their small village.

Unfortunately, I didn’t love this book. It had one of the most serious cases of insta-love I’ve ever read, the time period felt all but forgotten, and I found myself skimming the last half.

 

 

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

 Without a doubt one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year, Angie Thomas’s debut novel was everything it was described to be.  THUG follows 16-year-old Starr Carter, a young black woman who must deal with the aftermath of witnessing the shooting of her childhood best friend by a police officer. This Black Lives Matter story should be read by everyone.

Just go read it, please and thank you. 

 

 

The Smell of Other Peoples Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

This was recommended to me by a friend, and the second I saw the gorgeous cover I knew I had to read it.

I mean, did you see it?

Following the eventually interconnected lives of four struggling teens in 1970’s Alaska, Hitchcock’s debut novel was, while slightly muddled, absolutely beautiful. Her own voice is so atmospheric and beautiful that it makes up for the fact that the four different narrators all sound more or less the same. There’s a whole lotta plot stuffed into a fairly thin book, but the novel serves all the stories well just the same. Overall, I really enjoyed this one.

And again, that cover though.

October Reading Wrap Up

Boy was October a prime month for me in the reading department. Unemployment mixed with the high I’m still feeling from the YA Literature Conference earlier in the month made me a machine. In between sneaking candy from the Halloween bowl and doing some serious prep/rewatch for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, I managed to finish 8 books: 

TTT: Favorite Literary Names

 I’m jumping on the Top Ten Tuesday train this week and taking cues from The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s list: Top Ten Character Names for a Kid/Pet/Car,Etc.

All American Boys – Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

 

All American Boys
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
September 29, 2015

Nothing will make you feel quite as ill-read as attending a two-day YA literature conference with a ballroom full of YA librarians and  booksellers. It’s something to do with the superpowers imparted on them at their knighting ceremony that allows them encyclopedic knowledge of absolutely everything – it’s very mysterious. I left with a notebook page full of TBRs and a tote bag full of books from the conference bookstore.

October Book Haul: Young Adult Literature Conference

I was lucky enough to find myself in a sea of librarians, booksellers, and authors this past weekend at the YA Literature Conference hosted by Anderson’s Bookstore in Naperville, IL.  The conference hosted some great panels, thoughtful and hilarious keynote speakers, and one mean bookstore. They had copies of every book published by the authors in attendance as well as some recommendations of their own.

The Serpent King – Jeff Zentner

The Serpent King
Jeff Zentner
Crown Books for Young Readers
March 8, 2016

This book has been on my radar for months but I – for some misguided reason – had yet to pick it up. I got to meet Zentner at a YA Lit. Conference this past week in Chicago, and when he pitched his book in a panel discussion as Friday Night Lights meets The Outsiders, I all but fell out of my chair. I immediately picked it up in the conference bookstore and read it the same night because I’m apparently a masochist.

Kids of Appetite – David Arnold

Kids of Appetite
David Arnold
September 20, 2016
Viking Books for Young Readers

I’ll preface this review with a disclaimer that The Outsiders is my favorite book of all time. At 13, it was the first book I ever finished and immediately went back and reread cover to cover. I’ve read it upwards of 20 times, and watch the film at least once a year, crying from the moment Ponyboy steps out of the movie theatre until he steps back out again. (Just to put things in perspective, I also cry from beginning to end of The Muppet Movie and the majority of The Goonies – if you can figure that one out please let me and my therapist know. We’re both really curious.)  That being said, I’m always wary when authors use Hinton’s book, as it has a tendency to be used as a kind of shortcut for character development. In the same way that a “reader-girl” is shorthand for moral goodness, a reference to The Outsiders is often used as a quick way of understanding that character as a misunderstood misfit or loner.

On Diversity: A response​ to Lionel Shriver and a look at my own bookshelf

Twitter was a fumin’ over the last few weeks in response to author Lionel Shriver’s controversial keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival. Her speech meant to discuss “community and belonging,” quickly dissolved into a tirade against the rampant (and completely imagined) “crisis” plaguing white authors today: political correctness.

Comic Curiosity II: Paper Girls

 

Paper Girls, Vol.1 

Image Comics
March 2016
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Cliff Chiang
Colorist: Matt Wilson
Lettering: Jared K. Fletcher

 

In keeping with the rest of the world, I’m still reeling from the 48-hour trip that was binge watching Stranger Things. That synth-pop lovin’ Goonies meets Lost Boys meets ET masterpiece was MADE for me. When someone mentioned that Paper Girls was basically the comic book/female cast version of the show, I all but sprinted to buy it.

Just the cover had me completely won over. I MEAN, CAN YOU SEE IT?

Paper Girls follows four newspaper delivery girls through the pre-dawn streets of Cleveland, OH.  Banding together, these ladies are ready to face whatever comes their way, whether it be bill-evading customers, uninvited male advances, or invading supernatural predators.

What I Loved

The Artwork. I’ll talk about the coloring first, as that was what initially drew me in and carried me through the entire volume. The way Wilson utilizes color is beautiful and spot-on. Many spreads and panels are almost ombre-like in their tonal shifts, utilizing a dusty, muted variation of stereotypical 80’s neons.  This was, without a doubt, the most aesthetically pleasing comic I’ve read so far.

Chiang’s drawing was also a major winner here. The characters look like actual adolescent girls (a refreshing change of pace), and the clothing is spot-on, a perfect match for the time period while avoiding cliched trends like leg warmers and side-ponies.

I read recently that late to the game comic readers like myself have a hard time shifting from text-only reading to simultaneous text/image reading – skipping from word bubble to word bubble and ignoring the images in between. I’ve definitely felt this in my reading so far, but I think the artwork and color in Paper Girls helped me bridge that gap. I couldn’t help but pay attention.

I genuinely wanted to cut out entire spreads of this to hang on my wall. I’m assuming that this is frowned upon in the community – akin to highlighting, writing in margins, or dog-earing pages of books (All of which I do. What are you going to do about it? AB-SO-LUTE-LY. NOTHING).

What I Not So Loved

Pacing and Character Development. The four titular characters were each so uniquely different; it’s unfortunate that they seemed to get lost in the shuffle. Paper Girls got a bit bogged down by a constant influx of new characters (human and non-) and I often wished it would slow down a bit. I would have happily read page after page of the girls going around on their bicycles, smoking cigarettes, and putting down school bullies – providing some much-needed character development. This, however, wasn’t the case, and the story quickly moved onto a (still not quite fully realized) supernatural invasion (it’s a wild one).

I’m going to make a major (and much too early) generalization and say that this kind of fast-paced storytelling is just part of the medium, and I’m just not used to it quite yet.

 

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In the end, I finished Paper Girls the same way I finished Stranger Things – pretty confused. Whatever supernatural being reeking havoc on Cleveland is yet to be fully understood by the end of Vol. 1. If that suspense doesn’t get readers itching to read Vol. 2, then the cliffhanger in the final panel will.

Vol. 2 of Paper Girls will be available November 30, 2016 (but you can buy the single issues now if that cliffhanger is just too much to bear).

 

 

Review: A Torch Against the Night

 

A Torch Against the Night
Sabaa Tahir
Published by Razorbill
30 August 2016

Find the GoodReads summary here.

It’s safe to say that the second installment to Tahir’s Ember in the Ashes series was one of the most anticipated YAs of the season – and for good reason. A Torch Against the Night was, in short, a beautifully written page-turner (with a swoon-worthy protagonist to boot).

Torch takes place right where Ember left off – with two victims of the totalitarian Sparta-inspired Empire, running for their lives. Laia, an oppressed scholar turned Resistance spy, and Elias, one of the best (albeit unwilling) soldiers the Martial Empire has trained. Laia, with help from Elias, continues her fight to save her older brother, who holds the key to the Scholar’s fate in the Empire, from Kauf, its most dangerous prison. But Torch isn’t just an adventure story; otherworldly creatures and deep mythologies take it into a realm of high-fantasy that I didn’t quite see coming, but enjoyed nonetheless.

What I Loved

Character Development and Pacing. I’ve found a few reviews that fault Tahir’s protagonist, Laia, for what they consider unbelievably quick character development. It’s true – Laia had to develop quickly. After watching her grandparents/guardians brutally murdered at the hands of the totalitarian Empire and her brother taken away for interrogation (as good as death), Laia has to get really brave really fast. After a bit of waffling in the Ember, Laia is steadfast in her decisions and capabilities – and I was all over that. I was happy, ecstatic even,  that I didn’t have to wait until the final pages for Laia to understand her worth and strength. YAAASS, GIRL.

On a similar note, the characters in Torch are honest with each other, and I have never been more appreciative. One of my absolute least favorite thing in YA (that, unfortunately, seems to also be one of the most pervasive things), is protagonists’ unwillingness to share facts or feelings that would make their lives 300% more enjoyable/easier. Both Laia and Elias could have easily kept major information private, torturing themselves even further in the process. Honestly, it was refreshing for two mature protagonists to simply be honest with each other from, more or less, the beginning of the novel.

Narrators. I have to admit that when I realized Torch was going to be told from three different perspectives, I groaned. Loudly. And thrashed around a little for good measure.  I’m starting to tire from what I see as a relatively new trend in YA to utilize an extensive number of first-person narrators. Not only is it extremely difficult to capture that many different voices in one novel, but it disjoints the story, magnifies the number of characters a reader has to keep track of, and often encourages unnecessary or waffling storylines.

Despite my reservations, Tahir handled the varying perspectives wonderfully. Most importantly, I felt that the three separate POVs were necessary to the narrative and overall made for a richer storyline and more complex and sympathetic characters.

Villains. All I will say to this point is MAN, can Tahir write some villains.

What I Not So Loved

Lack of Worldbuilding. I see this as actually a carry-over from Ember, which for me, simply didn’t lay sufficient groundwork for a full understanding of the Empire. It caused a lot of confusion as I read Torch and lead me to really struggle with fully picturing and comprehending the construction of the world. That being said, it  wasn’t enough to keep me from loving and recommending this novel.

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Overall, Tahir wraps up Torch much more mercifully than Ember (which might of well have just ended mid-sentence), while still leaving readers with plenty of questions and hopes for the third installment. The third novel of the series is set to come out sometime in 2018.