Kenzie and Gennaro

After hearing Dennis Lehane speak, I thought I'd give his Kenzie/Gennaro crime series a try.  I read A Drink Before the War, Darkness, Take My Hand, and Gone, Baby, Gone. (These are books 1, 2 and 4 of the series.  For some reason I skipped the third one, Sacred. Not sure why.)  Pretty good!  Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are private detective partners in Boston.  Of course there's sexual tension, etc., and their personalities and all the stuff on the side sort of bugs me, but the action and the plots are kind of exciting.  Worth a look.

Those were Books 38, 39 and 40 for my challenge.  Home stretch!

okay okay

Two more young adult books and then THAT'S IT.  I promise.  Both by E. Lockhart: 

Book 36:   The Treasure Map of Boys.  Cute, fun, thoughtful - like the other Ruby Oliver books.

Book 37:  Dramarama.  You know...  maybe not my favorite of the E. Lockhart books.  If you're a drama geek you'll like this one, though. I'm just not.  And the protagonist bugged me a bit.  Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it -- I don't subscribe to the theory that you have to like characters in order for a book to be a good read -- but Sadye did annoy me.  Bit of a know-it-all. 

UNTIL:  The last 20 pages of this 300-page book, when I cried.  

And now, my dear friends, I think my appetite for young adult books has finally been sated (for now).  Grown up books from here on out.  Huzzah!

Book Challenge Update

I'm three quarters of the way through the year, and on track to finish my 50 books by December 31.  I thought I should reflect.

I enjoy reading, so I don't find it difficult to read fifty books in one year. Especially when my summer was filled with young adult books.  I mean, the books I read weren't short books - most were around 250-300 pages -- but they were not especially difficult to get through.  So I guess I don't find this 50 Books project to necessarily be a "challenge". 

Keeping track on this blog is sometimes a challenge, though.  I feel like I need to be thoughtful, and write an interesting review instead of just making a list.  I don't know why.  It's not like Draggletail has a huge audience full of critics and authors and people waiting to judge me.  I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not.  I'm just reading.  But still, I feel compelled to be thoughtful and... smart.

The blogging also sort of inhibits my reading choices.  I think I am a lot more embarrassed about all those YA books I read because I feel like I have to tell the truth and follow my own rules here, report back.  I have to blog that I read them, instead of just reading them secretly on my Kindle or something with no one ever the wiser.  So there is a bit of pressure in that sense.  Obviously it didn't truly inhibit me - I still chose to read those books (and enjoyed some of them!) and wrote what I thought and didn't pretend I never read them - but it was a little bug on my shoulder now and then.

Who am I trying to impress, though?  That's what I wonder.  I know who looks at this blog.  I am not that worried about impressing y'all.  But still.  I've made these insecure ruminations before.  Maybe that's just it: Insecurity.  Unnecessary insecurity.

Pretty Little Liars!

Books 31 and 32 in my challenge were Books 1 and 2 of the Pretty Little Liars series, by Sara Shepard.

I picked these up because I have been obsessed with the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars.  It's so good!  Did you see the finale the other night?  OMG.

I'm not even kidding. Anyway, weeks ago, about three episodes in to the season, I (belatedly) discovered that the show is based on a series of books for teens.  Somehow this escaped me before then.  I couldn't wait to see what happened next in the show, so I went to the library and got the first three books in the series so I could get ahead and find out!   Unfortunately, the timeline is not the same in the books, and the intertwined stories were different enough that it didn't really help me and my plan was a bust.  The books were not bad, and the plan might have panned out if I stuck with it, but I decided I am already invested in the TV version, so I only read the first two books and did not bother with the third.  Back to the library they went.

So pretty!  What liars!

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Oh, I just loved this book!  (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Book No. 30, by E. Lockhart) It's another Y.A. book, and I KNOW I'm too old for this (more self-analysis at a later date on why I keep picking up Y.A. books the past year or so - I have been thinking about it) but it had a fun plot, great characters, funny parts, sad parts.

I came across a mention of the book on this blog (which I randomly came across while looking for dress sewing patterns, of all things) and the blogger's enthusiasm plus the fact that the book was nominated for a National Book Award made me feel like it might be worth reading.  I finished it all in one lovely, hot, lazy weekend day (to the detriment of the piles of laundry waiting to be laundered and the kitchen waiting to be cleaned and the dog waiting to be walked). 

Frankie is a teenage girl recently blossomed into someone that boys and girls alike are beginning to notice.  She's smart, good-looking, and does not like being told what to do.  She becomes obsessed with her school's boys-only secret society, a group which claims as its members her father and current and ex-boyfriends alike.  She manages to infiltrate the group via email, talks them into a number of genius school pranks...  and I don't want to give away the ending.

But it's interesting.  It's about girl power, and also about the lessons Frankie learns when she doesn't play by the Old Boy rules.  Double standards are alive and well.  When her pranks are discovered, she has to ask, "Why is it psychotic if I did it it, and brilliant if Alpha [a male student] did it?"   It makes her think, and hopefully it will make Ms. Lockhart's female readers think.  It's a funny, smart book, and while it doesn't necessarily have a Happy Ending, the conclusion is solid and rings true. 

Of course the book has many ingredients I love: Teenagers good and bad, boarding school, successful teenage girls, secret societies, crushes, language games, literary references.  Some minor points jarred slightly - does a sophomore girl really read P.G. Wodehouse for fun?  But then I decided maybe Frankie does.  She seems like she might, so I took it at face value.

Loved it.  I ran out and picked up two more by Lockhart.  (I can't stop with the teen books!)  Info to follow.

Book No. 29: Fly Away Home

My latest book was Fly Away Home, by Jennifer Weiner.

I love Jennifer Weiner's books.  I love them, and I think I would love Jennifer herself if only she would move to Idaho so we could be friends... 

Okay, just kidding.  I am (pretty much) not a stalker.  So anyway, Fly Away Home.   I liked it a lot.   The main story is about what happens when a famous husband cheats, and the repercussions it has on his wife and daughters.  The pain, the recovery, the decisions the women must make.  What is the "right" or "best" thing to do when your husband has cheated?  What if that husband is a famous politician? 

The book also tells the stories of the daughters' own lives -- one, a successful doctor, is having an affair, and the other, a recovering addict, finds she is accidentally pregnant.  I really enjoyed how complex these characters all were.  No one situation was cut and dried. 

Since I recently read Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter, which also told a story of a complicated infidelity, I couldn't help but compare the two.  Fly Away Home hit the mark better (for me, anyway) -- I did care about these characters and what choices they would make, whereas I just did not find the characters in Giffin's novel to be appealing.

 

So it was a good one.  I'll read anything Jennifer Weiner writes.

Here's a nice interview with the author regarding the book (Elle.com, June 2010).

Family Affair, by Caprice Crane (Book No. 28)

I read Caprice Crane's most recent book, Family Affair.  I have enjoyed Ms. Crane's books in the past, and so I figured it would be a good bet for an enjoyable read.  It was. 

The basic premise that moves the plot along is that a young couple is splitting up, and the wife, having lost her family (for the most part) and having become very attached to her husband's family, wants "custody" of them in the divorce.  Things happen, the story goes on.

In retrospect, overall, I feel like I didn't love it but I did like it.   The author's humor great --  quirky and odd (I just read someone's review on Amazon and she said she "laughed until she cried".  Really?  REALLY?  I can't imagine, but okay.) and the book had some touching family moments.  I think I preferred Stupid and Contagious, but this was a pretty fun, easy read.  I would definitely try her again.

Bonus linkage:  Here's a related Huffington Post article by Ms. Crane from last fall...

Flavia!

Just finished the second Flavia de Luce book: The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag.  Such fun!  I actually listened to this one on CD (I haven't decided yet whether that should count toward my 50 book goal, since I didn't actually read the book.  Maybe not, but I'm going to count it for now and we'll see how pressed for time I am at the end of the year. As Bobby Brown once said, "That's my prerogative.").  The reader on the audio book - Jayne Entwistle - was fabulous!  She had such a great (girly, British) voice and really made the joke bits funnier and had a cute way of portraying precocious, 11-year old Flavia.  I'm very picky about my audio book readers, and I thought she was just great. 

Like the first Flavia book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the story centers around precocious, poison-obsessed Flavia, her family and the townspeople of Bishop's Lacey.  I went into these books thinking they would be sweet and soft, sort of like the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, but these have both had a hard little twist to them.  People die!  It's sad and sometimes scary!  But Flavia is also delightful at the same time, so it kind of evens out.  Can a book 'even out'?  That's how I think of it. 

There is a puppeteer, a German POW, and rat poison!  Sulfurous chocolates, a naked vicar hopping about in the woods and a secret pregnancy!  Lots to like.  I already look forward to the next one.

If You Have to Cry, Go Outside

Book 21 on my list was Kelly Cutrone's If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You.   Loved it.

Kelly is, among other things, the founder of a fashion PR company called People's Revolution and she is a total badass.  She has appeared on The Hills and had her own reality show on Bravo called Kell on Earth.  I think people like to think of her as a publicity-seeking, crazy bitch, and maybe the publicity part is true but I also think of her as brash but honest.  She'll let loose on one of her staffers with a tongue-lashing but follows it up with a kind word or a compliment, which I find endearing, and compassionate.  I mean, obviously I don't know her or anything, but that's the way she seems on TV.

Anyway.  The book.  I started reading it thinking that it would be a name-dropping tell-all memoir in the manner of Janice Dickinson's bio, and there was some of that.  Listen to this:

My marriage ended with an explosion, not a slow fade.  When I told Ronnie I was leaving him, he didn't take it well:  he grabbed a German ceremonial dagger out of his closet and put it to my throat.  I managed to escape, which is when he called my father and said, "Lee, I'm going to kill your daughter and then I'm going to kill myself."  He subsequently pushed me down the stairs at the office...

Yikes.  I learned that during her life, before she started People's Rev, Kelly was a fabulous NY It Girl, almost died from drug addictions, and worked as a tarot card reader on the boardwalk in Venice Beach.  She is very spiritual. She is a single mom.  And at one point she was a hippie rapper!  Check these lyrics:

Deep in outer space,
Trying to get a grip on this thing we call the human race,
Rat race, out of place,
Krishnas calling out, don't you hear your name?
Darkness keeps on dancing, it never stays the same,
Yes the Mother loves you and it's time for you to know,
Heaven is a comin', it's a souled-out show.

I mean, come on.  "Souled-out show."  That is so awesome. 

She's entertaining, too. At one point she calls out the fashion industry for producing "images of girls who look like they've been gangbanged on Alice in Wonderland adventures and calls them ad campaigns," and in another spot she discounts the "popular notion that 'spiritual' refers only to vegans in Whole Foods whispering to each other." Ha!

Now:  Gossip about her life aside, for the most part If You Have to Cry was kind of a self-help book.  Surprise!  Kelly (I feel that we're on a first name basis) tells the stories of her life but mixes them with heaps of advice on finding your own "religion", creating your brand, making your career work for you (not the other way around), and just encourages her readers to be authentic and true to themselves.  It's really quite positive and uplifting.  She writes, "I fundamentally believe in grooming the next generation of women to win, not in trying to be come their friend," and provides her "unspoken rules you must know to pole-vault forward on your sword of truth, light and ambition and not get stabbed by it."  A little hippie-trippy, sure, but I admire her attitude.  When I finished the book I realized I had marked over a dozen pages for rereading.
 
I enjoyed this book, and I think Kelly is great.  I'm also totally afraid of her, of course.

.....brainnnnsss....

I'm all about zombies right now. First off, we watched Zombieland the other night, which was pretty good/gross. Then I played Plants vs. Zombies for, like, two hours one day. And THEN I picked up The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan (Duke Law grad! Right on.). I sort of like zombies (apparently), and I like books about problem teenagers, and this has both. It got a lot of good reader reviews, so I thought I'd give it a go. (I know, it's another young adult book, and I'm too old to be reading these. I know! I also know it's lame to play Farmville, but that doesn't stop me from doing it.)

Overall, I liked this book well enough. You know the M. Night Shyamalan movie "The Village"? It is kind of like that, a little: A colonial-type community is stuck in an isolated village that is surrounded by a scary forest inhabited by creatures that may or may not kill and eat them. I like that sort of weird problem. I'm okay with that.

Our heroine is Mary, a girl who wants to know more about the world beyond the fences, beyond the hordes of Unconsecrated. She's obsessed with finding the ocean - a thing she has heard of but has never seen, since she lives in the treetops in this village in the forest. You know her kind: The strong-willed, brave girl who Doesn't Fit In and Knows There's More to Life Than This. I won't give it all away, though.

The book enjoys an annoying (but minor) degree of melodrama (the Sisterhood keeps THE SECRETS?!! SECRETS!!!!) but teenagers are melodramatic, so I suppose that suits both the young adults in the book and the young adults who are (theoretically) the reading audience. But the zombies and the plot were enough to keep me plugging through it. It was sort of good... and evidently good enough to spark me to read its sequel, The Dead-Tossed Waves (I like the cover, don't you?).

The sequel features some recurring characters from FOHAT, but mainly revolves around some new folks -- Gabry, our protagonist, is Mary's daughter, for example. Then there's more zombies, and some pretty gross violence.

I'm pretty sure all the super-enthusiastic reader reviews that you'll find online for these two books were written by Twihard types. There's a lot of teenage girls out there who are obsessed with the undead action/romances right now. If that description fits you, then you'll love these books.

However: I'm pretty sure that description doesn't fit you you, because I know exactly who all five people are who read this blog. :)

P.S. Just as I was Googling The Forest of Hands and Teeth to find an image of the cover for this post, I discovered that a movie adaptation of this book is set to come out in 2011. Huh. Not really new news, to people who care, but I did not know that until just now.

Can he do it?

My husband knows about my 50 Books Challenge, but it doesn't, you know, play a big part in our day-to-day lives or anything. Plus, he's not a big reader. Like, not at all. He reads mountain biking magazines.

So he received a book for Christmas that he thought looked good - Bill Simmons' The Book of Basketball - so I challenged him to read this book, ONE BOOK, by the end of the year. I am not sure he's going to make it!

easy breezy

Girly-girl books this week: The Real Real by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin (authors of The Nanny Diaries) and Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner.

The Real Real: What is it with me and YA books? I might be immature. Never said I wasn't. So the premise of this book is this: A music TV channel ("XTV") sets its sights on a high school in the Hamptons as the focus of a reality series called The Real Hampton Beach - a la Laguna Beach, The Hills, etc. Shows I love, so this is why I was drawn to this book. Our heroine, Jesse, is not part of the in crowd, but is chosen to be a focus character nonetheless. How she deals with the popularity, the jealousy of her her best friend, the powers that be at the TV station - this makes up our story. It's cute - a nice summer read for a teenage girl. Or a nice holiday week read for a 40-year old.

P.S. Did you know that Kraus and McLaughlin's Nanny Returns just came out this month?

Best Friends Forever: I'm a fan of Jennifer Weiner. I think I've read all of her books at this point -- enjoying some more than others, naturally, but I am always willing to pick up something she's written. This one is a little bit Thelma and Louise -- two childhood friends who were torn apart but who reconnect at their high school reunion and set off to wreak revenge on someone who wronged them. It's more complicated than that -- messed-up families play a part in the story -- but I don't want to retall the whole story here...

Which brings me to this realization: I am pretty much just logging what I read these days. I don't know if I'm tired, or just don't have time or what, but I am at a point where I am not spending the effort to dissect what I'm reading. Which is fine with me. But it makes me think maybe it's time for another 50 Book Challenge! I think that's what I'll do, beginning in 2010 - since I'm spending more time reading than writing about the books, I might as well just go with it - and spend more time reading and just log what I've read.

50 Book Challenge is back!