Staff Picks

What’s even better than a companion book for  The Wednesday Wars?  A companion book that works just fine as a stand alone book!  (Some people call this book a sequel, but I am calling it a “companion” book because it has a different main character and doesn’t require you to read the first book in order to understand what’s going on.)  There IS a bit of a shout-out to Holling Hoodhood, which is nice, but this book focuses on Doug Swieteck — one of Holling’s friends whose family has to move upstate, to a small town called Marysville, when his dad’s bad attitude causes him his job.

We learn early on that Doug’s father is a jerk; he treats his family like trash and doesn’t grasp the simple notion that the world doesn’t owe him  anything that he didn’t work to earn.  Doug’s mom is really passive and pretty much ignores her husband’s faults while trying her best not to anger him.  And then there are Doug’s brothers — one who is serving in Vietnam, and one who moves with the family and then falls in with the local herd of jerks.  Luckily, Doug meets Lil Spicer and gets a job delivering groceries for her dad’s deli.  Through this job, he gets out of the house, forms relationships with some of the townspeople, and makes a little bit of money to boot.  There are several points where things get really rough for Doug, but he always manages to find solace in the local library where he is intrigued by, and learns to draw, the birds found in the John James Audubon book kept on display.  With its complex characters, rich setting, and the message of hope and perseverance, I think this book would appeal to nearly anyone who likes a good story.

After trying to read Going Bovine and feeling like I was too dumb to understand what the heck was going on, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Beauty Queens.  Luckily, I talked to a coworker who thought this book would be perfect for me, and I decided to give the audiobook a chance.   Shortly after finishing this book, I discovered a blog post entitled “Ten Things I Want to Tell Teenage Girls” and it was as if this entire book was condensed into number 10 . . . in a much less sarcastic way.   I think that might be a big part of what I loved about this book — the sarcasm, that is.  I am an *extremely* sarcastic person, and I just love some tongue-in-cheek satire.

Have you ever asked yourself, “What would happen if a plane full of beauty queens crash-landed on a deserted island?”  Then, this is the book for you! Beauty Queens examines consumer culture, reality TV, politics, rom-coms, the beauty industry, and religion while exploring issues of gender, race, sexuality, beauty, and identity.  While it’s hard to believe that a unified storyline can emerge from a story that tackles so many issues, it really came together nicely.  Although the issues covered in this book are totally serious, Bray manages to be anything but serious and still makes her point.  (She also manages to sound like a full cast of readers in the audiobook!)  I wish I could assign this book as required reading to every insecure girl/woman I know so they could start to see how ridiculous it is that we allow society to put so much pressure on us to be “perfect.”  One of my favorite lines was from an advertizement for Lady ‘Stache Off — “Because there’s nothing wrong with you . . . that can’t be fixed.”  I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of our culture telling me that I need to “fix” myself.  I hope to teach my daughter (and every teen girl I work with) that we’re all beautiful just the way we are thankyouverymuch!

Happy Reading!

Some books were just meant to be audiobooks.  I never actually read physical books of Feed or Thirteen Reasons Why, so I cannot say for sure, but I can’t imagine that reading them would have been anywhere close to the experience I had listening to them.  I don’t think I would have done “the feed” justice on my own, and I firmly believe that listening to Hannah’s tapes along with Clay helped me to experience his emotional reactions much better than reading the text would have.  I decided to listen to this book because my current audiobook was almost over and this one was sitting on the NEW shelf.  I recalled that it got a good review, but I didn’t remember anything about it.  Well . . .  I am really glad I “accidentally” took out the audiobook instead of reading the book because it definitely reminded me a lot of Feed!

Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown, a small settlement on New World.  His people came to New World to escape religious persecution, but they found plenty of new problems upon arrival.  The two main problems were the Spackle (lifeforms indigenous to the planet) and a germ that causes “Noise” (the projection of one’s thoughts so that other people can hear and/or see them).  In this first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy, we learn two very important details:  all of the women of Prentisstown are dead, and the boys “become men” at 13.  Todd, the last remaining boy, is feeling anxious and confused about his impending 13th birthday because of all the secrets that are kept from the boys — including details about the actual ritual that will complete his transformation from boy to man.  When, all of the sudden, Prentisstown becomes unsafe for Todd, his adoptive parents (Ben and Cillian — pronounced Killian) send him out into the wilderness with his dog (Manchee), a hunting knife, his mother’s diary, and a map that should lead him to another settlement.

There was a lot to set up in this first book, but it was not overly difficult to follow.  Plus, the action and adventure work well to keep readers hooked while bits and pieces of the history of Prentisstown are revealed.  Definitely a book/audiobook I would recommend to fans of dystopian science fiction.

Because Perry wants to get into Columbia, he has pretty much always played by the rules.  He understands that he needs to get good grades and that obtaining a recommendation by doing an internship at his father’s law firm is very important.  He works his butt off most of the time, but he’s still a teenager and, therefore, wants to do fun things once in a while.  That’s why he belongs to a band.  And even though many teenagers look forward to their senior prom, Perry and his friends have other plans for that night — they’ve finally lined up a gig at a club in New York City!  Unfortunately for Perry, his dad doesn’t care.  His dad wants him to bring Gobija [the foreign exchange student who has been staying with their family] to prom.

If Gobija had been the teen movie stereotype — hot and anxious to date a geeky American boy — Perry might have been happy about this arrangement.  Since she was dorky and standoffish, though, Perry was looking forward to the end of her stay and tried his best to weasel his way out of this date.  It was rather obvious that things went a bit differently than expected since the book opened with Perry saying, “You shot me!”  The bad news is that, after the initial teaser, I had to go back to the beginning of the story to find out how the heck he got shot.  The good news is that the story moved so quickly that I got back to the wild ride before too long.

Let me begin this review by stating, for the record, that I do not consider myself  a “football fan.”  I don’t hate football, but I don’t go out of my way to watch football either.  I literally watched the Super Bowl for the commercials and half-time show while ignoring the game to get food and drink refills! I also want to mention that many people will try to compare this book to Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen books, since they also have a female main character who plays football, but this book isn’t just a Dairy Queen redux.

Jordan is much more than a girl who happens to play football — she is the quarterback and captain of one of the best high school football teams in Tennessee, a possible recruit for the University of Alabama [Roll Tide!], and the daughter of an NFL player.  Football is in her blood and it has been her life for nearly all of her life, so she is very upset when a new quarterback moves to her school during the fall of her senior year. This is precisely when she needs to prove herself to college recruiters, and Ty is both a threat to her playing time AND a [really cute] distraction.  Add the fact that Jordan’s dad isn’t really supportive of her playing football, throw in a changing relationship with her best friend [who is a guy], and you get a whole lot of story in one book. Luckily, it’s not too much to keep straight and it’s all very believable.  The best part?  There’s enough about practice and games to keep football fans interested without overdoing it for people who couldn’t care less.  A great coming of age story with a side of teen love!