Booking It

Books of the Month: October & November 2012

Book Review: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

Must I wait until 2013 for the next one? Must I? Really??

Goal-setting is good. With that in mind, I’ve realized I’m being altogether too optimistic about my reading abilities! Here’s what I plan to crack open in April:

1) Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers: A killer historical fantasy featuring assassin nuns. When I drafted my TBR a couple of days ago, I didn’t realize how quickly I’d blast through it! It’s already been released, and I’ve just finished reading it as of this post - so look for a review sometime in the (hopefully) near future.

2) The Peculiars by Maureen McQuerry: An interesting mix of steampunk and paranormal, this one features a teenager named Lena on the search for her missing father, who disappeared into a mysterious wilderness populated by “Peculiars” many years before. (Potentially disastrous? Potentially awesome?)

3) Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott: With a fairytale-esque premise, and some dark undertones, Shadows is about a young girl named Suzume capable of re-creating her identity through the magic of shadow-weaving. Looks absolutely gorgeous!

4) The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa: Holy freak. Need I even explain? In case I do, this is the delightful Julie Kagawa’s take on vampire mythology. Let’s hope she can infuse some of her magic into this sadly over-worked genre. So very, very excited!

5) The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda: A Hunger Games feel with a vampiric spin, Hunt deals with a human boy forced to run with a pack of vampires, all the while trying to resist the allure of a girl he can’t have.

6) Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco: This one is a thick, journalistic graphic novel about Joe Sacco’s experience talking to the victims of a historically-footnoted incident in the 1950s Gaza Strip, relating to the war between Israel and Palestine.

7) Diamond Grill by Fred Wah: Another prescribed piece of Can Lit, this time a collection of prose-poetry dealing with Wah’s experience as a Chinese-Canadian, seen through the lens of the eponymous Diamond Grill restaurant.

8) The Fox by D. H. Lawrence: Technically a novella, Lawrence’s modernist classic presents two parallel stories (a fox menacing a chicken farm, and a man menacing the two women who own it) in a social commentary.

9) Molloy by Samuel Beckett: I wish I could tell you what this book is about. Kind of an ambitious read for me - the first paragraph is 82 pages long! That’s right… What am I getting myself into?

10) The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah: Sadly all of the images of this one’s cover are extremely tiny, extremely blurry, or both. A piece of African literature dealing with a railway clerk living in modern-day Ghana and dealing with the issues that no doubt arise from such a situation. 

Left unread from my March TBR and thereby transfered over is Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta. There are a couple of reasons I didn’t get to this one in March, and hopefully I’ll be able to shed some light on that in my review! Which should actually be posted this month. Hopefully.

First in a new paranormal mystery series, Jill Hathaway’s Slide was definitely an interesting read! A little out of my usual genre boundary, but a solid book nonetheless.

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Gorgeous cover? Check. Interesting premise? Check. Promise of potentially cheesy romance? Check. Stand-alone? Check, please.

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Book Review: A Million Suns by Beth Revis

Beth Revis, you rock my world! Or…. my outer-space? (Come on, you know you love the puns). Now hurry up and finish the next one!! 

Check out my review of Across the Universe here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFqo7Ox_CcM

A bit of lighthearted paranormal romance with a windpipe crushingly heavy dose of fluff, Spellbound is a major lightweight. Find out what I thought about Schultz’s series-opener (the sequel’s due out at the end of March) under the break!

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Book Haul: February 2012!

[Edit: LINK! Y U NO WORK!!!! Should be fixed now. Grr.]

Annnnnd Addie buys more books than she needs. Again. ‘Twas filmed a while ago, and then forgotten, and then found, and then uploaded for your delectation.

Here’s that website I rambled about: Inkpop

You could say this book is a little bit like Superbad trying to disguise itself as some kind of philosophical manifesto, with make-out sessions thrown in there for kicks. Surprisingly, the result was a lot better than what the recipe promises - even if Graffiti Moon does have its flaws.

Due thanks to Random House via NetGalley for allowing me to pre-read this title.

… whatever.

Title: Graffiti Moon

Author: Cath Crowley

Publishing House: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Release Date: 14 February 2012 (American Edition)

Page Count: 272 (Hardcover)

The novel - taking just one night for its time frame - sets out to tell a multi-layered story about an Australian teen named Lucy as she sets off to discover the true identity of an enigmatic graffiti artist known as “Shadow.” The art that Shadow creates strikes a chord with Lucy, who’s also an artist - a glass-blower, to be more specific. Add a well-meaning comic relief and some bad dudes who like to cut people with things and shake well. Sounds like a great okay recipe for your average teen movie, dunnit? But despite the gimmicky Valentine’s Day release date/”edgy” teen romance cover double whammy, Graffiti isn’t as simple as it seems… which might be the problem. 

The plot moves at a fast clip, as it rightly should - Graffiti is a lightweight, clocking in under 300 pages. Despite the (for me, personally - especially considering I’m working my way through A Clash of Kings right now. Excessively long bracket over) low page count, Crowley manages to cram quite a bit of plot between the book’s covers. Shadow’s identity, while secret from Lucy until quite close to the end, is immediately obvious to the reader - half of the book is written in his perspective - which detracts from the mystery, but adds a fair bit of tension to the narrative. And that tension is needed. Despite the threat looming from various Big Bads, the narrative is generally a loosely-structured series of incidents: character sketches, random running through deserted parks, various people making out with each other, and overly-copious flashbacks. Despite that, it was a quick and entertaining read. The attempts at “depth” and philosophy missed the mark for me, but the plot was generally disconnected from these, so I will forgive them.

The book is narrated from two major perspectives - Lucy’s and Shadow’s - with occasional bits of poetry written by a third character, Shadow’s best dude friend, thrown in there for “spice.” This is a good idea narratively speaking, as it provides sufficient background for the characters’ relationships and sets up the dramatic irony surrounding Shadow’s actual identity. So props for that. But I took issue with the fact that, despite the lengths Crowley goes to distinguish the characters, Shadow and Lucy speak in exactly (and I mean sometimes-had-trouble-telling-them-apart exactly) the same narrative voice. I don’t care if the chapter heading tells me who’s speaking. Show me, please, dammit! This is a problem I’ve encountered in a lot of YA fiction - usually moreso in the dystopian/sci fi stuff. Clearly it has infected the realistic fic as well. 

Another quibble I have is that, despite the fact that narratively they sound identical, I found it hard to relate to our leading lady. There was nothing wrong with Lucy, per se - she just had way too much in common with Shadow. His story was the more interesting version of hers - unorthodox home life, secret desire to be an artist, teen angst, etcetera - so when it came to develop Lucy’s character and that was all exactly the same, but less extreme, it was boring. They came from similar backgrounds (generally), and both had similar secret artistic dreams, and similar angst.

The actual narrative itself was what provided all of the romantic tension. There was no romantic tension between them in a personality sense - I mean, Lucy was already in love with the guy before the story started! Events and circumstances were what separated them, not personality differences. I like my romance served with a healthy dose of antagonism - I mean, who doesn’t love a little love a la Lizzie and Darcy? It’s the clash of wills and opinions that makes a love story interesting! Those are the issues I had with both characters and writing - for once so entwined I couldn’t really separate them and still maintain a charade of coherence.

As for enjoyability, Graffiti Moon had its moments. Like any raunchy, frenetic teen flick, it had its fair share of humor and snappy dialogue, even if much some of it was forced. And it had its fair share of pretty-prose one-liners; it’s a book about artistes, after all. But something about the ending left me cold. Not that there’s a tear-jerking shocker lurking on the last page - it ended fairly well as I expected it to. It was trying too hard to be touching and deep, and I wasn’t feeling any of that. It was a good story, with a good set-up and some quality writing, but it didn’t thrill me. For my money, it didn’t do what it set out to do. Not that it was a bad read. Maybe you’ll read it and think “oh, this book totally gets me, it understands what I’m going through,” but that wasn’t what came to mind when I flipped the last page.

Final Breakdown: 

Premise & Originality: 0.5 Star

Plot: 1 Star

Characters: 0.5 Stars

Writing: 0.5 Stars

Enjoyability: 0.5 Stars

Total: 3.5 / 5 Stars

Book Review: Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

What is this? A book review? At last? The world must be coming to an end!