Looking for Alaska by John Green

Several weeks ago, right around the time Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, the Book Dragon (now Outside of a Dog) posted a link to Brotherhood 2.0. Brotherhood 2.0 is a video blog project between two brothers- Hank and John Green. Over the next few weeks I (some would say obsessively) watched ALL the videos- one a weekday from January 1, 2007 until now. I love it. I love the brothers. One of the brothers is John Green, a published award-winning young adult author. Once I finished catching up with the vlog, I found myself having withdrawals, so I headed to the library where I checked out Looking for Alaska by John Green.

One night as I was trying to convince myself to read something on a challenge list (yeah right), I picked up the book and read the "About the Author." Now, having seen all the videos, I have a pretty good idea of John's (first name basis, see?) history and life, but one sentence in the bio really jumped out at me- "John Green attended a boarding school in Alabama not entirely unlike Alaska's Culver Creek." What?? Are you serious? I attended a boarding school in Alabama! I am only a couple years older than John Green! This spurred a fast and furious internet search until wikipedia told me that, alas, we did not attend the same school. (For the record, I attended the Alabama School of Math and Science and he went to Indian Springs School. Mine- public; his- not so much.)

This still spurred me on to reading the book. Looking for Alaska is about Miles who is a first time student, a junior, at an Alabama boarding school. It's about making friends, loyalty, growing up, love, doubts, everything we all did in high school. There is an abundance of smoking, drinking, and a good bit of sex talk. This was so much like my high school it's was spooky. The book isn't broken into chapters, but rather sections are titled as a countdown (ninety-eight days before, four days before, twenty-one days after, etc.) Obviously, Something Happens and the rest of the book deals with the aftermath of that.

I have to say I loved it. The story isn't particularly unique, but it is very clear that John Green remembers high school clearly. I don't know if this will resonate with people who didn't attend a boarding school, and honestly, I have a hard time separating the book from my experience. Between the vlog, and the shared high school experience, I thought this was an excellent book. If you aren't already a John Green fan or a boarding school alum, I don't know, it might not be for you. It's not a book that avoid touchy subjects and there's a lot of hand-wringing in the last half. I thought it did an excellent job of showing how fast and tight friendships are formed in a dorm. Overall, great book, and I'll be looking for his other book An Abundance of Katherines.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

A couple of weeks ago Bookshelves of Doom reviewed Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. During the course of the review, she talked a good bit about Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. Now that review was for a different book, but it made me want to read this one. (Actually, it made me want to read BOTH of them. Naomi and Ely aren't out until next week.)

Nick & Norah are teenagers- I don't remember it ever saying exactly how old they are, but definately under 21, and at least 18. Nick plays bass in a band where he is the only straight guy. The story opens with his band playing, and his very recent ex showing up. Nick panics, and asks Norah (a complete stranger) to be his girlfriend for the next five minutes. The rest of the book takes place in the next 12 hours or so, as Nick & Norah fall in love.

I loved this book. The chapters alternate from each viewpoint, and some scenes are told twice. Nick & Norah have some hangups from exs to get past and all of that is beautifully told. The falling in love is completely believable.

Things that didn't work so well for me- the book takes place in NYC, in the punk music scene. For this book it was great, but clubs and punk music aren't my thing and I was worried when the book opened. It also opens with a lot (and continues with a LOT) of swearing. The f-bomb is used a lot. I'm not a stranger to swearing, but this IS a young adult novel, so it was surprising that it was here SO MUCH. There are a lot of sexual situations and references. They spend some time with a gay member of Nick's band, who is very blunt about what he wants from the guy he is with. There are several occasions of men kissing. There are scenes between Nick and Norah themselves (but no actual sex.) It all worked for me, but if you're not into that or think teenagers shouldn't know what sex is, you definitely won't like this book. It is steamy.

Here's what Bookshelves of Doom said, that made me interested:

The response to Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's first collabaration, was somewhat divided. Some people (myself included) adored it. People in that camp felt it captured the whoosh feeling of a new love, that it was an urban fantasy in which the magic didn't come from faerie folk -- it came from the music and the people and the energy of an all-nighter in the city. And we loved the dialogue. Non-fans didn't like it for various reasons -- the (some say excessive) swearing (and, yes, N&N certainly do swear a whole lot), the steamy situations (and oh, were they steamy), and the dialogue. Some felt that it wasn't realistic for Nick, Norah & company to talk the way they did -- that they sounded like they were reading from scripts written by clever thirty-somethings. (I actually liked that about the dialogue. Being the sort of person who only thinks of the witty retort days after it's needed, the book's banter added to the fantasy element for me.)

Overall, I loved this book. I thought it completely captured the emotions of falling in love, and wondering how the other person feels. It was sexy in a good way. I read it in one sitting. No, this book wasn't on any of my challenge lists, but it was totally worth taking a break for. I'll certainly be going back for the authors' other books.

The Faith Club

The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew- Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner.

After September 11th, Ranya Idliby was faced with questions about their faith and death from her children. Ranya and her children are Muslim and live in New York where they were confronted often by the persistent stereotypes of Muslims and terrorism. She was inspired to seek out a Christian (Oliver) and a Jew (Warner) to write a children's book about the three religions and hopefully to reassure her kids (and others) that Islam wasn't scary and that the three religions were about the same original God.

What followed was several years of regular meetings and open discussion about each woman's beliefs and the background for each religion. Each chapter is divided into sections written by each woman on their take on the discussions, and there are small sections taken from recordings of their conversations. Each one took notes, and this book is the result.

I am not a religious person, but am drawn to books like this one. I am fascinated by the path people take to God and how they express it in their lives. This book starts off with some stereotypes and misunderstanding and the project almost ends before it starts. They stick with it and through some very open discussion are able to continue. Each chapter addresses a different area of faith (prayer, rituals, death, etc.) I learned quite a lot that I didn't know about all three, and how they interact with each other. I learned that some of my assumptions about Islam are completely wrong. The parts about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were the best, as it was finally written in terms I could understand. I've read about it before, but it's always been very political, this made it very personal and I could really understand both sides.

I have a copy of The History of God: The 4,000 year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstrong on my shelf and hope to eventually get it read. I think it would be a nice follow up to this much more casual approach. I'm going to give The Faith Club a 4/5 because it lost steam for me at the end. Near the end the women have a strong relationship with each other and the last chapter is about their (new and improved) relationship with each respective religion. It becomes the kind of religious book that I don't like, but that many people love. This failing is due to my own beliefs, not the book, so if you're into that kinda thing, you'll love it.

I marked several passages in the book to mention here. The only one I'm going to post is from near the end, and is Suzanne responding to a question about Christian values vs. Jewish values. This is on page 289 of my copy, and is in one of Priscilla's sections.

"They're the same!" Suzanne said in her honest, straightforward way. "But I don't think everyone recognizes that. They confuse social values with Christian values. Or they see that our religious practices are different, so they assume our moral values are different, too. We should all be taught early on that our religions boil down to one morality: to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself."

Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner

I'm on a roll! I persevered and finished another challenge book today. This one was Carpe Demon: Confessions of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom by Julie Kenner.

Here's Amazon.com's summary:

Lots of women put their careers aside once the kids come along. Kate Connor, for instance, hasn't hunted a demon in ages.

That must be why she missed the one wandering through the pet food aisle of the San Diablo Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, he managed to catch her attention an hour later-when he crashed into the Connor house, intent on killing her.

Now Kate has to clean up the mess in her kitchen, dispose of a dead demon, and pull together a dinner party that will get her husband elected to County Attorney-all without arousing her family's suspicion. Worse yet, it seems the dead demon didn't come alone...

It's time for Kate Connor to go back to work.

Well. It wasn't Buffy. The writing starts off bad, but gradually gets better. It's supposed to be almost slapstick humor like maybe Meg Cabot or Janet Evanovich. I felt like she was trying way way too hard, the jokes had neon signs announcing them. This too gets better as the book goes on. And while I'm being honest, her 21-month old is way way more verbal than my (very verbal) 25 month old. And I knew the ending about halfway through. I do love the idea, I think the plot had potential, but it doesn't not inspire me to run out for the next in the series. Which is ok, cause thanks to my procrastinating on reading this one, paperbackswap.com has already sent me the next one! I managed to get the 3rd off my wishlist before acquiring it too.

This book is my 4th TBR Challenge book.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Today I had an unexpected afternoon off, and decided I would spend it catching up on my reading. I was closest to finishing The Giver and so I started with that. Wow. I knew from about the halfway point that this book would make an emotional impact on me, but did not expect it to be so powerful.

Here's the summary from Amazon.com:

In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of Brave New World, in this 1994 Newbery Medal winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price.

I read this book as part of my own Dystopian Challenge. (heh, I was putting it off cause I thought I'd chosen it for the Newbery Challenge. I'm getting my lists confused!) For the first half of the book or so, Jonas' world seems perfect, very rule driven, very orderly. The people are happy. There aren't any secrets. At his 12th December, he is assigned his career, and from then the book takes a turn. The truth of the happiness is revealed, but only to Jonas.

I can't say much more without giving away plot points, so I'm going to jump over here with a some spoiler points that I need to say outloud. If you have not read the book, and plan to, I would not read these.

This is my first finished book for the Dystopian Challenge.

What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones

On Wednesday morning I was hopping around reading blogs and one of the posts was about a book called What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones. In the course of the post the prequel to it was mentioned, that book was What My Mother Doesn't Know. I didn't write down the title, or the blog it came from (a habit I am trying to develop) because I really didn't want more books on my list that I would never get around to reading. I've tried to go back and find that post, but no luck. If that was your blog, and you're reading this, please comment. I'd like to thank you. You see, on Wednesday afternoon, I went to the library. And since I was already upstairs to get The Giver, well, I picked this up too. I practically read it in one sitting. It was that good. Thanks.

Here's the summary from the flap:

My name is Sophie.
This book is about me.
It tells
the heart-stoppingly
riveting story
of my first love.
And also of my second.
And, okay, my third love too.

It's not that I'm boy crazy.
It's just that even though
I'm almost
fifteen
it's like
my mind
and my body
and my heart
just don't
seem to be able to agree
on anything.

That's a fairly good example of the entire book, actually. The whole thing is written free verse, and is remarkably easy to read. This is a book aimed at young adults. Sophie is a freshman. It was so lovely and honest and I thought did a great job of showing how Sophie felt. It's a lot about falling in love, falling out of love, a little about friendship, and not much of anything else. It was excellent, and now I need my own copy.

I marked a few pages to go back to. Some of the "chapters" are breathtaking. There are two examples here, but they should be considered very slight spoilers. I'm not sure how they hold up outside of the plot.

Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult

After talking about it for months, I have finally read Sufficient Grace. Here's what it says on the back of the book:

"Set against the backdrop of two neighboring Southern towns, Sufficient Grace is the powerful, affecting story of two families over the course of a year, from one Easter season to the next." "One quiet spring day, Gracie Hollaman hears voices in her head that tell her to get in her car and leave her entire life behind - her home, her husband, her daughter, her very identity. Gracie's subsequent journey releases her genius for painting and effects profound changes in the lives of everyone around her. Ultimately, her quest leads her into the home of Mama Toot and Mattie, two strong, accomplished women going through life changes of their own. As the bonds between these women grow stronger, and the family Gracie left behind come to terms with their own loss, both worlds slowly and inevitably collide, revealing a long-buried secret that they share." Sufficient Grace explores the power of personal transformation and redemption, and the many ordinary and extraordinary ways they come to pass through faith, love, motherhood, art, even food. Even though we sometimes have to leave behind an old identity in order to discover our soul, this poignant, poetic study of the human condition affirms the enduring importance of relationships and the strength we derive from them.

I found this to be a slow book. Slowly paced, nothing urgent about it, just laying out the events in a nice easy way. I didn't feel the need to return to it to see what happened next. This isn't really a bad thing, but does explain why it took me so long to read it. The book takes place over the course of a year, and follows into two storylines- Gracie's and Ed's (her husband). The book description would have you think that something dramatic happens "both worlds slowly and inevitably collide" but I think the important word there is "slowly." The "long-buried secret" wasn't so shocking, I didn't think.

That said, I enjoyed the book. I wanted to know what happened to Gracie, I thought she was well-written, and I loved Toots. Some of the characters seemed pretty one-dimensional (Ginger, Wally, the new doctor at the end). There are a few really moving scenes, my favorite being a scene involving Mattie and her late husband's shoes. Another scene is about Ed and an overabundance of windchimes, and I really liked the symbolism there.

There are some aspects that I need to think about a bit more, and might come back to later for another shot at a review. For example, how did the title come about? I'm sure it's because of the Bible verse in 2 Corinthians 12:

7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

but does this refer to Grace? Ed? Ginger (their daughter?) I can't see how it's about Toots and Mattie. They aren't troubled at all by the appearance of a crazy white woman. I don't think it can refer to Grace, she's not the least upset by her new life, though God does talk to her. So Ed? He's handling it fine. The only character who needs a little strength seems to be Ginger, but the book isn't really about her.

I need to think more about the history of Gracie and Toots, and the little bits of backstory given by Toots. I'm wondering if I'm missing anything there, or if it's really just a way to explain Gracie's mental illness. It's all written very dramatically, hinting that there is more to the story than what is revealed.

The reader's guide at the author's website has the two following questions, which interest me:

-Sister Reba and Gracie both feel "called" to make some of the same decisions.
They both leave their families for a different, nontraditional life, a life with
a focus they believe is defined by something beyond their own desires, even by
God. They both retreat to the woods at times. Can you think of other common
ground shared by Reba and Gracie? Why are these similarities viewed differently
from one character to the other?
-On a larger scale, how do you interpret the issues of faith and fate in the novel? Of miracles and coincidence? Of the
thin gray line between a passionate, inspired calling and bona fide illness?

I definately need to think more about that last question. I didn't make the connection between Sister Reba and Gracie while I was reading the book. During the book, they were clearly different to me, but now, thinking about it, not so much. (Sister Reba is a traveling woman preacher. She left her family and daughter behind to follow God, like Gracie. Reba is not portrayed as crazy at all, just a very religious person.)

Overall, it was a good book, and it certainly has me thinking about it longer than I usually do when I finish a book. I have a feeling that it won't be leaving my head any time soon.

While thinking about this review, I found a blog post that contains some recipes from the book. Here's a link to it.

Official Website for Darnell Arnoult

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, creator of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle is the author of I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. This is a short little book of essays on various topics including purses (she doesn't love them), manicures (ditto), New York (loves it), and aging (hates it.) For the most part the essays are funny, and they are light and easy (yes, even the one on death.) I suspect this book is aimed at women a generation older than me, and perhaps would be a bit more meaningful to them. I had similar thoughts about Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, which I read last summer. It was good, but it wasn't all it was made out to be. Get it from the library, not the bookstore.

This was my 7th book for the New Author Challenge.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand, and the next thing that happened was we kissed each other, and I found I knew how, and I felt happy and sad in equal parts, because I knew that I was falling in love, but it wasn't with him.
---From A History of Love, page 202.

For Christmas, my friend Shawna gave me A History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to read it. I was nervous, she had loved the book so much and I was worried that I wouldn't love it. I was wrong. It's hard to summarize what this book is really about, so here's the text from the back cover:

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing that she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of it's author. Across New York an old man named Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives . . . .

This does not begin to describe the book. It's very good. It's written so well, from the perspective of a half dozen people. The clues to how it will all end are evenly paced and well written. Nothing is given away too soon and nothing is left out. This isn't a light fluffy book, the parts that are the book within the book are completely different in style and tone from the rest of the book. It's so well thought out and written that I wish I had written it. I should not have worried, this book will end up on my personal best of 2007 list.

Something From the Nightside by Simon R. Green

John Taylor has an extraordinary gift. He can find things, anything. John is from the Nightside, a place where it's always 3 am, and everything is real. Myths are alive in the Nightside, ghosts are real, legends exist. He has been hired to find a runaway and since he's down on his luck, he takes the case.

I love the idea of the book. I like the Nightside. This seems a lot like a man's version of the worlds that Laurell Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and Kim Harrison have created. It's harsher, blunter, less forgiving. I can see myself reading more of them. It was quick and very easy. However, this was the first book in the series, and without spoiling it for the next guy I have to say- he could really do with a better plot idea. It was kinda like he got to the end and then was stumped on how to end it, and threw this crazy idea into the book. It all worked so very well, until that point. I will read the next one (I already have it) but will hold off on ordering more until I see if he has more (or should it be less?) imagination next time. I'd give it a 4, but the ending brings it down. I'll let you know if you should seek them out.

Ill Wind by Rachel Caine

Joanne Baldwin is a weather warden, part of a secret group of people who can control the weather and change the course of storms, fires, etc. The wardens live in our world and keep the general population from being wiped out by Mother Nature. She's on the run because she (sort of) killed someone, someone more powerful than her. She's trying to get to the only person who can help her, Lewis, who is also on the run.

This was a great book. The premise was completely new to me, and so the whole world Joanne lives in was interesting. Almost from the first page I was hooked. There's a little bit of mystery, a little bit of romance, and a lot of fast driving. This books isn't a heavy, serious book. It's a lot of fun, with a nice twist to the ending. I will definately be reading the rest of the series.