review: popular

I hate to start reviews off with this sentence, but I just have to. Cue valley-girl squealing here: This book is so cute! At the start of her eighth grade year, social outcast Maya Van Wagenen decides to use a 1950s guide to style and popularity. Yes, it's a quirky social experiment (Maya is unabashedly a nerd), but it's also an honest attempt to rise in the ranks of popularity. Each month Maya puts into practice a new chapter of Betty Cornell's old-school popularity guide. She starts with "Figure Problems" (read: weight) and "Hair" and works her way to "It's a Date" and "Be a Hostess," making daily notes on her successes, failures, and the reactions of those around her. (Pilgrim-style shoes: might make people think you're homeless. Pearls: actually kind of cool.)

Maya is now fifteen years old, which means she wrote this book as a 13/14 year old. I don't like to talk about authors' ages typically, because whether you're a teenager or a fifty-year old, all I want is a good story. Good writing. That said (and trust me, Popular is a good story full of good writing), Popular reminds me so much of my own eighth-grade journals -- quirky social experiment aside -- if my journals were well-written, with dialogue and scenes. That is to say that Van Wagenen's unique view of the world and her place in it rings true; as with any teenager's diary there's the trivial mixed with the big-picture. Dieting and makeup mixed with neighborhood drug dealers and school lockdowns. And amid all of this are the kind of smart teenage insights that many of us sadly tend to forget about as we grow up and disavow our younger days. This book is a reminder that teenagers can be just as stupid, and just as insightful, as grown-ups. 

I loved this book. Yes, there are cheesy parts -- one scene in particular made me think of High School Musical's level of all-in-this-together cheese. But, you know, cliches are cliche for a reason. Maya's gung-ho, fighting attitude is something to aspire to, and her growing confidence over the course of her experiment is a good reminder that yes, we can change our situation. Yes, we can change ourselves. Yes, it is possible.

I know, I know. I'm getting sentimental just talking about this book. But it's good! So good! So wonderful! Maya Van Wagenen, you are incredible and your book is awesome.

some of the best lines.

I'm feeling a bit lazy at the moment and don't quite know what to blog about, so I've grabbed my quote-book (in this case it's actually quote-book #2, because #1 got filled up) and here are some of my recent-ish favorite quotes.

"Nothing goes away," Esteban says after a long time passes. "Not the things you remember, and not the things you still want." 
~Small Damages, by Beth Kephart (p. 152 -- ARC)

The longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts, too.
~Tiger Lily, by Jodi Lynn Anderson (p. 21)

I hadn't been in the woods in years, and as I started to follow the trail, I realized how familiar it all was, the beads of dew on the moss, the smell of the pine trees, the snap of twigs and leaves underneath my flip-flops. It was... the realization that just because you'd left something behind didn't mean that it had gone anywhere.
~Second Chance Summer, by Morgan Matson (p. 62)

Summer sighed. "You want to have air-quotes fun. I just want to have regular fun."
~Reunited, by Hilary Weisman Graham (p. 173)

Do you have any recent favorite quotes from novels? (I think my favorite of the above is the quote from Tiger Lily.)

Review: Shatter Me

SHATTER ME
Tahereh Mafi
Harper/HarperCollins

Juliette can kill people just by touching them. She's a menace to her crumbling society and for 264 days she's been locked away and hasn't touched anyone. And then she gets a cellmate, a guy named Adam who isn't afraid of her and looks incredibly familiar. Soon, Juliette discovers that the Reestablishment - the people ruining what's left of the world - have plans of their own, to use her as a weapon in their war. Struggling to keep what little humanity she has left, Juliette must find a way to resist the plans they have for her and find a way to escape and make her own choices.

There is so much I absolutely positively love about this book. The world these characters inhabit is bleak and unforgiving and just a little bit too real; the horror of the Reestablishment is terrifying and its leader, Warner, is despicable and disgusting. When this book goes bad, it goes all the way bad. And though it's more than a little uncomfortable, it makes the stakes of the story all the higher and ups the tension. But on the flipside of this is the fact that when it's good it's absolutely brilliantly bright and wonderful.

First and foremost, I absolutely love Juliette. Tahereh Mafi has written an original, unique, and thoroughly incredible character in Juliette, a girl whose strange power has caused so much misery for her and others. Her parents refused to help her and ultimately abandoned her; she's been locked away from society and deprived of any human interaction. More than this, she's a good-hearted person who wants to help others but only ends up hurting them... and she has no idea why. Juliette is a girl determined to keep her humanity in a world that insists she doesn't have any and her internal struggles are written so, so perfectly. Her romance with Adam became a love story I'm rooting for almost instantly and it's hard to pinpoint exactly why. This is definitely a case of YA insta-love, which I often dislike, but here it worked, and it worked incredibly well as Adam is the only person Juliette's ever known who treats her as a human being instead of a monster and the two have a connection that's impossible to deny. Juliette, who despite everything still believes in beauty and love and goodness, has found much of this in her relationship with Adam.

The writing in this book is wonderful. Though the constant metaphors and strike-outs will no doubt be a bit much for some readers, it suits Juliette's character and struggles perfectly. Mafi's writing is lyrical and beautiful, pages and pages and pages of absolutely stunning sentences, though I have a feeling that the polarizing effect of this book (everyone seems to either love it or hate it) is due to this writing. You'll either love it or hate it, and I love it. The writing in this book is amazing; I honestly can't say enough good things about it. Love, love, love.

And all of that being said, though for much of this book I loved it more than I could even comprehend, at some point in the second half of the story things took a turn. The feeling of the book changed. As more characters entered the story, along with new twists, some of the urgency and desperation that had been at the core of Juliette's story in the beginning, went away. It's hard to discuss what happens without spoiling the whole book, but I will say that it ended in a way I wasn't expecting, a way that, while I kind of liked it, didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. Juliette's unique and strong personality seemed to get diluted in the mess of people and events that were so different from what had come before. Additionally, too many hormone-fueled scenes between her and Adam took the focus away from the more important parts of the story. While these scenes were well-written, they often felt inappropriate and gratuitous in the midst of everything else that was happening: it was as if Juliette's focus had shifted away from protecting herself and Adam and the larger issues she was grappling with earlier in the book and over to a complete preoccupation with sex. In a way this makes sense, considering that she hadn't touched anyone in nearly a year, but still it seemed like a lot of (fairly redundant) overkill that felt like way too much and also stalled the plot.


Still, despite my issues with the last quarter of this book, this is one story that completely captured my attention. It overwhelmed me with how beautifully it was written and how complex the characters are. The ending nicely sets up a second book and while I worry the feeling of this second book will be (judging by the ending) so different from what makes this first book incredible, I still love Shatter Me and am cautiously optimistic about book #2. There were so many huge passages from this book that were incredibly, searingly beautiful, and the character of Juliette has a place as one of the most original characters and a personal favorite of mine. Bottom line: I love this book. So much.

40 Day Book Challenge - Favorite Character (03)

Day 03 - A book with a favorite character
I have so many favorite characters, but for some reason Kurt Brodsky is the first that comes to mind. Kurt Brodsky is hardcore awesome. I always think that the guys in Leverage encapsulate the best and worst of humanity, and Kurt Brodsky is definitely on the "best of humanity" side of things. I absolutely love him and I think if more people were like Kurt Brodsky probably (definitely) the world would be a better place.

Review: A Friday Night Lights Companion

A FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS COMPANION
edited by Leah Wilson
Smart Pop Books

Writing about A Friday Night Lights Companion is going to be difficult for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that I completely, totally, 100% love this book and it's difficult to put that kind of love in words. But I'll try. The book is a collection of essays on the television show Friday Night Lights. It includes Why We Love... essays on each of the characters, an essay on Coach and Tami's marriage, and an essay on how the unique deal with DirecTV saved the world's best show. And a bunch of other really excellent essays on various aspects of the show.

Typically, this is how it works with anthologies: the pieces within them are a bit hit and miss. Some I won't like, a couple I might love, and the rest will fall somewhere in the meh range. This wasn't like that. This book, from start to finish, whether or not I agreed with everything, was absolutely brilliant. As the one lone Friday Night Lights fan who actually liked the murder plot, of course my opinions didn't always fit with the essays collected, but that's hardly the point. The contributing writers really know their stuff and have written brilliant, in-depth essays on the various aspects of Friday Night Lights. From the heartfelt introduction that made me cry to the role economics and class plays in the show to a look at how DirecTV saved the sinking ship, there's some real insight here. And while much of it (the DirecTV discussion, for instance) is applicable to more than just Friday Night Lights, a lot of it is immersed in the show itself. The marriage of Coach and Tami Taylor, the discussion of the reality of the show, and an essay on its lack of teenage viewers are all very specific to Friday Night Lights. (On a side note, as someone who actually started watching this show as a teenager, I loved the essay on why it never garnered a teenage audience.)

The shorter essays on each of the characters (including Herc!) are funny and mostly spot-on. I say mostly only because we don't all see the characters the same way. However, no matter what you think of certain characters, reading a list of Herc's best quotes and the various reasons we love to hate Joe McCoy is awesome.

For all of my diehard FNL fans, this book is a must-read. Trust me when I say you will not be disappointed. Not even a little bit. The thoughtful reflections on life in Dillon, Texas are not only interesting and compulsively readable, but in many cases thought-provoking. (I want to talk about this book with everyone, but I'm the only one I know who's read it. So, problem. GO READ IT SO WE CAN TALK.) I think you've gathered by now that, like the show itself, I kind of can't recommend this book strongly enough.

Best YA Couple of 2010

Alexa, over at Not Enough Bookshelves, is doing a countdown of the best couples in YA for 2010 and I thought I'd share my favorites. For her, it's a countdown to Christmas and for me it's just one Best-of-the-Year/End-of-the-Year post.

I thought I'd have a bunch of couples to choose from, but looking at my Goodreads shelves and the reviews I've written... there really aren't many romance stories on there. Sure, I read a few, but the ones I really loved weren't focused on romance and the most realistic, incredible characters had dynamic stories that don't fall under the category of romance. For the most part the best couples weren't even couples. Or they were, but not until the very end. Or they weren't, but I thought maybe sometime in the future they would be. Yes, I know this is fiction.

So with all of that said, the best YA couple of 2010? (Warning: spoilers for a certain book/series after the jump.)