Sadly, this is only the 5th book that I've read this year. I'm terrible, horrible, I should move to Australia. And... I have to say... I was reallOk.
Sadly, this is only the 5th book that I've read this year. I'm terrible, horrible, I should move to Australia. And... I have to say... I was really meh over it. I've been told to read Meg Abbot for awhile and maybe I shouldn't have chosen this one as my first. I'm all like what is this?
So.. I'm thinking 'Fever'... okay, like biochemical apocalyptic.... I mean there is that lake.. with it's slime... No. They're just normal 16 yr old girls who really really really like to wear tights (as we are told many many many times) and their normal lust driven thoughts. Ok, I can deal.. I've read Sarah Dessen.. this steps it up a notch. The main character is named Deenie, which throws me back to Blume and I'm stuck in like 1980 and wow, scoliosis man... do you think that was intentional? A homage. And... my mind drifts.
So, no zombie fever. Check. Then I'm like ok... so, there's an epidemic of some sort but it's only affecting girls around 12-16 and they are hysterical in the true form of the word (Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!) and get this.. they are blaming.. VACCINES... jesus christ on a crumb. I'm so weary of the vaccine debate. So, eye roll.
Then, no HPV lurking parasite. Check. Now we've got a group of girls twitching and snapping and screaming and vomiting and tweaking and more and more each day... I'm thinking 'Where's Winona? Where's Goody Glover?' At this time, I am so confused... sigh
Okay, so no trials of the blaming sort, but wait... what's this? Jealousy! Carnality! Fury! Retribution! And... spells. The Craft? Hot girls in short black skirts and no acne and perfect hair seeking out the beautiful innocents? ehhhhh.........
I'm lost. I'm tired. I've only read 4 books this year. I feel like I wasted my precious netflix bingeing time on this. I want to cry because I miss reading. I miss the excitement of losing myself in a saga of epic proportions... Calgon, where are you?
Meh, read it. Don't. I am not going to judge Meg Abbott on this. ...more
“An evil librarian is taking over the school. He appears to be making my best friend his special evil library monitor.”
Come on. You HAVE to continue “An evil librarian is taking over the school. He appears to be making my best friend his special evil library monitor.”
Come on. You HAVE to continue reading after that, right? Especially if you are a book nerd with a penchant for hot librarians
Yes, this does have that Buffy feel to it. Sorta. But Cyn is no Buffy, not really. She is just an average girl who really really loves her best friend and would save her from becoming a demon child bride---who wouldn't do that for their BFF? Of course in this situation I would most likely be the BFF who would totally fall for the aforementioned evil librarian than the one doing all the ass kicking and I guess I'm okay with that. I'm kind of lazy.
What was also endearing was Cyn's crush on the high school musical star, Ryan.
“He said my name. He knows what my name is. He spoke it out loud and used it in a sentence.”
Oh, and yes... I have been there. I remember the loins calling out and the secret stalking and the wow. Especially the wow.
The story is clever in its writing but not earth shattering, it was a cute quick read and made me miss my Buffy days. Or, my Willow days because I was more like that (until she became that bad ass witch--hello??!! corsets!!!!).
I say give it a shot. GMBA gave it a finalist spot and they are usually pretty good at catching worthy YA reads.
Oh. This was good. This knew right where to burrow its pincers and plant that seedling. If that even works that way.
Ten letter word for incorporeal, Oh. This was good. This knew right where to burrow its pincers and plant that seedling. If that even works that way.
Ten letter word for incorporeal, evanescent, imponderable, unsure.
This weed that is growing is deep in my nethers. It hurts. It reminds me that something is missing, something/one that is far away, evasive. That what I consider is true love. True: “You choose your truth and then you build your life around it.”Love: “Greater love has no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends---JOHN 15:13”
This is the true love of friendship. The one that is supposed to be there for you always and forever. Not the gooey lust thing we sometimes mistake for love, but that feeling that no matter what you do, how you do it, if you are banished for doing it, if you become a pariah for doing it, you still have that one person you know has your back. And, they will hold your hair while you puke into a dumpster.. True Love.
Here we have Hannah (“Grace”) and Zoe (“Life”).
Hannah: “You’re a half glass empty kind of girl, aren’t you? No, not really, I just like surprises, so I keep my expectations low.”
Zoe: “We hate labels, but the doctors like to call it a thing that rhymes with hi-molar schmisdorder or zanic oppression. I just think she’s more alive than the rest of us.”
How far would you go for your best friend?
This is a road trip story, much like An Abundance of Katherines and Going Bovine. It’s about discovery, about running away, about learning about the ethereal.
Intangible Things. These are the gifts that Zoe gives Hannah and the belief in the intangible is what she gets in return. Ultimate Trust, even when you have to trust the impossible.
That is the great theme in this book, the intangible.
Zoe’s brother, Noah (“Comfort”): “Zoe’s eight-year old little brother, Noah, has some kind of Aspergery thing. He could read when he was two. He understands Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. He’s read all of Stephen Hawking’s books. He is obsessed with the cosmos and talks about it constantly without ever noticing if you’re listening to him. And yet he cannot process anything at all irrational or intangible. Emotions are elusive to him. Dreaming and imagination, foreign. To help him, and since he loves museums, Zoe created the Museum of Intangible things, for which she creates a new installation in her basement every month. September’s project was “Pride.” In the corner, Zoe created a puffed-out human chest with papier-mache and peach tempers paint. A marionette peacock walked back and forth over a gay pride rainbow, while a video montage streamed footage of a mother watching her son graduate from college, a swimmer winning a gold medal, and an actress receiving an Academy Award. She covered the walls with white paper and asked me to write about when I feel proud."
"Zoe explains that ‘Sloth-Laziness-Depression” will consist of Barbie and Ken in gray felt outfits installed in a shoebox also covered in gray felt. She found an old flowered couch with the foam bulging from the rips of the cushions and on top of it, she flopped her mannequin dressed in a Snuggie. An old TV/VCR will stream infomercials and Zoe will scatter potato chips and empty soda cans around the couch, which will also be sprinkled with cat hair.. For the interactive part of the exhibit, she filled the pockets of an old fishing vest with rocks and will ask Noah to try it on. Behind a screen in the corner of the basement, to distinguish between sloth and sadness-slash-despair, Zoe created a beating heart impaled by a kitchen knife."
"Won’t that scare him? I ask."
“Um. Duh. He doesn’t understand fear.”.
This weed… it needs to be yanked. I need to fill this space with that sort of devotion, give and take. This book reminds me of that. Acceptance...that is intangible as well. ...more
I want to be the filling in a Rachel Cohn/David Levithan sandwich. I want to be BFFx3 with them. I want to swim in their words and dance between their I want to be the filling in a Rachel Cohn/David Levithan sandwich. I want to be BFFx3 with them. I want to swim in their words and dance between their snarky sparring. Oh, how I wish.
This is so my kind of book. This is so my kind of thing. I have totally done this. I am this. I use my words (always use your words) because my social skills are so lacking. The written word is my vehicle. I may babble, I may be self-absorbed, I may tangent (I’m using that as a verb, just so you know) but this is the most real me that you will ever see.
My confidence is like the Vegas Strip. It’s all ‘Look here!’ ‘No, look here!’ ‘Hey, buddy! Yo!’ when I write. Here is where I thrive. But… put me in a room with people and I shrivel. I stumble and I make really bad choices. I wish I could just email people or have my own reverse Speak and Spell, custom-made for my brand of communication. We’d have to let it loose to make up words and there would have to be a ‘no grammar bullying’ allowed.
Example: I tried online dating. Yes. I admit that. And my description is rambling and filled with quotes and pop culture references and the book section is like a mile long and any of the takers that could actually get through that and not ‘hey baby’ me and mention something that relates to my essay then I will respond. This is rare. I did, however, get one taker and we had amazing spar sessions, like blow your mind kind of repertoire. Then we met, and I must have somehow related my dufus self because ‘the end’.
There, that was a mighty big confession. I can do this in writing!! I can show you my scars and scrapes and I am okay because I have Lily:
“I don’t really know how to talk to boys. In person. Which is probably why I’ve become dependent on a notebook for creative expression of a potentially romantic nature.”
So, what I’m trying to say is, I get Dash and I get Lily. I love the idea of a treasure hunt in The Strand. I love the Strand. I love the curmudgeony hipster works, I love that I sneeze a lot because of the dusty shelves, I love walking down the stairs into the basement and seeing all the colored spines of the children books.(That's where it was when I lived there... can't say for sure now..) I am so jealous.
“I was spending time in the Strand, that bastion of titillating erudition, not so much a bookstore as the collision of a hundred different bookstores with literary wreckage strewn over eighteen miles of shelves. All the clerks there saunter-slouch around distractedly in their skinny jeans and their thrift-store button downs, like older siblings who will never, ever be bothered to talk to you or care about you or even acknowledge your existence if their friends are around…which they always are.”
Yes. Absolutely yes.
This whole story is filled with quotables. I am super jealous. I wanted to be the one to write these words. I wanted to be the one to say:
“I’ve always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got to be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.”
I want to cry. These are my people. This is my world. So, why am I here? I’m pathetic. I can’t grow up. I mean, look:
“At the end of the book, when Zooey calls Franny pretending to be their brother Buddy, trying to cheer her up, there’s a line where he talks about Franny going to the phone and becoming ‘younger with each step’ as she walked, because she’s making it to the other side. She’s going to be okay. At least that’s’ what I took it to mean. I want that. The getting younger with each step, because of anticipation, in hope and belief.”
So, here’s where I want to rant and rave. I come from a generation so disillusioned, so snarly, so underwhelmed. So, why do we have such high expectations? That’s what gets us in the end, the being let down. The anti-anticipation. I hate that. Maybe it’s because we crave hope. We have to think that something better has to be out there just to get through the day. We’ve even made happiness science a thing. So sad really.
“The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies—all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect.”
I feel like I’m a third wheel. The super super jealous third wheel. I felt it in Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and I will go out and read Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List because I am one of those ingratiating Peter Pan types who can’t leave Neverland.
“It’s that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we’re still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that’s only spelling.”
Seriously… Rachel, David… please let me in.
Do I suggest that you read this? I think that I have a few requests. 1. You can’t have lost all hope 2. Put the cynicism aside, don’t worry, it will be right where you left it. 3. Accept the words. How they are presented to you how they extract, paint, bleed, sound, whatever…because this is a gift.
One last quote:
“We are reading the story of our lives. As though we were in it. As though we had written it.” ...more
I liked this more than I thought I would. Dorothy always seemed like a prima donna with delusions of grandeur, and her little dog too. Wicked is healtI liked this more than I thought I would. Dorothy always seemed like a prima donna with delusions of grandeur, and her little dog too. Wicked is healthy. I'm all for Team Nox and was gearing up for a knockdown between TN and Team Pete, but now I might have to tweak my pervy side in order for that to happen. Shame. Don't trust anyone. Stranger Danger indeed. I'm looking forward to the next one. ...more
Kit’s Wilderness I wonder how many times I’ve seen this title and assumed it was an American Girl book. Truly a shame… This has been out for 15 years… Kit’s Wilderness I wonder how many times I’ve seen this title and assumed it was an American Girl book. Truly a shame… This has been out for 15 years… 15 years that I could have carried Kit and his story with me.
It almost eluded me once again, when I noticed the author, David Almond, I knew that name. A sudden surge, like a warm fuzzie or a premenopausal hot flash overcame me. Skellig. Yes. Now, I remember.
David Almond has this incredible talent. His voice. He rambles, he doesn’t use paragraphs, his dialogues runs into each other, he’s got that British slang thing and he must say “Eh? Eh?” a hundred times which just reminds me of Eh? Eh!. Then I lose my train of thought and some random facebook picture of one of Eh’s dinners pop up and then I’m hungry and I have to focus focus focus.
His voice. It’s gentle, it lulls you.
“This is our world, he used to say. “Aye, there’s more than enough of darkness in it. But over everthing there’s all this joy, Kit. There’s all this lovely lovely light.”
The story is of two boys, Kit and John, aged thirteen. Living in Stoneygate, built over an old mine that holds a power of the boys, the ghosts of children who perished down there, the fascination with death, the escape of grandfathers suffering from dementia or drunk abusive fathers… something draws them together, a story that they need to tell in order to heal.
Or something like that.
What I know is that Mr. Almond was able to lure me into a story of two pubescent boys living in a bleak town in England and hold me there, tightly, until he decided he was done with me. Cast me off into the tunnels below Stoneygate. And now I feel hollow and I’m meandering, trying to catch Silky’s eye. (You have to be in the know) ...more
The worst thing in the world would be to pretend t know the people whose lives I step through. They cannot be homes to me. They must be hotel rooms.
LeThe worst thing in the world would be to pretend t know the people whose lives I step through. They cannot be homes to me. They must be hotel rooms.
Levithan is revisiting A, the character he introduced us to in Every Day. I suppose this is a prequel that needs to be read as a sequel so you understand A, you can see, be, the six different people that A has chosen you to glimpse.
Again, such beauty. One day does not ever seem enough and to stay detached, to try to not disrupt, to always have to be thinking of the person you are squatting in and not yourself... I don't envy A.
"It's the secret smile you get from knowing that, somewhere, there is someone who is yours. Not in the sense that you own her, or control her. She is yours because you can say anything to her."
Too often we realize this too late.
"The desire to be heard is as deepply seeded as the desire to be loved. So much of the technology we spend our time on is geared toward this. For some people, it doesn't matter who's on the other end."
I want to hug David Levithan. I have since I met A, Nick, Nora... and now I want to meet all of his creations. I may even go back and find which Baby Sitter's Club books he wrote.
I'm a geek.. I'm nerd... I have no life.. but if not living means I can throw myself in a Levithan world, then I'm okay with that. I feel lighter after one of his reads.
I hate this book. I hate it with..with…HATE. It’s visceral, I mean literally VISCERAL, like affecting me internally. My arms are humming and my legs a I hate this book. I hate it with..with…HATE. It’s visceral, I mean literally VISCERAL, like affecting me internally. My arms are humming and my legs are pounding and my throat has closed and my fingers shake and such hate from the bowels of depth or depth of bowels or whatever you think is right because I can’t think I’m so filled with….
Want. Need. Loss. Despair.
This is a love story. It’s a story of two young people falling in love.
“Romeo and Juliet are just two rich kids who’ve always gotten every little thing they want. And now, they think they want each other.” “They’re in love..” Mr. Stessman said, clutching his heart. “They don’t even know each other,” she said. “It was love at first sight.” “It was ‘Oh my God, he’s so cute’ at first sight. If Shakespeare wanted you to believe they were in love, he wouldn’t tell you in almost the very first scene that Romeo was hung up on Rosaline… It’s Shakespeare making fun of love.” She said. “They why has it survived?”….”Tell us, why has Romeo and Julie survived four hundred years?” Park hated talking in class. Eleanor frowned at him, then looked away. He felt himself blush. “Because…” he said quietly, looking at his desk, “Because people want to remember what it’s like to be young? And in love?”
See? Rainbow Rowell is making fun of us. We should all be storming her door with torches and yard rakes.
It’s not like books haven’t done this to me before, but maybe just maybe I’m wiser now.. maybe I’ve gained some distance from that ‘When he touched Eleanor’s hand, he recognized her. He knew. Eleanor: Disintegrated. ….. If you’ve ever wondered what that feels like, it’s a lot like melting—but more violent.”
Or maybe not.
Because this isn’t REAL. It doesn’t LAST. You can’t NEED a person like that forever. It FADES, it withers and dies and if it doesn’t outwardly die, it limps along begrudgingly muttering bits of snarkyness under its halitosis laden breath.
And that is why I hate it so much, it stirred up all that stale oxytocin that is mixing with my gastric juices and flung it around right back into circulation... visceral and made me feel weak, made me cry. Made me wish for that.
But, it only happens in books. I have to keep reminding myself of that. The good never lasts. And it’s never the big dramatic orchestra laden climax that does it. It’s just life. And the memories are there and they sting and a glimmer of hope of having that again rises up until you put down the book and know that there really isn’t an Eleanor or a Park and it’s the end of Say Anything all over again when Lloyd and Diane are on the plane and they look at each and you know… you just know that they’re not going to last.
Maybe you cry for that old self. Or maybe you let the bitterness eat at you. All’s Fair..
Yeah. Okay. This sort of bummed me out. And, I guess, that's like life, right? A bummer? It's like Plath says “If you expect nothing from anybody, youYeah. Okay. This sort of bummed me out. And, I guess, that's like life, right? A bummer? It's like Plath says “If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.” and that turned our alright, right?
I'm bathing in luke warm water here. No jealousy, no despair, no... anything.. really. I gave this four stars just because of the run over love of E&P.
There are good characters, there is an interesting story. Kind of, I'm not really into fan-fiction and 'shipping' and all that. And the whole Harry Potter rip off thing kind of irked me.
I did really like Cath. I liked her fear and her disorders and I thought that she was well written. I could relate to that. The escape into books? Check. The fear of everything? Check.
The rest of it? Meh. not, not Meh. Eh... that's a step up.
I hate hype. DUH. But, it needs to be said, again. That's what's to be expected, right?
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