YA
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Technically, the term is over, but I didn’t get a chance to post my thoughts on the final week’s reading. I was…busy (cough-library management essay-cough). So here’s one last ‘official, course-related’ post. I read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Story-wise, it was okay – I didn’t hate it, didn’t love it, either. The pacing felt uneven at…
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So this week’s topic is… “Conspicuous Consumption and Teen Markets” (dum dum DUUUM). This is like double weird timeliness, what with the Occupy movement appearing to be on its last legs and – oh, the irony – the Christmas consumergasm/shopping orgy beginning to strike us all with the temporary insanity of a European soccer riot. As I consider this thorny…
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This week, I watched the film It’s Kind of a Funny Story (stupid title). I was not amused (so, stupid and also misleading title). What a terribly mediocre movie. I haven’t read the book, by Ned Vizzini, but I’m sure it’s better than this adaptation was, or they wouldn’t have bothered. Even though, Craig is the kind of weak,…
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McBride, Lish. Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. Henry Holt, 2010. 343p. $19.50. ISBN 978-0-8050-9098-7 Samhain Corvus LaCroix—Sam for short—is not your average hero. College didn’t work out, and now he’s flipping burgers while he tries to figure things out. Working at Plumpy’s isn’t all bad, since his co-workers also happen to be his best friends. One…
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Interesting reading this week. Best quote: “Nonfiction remains the kitchen-bound Cinderella of young adult literature, while her stepsister—fiction—remains the belle of the ball” (p. 184). Oh how I laughed. Also hilarious: Cold War paranoia spurred the Man to give money to libraries to raise little astrophysicists so Russia wouldn’t plant a hammer & sickle flag in…
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Or not. Because there wasn’t a whole lot of innuendo in Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky. It was just all… out there. Should I have expected that? There’s a creepy naked Ken doll on the cover, so maybe that should have foreshadowed the creepy naked teen sex shenanigans that awaited. I will admit, I did NOT expect it. Holy…
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Cue the ruffles and flourishes… It’s booktalk time! Here’s my very first foray into the medium: So? Do I get a hero cookie? Yeah, I think I get a hero cookie.
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This book was… interesting. It’s not your usual YA read. Unwanted teen pregnancy, abandoned babies, and the ensuing moral dilemmas–I’ll be honest, it caught me off guard. I’ll admit it, I picked this book from the library’s catalogue because I thought the cover looked spooky. (So so wrong). Let’s talk appeal factors. The novel’s pacing was excellent, fast enough to maintain…
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This week, I read Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston. It was… a struggle. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not the whole fairy–sorry, faerie–thing. Faeries are cool beans. I love faeries. Good faeries, bad faeries, pretty faeries, ugly faeries, faeries that bite your finger because appearances can be deceiving (duh, Hoggle)… love it all. Back to…
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Ness, Patrick. The Knife of Never Letting Go. Candlewick Press, 2008. 479p. $21.00. 978-0-7636-3931-0 Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown, eagerly awaiting his thirteenth birthday and his entrance into manhood. Set on a planet known only as the New World, Todd is the child of settlers from a decaying Earth. Todd was orphaned…
The Reading Robyn 