It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

It’s group blog time once again, It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books.

I’ve been doing more writing than reading this week, and only managed to get through one “real” book and one audio book. I finished the awesome Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde and listened to the moving Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr.

Shades of Grey

I’ll be honest, although I like the premise behind Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, I had a hard time getting into those books, but when I read the premise behind Shades of Grey, I knew I had to give Fforde another try, and I am so glad I did. The novel is set in a dystopian future where everyone is obsessed with color and society is organized into a rigid hierarchy based upon one color’s reception. Our narrator Eddie Russett has strong red perception, but thanks to a bit of trouble he caused back home he’s been sent out to the sticks with the assignment to complete a chair census. He finds that the village of East Carmine is filled with dark secrets and curious characters, and gets himself mixed up in things a bit over his head. Really no description of this book can quite do it justice. A wonderfully original premise, colorful (sorry, I couldn’t resist!) characters and the sort of humor one would find in a Douglas Adams book makes this book a must read. The good news is that it is the first book in a planned trilogy. The bad news is I have to wait for the other two books to come out.

Story of a Girl

With audiobooks, a book’s reader can make or break a book. I appreciated the fact that Sara Zarr herself was the reader for Story of a Girl. It made this book about a teenage girl coming to terms with an event that occurred a few years ago, and which has come to define her both in her family and at school, all the more powerful. If you enjoy good young adult realistic fiction, this is one definitely worth checking out.

What’s next

Thanks to some library reserves coming in for me, my reading plans changed a bit this week. Right now I am reading the nonfiction book Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer, and am already by the wealth of information it contains for writers promoting themselves and their work in these modern times, and I’m only on chapter 2. Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick also came in for me at the library this week. So, I’ll probably read that next, and then hopefully read Handcuffs by Bethany Griffin.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

This week I finished up the awesome and hilarious graphic novel Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Voume 1 by Michael Kupperman, read the hard-to-put-down YA novel The Dark Divine by Bree Despain and listened to the audio version of  Mary Pearson’s YA novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1

Graphic novel isn’t really the right term for this work by Michael Kupperman, as novel implies that there is one overarching story. This is not the case, instead this is a brilliant collection of a bunch of humorous short comics. Most are one or two pages at most. It’s in full color and many of the comics blend retro style comics with a healthy amount of weirdness to produce wonderful gems. Interspersed throughout are extremely funny fake advertisements. If you like your funny stuff on the quirky side, this is definitely worth checking out.

The Dark Divine

Bree Despain’s debut novel is a classic YA paranormal romance. From the first page I was sucked into the story even though at first, I wasn’t so sure about the seemingly perfect main character. Grace is a minister’s daughter who gave the impression of being  a little too goody-two-shoes, but she soon proved to be a wonderfully well-rounded girl, and it was hard to put down this book as I tried to find out what was going to happen to Grace and her tortured boyfriend, Daniel.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

This young adult science fiction novel by Mary Pearson is set in a not too distant future, where medical technology has made some tremendous leaps forward. From the start we know that something is not quite right with Jenna, and we soon figure out what is going on, long before she actually works out what happened. Jenna is forced to come to terms with her own identity. The story raises some interesting questions about how far medical technology should go and what it means to be human.

What’s Next . . .

Right now I am reading the memoir This is Me, Jack Vance by Jack Vance and listening to the audio version of Feed by M. T. Anderson. I have plans to dive into Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl next, as well as Superfreakonomics by D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

What are you reading this week?

New Jersey is a YA sort of state

Map found via Driko Land

A friend of mine alerted me to a book review in this past Sunday’s New York Times of Beth Ann Bauman’s YA novel Rosie and Skate. The novel sounds good, but that’s not why the review was pointed out to me. It’s because it opened with this line:

New Jersey is a teenage state: it looks awkward in places, has questionable ethics from time to time and plays perennial underdog to New York. Perhaps this is why it’s home to so much good young adult literature.

All along I thought that the reason I was drawn to writing and reading books for teenagers was because I was immature and really just a kid at heart, but perhaps it’s because like Beth Ann, I am a Jersey girl. These days, I am back in the garden state after living in Pennsylvania for the past seven or so years, excepting a six month stretch spent in Maine. It’s a weird and wonderful state in many ways, and although there may be nicer places to live there are few that are quite as colorful as New Jersey.

It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

This was a two book week for me. I listened to Paper Towns by John Green on audio and read Makers by Cory Doctorow.

Paper Towns

Paper Towns is a great YA novel, with all the elements that make for a good teen read. There’s silly pranks, a mystery and even a zany race against time road trip. It’s realistic fiction, and the sort of realistic fiction that actually feels real. The characters are multi-dimensional and fight off those usual high school stereotypes. Our main character is Quentin a high school senior on the verge of graduation, who spends a lot of time in the band room, even though he isn’t even a member of the band. His next door neighbor and childhood friend is the ultra-popular Margo Roth Spiegelman, but when Margo disappears and Quentin takes it upon himself to track her down, he starts finding out that he doesn’t know Margo as well as he thought he did. John Green has a knack for writing about and for teens, and his novels manage to be both fun and thought-provoking.

Makers

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author who occasionally writes for the YA end of the spectrum. His latest book, Makers, is clearly an adult novel. There are a lot of characters in this near-future science fiction book, but I think the main character here may be the technology itself. The biggest difference between the world of the novel, and our own is the existence of 3-D printers. Rather than paper these printers are fed with “goop” and what they turn out is various three dimensional objects. What this means is that production becomes much more of a small scale sort of thing. The novel follows this technology and the different players involved in using it as they try to understand the business logistics of it from the geeky engineers who just want to make stuff to the Disney executives who just want to make big bucks. It’s an interesting look at a very possible future.

What’s Next

Right now I just began the funny, out there graphic novel Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume 1 by Michael Kupperman and am listening to the audio version of the YA novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. I’m not sure what I’ll be diving into next, I bought a few YA novels with an Amazon gift certificate I had, and I’ll probably have to do an eenie meenie miney moe to figure out which one I read next.