Books and Sensibility

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Kat C

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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  • Release Date: November 8th 2011
  • Genre:  Thriller
  • Pages: 849
  • Publisher: Scribner 

I’ve always been intrigued by the cover of this book; one side shows a newspaper with Kennedy’s assassination as the headline and the other side has the same newspaper with a headline saying the assassination had been avoided. This book has had been sitting on my Kindle since it was on sale for  2.99 and after finishingA Thousand Pieces of You I was looking for a more complex alternate universe story and figured King could deliver.

 Everything you need to know about this book can be summarized from the cover. Basically,  high school teacher, Jake Epping, goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. I think saying anything else would just get… complicated….

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Listen Up (Again) : Podcasts for Readers

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I didn’t think it was possible but since our last posts on podcasts I have become even more obsessed! They are the perfect thing to listen to when doing boring tasks like cleaning the house, washing dishes or long car drives. Here are some of my favorite podcasts that will appeal to the YA reader.…

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Audiobook Review: The Young Elites by Marie Lu

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  • Release Date: October 9, 2014
  • Genre: Historical Fantasy 
  • Narrators: Carla Corvo, Lannon Killea
  • Length: 10 hours 9 minutes
  • Publisher: Putnam (Penguin)

I don’t fangirl for many authors, but if there is one author I will consider flailing over it’s Marie Lu. Her Legend series is one we’ve been talking about on this blog since day one.  The series has great story building, action and interesting female characters. Needless to say when I heard about The Young Elites I was excited to get back into Lu’s head….

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Like No Other by Una LaMarche

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  • Release Date: July 24th 2014
  • Pages: 368
  • Genre: Contemporary 
  • Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)

Like No Other has an easy pitch; take the star crossed lovers trope and apply it to a  Hasidic Jewish girl  and West Indian boy in 21st century Brooklyn with a meet cute in a broken elevator during a storm.

 I really like  what this book is doing in terms of the current state of YA publishing. It’s like yeah diversity in YA,  yeah diverse cover art and oh look The New York Times is reviewing a diverse book by a female author.  But despite my cheering for its successes I kind of take issue with LaMarche’s portrayal of the male protagonist Jaxon

I didn’t necessarily hate his character. Jaxon is a nerdy first-generation West Indian who represents the average teen boy and I actually like many of his introductory paragraphs.

It’s funny; I forget sometimes how I might look to other people. I could be reading The Great Gatsby on the 3 train, or walking down the street listening to a podcast on my phone, or coming out of the orthodontist’s office with Invisalign braces feeling like the biggest nerd on the planet, but some people don’t notice anything but an almost six-foot-tall black man.

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Now and Forever by Susane Colasanti

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  •  Release Date: May 20, 2014
  •  Pages: 273
  •  Genre: Contemporary YA
  •  Publisher: Viking Juvenile (Penguin)

So, I’m starting to realize I may have a new book kryptoniteand it’s the what I like to call “I’m with the band” stories.  These are the books were either a friend, parent, or the love interest is a rock star. I haven’t read many of them, but if I see one it instantly goes on to my TBR pile. I’m not sure why I’m so interested in this.  Maybe its because my guilty pleasure movie is the Disney Channel Original Movie Starstruck or that Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby was my favorite book as a teen. Either way, pair this knowledge with the fact that I’ve been meaning to read Susane Colasanti for years and Now and Forever was the perfect choice….

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A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray

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  • Release Date: November 14th, 2014
  • Pages: 368
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: HarperTeen 

Marguerite Caine’s parents are geniuses. Literally. They’ve invented the Firebird, a device that allows a person to travel into alternate universes. Just as they are about to go public their graduate assistant, Paul Markov steals the technology, kills Maugerite’s father and escapes into another dimension. Now, with the help of their other assistant, Theo, Marguerite is going after Paul to figure out what his plans are and avenge her father’s death.

 I don’t typically read the trendy science fiction YA books, but this cover is so unique and I always liked Gray’s ‘I’m not like the other girls‘ blogpost and I needed to break my contemporary kick.

Jess is always telling me how time travel books can always be hard to understand and as I started this I imagined alternate universe traveling would be even more confusing. I hand waved most of the science stuff, but  basically the book  says that all around us multiple alternate universes exist where different choices have created different timelines. When you travel you are put into the consciousness of yourself in that dimensions and when you leave the version of yourself has no memory of you being there.

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