Books and Sensibility

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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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Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius

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  • U.S. Release Date: November 12, 2013
  • Page Number: 304
  • Genre: Nonfiction
  • U.S. Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishing (Harper Collins)

I’ve recently become an NPR podcast junkie and I’m really loving their new podcast Invisibilia, about “the intangible things that shape human behavior.” Each week the hosts tell stories of people who have rare psychological or neurological experiences–on of their first stories is of Martin Pistorius, a South African man who spent six years trapped in his own body. After I heard this story, I had to know more and was happy to see his memoir was on Scribd.

When Pistorius (who as far as I can tell is not related to the convicted South African athlete Oscar Pistorius) is 12-years-old he develops a degenerative brain condition that leaves him mute and unable to move. Doctors couldn’t diagnose him and his parents were told he had the mind of a 3 month old and to take him home to wait for him to die. Only Martin doesn’t die and a few year later his mind comes back, but not his motor skills or speech. He can’t tell anyone he’s back and he lives like a ghost boy as the people around him assume he isn’t comprehending what he sees.  It takes six years for his parents to finally  figure out he was aware and the book is his reflections on his time as a ghost boy and  his journey learning how to communicate using technology.

This book tells a really incredible story. Martin becomes well known in the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) community and it’s interesting to see all the people he meets as he goes to conference. It can be a little nightmare inducing too. One of his friends was paralyzed from the eyes down from a stroke at the age of twenty-five.But it’s amazing the amount of technology and work being done so everyone has a voice.

The parts I found most interesting are the parts where he tells the things he sees people do when they think no one is looking. He observes many of his caregivers mostly at their worse, but also some at their best.

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Cruel Beauty By Rosamund Hodge

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“You’re just as foolish as the others. You think you are clever, strong, special. You think you’re going to win.”

Hodge, Rosamund (2014-01-28). Cruel Beauty

  • Release Date: January 28th 2014
  • Genre: Fantasy/Fairytale
  • Pages : 342
  • Publisher: Balzer & Bray

Cruel Beauty is a fantasy retelling of Beauty and The Best, where beauty is an angry and selfish (read: cruel) young woman named Nyx. Out of desperation Nyx’s father made a bargain that would result in Nyx being married off to the Gentle Lord, a powerful demon who has ruled over Nyx’s people for 900 years. Nyx mission isn’t just to marry the Gentle Lord, but she has been trained to take him down, but could there more inside this beast than darkness ?

 

Cruel Beauty is sold as a Beauty and the Beast retelling
but the story feels more like the tale of Bluebeard. A man whose young innocent wife discovers the benevolent Bluebeard keeps the bodies of his previous wives who disobeyed him. There is this sense of isolation and dread in the original tale that we see a bit of in Cruel Beauty. Nyx is also one of many of wives who have joined the Gentle Lord and, like in the original tale, he allows Nyx to roam the rooms of his magical house—expect for the locked ones. The Gentle Lord also keeps the dead bodies of his previous wives in one of said rooms, so I was really getting Bluebeard vibes

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I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

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  • Release Date: February 3, 2015
  • Pages: 400
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Publisher: Henry Holt & Co (Macmillan)

Skylar Evans has one goal; get out of her small backwoods hometown of Creek View, California. With her acceptance letter to San Francisco State in hand the only thing standing between Skylar and the next step in her life is the summer. But when her mom loses her job and sobriety she’s not sure the summer is going to end how she planned.

 Right away this book reminded me of one of my favorite chapters from Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Thingscalled How To Get Unstuckabout Strayed’s time as a counselor to girls whose success was measured by two things; not getting pregnant and getting a job at Taco Bell.  This sort of mentality is evident in Skylar’s story, her best friend is a teen mom and her mom worked at Taco Bell for 18 years. Skylar herself is trying to get “unstuck” from this life cycle. Creek View is a place where future plans are very short sided and people drink and party to forget about their problems.

I feel like the setting of this book is very important to understanding the story. Creek View is this lower income area with a mix of lower income white people and Mexican migrant worker families. Creek View represents a town we don’t see a lot of in contemporary YA; most YAs tend take place in nondescript suburban bubbles.

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Book Swap #1 ! The Golem and The Jinni / Fangirl

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Jess and I did a book swap as a way to force the other to read and review a book. The theme for our first book swap was 5-star reviews; we gave each other a book we’d previously reviewed as five stars. Jess gave me The Golem in The Jinni and I gave her Fangirl.

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