Reading on the F Train

Tahereh Mafi Is Awesome. (That is all.)

2012-03-07T22:22:00.000-05:00

Hey all--RTW kind of stymied me today, so I'm sitting it out--but I had to have a moment of squee here on the blog, since I'm lucky enough to have won yet another giveaway, this time from the fabulous Tahereh Mafi. Somehow, it's not enough for her to write beautifully, she's also just a cool person and does stuff like give away her books. Check out her blog, and if you haven't read Shatter Me--well, what are you waiting for? My review is here, but really, in a nutshell: if you like good writing, you will love Shatter Me.

Sunday Sunshine: Whoah, It's March!

2012-03-04T10:48:00.006-05:00

Ok, I was back at work this week, and therefore back on the F Train--so I actually did finish some books this week. It's not that I don't want to read when I'm on vacation--I just feel like I should be out! And about! And also in! and sleeping!

Since it's a new month, that means I should be setting a new goal for a specific type of book I want to read more of. Well, last month I didn't do as well as I'd hoped on my goal of getting caught up and reviewing all the e-galleys I've gotten from NetGalley, and I actually feel an obligation to do so (as opposed to the goals I set just for myself, this affects other people.) So I'll continue to work through those in March. I read two in February--The Glass Collector by Anna Perera and Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta--and you can find my reviews here and here.

What I Read This Week:

Across the Universe by Beth Revis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After I got past the TERRIFYING beginning (seriously, I had to walk away for a day or two)I got really swept up in this story. Amy's voice, in particular, feels very true--and in a book with a plot this wild and twisty-turny, having a protagonist who can anchor it with some reality is important. That's not to say that the plot doesn't work--in fact, it's very well constructed--but I don't read a ton of science fiction, so it's nice to have a bit of a lifeline. I can't help but compare the plot, in some ways, to The Giver, but it never feels copied or unoriginal. It's like it takes some of the concepts and situations that were most interesting from that book and gives them a whole new context. (And really, so much in The Giver is just waiting to be revisited!) Revis has created a really fascinating world in Across the Universe, and by the end of this book you're left with the feeling that she's just scratched the surface (so isn't it awesome that Book 2 is out? Yes, yes it is.)

A Million Suns by Beth Revis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ah, the rare (these days) second book I read immediately after the first book! And it did not disappoint. The big reveals are just as satisfying and tightly paced as those in the first book, and the stakes just keep getting higher! I loved the "scavenger hunt" setup--and completely did not anticipate any of the big twists. My only complaint: having to wait for book three!

View all my reviews

Waiting in the Wings

RTW: Best of February!

2012-02-29T07:32:00.000-05:00

Happy Leap Day, everyone! Are you all wearing blue and yellow and making plans to watch everyone's favorite Jim Carrey movie, Leap Dave Williams?

Yeah, me too.

But I'm also road tripping! Today, Road Trip Wednesday asks:

What was the best book you read in February?

Goodreads is making this so much easier! Looking back at what I read this month, I can tell you without a doubt that my book of the month was Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I posted my review here a few weeks ago, but really? Don't even worry about going back and looking at it, just go read Cinder. If you like humor or romance or suspense or, I don't know, dreamy-but-grounded princes, just go do it. You know you wanna.

And look at this gorgeous cover, to boot:

Happy Leap Day! Take a leap--read Cinder!

What Day Is This?

2012-02-24T18:42:00.002-05:00

I've got vacation-head, where I completely lose track of what day and/or time it is most of the time. But I'm pretty sure it's Friday, and that I'll go back to work bright and early Monday morning. Yikes.

I've had a great vacation, and done very little that might be considered productive. I read, like, a third of a book (but oh man, what a book--finally got around to Across the Universe by Beth Revis--it's excellent but a little stressful) and got my new sewing machine set up for some last-minute costumes (our school production of Annie opens three weeks from yesterday. I also sketched out an outline of the TV Writing and Production course I'm going to be teaching next trimester...but it's a very, very rough one.

Other than that, I've been neglecting work a bit (I'll have a normal weekend this weekend, where I put in a good 8-10 hours of work...you know, those easy-peasy teacher hours.) I've also neglected this blog. So: time for catching up!

First of all, Road Trip Wednesday had a question I definitely did not want to pass by:

February is Black History Month and it's also the month of Valentine's Day. So let's show some writerly love by answering the following question: Who is your favorite African American author or fictional character?

I also wanted to think about this one. The first character who came to mind was Calpurnia, from To Kill A Mockingbird. And I do love her.

But I knew I could come up with more contemporary favorites. Mr. S. reminded me of Sticky Washington, from the Mysterious Benedict Society books by Trenton Lee Stewart. (Seriously, if you have not read these--do it now. They're completely hilarious and clever MG mystery novels about a group of gifted kids fighting the good fight blah blah blah stop reading this and go read the books.)

And of course there's Rue from The Hunger Games. Annnnnd...that's what I could come up with. I think I'm suffering from Monoethnic Dystopia Syndrome. I'll have to keep an eye on that.

And today is Friday! So, let's have some Friday Fives time:

How I Spent My Winter Vacation: A Guide to Awesome Entertainment

by Mrs. S

1) Since I'm getting ready to teach a TV class, I thought I should probably take one as well. So I'm doing an online course through Gotham Writers' Workshop. It's only in its second week, but so far, so good. The course is structured around writing a spec script, so I've been re-watching the series I've chosen to write, Happy Endings. I had planned to write for Parks and Rec, but this season they're doing a bit more of a long plot arc than they have before, which makes it hard to write something that fits in. Anyway, Happy Endings is excellent. It's like if Friends was faster-paced and sharper and I was the age of those characters when it aired. I'm looking forward to writing for it.

"Draw an alligator, swimming in a pool, eating Pinkberry."

2) Godspell again! I went back on Wednesday, and scored a seat in the pillows-on-the-floor-in-front-of-the-stage section through the ticket lottery and the kindness of a stranger, who let me take his winning lottery ticket since he preferred standing room to the (rather tightly squashed) seating on the floor. So, long story short, I got pulled onstage to do some audience participating, had to draw in front of people (Pictionary style), and had a blast. Although my students will not be surprised to learn that after the show, when the cast was kind enough to sign my drawing for me, Hunter Parrish looked at my drawing, frowned a little, and said, "Um, alligators have feet." (For the record, the alligator was swimming, as per Hunter's instructions, and therefore his feet were under the water. But I digress.)

3) And have I mentioned that Godspell has the hardest working cast of any show on Broadway? Not only can they sing and dance and play guitar and trampoline at the same time, many of them have other projects going on. We saw two of those on Wednesday night. The first was Missed Connections, a very funny (but definitely not family-friendly, so don't get any ideas, students-of-mine) show taken from the Missed Connections section of Craigslist. On this particular evening, it featured George Salazar, maybe the goofiest member of the Godspell cast. He was great, and super-friendly.

4) After Missed Connections, we headed over to see Morgan James do a set at the Rockwood Music Hall. That. Girl. Can. Sing. She's got serious pipes and knows how to bring it old school. She said she'll have a recording out later this year and I'm pretty excited for that.

5) And tonight, we're going to a show that somehow has nothing to do with Godspell! It's called The Total Bent and it's by the creative team behind Passing Strange, Stew and Heidi Rodewald. Mr. S and I loved Passing Strange when it was on Broadway a few years ago, and in a wacky coincidence, this show is also designed by a guy who taught at Williams when I was there, AND directed by a woman who directed a show I was in there. Basically, we HAD to get tickets. Should be a good way to round out the break.

Sunday Sunshine: Special Edition

2012-02-19T13:59:00.001-05:00

Why special edition, you ask? Let's see:

Well, first of all, I'm on break from work this week! That's special enough all by itself.
I'll be posting reviews #19 and 20 this week--I'm pleased with myself for keeping on track to my 150 book goal for the year. Twenty books by February 19th is pretty good--it reflects a lot of time at home, when I would normally be playing dopey computer games or reading the internet, which is a change that makes me feel better about myself and life in general.
I have a bonus, non-book review--because I saw Godspell on Broadway last weekend and can't stop talking about it.
AND on top of all of that--this is my 50th post!

So, welcome to this very special edition of Sunday Sunshine!

Friends, I didn't think I would make it to book #20 this week. In fact, I really thought I might end up this week with just ONE book finished--because I started the week with Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta, and that book is LONG. Good, really good, but long. It took all my commuting time and then some to finish. But I woke up this morning, on vacation, relaxed--and so instead of grading or lesson planning, I was able to pull The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight off the shelf. I think it took me all of two hours--what a perfect Sunday morning!

But before I talk about those books, indulge me a little (or, feel free to skip down to my book reviews, at the end of this blue text). Like I said, I went to see Godspell last weekend--Sunday night, actually. A week later, after following the whole cast on Twitter and buying this cast's recording of the score (even though I already have a different version), I'm still caught up in it. I'm actually going to go up to Midtown--my least favorite place in the world--and try my luck in the cheap ticket lottery this week.

I've run into Godspell a few times over the years. The recording was the first CD I ever owned--I had other things on records, or on tape, but when we got a CD player from my godmother in the mid-90s, she gave us a bunch of CDs too. Most were stuff my mom liked, but I was a budding musical theater nerd, so I laid claim to the Godspell CD. Then when my sister was (I think) a senior in high school, she was in the show--it was really cool to see her and her friends in a show where they could just sort of play and have fun with each other. It was supposed to come to Broadway very shortly after she graduated, but the tanking economy delayed it, and it's here now.

This production has a similar spirit--I keep describing it to people as feeling like a high school show, just with really, really talented people. And for Godspell, I think that's just right. Of course, this production has many more bells and whistles and a much higher degree of technical difficulty than a high school show, and I don't mean to take away from any of that. What I mean is that the cast radiates energy and excitement and joy and can-you-believe-we're-actually-doing-this in the way that the very best high school shows do.

It's hard to single out anyone in the cast, because they all have such awesome moments. Uzo Aduba's By My Side has an intensity that's almost jarring, in the way that I love when you think you're in the middle of something that's just fun and then something chills you. Morgan James gives a rendition of Turn Back, O Man that's as sultry as expected but way funnier than I thought that song could be. Lindsay Mendez--well, Mr. S refers to her as "the Gilda Radner one", and while I'm sorry to my students who are way too young to get that reference, I'm sure the rest of you know what high praise that is. I could keep going but you'd be here all day.

Oh--and then there's Hunter Parrish. I knew his work from Weeds and I had seen him in Spring Awakening a few years ago. But he's got this goofy sweetness that blew me away. Coming from him, the lessons the show teaches (actually parables from the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament of the Bible) don't seem preachy or proselytizing, although they do stay with you. I mean, yes, he plays Jesus. The Last Supper and crucifixion are the inevitable end to the evening. But it's not a show designed for an exclusively Christian audience. It picks and chooses, for the most part, the parts of the Bible that are hard to argue with. Be kind to others. Be humble. Put someone else before yourself. Turn the other cheek. The focus isn't on the book or the religion--it's on how much better the world would be if people acted liked that more often. And it's all delivered so cheerfully and gently that you leave just wanting to be a little bit nicer. If you're interested, the official site is here

Ok, now on to what you came for:

What I Read This Week:

Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**This is a book I got for free, in advance through Netgalley.**

I really vacillated between giving this four stars or five. I read this book every day, two hours a day, for an entire week. I can't remember the last book that I invested so much time in--probably another fantasy epic (Paolini, I'm looking at you). And I was totally engrossed. The thing I kept thinking--and if you know me, you know this is a high, high compliment--is, "This is like a TV show!" But like a really good one, like Mad Men or Downton Abbey, where it's really work to keep all the threads in your head but it's so worth it. Yes, I know TV like that is usually compared to novels and not the other way around. But I am a product of my times, so deal with it.

Anyway, I loved this book. I really did. The detail, the new characters (and their names! Tippideaux! Quintana!), the plotting! I don't want to spoil it, because it's not out in the States yet. But I thought it was even better than Finnikin of the Rock because it was on a much bigger scale. Definitely, definitely add this series to your TBR list--it's so rare for a Book Two to improve upon Book One, but this one does it despite the excellence of its predecessor.

However--and this is a spoiler, if a vague one--after investing so much time and loving this book so hard, I was not prepared for the ending. Nevermind cliffhanging--I feel like a few plot threads took flying leaps and we won't know what happened until the next book comes. Of course, the actual events themselves were totally justified within the story, and I actually anticipated one of them...but the pace sped up so quickly at the end that I wasn't ready to let go. I must cry, with Romeo, "Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" But I, like Romeo, have to concede that I'm happier having read it and feeling the pain of not getting instant gratification. (Sorry, English teacher diversion.) As lousy a reader as this might make me, though, I have to imagine that when I can read this and immediately carry on with Book Three (someday? I hope?) I may go back and kick that rating up to five stars. Because if it continues in this vein, this is most definitely a five-star series.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was as short and sweet and delightful as everyone said. I wanted a quick read that would leave me in a good mood, and this fit the bill exactly. Jennifer Smith does a great job of parceling out bits of information as they're needed without making anything feel disjointed. This story does, of course, have its moments that strain credulity, but only in the events, never the emotions behind them. And the events that anchor the plot are ones that heighten emotions and make people do weird things anyway (and the protagonist is a seventeen-year-old girl, which, ditto) so it never pushed me to the point of absolute disbelief. I will definitely be recommending this when my students come looking for something with a happy ending (oh, just look at the cover, saying that much isn't a spoiler! Have some genre awareness!)

View all my reviews

Waiting in the Wings

Yay Jaime!

2012-02-17T07:11:00.001-05:00

Hey y'all--

Just a quick note that my friend Jaime is having a great giveaway at her blog to celebrate her 100th follower! Go check it out (and follow her, if you don't already--she's always got something funny and insightful to say!)

And happy Friday!

Road Trip Wednesday: I Hate The Word

2012-02-15T21:08:00.004-05:00

Today, Road Trip Wednesday over at YA Highway asks a great question:

What words do you absolutely hate? Which ones do you adore?

I've been thinking about this all day. See, there is a word that, without a doubt, takes first place in the "words I hate" competition. And in fact, I hate it so much that I won't print it here. But to give you an idea, it's the OTHER F-word, one used as an anti-gay slur. It once meant a bundle of sticks, or if you're British, the short form can (could? I'm an American, what do I know) mean a cigarette. If you want to see the word, as well as a history of its evolution provided by GLSEN, you can click here and scroll about halfway down (but of course they use the actual word, so...just know that.)

But here in the States, and now in 2012, it really only means that at best, the person speaking is completely ignorant of the import of the word. And at worst, it's absolute hate speech. You know the word I'm talking about.

As a teacher, I hear kids toss around words that they shouldn't all the time. "That's so gay" and "that's retarded" and worse. And I always try to put the kibosh on that. But when I hear That Word--lord help that child. Because that business gets Shut. Down. See, unlike the words I mentioned above, which have uses that are appropriate, if they're not being used casually as insults, That Word has no acceptable modern-day American use. None. So rather than entering into the English Teacher Usage Hour like I am prone to do with the other words, I simply inform the kiddo in question that what I just heard them say was hate speech and it's not ok, not ever.

I've had kids ask me what the big deal was, and it's possible that my position sounds extreme. But when I see a kid pounding on another kid, I don't first try to calmly educate them about non-violence--I end the fight. Talking can come later. As far as I'm concerned, The Other F-Word is just as violent and damaging as actual physical fighting (maybe more).

And you know what? I've been at my current school for two and a half years. My first year, I heard that word at least every other day. Now? I'm actually not even sure the last time I heard it. I'm not naive and I'm sure some of my students still use the word. But I've at least gotten them to stop using it where I can hear them, and once they have to think before using it some of the time, I hope they will think before using it more and more of the time. Granted, I think the reason they don't use it in front of me is that they're just sick of hearing me talk about it, but it's a start.

Ok, end-of-soapbox. But I had to say it.

And words I love?

Inexplicable
Actually (but only the way it sounds when Lola says it on Charlie and Lola, a totally adorable TV adaptation of an equally adorable picture book series by Lauren Child.) So, "Act-ually".
Anthropophagi, a recent discovery in Othello, which I'm teaching. I just love words that I can look at and put together the word parts. Ironically, after the above screed, one of my favorite word roots is "phag", meaning to eat. It crops up in the weirdest places!

I don't know--there are definitely more of them, and I go through phases. But "inexplicable" will, somewhat inexplicably, always be my favorite.

Whew--it's practically Thursday. I promise to keep it shorter next time!

Sunday Sunshine: A Productive Week

2012-02-12T01:30:00.000-05:00

So...I read three and a half books this week. This was due in large part to the arrival of an ARC of Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver...yesterday. I won it from the Vault over at YA Confidential and I wanted to get it read this weekend so I could pass it on to my students ASAP. But first I had to finish Finnikin of the Rock. So I read a book and a half today. The other books were Cinder by Marissa Meyer and half of The Glass Collector by Anna Perera, which I had already read half of sometime back in December. Anyway: I read a lot this week. And it was awesome.

What I Read This Week:

Cinder by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm still in a daze. It was, without a doubt, a five-star read for me. But I can't put my finger on exactly what elevated it above the many other futuristic fantasy dystopias or fairy-tale re-tellings or however else you might define this. I just know that I'm smitten. I can't stop thinking about this. I mean--the world-building definitely stands out, as Marissa Meyer has created not just one but TWO worlds. I've read that this is the beginning of a bunch of stories about fairytaleish characters, and I sincerely hope that this is true, because: I want so much more. If you like strong, realistic protagonists or charming, conflicted love interests or complex, sprawling, tantalizing worlds, or immensely satisfying plotting--well, you have good taste, first of all, and second of all, you need to read Cinder ASAP!

The Glass Collector. Anna Perera by Anna Perera
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

**This is a book I got for free, in advance through Netgalley.** I read The Glass Collector in two halves a few months apart. The story itself, and the detail with which Perera described the life of the Zabbaleen, were fascinating. The Zabbaleen are a community of people who live in a village just outside of Cairo, and who collect and recycle much of the city's trash. Clearly, Perera has done her research, and it shows in the strongest parts of the book, which depict life in the Zabbaleen village of Mokattam. Most of the book focuses on Aaron, a young man whose obsession with glass makes him both a skilled trash collector and, later, an outcast in his own village. Aaron's story held my attention, but occasionally the third-person narration would shift to give the perspective of a different character, and that jarred me out of the story a bit. Overall, though, I would recommend this book simply based on the chance to read about a community I had never heard of--it almost feels invented, like I want to praise Perera's world-building--but it's very real and essential to the functioning of a major city.

Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After hearing raves about Melina Marchetta's writing from many, many bloggers whose taste I trust, I decided to start with Finnikin of the Rock. My verdict: Ms. Marchetta has not been overhyped. Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy fantasy like this--which, really, is historical fiction with just a touch of magic thrown in here and there. This story had all the ingredients I look for in fantasy--a long journey, a hero to root for, a girl who has to repeatedly prove her grit and strength--along with some things I didn't expect (cussing, casual sex talk) that startled me at first but then added to the reality (I've started to take the absence of casual profanity in many novels for granted, just like I don't worry about the inexplicable presence of light in outdoor nighttime scenes in movies. There was nothing in Finnikin that's any worse than the things I hear in my classroom every day, but if you're someone who'd rather avoid dirty talk altogether, consider yourself warned.) It was a dark read, that only got darker as it went along, but that makes sense given Marchetta's note at the end of the book that she was writing from a place of reality--considering the problems in our own world that she feels are most compelling in a humanitarian way--rather than trying to emulate classic fantasy. That said, the entire thing is about finding hope and rebuilding, so it's not as though it's designed to make you want to curl up in a ball and rock back and forth. Also: the characters are often funny, and I found myself tearing up happily more than once. I'm very excited to have received an e-galley of the sequel, Froi of the Exiles, so look for that review some time next week.

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having won an ARC of this book just a few weeks before its release, I resolved to read it ASAP and then pass it on to my students. Well--I opened the package about 25 hours ago, during which time I had to finish about half of the book I was currently reading, sleep (for about twelve hours--it's been a long week), and go out for lunch. Friends, I devoured this one. It's one of the sequels coming out this year that I was most excited for, and it lived up to my anticipation. The thing I admire most about Lauren Oliver's stories is their structure. She doesn't re-invent the wheel, and it sounds like a kind of basic, boring thing to admire. But she just uses story structure like such a pro. It gives this great experience of familiarity overlaid with breath-stealing suspense: I think I know what's coming--but it can't be true. She did it in Delirium and she did it here. I won't say much about the plot, because I don't want to spoil anyone--but listen, if you don't finish this book desperate for the next one (*sigh* Spring 2013? But what if the world ends this year?!?) then I think you must have been Cured or something. Girlfriend knows how to end a book, y'all.

View all my reviews

Waiting In The Wings:

(This is a picture of Ivyland by Miles Klee. He is a friend of mine from college, which is why I snapped this picture today when I picked up his novel on the "New and Noteworthy Fiction" table at McNally Jackson! I'm really excited to read this and will report back soon.)

Too Good To Miss

2012-02-09T19:53:00.002-05:00

Hey y'all: if you've ever entered a giveaway, or thought about entering a giveaway, or just don't hate awesomeness, here's something you've gotta check out. For some reason, Tahereh Mafi feels like she needs to give the world MORE than just the most gorgeous prose ever and an amazingly compelling fantasy dystopia...she's also doing a book giveaway. And including her own signed books in each of the SIX book packages she's offering. I mean, really.

Check out the giveaway here!

Let me entertain you, let me make you smile...

2012-02-07T22:45:00.000-05:00

Let me do a few tricks
Some old and then some new tricks
I'm very...

Yes, friends, that's right--I'm lucky enough to have received another blog award! This one comes from Jaime Morrow (check out her recent posts on InstaLove and InstaLoathe--always hot topics!)

So, at this point, I have entirely lost track of the requirements of the many blog awards that seem to be circulating through my blogroll these days. I do think they're a lot of fun and a good way to point readers at some of the many awesome blogs out there, so I will be naming a few folks (those who I have not recently caused to post lists of things about themselves!). I will not be doing the List of Things about myself, though; instead, I will be sharing some pictures of my newly re-arranged bookshelves!!!

1) Lining the top of the shelf, you can see my recently completed collection of Community figurines, from the stop-motion-animated special "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas". Any other Community fans out there? Anyone? Bueller? [Hey guys, think about watching this show. Especially if you are a Nielsen family. It's wonderful and could use the help. Coming back to Thursdays on NBC any month now!]

2) Ok, books for real: the top shelf here are all of our graphic novels/comics/whatever you would call my beloved Amphigoreys.

3) When confronted with the great big pile of ALL of our books (mine and Mr. S's--I couldn't have married someone who isn't a reader!) I noticed that the largest single category was--very broadly speaking--fantasy. So this shelf encompasses everything from Narnia and Harry Potter (on the bottom out of sight, since they take up a whole shelf between them, so they're not needed for browsing) to things that are more properly science fiction or magical realism. Basically, if it couldn't happen in real life, it's on the shelf. It's a fun way to feature most of our favorite books in one collection that's easily accessible to guests.

Okay, this is my favorite. The top shelf here is devoted to signed copies! Living in New York, it's relatively easy to come across signed stock in bookstores (especially Books of Wonder! I picked up the signed copies of Shiver, Where Things Come Back, and Across the Universe there this weekend, and it looks like Beth Revis will be coming through again next week to sign A Million Suns, so I'm going to try to go two for two! Also Marie Lu will be there, so I'm going to try to wrest my copy of Legend away from my students long enough to get it signed.) Anyway, I've put little arrows next to two of my most prized signed copies: Mockingjay, obviously--I mean, it's stamped, not signed, because Suzanne Collins had a wrist injury or something, but I actually went and spoke words to her while she was stamping it, and it was amazing. Also Bridge to Terabithia--I met Katherine Paterson at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning two years ago and she was AWESOMESAUCE.

Also, bee-tee-dubs: the orange book? The one with the little star drawn on it? That's a book co-written by a friend of my husband's family, Jake Halpern. It's called Dormia and I recommend it!

And those two very very full shelves? TBR!!!!! Uh-oh. (If only you could also see the inside of my Kindle, you'd have a better idea.)

Ok: Blog Awarding Time!

(To my student readers: A few of these links--namely, the Tumblrs--have a wide variety of non-book-related content and I can't guarantee that it's always 100% G-rated. Read at your own discretion.)

1) Inspector Spacetime Confessions. Do Tumblrs count for blog awards? Well, let's say they do. While I'm shilling for Community I'll also highlight this creation from fans of BOTH Community and Doctor Who. (And I KNOW I have some Doctor Who fans reading this!) Inspector Spacetime is the Doctor Who analog on Community. It's gotten a handful of mentions and very, very short clips on the show, but then The Internet happened, and now I think it may be scripted through its first season.

2) Rebecca Behrens. Definitely a versatile blogger: her last three posts are about coffee, True Grit, and Groundhog Day. I mean, come on. (Also: I will be adding True Grit to that ginormous TBR!)

3) Ok, another Tumblr: Hate the Future. This one is by a college friend of mine, Miles Klee. Each post is like a tiny little dystopia in a few lines and usually an image. He's also got a book out that I'm super excited about (I will be McNally Jackson this weekend picking up my copy, I swear!) called Ivyland.

4) I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the H*ll Do I Read? Lee Wind maintains a really great reading list of books for teens featuring LGBTQ characters, and he also offers thoughts about all things LGBTQ and/or writing related.

I'm gonna call it a day here--you're all awesome, but I don't want to induce blog award fatigue. I leave you with this picture from my weekend project to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS AND SORT ALL THE BOOKS. (Don't be too alarmed--in the middle of that pile is my coffee table. So it's not all books.)

Sunday Sunshine: This is my brain; this is my brain on fairy tales.

2012-02-05T11:37:00.000-05:00

I managed to get back up to three books this week! That's largely because I read one of these books in like, two sittings. I've finished my McCourt binge, and started my two-book bop through Cinderella.

After this one, though, I need to shift my focus a little. It's a new month; that means a new focus in my quest to diversify my reading. And this month, I'm going to focus on clearing out some of the backlog of e-galleys I've picked up on my Kindle! That means my Sunday Sunshine posts will be shifting a bit, as I try to write actual reviews rather than my usual rambling responses. I may also write my reviews now but hold off on posting until closer to the release date, depending on the publisher's preferences. I'll try to keep reading some already-published stuff, but it won't be at the same rate.

And, slightly belatedly: I set an overall reading goal for myself for the year. After gauging my pace throughout January, I decided that I could probably get up to 150 book. So there's now a little widget in the sidebar where my progress will be displayed for all the world to see.

And now, here's what I read this week:
'Tis by Frank McCourt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ok, I couldn't hold out on the fifth star anymore, Mr. McCourt. Usually, I prefer the childhood piece of memoirs, but in this case, I think the young adulthood/adulthood portion was even stronger. Was this largely because of his pitch-perfect ear for what a class of students sounds like when they smell inexperience on a new teacher from out of town? YES. Yes it was. Am I deliriously excited that McCourt's third book focuses just on his teaching career? YES. Yes I am. There is no schmaltz and no bravado when McCourt writes about teaching--which is unbelievably rare. And, also, in addition to making me actually giggle on the subway, 'Tis made me tear up, where Angela's Ashes never did (oops, sorry, that might make me horrible. Or maybe it just means I'm used to stories from my own great-grandmother that started, "When I was growing up, back on the farm in Ireland, the only way to get all ten of us children to church on Sunday was to hitch the donkey up to the cart for the little ones to ride. So we'd get up, and go out to the field and catch the donkey, and we'd have to chase him..." I guess Frank McCourt would say, at least you had a farm and a cart and a donkey, but if 'tis sibling deaths you're after, sure my great-grandmother's family had their fair few. So maybe I'm immune?)

Anyway: 'Tis was more of what I loved about Angela's Ashes, with less of the ultimately tedious drunk-father-chasing (in my defense, I imagine it felt pretty tedious to the McCourts as well.) I highly recommend going straight through McCourt's books, all at one go.

Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While parts of this book made me very, very happy, and I finished it with tears in my eyes, overall the impact was not quite as strong as 'Tis. That's hardly a dig, as 'Tis was one of just two five-starred books I read last month--and I found a lot to love in Teacher Man. Frank McCourt writes New York City teenagers like I suspect only a teacher can--completely on the nose in his characterizations of their group behavior, and at the same time painting each individual with such striking detail that they leap out and stick in your head. And so much of his frustration with bureaucracy and paperwork, etc, feels like it came straight from my own head. I suppose what I really wanted was more beginning--teacher memoirs are often too cutesy in their self-deprecation, or else they have an impossible sanctimonious tone: "I was letting my students down. Looking back, my one regret is that I only spent twenty-two hours a day working. I could have given them so much more, if only my spouse wasn't so unreasonable about spending time with me." (The only time I will go on record as rooting for a Patrick Dempsey character is in Freedom Riders. Those kids were great and all. But ughhhhh, that movie.) Anyway, Frank McCourt sounds like an honest-to-god overwhelmed young teacher. He really likes his students (mostly, sometimes) but the job as a whole does often feel like the walls are closing in, and he nails it. As a teacher who had a seriously rocky first year (hi there, students-of-mine, who unfortunately had a front-row seat for that) I am overjoyed to read someone writing this well about what it's like. It was almost hard to see him get better--even though my job has gotten a LOT easier, I'm still not the thirty-year vet he was by the end of the book.

Yikes. When people complain about reviews getting too personal, they usually mean the author's personal life, not the reviewer's. Ok. Well, these aren't really reviews, they're just a good place to keep what would otherwise be free-roaming blog rambles. Anyway, bottom line: if you are a teacher, especially in a big city public school--pick this one up. If you're about to be a teacher...maybe wait till you're a year or two in?

Ash by Malinda Lo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a very quick read for me...and it felt like the kind of thing that might actually be told, rather than written down. Saying that an adaptation of Cinderella "feels like a fairy tale" sounds almost tautological, but what I really mean is that this had the dreamy quality of a story being performed by a master storyteller. It's one that makes me wish for daughters, so that I can read it aloud to them. I wanted a little bit more at the ending, as I felt there was so much build-up to the fairy world that I wanted the scene we didn't get to see. But sometimes that's the way of fairy tales, and overall I thought it wrapped up nicely.

View all my reviews

Currently Reading:

Waiting In The Wings:

(I actually started this one a little while ago and then life got in the way, but it was just released so at least my review will be timely. I'm looking forward to getting back to it.)

(Ok, this is a cheat, but I did want to read some Melina Marchetta this year, and then I got an e-galley of Froi, so...)

Friday Fives: Novel Envy

2012-02-03T20:03:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I've gotten to a Friday Fives post, simply because it's been a while since I've gotten around to reading blogs at a reasonable hour on a Friday! But this week's topic from Paper Hangover is a fun one:

1) A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I've mentioned my love of this book before, but the writing combines the simplicity of Sara's ideas about life and being nice to people and imagination with some incredibly lush and evocative descriptions.

2) Delirium by Lauren Oliver. I think this one sprang to mind because my current WIP has some structural similarities and I despair of ever getting into some kind of shape that is even half as urgent and lovely as Delirium.

3) An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. I think I mentioned my love of the narration in this book when I posted my response/reviewlet/whatever after I read it. That's like, the least of John Green's gifts--I can't even wish I wrote Looking For Alaska, because I don't even understand how that book happened in someone's brain, but I can wish for John Green's 3rd person narrative voice in An Abundance of Katherine's because it's at least like something I've attempted before.

4) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I was nervous about reading this one when it was assigned in my college Intro to the Novel class, because I had an out-and-out battle with Dickens when we had to read A Tale of Two Cities my sophomore year of high school. But I wound up getting so sucked in by Great Expectations that I actually gasped out loud reading a particularly suspenseful section alone in my dorm room. It's such a great story. (English majors aren't really supposed to talk like that. But I wasn't a great English major.)

5) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. Yeah, I went there. I chose this one on the strength of a four word phrase near the end of the book that I think I may someday get tattooed on my wrist to remind me what words can do. (It's "this is what happened" and it's right before The Awful Thing happens, and no book has ever made me want to slam it shut and stop reading more than that phrase did, because I knew as soon as I read it.)

2012-02-02T22:35:00.001-05:00

Yay! I've received the Liebster Award from Marcie Colleen at The Write Routine! I really like the idea behind this award: it's for blogs with fewer than 200 followers, to help get the word out!

So, before I share this with some of my fellow bloggers, I'm meant to share five things about myself:

This is the backyard of our house. Yes, it was beautiful. But. 37 other people.

1) The first time I ever left North America, I was 21. Not one to do anything by halves, I flew for 19 hours to get to Johannesburg, South Africa. (Did I mention I hate flying?) I spent three weeks living in a house with 37 other people--yes, 37, half from my college theater department and half from a theater conservatory in Jo'burg--and taking the public bus through Jo'burg to work each day. (Did I mention I adore public buses?) It was undoubtedly the most intense three weeks of my life: literally across the planet from anywhere I had ever been before, living with 37 other people, and having another day of flying to look forward to. And, not to be a total cliche, but: I'm so, so glad I did it.

Find this candy bar. Now.

2) PSA: Trader Joe's has started making speculoos-filled chocolate bars. Speculoos, if you haven't tried it, is like a spice-cookie spread. Like the texture of peanut butter, except it's made of cookie. Needless to say, they have become a staple in our house.

Who took the picture? Why, our new friend, the cabbie.

3) My Blogger picture is me, on my great-grandmother's farm in Ireland. My great-grandmother grew up there and then came to the States when she was about 18, leaving behind her parents and nine siblings. Mr. S and I honeymooned in Ireland and found our way to this tiny farm, which we only got to because our cabbie kept stopping and asking after my great-grandmother's sister-in-law, and everyone in the village knew her. When we got there, the door was open--I mean, standing ajar--and the cabbie led us inside. I introduced myself--Kitty's great-granddaughter from the States--and just like that, I was handed a beverage and given a tour of the farm. My great-grandmother may have planted the rosebush that I'm standing in front of in that photo. And above is me with my newly-discovered relatives (and newly acquired husband!)

(Flames! On the side of my face!)

4) I can recite at least 50% of the following movies: Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, A Christmas Story, Clue. Also the entire run of Sports Night and at least the first season of The West Wing.

[No Photo Available...]

5) I have performed the following embarrassing numbers in front of my classes: Gold Digger (rap) and the Dougie (dance). Both times students laughed so hard other faculty members came running to see if everything was ok. They were not laughing with me, except that I was also laughing...at me.

Ok, now to pass the award along!

1) Jaime Morrow at Jaime Reading and Writing, who is a friendly and encouraging blog pal, and who is always one step ahead of my TBR list!

2) Kristen Pelfrey at Kristen Pelfrey Writes, who writes about teaching with a clarity and honesty that I really admire.

3) Colin D. Smith, who is a tireless advocate for all the things he loves, including Doctor Who, Divergent, and Scott Westerfeldt's Leviathan trilogy (excellent taste, no?)

4) Jim Randolph at Teacher Ninja, who I discovered through a recent comment challenge, and whose blog totally fascinates me because being a school/children's librarian is like, the secret dream I keep where most people keep their dreams of playing pro sports and winning American Idol, and he makes it seem exactly that cool.

5) Bailey Hammond at Over Yonder..., who has excellent taste in books (read: is also a fan of The Scorpio Races) and hobbies (read: oh Bailey why did you have to blog about Skyrim, now I am going to have to PLAY it, there goes spring break...)

RTW: Best Book in January

2012-02-01T07:28:00.003-05:00

Well, for once, I have an answer to the usual end-of-the-month Road Trip Wednesday question:

What was the best book you read in January?

I called this one back when I finished the book, on New Year's Day. In fact, I called that it would be the best thing I'd read all year, but one thing at a time. I read two books this month that I gave five stars on Goodreads (check back for Sunday Sunshine this week to see what the second one is) but The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater, takes the prize. I keep having to stop myself from just going back and re-reading it instead of attending to my lengthy, lengthy TBR list. I've already waxed poetic about it, here, so I'll keep today short. But if you are the kind of kid who read a lot of horse books as a child, or if you're looking for a slow-burning, rich, lyrical read--you may want to consider reading The Scorpio Races like, immediately.

Sunday Sunshine: Long Time Coming

2012-01-29T14:31:00.003-05:00

At first glance, it seems like this week's books have nothing at all in common. A dark, magical novel about a girl torn between two worlds, and a grimly truthful memoir about a boy growing up in poverty--yeesh. But: I've been meaning to read both of them for what seems like forever. Yes, Daughter of Smoke and Bone has been out for four months and Angela's Ashes has been out for nearly thirteen years, but time is relative, right? Anyway, these books were excellent--if there was a 4.5 star option on Goodreads, that would have been my rating for both of them.

(Also, here's a perk of waiting 13 years to read a book: as soon as I finished Angela's Ashes, I started reading 'Tis, whereas the big news this week is that Laini Taylor has announced the title to the sequel of Daughter of Smoke and Bone. For those who haven't seen it yet: it's Days of Blood and Starlight.)

Without further ado--here's what I read this week

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I know people have been excited to hear my reaction to this one. So let me explain the four stars, which seems to be a shockingly low rating for a book that topped the "best of 2011" lists of so many people I enjoy. This book started at a disadvantage with me. It's not that I don't do dark--it's just that I usually do it in dystopian/postapocalyptic ways. The human kind of evil, rather than the paranormal/angels/demons/high fantasy kind of evil that this story at least kind of is. But it reminded me of people I know and love--who have spent time in Prague, or love giant puppets, or who move like gazelles. So as far as it went down the paranormal/fantasy path, it also kept setting off tiny echoes of reality. And I followed those echoes down the rabbit hole.

What I'm saying is--this book written with any details altered? Might have been a three. Or might have lingered, half-read, on the shelf.

But it was written by Laini Taylor--and I bow before her. I am a word nerd. I am. I collect words and I love them, and I met old forgotten friends in these pages, and found some new ones. I've never read a book in which the author so consistently used the exact word--and only the exact word, without ever settling for a substitute--that was called for.

And also, by the time I was done, it didn't feel as...fantastical, at least not in the way I find off-putting. I think I sometimes struggle to feel the stakes in fantasy, if they're too huge and sweeping or elven or whatever. But this book never lets you forget for a second the ties between the big, alien, faraway things--war, angels, pain tithes--and the immediate human things--family, school, friends. It also has just enough of our world laid into the struggle between angels and chimaera (in how many countries on earth has land changed hands back and forth, with each new and previous owner claiming sovereignty? In how many cultures are people sorted and segregated based on appearance?) to make the issues in the book feel important to the part of my brain that thinks about things outside of books--but it doesn't go overboard with the symbolism, because the point is the story.

Anyway, thanks to the dozens of people who raved about this--I probably would not have picked it up, or kept with it in the beginning of the book, without you. And I'm definitely glad I did. I want more!

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourtMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was surprised by how un-maudlin and, frankly, funny this book is. It also reads more like a YA novel than a typical memoir--the first-person present-tense narration by a narrator who's between the ages of 2-19 or so as the book progresses. Obviously, there's really awful hardship and family tragedy, but the way it's written saves it from too much sentimentality. It read a bit slower than my normal books, but not in a bad way...I found myself thinking about it on my way down to the subway and between classes. I'm already onto 'Tis, which I'm enjoying a lot as well.

View all my reviews

Waiting in the wings:

(I broke my no-more-books-till-February-break vow yesterday when Mr. S and I finally went into a really cool independent bookstore not far from where we live, McNally Jackson. I convinced him that I should be able to buy one book, to support indie bookstores. We left with three--a volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman for him, The Boneshaker by Kate Milford for me--and Cinder, because when Mr. S saw a China Mieville book he'd been meaning to read, he decided he wanted it on his Kindle instead, but then felt guilty about that so he told me to get a second book to make up for it. I liked that logic just fine, especially because now I can read Ash and Cinder back-to-back, and maybe even go back to some of the literary theory I researched when I taught a class on Fairytales and Mythology last year. I'm a super-nerd. Oh well.)

Sunday Sunshine: Odd Bedfellows

2012-01-22T12:06:00.003-05:00

This week, I only got through two instead of my usual three--they were a bit longer than usual, and they are a really weird pairing. Without further ado:

What I read in the last week:

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whoah. Like everyone else who has read this book, I am now struggling to talk about it without spoiling. I think what I liked most about it is the way it puts the reader squarely in Mara's shoes for much of the book, as you and Mara both try to figure out what the heck is happening. Parts of it read like a dark contemporary romance, parts like a thriller, and other parts--I don't want to spoil the other parts. But I will say that Noah is just as irresistible as he is meant to be--and that I can't wait for book two!

Prairie Tale: A Memoir by Melissa Gilbert
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Basically what I expected: some fun/amusing/surprising/sad anecdotes, but the writing didn't exactly light me on fire. I mean, not that Melissa Gilbert needs to be a great writer--she's got plenty else going for her :) I did like hearing about life on the Little House set--nerdily, I probably would have preferred to hear more about that and about Gilbert's development as an actress than about her star-studded romantic life.

View all my reviews

Waiting In The Wings:

(This is now at the tippy-top of the list--it's actually making me want tomorrow morning's commute to come faster, so I can start it!)

(This was recommended to me earlier this month when I mentioned wanting to read more memoir in January--and since I've only been meaning to read it for, oh, the last ten years, I decided it was about time.)

Congrats!

2012-01-16T10:26:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post to shout out Jaime Morrow, the winner of my 2012 giveaway! I had hoped to add some 2012 books to the TBR list through this contest, and Jaime's choice of pre-order definitely makes the grade:

(From Goodreads):

Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld... this time forever.

She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can't find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

Nikki longs to spend these months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there's a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen.

As Nikki's time grows short and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she's forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole's...

I mean, first of all. The cover. I am not always that won over by a cover, and when I am, black-and-red are not usually the colors that grab me. But this cover is too pretty and I cannot help myself--I want it :)

And all of that aside, I love the idea of riffing on Persephone like this. Adaptations of myths and fairytales are a huge weakness of mine.

So, congrats, Jaime, and thanks for the excellent taste in pre-orders--I will be adding this to my list as well!

Sunday Sunshine: John Green Edition

2012-01-15T19:34:00.001-05:00

This is a Very Special Sunday Sunshine, for two reasons: one, it is entirely composed of John Green books, and two, today is kind of a fake Sunday because there is no school tomorrow, so I don't even have any Sunday Night Blahs to combat! Plus, I've got a whole mess of finger sandwiches and Jaffa cakes and things ready for our friends who are coming over to watch Downton Abbey tonight. So this is an extremely sunny Sunday indeed. Let the reviews commence!

What I read in the last week:

Paper Towns by John Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Something I love about John Green: the way he creates these wonderfully rich boy narrators with exactly the right amount of casual (hilarious) detail and gorgeous voice...and then makes them translucent overlays for girls who it's impossible not to love even if you know they are manic pixie dream girls. Something else I love: the way this book acknowledges and tangles with its MPDG. I think I will never be able to watch Garden State again: Natalie Portman's character is the ultimate paper girl and Zach Braff's is patently absurd and sort of offensive. Margo is actually, now that I think about it, kind of a muggle pixie dream girl--no magic, after all. Can't wait for more John Green!

Abundance of Katherines by John Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book made me realize and remember the joys of the 3rd person omniscient narrator (especially the sardonic, dry-witted kind). Not that I don't love first-person narrators--like the first-rate examples in John Green's other books--but man, 3rd person really worked for this book. Also, the math was pretty cool--not that I understood it, but just in general, I've started to get interested in mathematical thinking and communication, so this was a neat example of that.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A note on the subjectivity of reading and reviewing: I read this book like a chicken. I knew it could make me cry--and oh, it sure could--and so I read it, and enjoyed it, and kept it at arm's length. I will go back to it someday when I have it in me to cry over a book, and also when I am not reading it on the subway and on Amtrak trains, and I will read it the way it is meant to be read, and then I will cry. Because John Green is exceptionally talented at writing funny, gut-wrenching books.

I will say that this book did make me, forcibly, smile. At least twice.

The author's note:

"This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.
Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.
I appreciate your cooperation in this matter."

And this, from p. 33:

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal."

View all my reviews

Waiting In The Wings:

(For real this time! Some of my students have read it and started talking about it in Book Blogging Club, so I must get this in before I get spoiled!)

(Also for real--this was both a Christmas present from my mom, and also part of my resolution to diversify my reading habits this year!)

(Can you believe I haven't read this yet? Me neither!)

RTW: Pseudonyms

2012-01-11T07:06:00.002-05:00

I love today's Road Trip Wednesday question:

This Week's Topic

If you couldn't use your own name, what would your pseudonym or penname be?

As a former aspiring actor, I spent many years thinking about a stage name. I am blessed/cursed (sorry Mom!) with an unusual middle name--Kaylor, which is my mother's maiden name. As much as I could stand to live the rest of my life without ever saying, "Taylor, but with a K" again, I also really like the sound of it. And I think it goes well with my maiden name (which, of course, was my last name in high school and college, when I was considering this question much more seriously.) So my choice has pretty much always been Kaylor Phillips. (Although in my mind, that is the name of someone with much better hair than me.)

And remember to enter my book/pre-order/giftcard giveaway if you haven't yet! Just a few more days till I pick the winner!

ARC Giveaway Alert!

2012-01-10T20:32:00.001-05:00

Ok, this is one of those times when there's a giveaway too cool to ignore--Bailey Hammond is giving away an ARC of Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore! I know many of you also love her work--I'm really looking forward to Bitterblue, whether I can get my hands on an ARC or have to wait till the official release! Check out her blog for the details, and to see what she has to say about the book!

Sunday Sunshine

2012-01-08T11:07:00.002-05:00

This week I signed up for the 2012 Comment Challenge, which encourages bloggers to read and comment on five blogs a day for 21 days. Apparently, habits form in three weeks, hence the length of the challenge. I'm enjoying it so far, but I'm noticing not a lot of posts on Sunday. So I thought I might try to get up a weekly post over here, about what I read last week and what I'm planning to read this coming week. I'm hoping that focusing on all the books I'm so excited to read will help chase away the Sunday Evening Blahs!

Also, don't forget to check out my first-ever giveaway! Just one more week to enter!

What I read in the last week:

1) Legend by Marie Lu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am intrigued by the world, and looking forward to the next book--but I think I wanted more of the relationship between June and her brother at the beginning of the book. It would have raised the stakes for me a little. Also, it's worth noting that the book itself is really gorgeous--definitely one to buy in print rather than as an e-book. It uses gold ink for one of the characters. Gold ink, people!

2) Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1) The characters! The main characters were fantastic, of course, but the unexpectedly hilarious addition of Kenji late in the game may have been my favorite of all.

2) The world! I have a feeling the next book will be dramatically different--I think in a lot of series, the first 3/4 of this book would be the first four chapters of a book about the world that unfolds constantly in the last 1/4 of this book. I can't wait to see more.

3) But really, really, it's all about the writing itself. Juliette's voice would not be out of place in a dark contemporary YA (reminded me a little of the genius that is every Laurie Halse Andersen) but it melds perfectly with the dystopian settings and events.

Oh dear. That doesn't sound very coherent. Well...just read it. I promise.

3) Hark! a Vagrant by Kate Beaton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book took me about twice as long as it should have because I kept laughing out loud and having to pass the book over to show my husband what was so funny. Kate Beaton's goofy sense of humor and broad knowledge of history and literature are a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon. My favorite: her take on Anne of Green Gables.

Waiting in the Wings:

RTW: Room to Write

2012-01-04T12:07:00.001-05:00

Today, Road Trip Wednesday asks us to:

Describe your dream writing retreat. Where would you go? Who and what would you bring?

This RTW is one I've spent plenty of time contemplating. Mr. S and I are starting to grow out of our one-bedroom apartment, and as we plan for where we will live next, I can't stop thinking about having my own room. Not that Mr. S isn't awesome, because he is, but I've always liked to have my own space where I can have everything just so. So my first answer is--I would go to my own room, and I would bring my cat, or nobody. My room won't just be for writing--I'll also keep books and knitting stuff and sculpture wire in there--but there are a few things I would really love to make it feel like a writer's haven.

First of all, my books. As much as I love my Kindle, I will never be satisfied with e-copies of any of my favorite books. (Also, some books are just too cool as objects to be on the Kindle--I'm reading Legend by Marie Lu right now, and with its shiny cover and gold print, it makes the most convincing case I can think of for books as physical objects, rather than Kindle copies.)

Ideally, this requirement would be satisfied with the use of built-in bookshelves, which have always been a dream of mine. While we're shooting for the moon, maybe they could look something like this:

(Sadly, I've lost the source for this. Has anyone seen this picture online? Help!)

Second of all, plenty of natural light (or really good electric light, I guess). I also love that about this picture. (But you can crawl into that corner of the couch and curl up if it's just too early, or if the dreaded migraine strikes.)

I also want a desk, so I could go back and forth--couch to desk--to save my back. Sometimes I like to sit up and sometimes I like to curl up. Actually, I mostly like to curl up, but then I sit like that for ten hours straight, hunched over a keyboard, and can't move the next day.

And, of course, my laptop. Can't do much without that. I tried writing on my iPad this summer for a change of pace, and it wasn't ideal, even with the bluetooth keyboard. But I hear Scrivener for iPad is on its way...so maybe for editing? We'll see.

Or...if I went away away to write...definitely the Berkshires (or maybe the Catskills--mountains, anyway, or what pass for mountains in the Northeast.) Someplace leafy and green and quiet, like The Porches Inn in North Adams, MA or Mohonk House in New Paltz, NY.

My alma mater, Williams College, tucked in among the Berkshires. Fun fact: The chapel with the four-spired tower there is where I got married! (Source)

But wait! There's more! While you're here, be sure to check out my 2012 More-Reading-For-Everyone-Giveaway!

Best Read of 2012--I'm calling it now.

2012-01-01T21:39:00.000-05:00

Isn't this a little premature? Calling the best read of 2012 on January 1st?

Yeah, maybe in a different year. And don't get me wrong, I am super-excited about the rest of my TBRs, and all the awesome books coming out this year...but.

I just finished The Scorpio Races.

Friends, listen. I may read books that are just as good, and I will certainly read books that I recommend to my students more widely, because I know their tastes pretty well and this isn't for all of them. But I will bet my last November cake that I will not read another book this year that I love more than The Scorpio Races.

Books that have affected me this profoundly in recent memory:

--Looking For Alaska shocked and destroyed me in a way that I forgot a book could do. Even Mockingjay...I went into with an understanding of some potential hazards. But Looking For Alaska was a true sucker-punch to the gut and I loved that it could do that to me. Scorpio Races made me feel as much, but with a feather-light touch that I didn't completely realize until I closed the book.

--The Hunger Games trilogy is simply the most exciting thing I have ever read. The first book is the only one I have ever read twice in a row--like, immediately going back to page one. I don't do that, ever. And I'm not with The Scorpio Races, because I don't need to. Where The Hunger Games shot through me, The Scorpio Races settled into my bones. I started to dream Thisby. It was too real to be exciting, per se...and I read it much more slowly because I couldn't rush it.

--I am mostly reminded of how I felt in January of 2006, when I read both The Time Traveler's Wife and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series for the first time. My now-husband, then-boyfriend, had graduated from college the previous June and we were separated by a five-hour bus ride, except that I found a January-term project that put me in New York City with him for a few weeks in the middle of the year. Somehow, I spent the whole month reading these devastatingly beautiful books that deal with, among other things, enforced separation from the love of your life. In related news, I spent a lot of time unexpectedly crying over books on public transit. Those books were the last time I felt a book hook straight into that space in my gut, just below my heart, and yank until I was well and truly stuck. That's what The Scorpio Races has done, but for entirely different reasons.

I got lured in by the horses. That's what did it first. I had forgotten, after so many years, what it was like to read a horse book. Most of them are written for kids, y'know? Or they're kind of schlocky. Or both. But as a kid I found the good ones and I loved them hard...and then there weren't any more, I guess. The Scorpio Races is a first-rate horse book for older folks, teenagers and adults. Honestly, though, by the end of the book...I think I would read it and love it if it were about racing lawnmowers. Puck and Sean are such magnificent characters, and Thisby such an immersive, textured setting, and the people there have lives out of frame (there are ten more books in that island, that we get glimpses of but never see in their entirety--the Malverns, Annie, George Holly)...I could stay there forever.

So tomorrow, I bake November Cakes. Because it's not enough that Maggie Stiefvater can write this brilliantly--she's also invented a food and made it real. I'm sort of out of my mind with glee, and while I've spent a good two hours since finishing the book going through her blog, my favorite thing has to be this recipe for November Cakes. That she made it real, that she revised her own recipe, and that even when writing a recipe, she sounds so distinctly like her own self, makes this basically the epitome of everything I admire about her. I am so happy to have finished this book with a day off to celebrate it and bake these cakes.

First-Ever Giveaway and Resolutions (Or: More Reading For Everyone in 2012!)

2012-01-01T17:54:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! We made it to 2012. 2011 was a pretty good year for me, with some big personal and professional events, but I'm looking forward to even better things in 2012. First of all: my resolutions.

1) Be more organized about my reading. I want to keep track of everything I read this year, so that those end-of-the-month Road Trip Wednesdays won't creep up on me quite so much. I also want to keep track of what I plan to read, since all of my fellow bloggers keep going on and on about dozens and hundreds and ZILLIONS of books that I want to read, and sometimes I lose track.

2) Read more broadly. This means different genres within YA, as well as genres outside of YA. Each month I will pick a new genre and try to read 1-3 books in that genre, mixed in with my other reading. First up: what I am broadly deeming "personal non-fiction"--memoir, biography, autobiography, etc. This will start with the Melissa Gilbert memoir my mom gave me for Christmas :) Recommendations for anything really excellent in this big, vague genre?

3) Stay on top of my writing! This means blogging for now, but also (after our spring musical goes up in March, I think) getting back to my WIP. Or, WsIP (Mr. S is a nut for correct internal pluralization). After the musical--no excuses. But in the meantime, I will focus on keeping myself to at least 2x/week posting here. Small steps.

And, in order to put some pressure on myself for #3 and maybe help with the first two as well--I am hosting my first-ever giveaway! In my last post I laid out a TBR list of already-released books, but I am always trying to add to it. So for this giveaway, I will be sending one lucky winner the following:

1) A book of your choice from my TBR list (including the runners-up, for a total of sixteen books to choose from! If you've read them all, you can always donate one to a school or library near you!)

2) A book of your choice that will be released in 2012, pre-ordered for you from Amazon.com.

3) A $10 gift card to DonorsChoose.org. I love this site, and I've used it to get tons of books for my classroom (including sets of Catching Fire and Mockingjay, when I couldn't keep them on my shelves after teaching The Hunger Games!) I don't even have projects up right now, so there's no ulterior motive--but I would love it if the winner used this to support a teacher trying to get books for his/her classroom.

Entries will be accepted until 12:01 am EST on 1/16/12. You can earn points by commenting with the book you would want to pre-order and why (mandatory) and by sharing the link to this post on your own blog/Twitter/whatever (totally un-mandatory but very welcome). I will be using Rafflecopter to draw the winner's name so make sure you use the Widget to enter! It should prompt you to log in--I need a way to contact you! I'll also post the winner here within 48 hours of the end of the entry period, so if something goes horribly wrong, you'll be notified on this blog.

Note about eligibility: Winners must be in the Amazon.com shipping area. If necessary, I'll spend up to $10 for shipping but more than that gets a little goofy so if you're not sure, you may want to check on Amazon.com to see how much it would cost to ship you two books. Alternatively, you can win if you are willing and able to accept Kindle versions of the books. Kindle pre-orders can't be gifted, so if the winner wants/needs a Kindle version I will send the winner Amazon credit in the amount of the pre-order. I reserve the right to substitute an Amazon.com gift card for the amount of both books in the event that difficulties arise due to geography/stock/etc. But I think books are more fun, don't you?
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Year-End Tidying-Up

2011-12-28T22:32:00.001-05:00

First of all: to those of you celebrating holidays in the last several days, I hope they were everything you wished for. I had a great Christmukkah with my big complicated family, but I had no idea what a blur this week would be. Between traveling for celebrations, helping my mother move to a new house, and doing my best to get a year's worth of sick out of the way in my week off, I must admit that it's been all I could do to even keep up with reading blogs, let alone commenting or posting.

I have gathered that most everyone is taking stock of what they've read this past year, in a few different formats, and I want to get some listing in before 2012 sneaks up on me.

First and foremost: best books I read this year. I am totally overwhelmed by the number of books I read this year, so figuring out which ones actually came out in 2011 would be next to impossible. But here are a few highlights of my reading life over the last 12 months:

1) Teaching Dystopian Literature, twice. I introduced tons of my students to The Hunger Games books, and I made a point of really delving into the genre. Hits included Divergent, Matched and Crossed, Delirium, The Ship Breaker, the Forest of Hands and Teeth series, and Variant.

2) Reading Pride and Prejudice over again this summer while emailing with one of my students as she read it for the first time. If only that's what all English classes were like!

3)Re-reading The Great Gatsby for the first time since it was summer reading before 10th grade English (hated it then, along with Wuthering Heights, which I have also re-read and loved since then!)I had no idea Nick Carraway was such a lyrical and frequently funny narrator!

4) Looking For Alaska. I can't even. You can see my thoughts here.

5)Discovering this blogging community! You have no idea how my TBR list has grown since I started following a handful of YA-focused bloggers.

So--segue into-- top ten TBRs (that are already out) heading into 2012. I'd like to point out that I'm in the middle of The Scorpio Races, a very exciting Christmas present, or that would be on the list as well. (I'm totally loving it, btw--I believe I mentioned my horsey reading streak from childhood, and this has all the best parts of that...with all the best parts of YA.)

1) Ash by Malinda Lo
2) Legend by Marie Lu
3) Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
4) Anna and the French Kiss/Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
5) Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
6) Across the Universe by Beth Revis
7) Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
8) Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
9) Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
10) The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Runners-up:
Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard
Fire by Kristen Cashore
Paper Towns by John Green
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Where She Went by Gayle Forman

That's my year in review, and a little bit of looking ahead...but stay tuned just after the new year for some resolutions and my first-ever giveaway! Happy New Year, everyone!

Road Trip Wednesday--Where Do They All Come From???

2011-12-21T18:32:00.000-05:00

Today's RTW is a potentially controversial one--but I like it.

This Week's Topic:
Where do you buy most of your books? No one is judging!

First of all, let me say that sometimes I look around and I'm pretty sure they just come creeping in the windows at night, because there's no WAY they all could have gotten in the door with me. I would remember buying thousands of books, right? I estimate my classroom library to be about 500 volumes, with loads more--maybe another 500 or so--in my apartment. Someday I will really catalog them all. Someday. Right now I have a GoogleDoc of my classroom books, but I know many of them will have walked away by the end of the year.

So anyway, where do they come from???

1) I have to cop to an old and undying love of Barnes and Noble. As a child, we went to the library a LOT, and I didn't have a lot of opportunities to buy books. Don't get me wrong--I LOVED my library, a lot. And I also loved the occasions when my parents would take me to the little WaldenBooks at our local mall, and I could pick out a book from the like, three shelves of children's books. But I will never forget my first trip to Barnes and Noble. I must have been about seven, which is when I got the horsey bug bad and couldn't get enough of Marguerite Henry. So anyway, I had never been to a freestanding bookstore before, ok? Just a little one tucked into the mall. And then one day my parents drove the twenty minutes or so to the Barnes and Noble in the next town over. And you guys. For whatever reason, there was a Marguerite Henry display in the window, with the books, and some hay, and I don't know, that was probably really all it was, but. It was like a palace for books. It was bigger than my library, even (and we went to the central branch which is pretty big and nice.) And my very very very favorite books were in the window, with horsey stuff around them--if you listen carefully, you can still hear the echoes of my tiny little mind EXPLODING WITH JOY. So, Barnsey, you will always be my first bookstore love.

2) We also have some great indie bookstores near us, and I try to patronize them as much as I can. Favorites include BookBook, Three Lives and Company, and Books of Wonder. Three Lives is especially well-curated--whenever I go in there, my immediate reaction is, "I want EVERY ONE OF THESE BOOKS." Books of Wonder wins the "Happiest Place" award, as it is both a truly excellent children's/YA bookstore AND a cupcake bakery. (Think Meg Ryan's bookstore in You've Got Mail, then add cupcakes.) I have to be careful with my wallet in these stores, because the awesomeness is so highly concentrated. In a store like Barnes and Noble, there's a lot I don't want mixed in...but not so much at places like these. Recently, I pulled my husband in to Three Lives and pointed out books I wanted for Christmas--and made him promise to buy them there, which he did! (And, since it's such an awesome place, he was inspired to add a few to the list--score!)

3) The Kindle store. Hmmph. I am really ambivalent about my Kindle. On the one hand, I mean, it's awesome. Because I am Rory Gilmore:

So being able to carry around a bus book and a backup book and a backup bus book (or in my case, train books) got a lot easier with the Kindle. On the other hand...I love having actual books. And now that I'm starting to follow some of the business pieces of the book industry, I have some anxiety over e-book pricing, etc. But for the time being, while I have an hour-long commute with a hill on one end and a 3rd-floor walkup on the other, I will be Kindling at least some of the time.

4) DonorsChoose. Technically, I'm not buying these books, and they aren't mine, but they live in my classroom library and I get to pick them out. I'm super grateful to the people who have donated books to my classroom in the past--I've gotten four projects funded, all books: a fiction mix, a non-fiction mix, and twenty copies each of Catching Fire and Mockingjay (our school bought class sets of The Hunger Games last year so I had a lot of desperate students.)

RTW--A Christmas Gift For Campbell

2011-12-14T18:14:00.005-05:00

Road Trip Wednesday! Huzzah!

This week, the question is:

What would be the ideal holiday present for your main character (or favorite character)?

This is actually a pretty loaded question, because of the world my girl Campbell is living in. Goods are limited pretty strictly, so either she would want something totally frivolous and consumable (gifts of things like candy bars and fresh flowers are pretty rare and noteworthy) or something she could share with her family.

But really, if she could have one wish, she would wish for her best friend to return the feelings she's starting to be aware of...or at least to understand those feelings a little better. (I have a friend from college who insists on fast-forwarding through the "conflicty parts" of romantic comedies because they're so painful--and I confess I read the painful parts of books more quickly, so I don't know how I will push myself to complicate this relationship as much as I need to--but what must be, shall be.)

Friday Fives: Christmas Stories!

2011-12-09T22:13:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I skipped out on RTW this week, as I sometimes do when it has a particularly writerly focus. (It kind of seems like everyone else waited to start their blogs until they had finished at least one MS...)

Anyway, I'm super excited about this week's Friday Fives from Paper Hangover!

What are your FIVE favorite Christmas/holidays stories or novels?

1) "A Pint of Judgement" by Elizabeth Morrow--This is one of many stories in my all-time favorite Christmas anthology: Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book. This one is about a little girl who overhears--and misunderstands--her mother's Christmas wish.

2) "Christmas Every Day" by William Dean Howells, also known to me from this anthology. The title sums it up, and it's a tired concept at this point, but this story is one of the older takes on the idea and I really like the way it's is written.

3) The description of Maria's first Christmas with the vonTrapps in The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. The house is all a-bustle with present-making and suspense and it just sounds magical.

4) Laura and Mary going through their stockings in what I'm guessing is Little House On The Prairie--but maybe Big Woods? They get sticks of candy AND and orange AND a penny EACH. (I think reading the Little House books at a very young age really contributed to the notion I had growing up that my family was fairly wealthy. Our house had glass window panes, we used white sugar at the table, and our Christmas stockings were so full they didn't ever stay up where we hung them. I was way off base--money was often tight in our house then, but it never occurred to me to notice.)

5) Ok, I have to cheat and say A Christmas Story! It goes on as soon as we get to my dad's house and doesn't go off all day. One of my all-time favorite movies in general, this has to make my favorite Christmas stories list.

RTW again? Already? ...and late?

2011-12-01T10:16:00.000-05:00

Wow, no posts between last RTW and this one. And technically, it has become RTThursday. I don't even know what happened to me, honestly. It took me ten minutes to remember where I was on Friday, because I realize that I missed Friday Fives (I was at my in-laws' house, because it was the day after Thanksgiving. I legit just forgot that for a little while.)

And somehow, even though this prompt is always the same, it always catches me unprepared.

What is the best book you read in November?

I read some doozies this month: Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver and If I Stay by Gayle Forman were both pretty great, but completing my trilogy of [SPOILER! SPOILER ALERT!] car-crash novels was the real stand-out, Looking For Alaska by John Green. It absolutely demolished me in a way a book hasn't done in a while.

And now, November is over, and we are on to December. A new marking period is starting soon, it's almost Christmas, and one of my classes just finished a very big and onerous project. I started a project I'm really excited about during NaNoWriMo, and even though I didn't make NaNo-speed progress on it, I'm feeling good about it. Onward and upward!

RTW: Thanks, Books Edition

2011-11-23T19:59:00.001-05:00

Well, this is pretty ideal. Road Trip Wednesday, my favorite part of the week, asks:

What writing or publishing-related thing(s) are you most thankful for?

Ok, first--I have to talk books. I meant to do this earlier in the month, when I named The Hunger Games as the book I am most thankful for.

1) Anne of Green Gables (and the other seven books in the series). Little Women and Little Men (ugh, not Jo's boys). A Little Princess. The Giver. These are the books that I've read more times than I can count and that taught me how to be a person.

2) Speak, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Looking For Alaska, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, The Hunger Games series, Divergent, Delirium, If I Stay, 13 Reasons Why, The Compound, Uglies and the rest of that series, The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. These are the books I've read since I started education grad school and made YA reading a priority. I wasn't a big reader of YA when I was a young adult--I read children's books for so long that I felt like I had to just jump straight to YA when I left the nest of the children's room at the library. These books are all over the map, genre-wise, but they all have characters I got to know and many, many of them made me cry. On the subway.

3) Which brings me to the subway: not technically writing or publishing-related, but it is where I do nearly all my reading. A 45-minute subway ride (each way!) is tough sometimes but it usually winds up being a highlight of my day.

4) The blogging community! I know everyone is saying this but there's a reason for that. I'm writing so much more regularly now than I ever have before, and I can actually imagine showing my work to people. Thanks, everyone, for helping me think of myself as a writer. (And special thanks to RTW, for giving us all such creative topics to blog about every week!)

Thanks, Part 1

2011-11-23T08:53:00.001-05:00

I've been so scattered this month that I haven't been taking the time to blog much about the things I am grateful for. I've planned to, I've thought about it, but I just haven't paused to write them down. So:

#1: I am grateful for today. I'm planned, my materials are ready, and I have time to breathe and write before my classes start.

#2: I am grateful that the show I directed went up this past weekend, and that the students involved rose to the challenge with flair and good grace. I'm really proud of the work they did and the maturity they found within themselves.

#3: I am grateful for the colleagues who supported me and my students--by attending, by encouraging their students to attend, and especially my supportive, understanding administrators and our music teacher who went way above and beyond to do all of our sound during the last few weeks of rehearsals and at every performance.

#4: I am grateful for my book blogging club--for half an hour every other day, I get to hang out with a room full of really cool students and geek out about things ranging from the Hunger Games trailer to my love for Neil Patrick Harris. And without them, I would probably not have started writing here.

#5: I am grateful for my family--my husband, of course, is the easy one--but also my mom and dad and sister, and new step-dad, and step-sisters, and step-brother-in-law, and step-niece, and my mother- and father-in-law, and sister-in-law, and my aunts and uncles and twelve first cousins, and two first cousins once removed, and my cousins-in-law, and my husband's aunts and uncles, and first AND second cousins, and great-aunts and great-uncles, and then of course all the people we're not related to but who are parts of our family anyway (godparents, neighbors, former babysitters/adopted grandparents, teachers, etc.) Whew!

Ok--enough is enough, for this post at least. I still want to write about books that I am thankful for, but that's a post for another day, I think. (Maybe tomorrow morning when I'm hanging out at JFK! I am definitely thankful for Jetblue's beautiful T5--takes a lot of the yuck out of flying on Thanksgiving!)

Have a great holiday if you're in the States; otherwise, just have a good regular weekend, I guess!

Looking For Alaska (Or: You GUYS, Why Didn't You WARN Me?)

2011-11-18T12:29:00.001-05:00

First off: If you have not read Looking For Alaska by John Green, please stop reading this blog post. Yup, stop right now. Go read the book. Then come back. I'll wait.

Ready? Ok. If you're still reading, I'm going to assume you've read the book. Because there will be spoilers. And despite the subtitle of this blog post, I've never been so glad not to have been spoiled on a book. So please, please, please if you haven't read the book, go away. You'll be glad when you read it.

[While I'm taking up space so that people don't accidentally spoil themselves, let me remark that I am really looking forward to having energy to devote to this blog again. I've been directing A Midsummer Night's Dream with my students and the first performance was yesterday. By 9:30 Saturday night, I'll be done with the show! My students killed it last night and I'm really proud of them, but I will be very, very happy to have my life back.]

Ok, back on track. Looking For Alaska. I don't know how I managed to remain unspoiled on the biggest plot point of this novel that seems to be (justifiably) beloved by everyone on the internet. But there I was, sitting on the train, reading the book, naively wondering, gee, what could they be counting down to? What's going to happen when I get to those grey-edged pages?

And then It happened. I can't remember ever really going through the stages of grief this clearly for a fictional character. I most definitely began with denial. Pages and pages of denial. I'm sorry, everyone else in my subway car, if you thought were sitting down next to a normal person and not a subway loon. I can't imagine you loved the teary muttering and head shaking and furious page flipping that ensued. It just really, truly, didn't occur to me that It--you know what I'm talking about--could be the Big Bad Thing. Especially with the structure of the story, and Green's pacing leading up to It. And all I could think was, "Why didn't anyone WARN ME ABOUT THIS?"

I'm usually the one springing things on other readers. One of my favorite things in the world is to read books to or with my students that I know will elicit strong reactions from them. I love it. The Giver and The Hunger Games definitely do this. When I read "My Last Duchess" with my seniors this year and they got it--that was great. And I cry at books fairly often (most recently before this: The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Before I Fall). But this particular blend of surprise and shock (two different things), and absolute devastation--I really can't remember the last book that did that to me. Even when bad things happen in the Hunger Games series--even the last, worst thing--didn't surprise me quite this much. That was the world. Maybe I wasn't using all my reading smarts during the first part of Looking For Alaska, but I think it's just really, really brilliant writing.

Once I got over my first rush of disbelief and genuine sadness, I was able to reflect on how grateful I was for this experience. This is why I read. And truly, I was really glad not to have been spoiled, even though it was a rough train ride. So, thanks, John Green, and thanks, discreet bloggers. I've tried to follow suit as much as I could here so that others can have the same experience.

What books have you read that truly, deeply surprised you, or moved you beyond a momentary reaction? What did the author do to get that reaction? As a reader, do you want those experiences, or are they too difficult?

Road Trip Wednesday--Assigned Reading!

2011-11-16T10:43:00.001-05:00

This week's RTW is about something near and dear to my heart: assigned reading!

This week's topic:

Inhigh school, teens are made to read the classics - Shakespeare,Hawthorne, Bronte, Dickens - but there are a lot of books out therenever taught in schools. So if you had the power to change schoolcurriculums, which books would you be sure high school students wererequired to read?

This one is fun because, to some extent, I DO have the power to change the curriculum, at least in my own classes.

1) The most successful book I have ever, ever taught? By a landslide? No surprise here: The Hunger Games. It got my students reading, which is absolutely my measure of success in the classroom.

2) The book I paired with The Hunger Games in my Dystopian Lit class was The Giver. I have loved it for so long that it breaks my heart to think of kids growing up without reading it. It has a much slower build than The Hunger Games but most of the kids agreed that the payoff was worth it.

My first year of teaching--or rather, my first year of standing in front of my classroom every day trying to teach something--I followed a pretty cool curriculum our school uses that included a unit on Tim Burton's films and a unit on To Kill a Mockingbird. Both were more or less busts, even though I loved the material. There were two units that worked a little better, though:

3) Romeo and Juliet. I knew my classes a little better by then, so I decided that rather than struggle through cold readings of the script, we would watch the Baz Luhrmann movie--with captions on. We actually had some really good close reading discussions with the movie paused, looking at the writing on the screen.

4) Speak

5) Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

6) Monster

7) The Outsiders

These were all from our lit circle unit. The circles themselves weren't great, but these books got some really positive responses. Speak was the first book that some of my students actually read on their own. The students in the Part-Time Indian group thought they were getting away with murder--they figured there was no way a teacher would assign a book with that many pictures and swear words if she had actually read it. (I shocked them when I calmly told them that I had read it twice, knew full well what was in it, and thought it had sufficient literary merit to assign it anyway.)

If I got to add any book, right now, into the classes I'm teaching now? Hmm. Honestly, I just read Before I Fall, and I think we could have some really great discussions about issues of bullying and relationships and personal responsibility. Then again, in terms of hooking reluctant readers, nothing beats The Compound. Or if I wanted my students to think about big ideas--government, privacy, environmental issues--maybe Water Wars or Delirium or The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

Thoughts on Motivation (and THREE more giveaway links!)

2011-11-11T14:22:00.001-05:00

Today's Friday Fives is one I really can't answer yet.

What are the FIVE ways that get you from the beginning to the end of your WiP without losing all your hair?

Simply put: I haven't yet. But there is one thing I've started to realize about my brand new WIP that sets it apart from the one I've been poking at since last November.

I want to read this book. So...I guess I have to write it first.

A big part of this has to do with genre. I will read the occasional contemporary/realistic MG novel. And goodness knows I read a LOT of them when I was growing up. But, teacher persona aside, just me, as a human being, choosing books? My mix breaks down to about 75% YA--of that, probably 85% is genre fiction, primarily dystopian with some fantasy and historical thrown in, and the rest is realistic/contemporary. Then maybe 15% adult fiction, with much of that drawn from my mother's book club picks (Time Traveler's Wife, Water For Elephants, a whole bunch of Lisa See, etc.) The other 5% is split between MG and non-fiction (most recently Malcolm Gladwell). So, clearly, the new WIP is much more on target for me as a reader.

The other thing I have to sheepishly admit is that the older WIP is--if not exactly based on my life in middle school--then at least drawn from it. I started with characters and scenarios that were real, and then embellished. It was good practice in terms of storytelling and raising the stakes, because it gave me something to measure against. "Well, this is what happened in life--what's the thing that would happen in fiction, instead?" But it didn't have the same element of surprise that my current WIP does.

When I started writing last year, I didn't think I'd ever be able to build a world good enough to sustain a dystopian novel. And maybe I won't be, but I feel like I'm at least making progress. What I do have right now are characters who stay in my head. I'm starting to actually have the writerly experience of learning about my characters, rather than inventing them. It's like a constant, low-grade version of the feeling I get when I'm reading and I want to find out what happens to the character so badly that I skim or skip whole paragraphs just to get to the resolution of a particular conflict. I want to know--and this time, I have to write it to find out.

In other news--

A few awesome ladies are doing some pretty excellent giveaways. But hurry! One ends today!

1) The "Maybe Genius Has an Agent" Contest
ENDS 11/11!

Enter to win signed books AND critiques! (BTW, while following her blog is not required to enter, it only took me about three posts to decide this funny, smart lady is someone I want to follow.)

2) Jessica Love's OMG I Have An Agent Giveaway

I'm totally in awe of this fellow HS English teacher who managed to finish a novel AND get an agent--that's the dream, people.

3) Malinda Lo's New Website Giveaway

Ash is high on my TBR list--and with a budget-imposed book-buying moratorium until after the holidays, I'm hoping for a copy to come my way sooner. (And it is a gorgeous new website!)

Road Trip Wednesday: Writing Superpowers

2011-11-09T19:58:00.002-05:00

Road Trip Wednesday just keeps getting harder and harder. Today's question is:

What are your writing and publishing superpowers (drafting? beta-reading? writing queries? plotting? character creation? etc.) -- and what's your kryptonite?

Honestly, I feel like I have no business even answering this one. I have twenty blog posts and two WIPs that, combined, don't yet reach 10,000 words. But really, right now--that kind of is my superpower. I'm new. So I'm allowed to not know things, I'm allowed to ask questions, and I'm allowed to not be very good. This is the first thing I've done that I'm really, truly new at in a long time. Like, maybe the last thing was trying out for my first high school play, or picking up the clarinet in 8th grade. Other things have been offshoots of things I was already good at. When I stage managed for the first time, or directed, I had already done a ton of acting and random tech theater work, so I felt that there was pressure to be good right away. When I started teaching, I had gone through ten summers working at camp, so even though teaching public high school in Queens was a far cry from theater camp at a Y outside Albany or progressive private school camp for 9-year-olds in Greenwich Village, I still expected to be good right away.

But writing? The only time I have ever sustained any kind of daily writing habit was when I was fourteen and writing fanfiction. For Ally McBeal. (Plus one crossover, where Ally and friends visit the Bartlet administration from The West Wing. Oh yeah. It's out there. It's terrible--all 13,000+ words of it!) So going into real writing, I have no pressure other than wanting to tell stories. I can celebrate every word, because it's one more than I had written before. I can bang out a short story and submit it to a contest, blithely aware that I will almost certainly not be chosen for publication. I'm basically a writing infant--and that's my greatest strength right now.

And my Kryptonite? At the moment, computer games and trashy TV. Really anything that lets me put off actually sitting down to write!

Life Happens!

2011-11-08T22:21:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note to say that I'm sorry I haven't been as active either posting or commenting as usual in the last week or so--this weekend, I took a whirlwind trip from my home in New York to a dear friend's wedding in California. Wheels up to wheels down, the whole thing was about 54 hours long, full of ocean and West Coast fast food and dancing and jet lag.

Plus, NaNoWriMo! I doubled my word count today--it's still pitiful, but things are starting to spark and flow. I posted an excerpt on my profile--I'm interested in what questions people have or what they're curious about, so feel free to NaNoMail me or post comments here. I'm having a lot of fun thinking about these characters but I feel like the world isn't very fleshed out yet.

To those of you who are actually making the kind of progress that will get you to 50,000--I am deeply, deeply impressed. To those of you who are going more my speed--keep going! Every word is a win! And to those of you working on other projects--may the work ethic that NaNo is meant to inspire enter your hearts to a much greater degree than it has mine!

I'll be back on schedule tomorrow, making the rounds of RTW!

Another fabulous giveaway!

2011-11-03T22:13:00.001-04:00

Lydia over at The Word Is My Oyster (a fabulous blog, by the way, with a weekly feature called Medical Mondays that lets Lydia show off the fact that she is not just a soon-to-be-published YA author but also a DOCTOR) is giving away books! And giftcards for books! And even a critique so that your writing can get closer to being--you guessed it-- books!

Go! Read! Enter!

(I believe Terry Pratchett makes an assertion in one of his books about the correlation between the number of exclamation points a person uses and the integrity of his or her sanity. Um, I present this blog entry without further comment. You be the judges. November!)

Road Trip Wednesday--Writing Coaches

2011-11-02T20:47:00.003-04:00

Ok, a short but sweet Road Trip Wednesday:

What kind of writing coach do you need? When you have to coach friends, what kind of coach are you?

As I embark on my second NaNoWriMo, my answer is simply: a coach who will keep me writing! Right now, I just need to keep putting words on paper. I'm not so worried about whether my writing is good--not yet. I need to make it a habit, and stick to it, and actually finish at least one of my works-in-progress. Once that happens, we'll see about what kind of help or feedback I might want.

Fellow NaNo-ers--how's it going?

I Am Grateful

2011-11-01T21:11:00.001-04:00

I am constantly amazed by the generosity of the book blogging community, both in terms of their willingness to embrace newbies like myself, and in terms of giving away scads of actual, physical books. Today I come to you with an extraordinary example of the latter: Beth Revis, author of Across the Universe, is offering a chance to win 19 books plus a ton of swag (that's goodies, for those of you who are young enough to use the word "swag" differently than us old folks.)

And this isn't just a chance to win cool prizes--it's also a great idea for a blog entry. So, without further ado, I'll have a go at deciding:

What book am I MOST grateful for?

One book? Really? That's all?

Ok, fine, I'll pick one. But I will be posting separately, as November rolls along and Thanksgiving approaches, about my many, many runners-up.

Honestly, at this moment the book I am most grateful for is The Hunger Games. Before The Hunger Games, I had a handful of successes as an English teacher who secretly longed to be a librarian. A couple students even told me that books I handed them were the first books they have ever read all the way through on their own. And that felt great (I mean, and also bummed me out, but on the balance, it felt pretty good.)

Then I read The Hunger Games and promptly designed a trimester-long English class around it*. Suddenly, everything changed. My students who used to ignore my every word--well, they kept ignoring my every word, except that now it was because they were too engrossed in Katniss and Rue's alliance or Peeta's injury to care what I was going on about. All five copies of Catching Fire that I bought for my classroom were snapped up as soon as I brought them in, and several were lost in perpetuity as students passed them around from person to person without bothering to check them in first. You might think that the students would dash through the series and then resign from reading forever--but that's not what happened. This is what happened:

"Mrs. S--what else do you have that's like The Hunger Games?"

"Hey, do you have any other books that are exciting like that?"

"What should I read next? I need a book."

The Hunger Games started conversations about reading, between me and my students, and more importantly, among my students as a group. Kids who had nothing in common were suddenly swapping news about the movie and debating the casting choices, or recommending books to each other. These conversations are my single favorite part of being a teacher, and for that, I have to send a huge wave of gratitude to Suzanne Collins for writing The Hunger Games.

*Anthropological footnote: when I put that class, Dystopian Lit, on the schedule for the first time in December 2010, I was flooded with students coming up to me in the halls asking me what "that d-word" meant. When I taught it again starting in March 2011, it seemed that many, many more of my students were familiar with the genre.

NaNoWriMo--It's Happening

2011-10-31T21:29:00.002-04:00

Maybe it's the Halloween parade raging outside (we've heard tunes ranging from "Thriller" to "Shipoopi" from The Music Man, plus enough rabid screaming to fill three Justin Bieber concerts) but I succumbed to crazy and signed up for NaNoWriMo again. A discussion prompt in the 7th grade English class in my room this morning made a YA dystopian world spring into my head in all its glory.

So, I'm SilversteinELA over there--and totally confused about how to do the whole Writing Buddy thing (I guess maybe it's not working right now?) but excited to figure it out. I will try for the goal, of course, but really I'll be pleased with myself if I can top last year's ~7,500 words. 10,000 would feel really good--that would mean that I sat down and wrote every day, even if it was just 300 and change words per day. Anything after that is icing. (I recently read, and loved, It's Not a Sprint, It's A Marathon--a dead simple reminder that the important thing is finding a writing habit that you can stick to, so while I will use NaNoWriMo as a kickstart, I think really I will be going for more of a marathon speed.)

Ok everyboday--Allons-y! Time to write in T-2:30!

Friday Fives!

2011-10-28T18:14:00.002-04:00

This week at Friday Fives, the question is:

What are the FIVE (book or movie) worlds you would love to live in?

1) I've scouted out some of the other responses, and it seems that few can resist the allure of Harry Potter. And neither can I, if only to go to Honeydukes and drink some Butterbeer. I mean, seriously. But definitely post-Voldemort.

2) Lyra's Oxford from the His Dark Materials series (or really, wherever in that world). I mean, yes, that series makes me cry as hard as anything I've ever read, but to just sort of be a normal person living there--having a daemon is possibly the coolest idea I've encountered.

3) Little House on the Prairie. Yes, their lives were incredibly intense and hard a lot of the time, but unlike other historical periods/places that interest me (Austen's England, Wharton's New York), women on the prairie had a chance to break out of some of the traditional social roles. And the "women's work" was a different kind of thing--yes, it was cooking and laundry in the home, or teaching outside the home. But it was cooking dinner over a fire, or if you were lucky, in a big cast iron cookstove--full of fire. It was cleaning and butchering a dead rabbit, or chopping off frozen chunks of carcass in the winter, or stretching three cups of cornmeal into two days' food for six people. Laundry was backbreaking, sweaty labor, involving giant tubs of scalding water, stirring and lifting and wringing heavy fabrics that became unbelievably heavy when wet. And teaching--still not an easy job under any circumstances--was in a tiny room in the middle of nowhere, with no other adults around, and with students ranging from the tiniest ones learning to read, to the big boys who only came long enough to run off the teacher, or beat him until he eventually died of his injuries which is something that gets casually mentioned in Farmer Boy. Wow, this does not explain why I want to live there at ALL. Um, they make sugar-on-snow candy and sometimes there are horses?

4) The world of Carolyn Haywood's Betsy books (not to be confused with the also-charming Betsy-Tacy books). I guess as an adult, this is less applicable, but these books just entranced me when I was a kid. They were from my mom's era of "Why don't you go play kick-the-can in the street until it's dark," and I grew up in a not-so-nice neighborhood where the only other kids when I was young was were little boys next door who stole my tricycle and then burned down their house. So while the Betsy books are realistic (well, idealized, but at least possible) they seemed like a fairy tale to me in a lot of ways.

5) This may be cheating, but pretty much any world created by Aaron Sorkin. Like reality, but with much better dialogue! And people try to do the right thing and be honorable and then give speeches about being honorable! And the speeches sound so good! (Ok, really, this is just a preview of next week's Friday Fives, I guess.)

Road Trip Wednesday--Best Book of October

2011-10-26T10:47:00.000-04:00

Time for Road Trip Wednesday again! My how the time does fly.

This week's topic:

What was the best book you read in October?

This is always such a hard prompt--during the school year, I read like a maniac because of my commute (see my blog title!) so I average something like ten books a month. A little more when I'm reading a steady diet of average-length YA fiction, a little less when I'm reading epics (the Eragon series took me a month or more--and it was so long ago now that I fear I have to re-read it when the fourth book is released!) or denser work.

This month, I finished the Luxe series (so much fun!) and inducted myself into the Malcolm Gladwell fan club after reading What the Dog Saw, Blink, and Outliers (we own The Tipping Point because Mr. S is a big non-fiction reader, but it has vanished into the stacks for the time being so I haven't read that one yet.)

But even though both of those projects were pretty enjoyable, I would have to say that my favorite October book is Chime by Franny Billingsley.

OOPS--wait a minute--let me consult my records--no, actually, my favorite book of the month was Shine, by Lauren Myracle! How could I have ever confused those two?

Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist. I actually did read Shine, just a day or two before all the National Book Award mess started. I really loved it--there are obvious similarities to Speak, which I also love, but I love Shine's focus on the community. It helped me get invested in the other characters so that the ultimate reveal kind of broke my heart. I am so excited to read Myracle's latest, Kissing Kate, and I think she's really cool for turning a crummy situation into something really positive. In short: moving, suspenseful, book, with a realistic and lovable protagonist, and an awesome author.

That said--Chime sounds pretty good. It will probably be joining my TBR pile soon. Billingsley certainly can't be blamed for any of this, so there's no reason not to take this as an excuse to pick up a new book!

Friday Fives: Five Favorite Ages

2011-10-21T20:06:00.000-04:00

This week, Friday Fives asks:

What are the FIVE best ages of your life and why?

Ok, this one is hard. I've been putting it off all day. I graded some papers. I read all of Field Trip Friday (which usually takes all weekend!) I even went online and did that jury questionnaire that got mailed to my mom's house by accident. But I think I'm ready to go:

5) 14. I didn't really think I would include much between like, 11, and college. But actually, my first year of high school, and the very beginning of my second--yeah, I had some pretty good times. I've been thinking about what that actually felt like lately--and it was always exciting. It was frequently awful, but the highs were so high that they actually kind of made up for it. This was especially true my first year of high school, when I was kind of adopted by the clique of older theatre kids, and before I realized that they weren't great friends and mostly didn't actually care that much about me. (A note on the advantages of Facebook--I'm friends with a lot of those people now, and they all seem like pretty cool adults. It makes me wonder about my high school self.)

4) Ages 4-8. This covers the period when I was becoming a reader, and just devouring the children's section at the library. It was the beginning of school, when I still loved it (except for first grade, when I cried every day because I was afraid of my teacher) and before it got complicated with cliques and mean girls and grade anxiety. I became a big sister, I spent a lot of time playing alone in my backyard and making up stories, and I still kind of thought I could fly if I focused hard enough and jumped off the coffee table in just the right way.

3) 26. I feel like not including my current age would be a real downer (and my students ask my age often enough that keeping it a secret is really pointless). My life is pretty good right now. I'm doing pretty well at balancing what I want to do and what I have to do, and my husband (and cat!) make things at home completely lovely.

2) 23. I finished my M.A., got married, got hired, and started teaching. A huge year.

1) 19. I was a sophomore in college. I was really establishing myself as a stage manager. I spent Winter Study taking a Musical Theater Performance class that culminated in me standing up in front of a real audience and singing "Stars and the Moon" by Jason Robert Brown. Garden State played at the little indie theater in our tiny college town and I spent the rest of the year overdosing on the soundtrack. I lived in a dorm way on the outskirts of campus, but I lived there with some really cool girls--and met my husband, who lived in the dorm next door, when he walked me back from a party one night because both our dorms were so far from everything else. That summer, I did the program that made me realize I wanted to teach rather than pursue professional theater. The next fall, I moved to a dorm much closer to the theater, and next door to my friend Lauren, who I can confidently say will absolutely always be one of my very favorite people. College in general was a great time for me, but I would say the year I was 19 was the high point.

I mean, I don't know. Realistically, maybe this should be more specific. A lot of bad stuff happened to me at those ages too, but I find that it's not what stands out. And hopefully, in ten or twenty or forty years, this whole list will be different. But this is it for now.

What was I just saying about this awesome community?

2011-10-20T19:34:00.000-04:00

I'm so excited and touched that after just a few weeks of blogging, Mr. Colin Smith has given me the One Lovely Blog award! This award asks that the winners pay it forward to fifteen bloggers. I'm going to try to choose folks who were not also on Colin's list--so Jaime and Jennifer, cheers to you lovely ladies!

Now, onto my fifteen. If I've named you--don't feel like you have to post it or do anything if you don't want to! I'm still so new at this that I look up to pretty much all of you so me giving you awards feels a little backwards. I have a few different categories:

YA/Writing Bloggers

1) Katy Upperman
2) Left Brained By Day; Write Brained--All the Time
3) Rebecca Behrens
4) Paper Hangover
5) Y(A)? Cuz We Write!
6) The Word is My Oyster
7) The YA Sisterhood
8) YA Confidential

Teaching Bloggers
9) NYC Educator/Miss Eyre
10) Miss Brave
11) Teachable Moments

Special Awards: While I love all the blogs above, these merit a special note or two!

12) Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords--This is one of the all-around best blogs I've ever read. Rob Rummel-Hudson blogs mainly about raising his daughter, Schuyler, who I would so love to have in my class someday. Schuyler loves the color pink, monster movies, and Coraline, and she has polymicrogyria, a brain condition that impairs her speech and some other motor functions. Rob is also a published author (I highly recommend his book, Schuyler's Monster ) and occasionally blogs about the writing/publishing world as well.

13) YA Highway--If not for YA Highway, I would not be writing this post. They got me started, with Road Trip Wednesday, and they have a great fun blog to boot.

14) Lois Lowry--I couldn't resist, even though I'm sure this is the goofiest award she's ever won, and really, seriously, who do I think I am? But I really enjoy her blog--it's chatty and fun and bops around from her life to her writing to adorable kitten and dog pictures.

15) The Bookshelf--I'm so proud to introduce one of my very own students! She is an avid reader and one of my favorite people to swap book recommendations with. She has great taste (but you don't have to take my word for it! Check out her book list on the side of her blog!) I'm sure she'd appreciate any comments/intros if you have time to stop by her blog.

Road Trip Wednesday--Why Do I Write?

2011-10-19T08:27:00.000-04:00

This week, Road Trip Wednesday asks a question that I had to think about pretty hard:

What's your numero-uno reason for writing?

I was hesitant at first because I'm not great at making the time for writing that I feel I should, and because it seems like so many of the other bloggers I follow are so serious and diligent about it. But then I thought, hey, this is writing too.

So, what's the number one reason I write?

I write because no one can tell me I can't.

I'll never be in the Winner's Circle at the Kentucky Derby (I was one of those horsey kids). I'll never be on Broadway or on TV (theater major). I'll never work in the White House (huge fan of The West Wing).

But ever since way, way before I wanted any of those things, I was a reader. Authors were my first celebrities and my first heroes. And while I'd have to get past a lot of people to reach any of those dreams, there is no one who can tell me that I can't write a book. Or ten books. Or a hundred. Even if I only ever share them with my own kids someday--this is something I can do if I choose to.

[Edited to add links and such! iPads are great for emergency blogging but less great for formatting stuff!]

Meta-Blognition (or: Thanks, Everybody!)

2011-10-18T10:11:00.000-04:00

So, I was completely right in my blogging intro--community was absolutely the piece I was missing. I'm so much more excited to blog now that I feel like I'm getting to know my fellow bloggers a little bit! I'm still a wee little baby blog compared to a lot of the blogs I admire, but I know I can count on some traffic on Wednesdays and Fridays for my Road Trip Wednesdays and Friday Fives. I find myself getting really excited to do those posts each week. I blog on Wednesday (on my prep period, when I can, or during my blogging club when it meets on Wednesdays) and then put in a few hours at night going from blog to blog seeing what everyone else said and commenting.

I used to be so freaked out by commenting on blogs, especially established ones. I thought, who am I to say anything? Why does this blogger I like so much want to hear what I think? Although people who know me well would be shocked to find this out, I can actually be really shy in some situations. When I went to college, I had to make a conscious decision to always be friendly--I figured I had a limited time period where everyone would be trying to make friends, and I wanted to take advantage of that. It was hard and scary, but I met some amazing people I never would have otherwise. Some I ran with for a semester or a year or whatever, and some became the kinds of friends who I will forever be able to pick up, mid-conversation, where we left off, even if I haven't seen them for a year. So I'm trying the same thing with blogging.

All this blogging about blogging was triggered by the fact that tomorrow I'm going on a field trip that doesn't end until 7pm, and then my little sister and her friends are coming in from out of town. I'm really excited about both of those things--but I also thought, immediately, "When will I do Road Trip Wednesday?!" This blog is really becoming part of my life. I'm really excited about that. And I really appreciate all the people (Colin, Katy, Jaime, Alison, Jennifer, Lydia, et al.) who have been so friendly and have such awesome blogs that I find myself thinking about blogging at least daily. I've been part of several internet communities in the past--most of them, various fandoms--and eventually, the snark turned from fun to toxic, and they buckled under the weight of their own sniping. This is the first time that I've seen a community this supportive of even its newest members.

So hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow at some point--but if not, catch you for Friday Fives!

A Little Light Meme-ry

2011-10-15T23:54:00.000-04:00

From Quita and Pam over at Y(A)? Cuz We Write!, I bring you one of my favorite things to do on the internet since 1998, a list of things that I get to comment on!

All of the red titles = I've read them and own them
All of the blue titles = I've read them but don't own them (likely, they walked away from my classroom library over the last two and half years!)

All of the titles with * next to them = I own, but have not yet read

All of the titles with ^ next to them = I don't own, but want to read!

What have you read on this list? Any books up here you're dying to read? Any that you think should be subbed on? What would you swap out?

Top 100 YA Books (2011 version)

1. Alex Finn – Beastly

2. Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones

3. Ally Carter – Gallagher Girls (1, 2, 3, 4)

4. Ally Condie – Matched

5. Alyson Noel – The Immortals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

6. Anastasia Hopcus – Shadow Hills

7. Angie Sage – Septimus Heap (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

8. Ann Brashares – The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1, 2, 3, 4)^

9. Anna Godbersen – Luxe (1, 2, 3, 4)

10. Anthony Horowitz – Alex Rider (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

11. Aprilynne Pike – Wings (1, 2, 3)

12. Becca Fitzpatrick – Hush, Hush (1, 2)^

13. Brandon Mull – Fablehaven (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)^

14. Brian Selznick – The Invention of Hugo Cabret

15. Cassandra Clare – The Mortal Instruments (1, 2, 3, 4)

16. Carrie Jones – Need (1, 2, 3)

17. Carrie Ryan – The Forest of Hands and Teeth (1*, 2*, 3^, 4^) [Didn't know there were four-but this series has been getting raves, and Carrie Ryan went to my alma mater, Williams College, so it's high on my list!]

18. Christopher Paolini – Inheritance (1, 2, 3, 4^)

19. Cinda Williams Chima – The Heir Chronicles (1, 2, 3)

20. Colleen Houck – Tigers Saga (1, 2)

21. Cornelia Funke – Inkheart (1*, 2, 3)

22. Ellen Hopkins – Impulse

23. Eoin Colfer – Artemis Fowl (1*, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

24. Faraaz Kazi – Truly, Madly, Deeply

25. Frank Beddor – The Looking Glass Wars (1, 2, 3)

26. Gabrielle Zevin – Elsewhere

27. Gail Carson Levine – Fairest

28. Holly Black – Tithe (1*, 2, 3)

29. J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

30. James Dashner – The Maze Runner (1, 2^)

31. James Patterson – Maximum Ride (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

32. Jay Asher – Thirteen Reasons Why

33. Jeanne DuPrau – Books of Ember (1*, 2, 3, 4)

34. Jeff Kinney – Diary of a Wimpy Kid (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

35. John Boyne – The Boy in the Striped Pajamas^

36. John Green – An Abundance of Katherines^

37. John Green – Looking for Alaska^

38. John Green – Paper Towns^

39. Jonathan Stroud – Bartimaeus (1^, 2, 3, 4)

40. Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl – Caster Chronicles (1, 2)

41. Kelley Armstrong – Darkest Powers (1, 2, 3)

42. Kristin Cashore – The Seven Kingdoms (1*, 2)

43. Lauren Kate – Fallen (1, 2, 3)

44. Lemony Snicket – Series of Unfortunate Events (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

45. Libba Bray – Gemma Doyle (1, 2, 3)

46. Lisa McMann – Dream Catcher (1, 2, 3)

47. Louise Rennison – Confessions of Georgia Nicolson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

48. M.T. Anderson – Feed

49. Maggie Stiefvater – The Wolves of Mercy Falls (1*, 2, 3)

50. Margaret Peterson Haddix – Shadow Children (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

51. Maria V. Snyder – Study (1, 2, 3)

52. Markus Zusak – The Book Thief

53. Markus Zusak – I am the Messenger

54. Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

55. Mary Ting – Crossroads

56. Maureen Johnson – Little Blue Envelope (1, 2)

57. Meg Cabot – All-American Girl (1, 2)

58. Meg Cabot – The Mediator (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

59. Meg Cabot – The Princess Diaries (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

60. Meg Rosoff – How I Live Now

61. Megan McCafferty – Jessica Darling (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

62. Megan Whalen Turner – The Queen’s Thief (1, 2, 3, 4)

63. Melina Marchetta – On the Jellicoe Road^

64. Melissa de la Cruz – Blue Bloods (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

65. Melissa Marr – Wicked Lovely (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

66. Michael Grant – Gone (1, 2, 3, 4)

67. Nancy Farmer – The House of the Scorpion

68. Neal Shusterman – Unwind

69. Neil Gaiman – Coraline

70. Neil Gaiman – Stardust

71. Neil Gaiman – The Graveyard Book*

72. P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast – House of Night (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

73. Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials (1, 2, 3)

74. Rachel Caine – The Morganville Vampires (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

75. Rachel Cohn & David Levithan – Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

76. Richelle Mead – Vampire Academy (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

77. Rick Riordan – Percy Jackson and the Olympians (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

78. Rom LcO’Feer – Somewhere Carnal Over 40 Winks

79. S.L. Naeole – Grace (1, 2, 3, 4)

80. Sabrina Bryan & Julia DeVillers – Princess of Gossip

81. Sarah Dessen – Along for the Ride

82. Sarah Dessen – Lock and Key

83. Sarah Dessen – The Truth about Forever

84. Sara Shepard – Pretty Little Liars (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

85. Scott Westerfeld – Leviathan (1, 2, 3)

86. Scott Westerfeld – Uglies (1, 2, 3, 4)

87. Shannon Hale – Books of a Thousand Days

88. Shannon Hale – Princess Academy

89. Shannon Hale – The Books of Bayern (1, 2, 3, 4)

90. Sherman Alexie & Ellen Forney – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

91. Simone Elkeles – Perfect Chemistry (1, 2, 3)

92. Stephenie Meyer – The Host

93. Stephenie Meyer – Twilight Saga (1, 2, 3, 4)

94. Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees

95. Susan Beth Pfeffer – Last Survivors (1, 2, 3)

96. Suzanne Collins – Hunger Games (1, 2, 3)

97. Suzanne Collins – Underland Chronicles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

98. Terry Pratchett – Tiffany Aching (1, 2, 3, 4)

99. Tonya Hurley – Ghost Girl (1, 2, 3)

100. Wendelin Van Draanen – Flipped

Friday Fives: Childhood Favorites

2011-10-14T19:33:00.000-04:00

Ok, I hope my students forgive me for this, because I imagine seeing your teacher become an internet fangirl is a little like seeing her in her pajamas, but: I have to SQUEE a little at this week's Friday Fives topic from Paper Hangover.

They want to know:

What are your FIVE favorite childhood books?

Ok, kiddos, let's see if I can boil this down to five. I spent the first twelve years of my life, easy, reading exclusively from the children's section of my library, and only reluctantly transitioned to the YA section, with frequent trips back until I actually got my dream job in 11th and 12th grades: shelving books in, you guessed it, the children's section. These days, I read a lot more YA than children's/middle grade books, because it holds my adult attention better and also because I teach high school. But I suspect that truly, my heart will always belong to the books I discovered in the children's room of the Schenectady Public Library--Central Branch--under the guidance of an amazing staff of librarians who I saw at least once a week pretty much from birth to age 18 (thanks, Mrs. Butch and Mrs. Grossman!)

1) The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr (who also wrote one of my runners-up: The Big Balloon Race. Before I loved Little House, even, I think I loved this one. I was doubly captivated by the story of Josefina, a beloved pet chicken on a wagon train west, and by the concept of a story quilt, where the materials used and the patterns on the quilt represented experiences the family had, like a scrapbook. I basically wanted to take this out every week, including the weeks when we had just returned it.

2) The Oink and Pearl books by Kay Chorao. True, Oliver and Amanda seemed to be the more popular pig siblings, but I was nuts about Oink and Pearl. When Oink tries to make Pearl a great big fizzy ice cream soda for her birthday--but uses baking soda instead of liquid soda? Classic! I laughed, I cried. Well, not really. I didn't know what baking soda was either, I was four. But this was another one that spent more time at my house than at the library.

3) The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, specifically On The Banks of Plum Creek. Little House In The Big Woods gets an honorable mention, mostly for the description of making sugar-on-snow candy and eating a piping hot roasted pig's tail. Actually, all the books in the series contain some superb food writing, but Plum Creek features Nellie Oleson prominently and really highlights the dreadful gloom of having straight brown hair instead of curly blond hair. I used to just stare at myself in the mirror and will my hair to curl. (And maybe it worked--if I cut it short enough and put goop in it when it's wet, it does indeed fall right into ringlets. If there's a full moon. And I throw salt over my shoulder.)

4) Saint Therese and the Roses by Helen Walker Homan. (Disclaimer: Since I write this blog as part of a school activity, it's important for me to mention that including this book is not meant to endorse or recommend its religious views. I'm including it because of how much I enjoyed its story, and because it was meaningful for my mom to share a book she had loved as a kid with me.) This is a biography that's told as a really engaging childhood/coming of age story. I do endorse the basic message that being kind in small ways can really add up, which was really influential for me, but I don't think that's necessarily connected to any particular religion or religion at all. My mom had read it as a kid, as I mentioned, and she read it to me--and when our library deaccessioned it, she bought me a copy. It was out of print, so she had to use a newfangled internet shop to find one--yes folks, this book is also memorable as our household's first-ever Amazon.com purchase.

5) Possibly my all-time favorite book, ever, anywhere: A Little Princess. I actually got my copy from the shelf to put the ISBN into Goodreads, because it is maybe the physical book I treasure most as an object (not counting signed/inscribed books--I love this book just for itself, specifically Jamichael Henterley's illustrations.)

(Sara's eyes! Her hair!)

This is another book with traits I love from both the Little House books and the St. Therese biography. Sara is my favorite kind of heroine--smart, plucky, and brunette (like Laura!). She doesn't think she's pretty (although of course she is, but not in the crowd-pleasing way that Isobel Grange, with her "dimples and rose-colored cheeks, and long hair the color of gold"--which is why it completely infuriates me that in the two highest-profile film versions, the actresses cast as Sara are blondes with round, rosy cheeks and dimples. I mean, Shirley Temple? Really?) and that actually is part of who she is. More importantly even than that, though--she's kind. She's generous and open-minded and takes care of people who are smaller or worse-off than she is even when it's terribly hard for her. She's pretty much been my role model for my entire life--but she's not perfect. She struggles to do the right thing, and she gets mad and cranky and misunderstands her friends and has to subdue her pride, and on and on and on. I just could not love her more.

So there you have it--my first Friday Five!

Blog Hop!?!

2011-10-14T10:27:00.000-04:00

Talk about jumping right in. As part of my goal for this blog, I've tried to be a more social blogger, mainly through reading and commenting on other people's Road Trip Wednesday posts until grading or sleep demand attention. This is something new I'm trying--and the volume is potentially much higher. I'm planning to spend the weekend intermittently checking out the blogs on the blog hop list, even though I am a little overwhelmed by what seems like the internet version of going out to a crowded club, when my speed is really throwing a Mad Men theme party in my apartment for like ten people.

Here's to new things!

Three blogs I enjoy:

Obviously, YA Highway because of Road Trip Wednesdays, and their excellent Field Trip Friday literary news roundup.

I'm really excited about YA Confidential--I always wonder if my students would agree with their "spies".

And, for good measure--Lois Lowry's blog! I was so thrilled to find it and it's very chatty and occasionally contains really tantalizing information about her new books.

Road Trip Wednesday--My Writing Journey

2011-10-12T10:51:00.001-04:00

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. This week, YA Highway wants to know:

What has your writing road trip looked like so far? Excitement? Traffic jams and detours? Where are you going next?

Eek. I'm still a little squeamish talking about my writer-self. I'm way good with my reader-self and my teacher-self, but my writer-self has been dormant for so long, wth only brief outings. I do have the beginning of a WIP...insert standard author excuse-making here, I guess, but since I don't let my students indulge in those, I really can't get away with it either.

I started this novel last NaNoWriMo, with my 6th grade writing class. I am proud/chagrined to say that two of my 6th graders beat my word count...one by quite a bit (I came nowhere near meeting my goal, but it was more writing than I had done for myself since elementary school.) Since I was writing alongside 6th graders, I decided to try a realistic MG novel. Currently it stands around 7,500 words, and for the time being, I'm leaving it be in order to focus on the demands of the new school year. I think I may give it another go during this year's NaNoWriMo--which I know is against the "rules", but it will be more of an inspiration to start writing daily--even 500 words or so--and that can't hurt. The title right now is Minnow. It has an outline, a playlist, and blobby first chapters. And I think that's all I have to say about that.

I also wrote and submitted a short story to a writing contest this summer, something I had never done before and had never really even considered. But the Machine of Death contest called out to me, and I had some free time over the summer, and so it went. I didn't agonize over it; I didn't tell myself that secretly, the editors meant that the contest was open to anyone but me (as I often do); I simply wrote, revised, and submitted. It was a whole new thing.

And of course, I'm writing this blog now. I'm committed to at least RTW every week, plus following my students once they get their own blogs up and running, and keeping up with a number of the other RTW participants. Actually, I have a question for the many more experienced bloggers who might click over to this--I tend to follow blogs in my Google Reader. Is there a preferred/better way? What's the current thinking/technology on following people?

Defining My Terms

2011-10-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

As an English teacher, I'm constantly recommending books and/or haranguing my students to come peruse my overflowing bookshelves. I try to stock a wide variety, including some books that just don't catch my interest but that I know will be appealing to certain of my students. (BTW, thank you Borders, for choosing back-to-school time to close up shop. At 70% or even 90% off, I was much more willing to purchase books that I don't want to read, if I know my students will. There is much more non-fiction sports writing in the collection now, for example.) At the same time--I'm buying these books on my own time, with my own hard-earned, y'know, blah blah blah, so I feel ok about letting my quirks shine through. I stock very few vampire books--my entire Twilight series walked away my first year and I never saw fit to replace it. If someone wants to make a case for a vampire book or series that stands out, I'll try it--it just seems too hard to sift through and find what's good vs. what's pulpy and mass-produced. A crummy vampire novel is just plain crummy--whereas even a crummy dystopian novel
at least, inherently, has a social critique of some kind for the reader to think about.

Ok, so all that is to say, I think a lot about what makes a "good" book. I get asked at least once a day, "Mrs. S, is this one good?" I have to interpret what that question means based on who's asking--some kids mean, "I don't really read--is this going to grab me and suck me in?" Other kids mean, "You know me, you know what I read--is this my style?" Other kids are willing to try anything and just want some reassurance that something is worth a shot.

As an adult with a degree in English who reads at least 75% YA, I feel like I need to be judicious with applying the big g-word when I'm talking to other adults. I find myself saying things like, "Oh my god, I just read ____________ and I'm so obsessed right now," or "This plot has me so hooked--go away and let me read my book." (Sorry, Mr. S!) With knock-out, absolutely wonderful books, I'll take the step. I stand by every part of the His Dark Materials and Hunger Games trilogies. (If I ever get a tattoo--which I don't plan on doing, but who knows--it will be a particular four-word phrase from Mockingjay which I can't even think without getting a little winded.)

I have to have a few go-tos when people hear about what I do and ask questions (go-to recommendations that I am willing to call "good books", even to adults, right now: Divergent, The Ship Breaker, Delirium). But this is a weird standard that I don't necessarily apply in my teaching life, except with a few students who are really voracious and discerning readers. I hold these multiple definitions of "good" in my head all the time. And I'm sure we all do--the book you can't put down even as you find the actual writing hard to take. (A recent experience like that for me was Vixen--I was desperate to know how it would turn out, but the dialogue and some of the description just clunked along, to my ear. If you interrupted me when I was reading it and asked if it was good, though, I would have shooed you away so I could keep reading, which most people would take as a yes.)

So--what's a good book? The part of my brain that feels like I should be reading more Wharton, Dickens, or (oh help) David Foster Wallace* says it has to do with the prose itself--how is the story told? The part of my brain that only learned to form letters so I could write my name on a library card, that's been reading hungrily and instinctively since I was four says it has to do with the experience in the moment. Am I enjoying it? Am I going to keep turning the pages?

And of course, as a teacher, I have the ultimate test. Is this student going to connect in a way that makes him finish this book? Will this student read this one and then want to read another one?

How do you define a "good" book?

*A footnote, in honor of the great man: my husband, also an English major, claims Infinite Jest is his favorite book. I love my husband and so I'm supposed to say things like "I would do anything for him" or whatever. Infinite Jest disproved that after about a hundred and twenty pages. Sorry. Taken together, Mr. S and I would make the ultimate English major, with him covering Chaucer, Marlowe, and everything from Virginia Woolf to the present, and me taking Shakespeare and everything from Tom Jones through Edith Wharton.

Road Trip Wednesday 10/4/11

2011-10-05T10:44:00.000-04:00

It's time for another Road Trip Wednesday post!

This week's topic:

What supporting character from a YA book would you most like to see star in their own novel?

Ok. Well. Where to start? I mean, it feels like the major supporting characters are too obvious (a Gale's-eye version of the entire HG trilogy, especially once we lose sight of him in Mockingjay? Yes, please. Or even the Tale of Effie Trinket.) And I wrote here last week about how much I would love to see more of anything set in the world of Ship Breaker. When I polled my students today, I put myself on the spot and talked about how interesting a story about Aunt Edith from The Luxe Series could be--her youth must have been quite something.

But surely there must be a better answer--a character I'm really attached to, from a book that's on my all-time greats list. Hmm.

Ooh--ok, got it. Either Asher or Lily--maybe both--from The Giver. Lois Lowry has continued to write within that universe, but I want a direct sequel to The Giver, maybe alternating first-person or third-person limited narration between Asher and Lily, since their ages and relationships to Jonas are so different. Ooh--and while I'm getting greedy, maybe Fiona, too. Someone who actually participates in Release in her work. Ok, maybe Fiona actually wins this contest. Yeah, definitely. So, my answer is:

Fiona from The Giver, by Lois Lowry!

Road Trip Wednesday--What Was The Best Book You Read In September?

2011-09-28T19:03:00.000-04:00

I'm new to this but I'm going to jump right in. YA Highway's Wednesday Road Trip this week asks: "What was the best book you read in September?" Since school started this month, I got my built-in reading time back and I've been devouring the books that I didn't get to this summer. It's really, really hard to choose--so I'm going to have to make a list.

1) Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly. I loved Alex and Andi, the dual protagonists, and I actually also loved the bits of history and music theory I picked up along the way. I really appreciated that it was a standalone novel--YA has gotten really series-heavy, which is great because I always want more of my favorite characters, but it can be really satisfying to read a story that actually ends at the end of the book.

2) The Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi. I'm hearing rumors of a sequel to this book, which I would be really excited about, but it also felt like a satisfying standalone in terms of plot. What I really want is more of this world, whether or not we see more of the main characters. Information about this dystopia is dropped throughout the story like breadcrumbs, and each new piece of information is so fascinating that I want a whole story just to explain it. I want more information about the different religions, the drowned cities, and most especially about the "half-men".

3) Delirium, by Lauren Oliver. This is another dystopian world that I'm excited about. While there weren't as many tantalizing details as in The Ship Breaker, there was a great premise--what if love was seen as a disease--and science found a cure? What if you grew up learning that love was something dangerous, and the goal was simply to get children to age 18--the age at which the surgical cure can safely be administered--without falling in love?

4) The Luxe, by Anna Godberson. I know everyone compares this series to Gossip Girl, which is justified in a kind of macro sense, but IMHO, it is much better-written. Much. (I'm thinking about addressing my issues with both Gossip Girl and Vixen, which was also similar, in another post, so I won't do too much bashing here.) The point is, it's romantic, it's suspenseful, it's clever, and the third-person limited shifting narration does a great job of letting us into each character's head in turn. Plus, I'm a sucker for period society dramas, with all their rules just waiting to be broken...and, the clothes. I worked in our theater's costume shop in college (Best. Workstudy. Ever.) so I at least have some idea of what the various detailed descriptions of fabric, cut, and color actually mean. And I love it. And I am jealous of it. Suffice it to say, with about a hundred and fifty pages left last night, I marched out to the bookstore and grabbed all three sequels off the shelf because I knew I wouldn't be able to wait to read them. I was right--I made a sizable dent in the sequel, Rumors, on the way home today.

So, those were the best books I've read this month. And yes--I did read a few books this month that didn't make the cut, so consider yourself lucky!

An Introduction

2011-09-28T12:58:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my blog! I'm Mrs. S, an English and Theater teacher currently working in New York City. I've tried blogging before but never with much success or longevity. I think my problem was that I was never part of a blogging community before. I'm hoping all that will change now that I'll be running a book blogging club at my school. I'll also be participating in some writing challenges from other blogs, notably those from YA Highway (Road Trip Wednesdays) and Should Be Reading (Teaser Tuesdays).

The title of my blog comes from the place I do most of my reading these days--on the F train! My commute to and from work gives me about 45 minutes of good reading time on the train each way, for about an hour and a half every day (and more if I'm waiting for the train a long time!)

I really want to follow more blogs that are related to YA literature, writing, publishing, or reading in general, so please leave a comment saying hello and sharing a link if it's ok for me to add you to my blogroll!