Chief Sealth Reads! (& Blogs)

Okay, so what are the chances I would l not be able to put down a book subtitled “The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”? My last reading adventure was a Pulitzer Prize winning dud, so maybe I was just ready for something interesting.   Stiff explores just what happens to our bodies and parts that get donated to science–all those cures and medical breakthroughs have to begin somewhere, right? This was FASCINATING to take a peek under the proverbial sheet and see how science and industry use donated cadavers to further our understanding of life, death, and just how amazing our bodies really are. Not for the the squeamish, Nonfiction can sometimes be a little dry in the wrong hands, but Roach’s writing is witty, smart, and downright hilarious on nearly every page. A great choice for anyone who likes to know how things work.  Really.  Hilarious!  I was laughing out loud in parts–and there are many, um, “parts”!

The list below will reveal my biases, but I should confess outright:
I love young adult novels that have page-turning plots, strong opinionated main characters, and I don’t mind if there’s a little magic or otherworldliness.
I started to name this list “The Best YA Books of 2009,” but stopped when I realized that title wouldn’t be accurate. There were several excellent releases in the past year that I read and admired, but they didn’t truly move me the way these 8 titles did.To save on space, I’m listing here only the titles and authors; the full list plus my summaries and reviews are here.

In no particular order, then, here are my favorites of 2009:

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire (parts 1 &2 of a projected trilogy)
by Suzanne Collins
Graceling and Fire
by Kristin Cashore
Jellicoe Road
by Melina Marchetta
The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer (parts 1 &2 of a projected trilogy)
by Patrick Ness
Chains
by Laurie Halse Anderson

The book below I’ve not yet read, but I’m confident it will join my favorites of 2009 once I have – every reviewer I trust raves about it.
Marcelo in the Real World
by Francisco X. Stork

(To read my summaries/reviews of these books, please click here.)
(To view the American Library Association’s Best YA Books of 2009, click here.)

Last weekend, I went to Vancouver BC. While there, I went to the Anthropology Museum. Despite its beauty, interesting artifacts, and Buddhist monks making a sand mandala, I couldn’t connect to any of it. As I finished If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz, I realized I didn’t really like it, but I did feel connected to it. I felt like it was full of my artifacts. Quilts that told stories of a grandmother who lived in a dark, cold place where forests housed magic and women held the world in their pockets. It was a good journey, but I don’t know that anyone else needs to go.

I recently finished the Philippa Gregory novel The Other Queen, and I remembered all the books I saw at Barnes & Noble last time I was looking for something to read.  Of course the selections were not the same and I was disappointed that I did not see the two books on the topic of the plight of the Jews in Europe during the Nazi regime.  So, after quite a long time looking at other Philippa novels that I haven’t read yet, decided to go with another author by the name of Rosalind Miles…..but the same historical setting.   I just am hooked on the subject of European (especially English)  history circa 1400-1600.   I selected the book titled I, Elizabeth.  I have only just begun this rather lengthy novel, but like the style and format.   Has anyone read any of Rosalind Miles’ works?  Can you recommend something else she has written or another author who writes about this period of history?

I am reading two books sort of at odds with each other, but both extremely good.  The Tenth Muse My Life in Food by Judith Jones and American Idle:  A Journey through our Sedentary Culture by Mary Collins.  Both are non-fiction and I had to stop the Tenth Muse as American Idle is due at the library sooner.

So if you want to read about a young woman just out of college who ventured off to France after it’s occupation and found a career in food and publishing this is the book for you. Warning: it may make you squirm when she talks about sweetbreads (are those guts or brains?) or drool when she talks about a loaf of bread and cheese in great detail.  Let alone the challenges of a single woman in the late 40s making her way in the world.  It continues back to the United States with a husband where she experiences everything from being targeted during the communist scare to having a boss a bit jealous of her success and her many triumphs along the way.  I can’t wait to finish it.

American Idle is  an autobiography about an athlete, a bicyclist who is in a life changing accident.  Mary Collins goes from the daily workouts to a still life while she pushes through physical therapy and lives live with an ankle and hip that were shattered/damaged extensively.  She starts her journey discussing how our bodies are designed for the hunter/gatherer lifestyle.  She proceeds trying to understand how/why Americans are choosing sometimes involuntarily to not move.  Ms. Collins covers everything from her daughter’s organized sports to  workers at a potato chip plant and a Harley Davidson factory.  Her research also delves into government, urban planning and funding.  Areas that honestly I never thought of affecting health.  Her research covers income levels and cultures, churches and schools, and the vast array of gov’t programs and non-profit profit and how programs work or don’t.  It is one day overdue, ok 2 now, but I have to finish it and I am very close to done.  Well worth the late fines, but my apologies to the people waiting for the book.

Vampires are indeed all the rage these days. Here’s a list of blood-sucking titles for bitten students: http://www.seattleschools.org/schools/chiefsealth/library/lists/vamps.htm

And for the howling fans of werewolves, another list of CSHS Library books: http://www.seattleschools.org/schools/chiefsealth/library/lists/wolves.htm

In the last few years, Nick Hornby’s novels have had the “I couldn’t put it down and so I got nothing done this weekend” effect on me.  I read my first Hornby novel, A Long Way Down, when I was living in Guatemala for 3 1/2 months (taking care of my new baby son, Diego…I didn’t have anything else to do!).  I was drawn to its concept – four individuals who meet at the top of an infamous London rooftop, all of them ready to jump off for different reasons.  I fell in love with Hornby’s witty prose and his uncanny ability to turn a subject so taboo into something  funny and poignant.  This quote from the Boston Globe captures the essence of this novel:

“A mordant, brilliant novel… A Long Way Down ought to be required reading for writing students who want to know how to evoke one set of circumstances with its opposite, how to capture unspeakable pain with humor, how to suggest camaraderie with trenchant, piss-all irony, how to turn a novel based on suicide into a cello suite about how to go on living.”
—The Boston Globe

Then, I read Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy, and How To Be Good.  I did watch the movies, Fever Pitch and About A Boy, and while I enjoyed the movies from an entertainment perspective, no movie could capture Hornby’s unique style or evoke the same kind of emotion as his writing can.

This summer, I was sitting in the library’s YA section and I noticed SLAM.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not typically drawn to YA fiction…but since Nick Hornby wrote it, I was definitely going to read it!  It was excellent!  And so I recommend it for youth and adults alike.  It’s an easy read; a compelling and insightful story about a teenage couple that get pregnant and grow up quickly as they navigate parenthood and their changing relationship.  The Miami Herald says this about it:

“Offers wry insights into the male psyche, making this book a good bet for Hornby fans, no matter their age.”
—Miami Herald

His latest novel, Juliet, Naked is next on my list.

Here’s his website if you want to preview any of his novels:

http://www.nicksbooks.com

-Lauren

When I was in middle/high school in the ’80s, an enormous chasm yawned between the shelves of books written for kids and those meant for adults. There were a couple of books fit for teens (The Outsiders, for one), but not many – and not all that interesting. Certainly there were no titles that reflected life as I knew it. So I started reading adult books at a young age, struggling with vocabulary and themes not intended for a teenaged audience. I think there were benefits in this early exposure to difficult books – my vocabulary grew larger, I learned to re-read when I got confused, and my attention span and focus both became sharper.

In the past several years, the number of books written for teenagers has exploded – and as competition for publication and sales have increased, the quality has greatly improved. (One reason for the change has to be Harry Potter – the young wizard’s popularity completely changed publishers’ understanding of the money to be made in this market.)

And what I’m finding, as a librarian buying and reading books for teenagers, is that many of these books are every bit as complex, interesting, and compelling as titles written for someone my age. Not all of them are excellent, of course – so my purpose here is to get you started with some of the most wonderful books currently available.

The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger, both by Markus Zusak
The Book Thief is narrated by Death, and is set during WWII. This book has been chosen by adult book clubs across the country, and I’ve yet to encounter anyone who hasn’t been profoundly moved by it. I gave it to my 70-something mother (she’d love my advertising her age here, I’m sure) to read several months ago, and she reported being unable to put it down.
I Am the Messenger is a completely different kind of book, which illustrates (as if writing The Book Thief hadn’t adequately done the job) just how talented Zusak is. This story is set in contemporary Australia, and follows the misadventures of 19-year-old Ed Kennedy. The down-and-out cabdriver begins receiving playing cards marked with a time, date, and address – and he bemusedly shows up at these appointed moments to witness events whose outcomes, he comes to understand, he’s supposed to do something about. Who’s behind the cards, why and how is Ed the recipient? Amazing book.

I’ll be back every couple of weeks with more titles for your enjoyment. Read them yourselves, recommend them to the young people in your life (who’ve probably already read them!), and suggest them to your book-loving friends. I think you’ll find the world of YA fiction a wonderful surprise!

Jake Adelstein is the only Westerner to work as a regular newspaper reporter for the Yomiuri, Japan’s largest newspaper and the largest newspaper in the world. He wrote about the police beat, and he recently published his memoirs in English with a book called Tokyo Vice. I read it this weekend, and boy did he have an exciting life. His investigative reporting ended up being integral in bringing down one of Japan’s worst Yakuza mob bosses. I literally couldn’t put this book down, and read it cover to cover in an evening.

With using some more aggressive tactics for making time to read, I have discovered that time to read does exist…without eliminating showering.  This means that I actually have finished books and am now on to others.

I finished Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  Amazingly hilarious and sad.  Nothing like a book that leaves you feeling like you’ve been taken advantage of.  It’s a book where you know what is going to happen and the characters know what’s going to happen, but still you’re surprised when it does happen.  If you haven’t read or heard of it, the main character is choroimpaired.  He is unable to control his movements through time.  He travels back and forward through time, forced to quickly acclimate.
I know there is a movie, and I’m not very excited to see it.  Katie informed me that Niffenegger has a new book out, and that I’m excited about.

-Joshua