No More Pants

Two nights ago, I read in its entirety the last book in the Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series: Forever in Blue. Set during the summer after Lena, Bridget "Bee," Carmen, and Tibby's first year in college, the final book is just as good as those preceding it. I'm partial to the second one -- Bridget has always been my favorite character -- but much of what happens in Forever in Blue rang true to me. Bridget spends the summer in Turkey on an archaeology trip, Lena's taking a summer figure drawing class in Providence, Tibby's staying put in New York City to take a screen-writing class, and Carmen's working on a summer theater production in Vermont. Though physically apart for most of the book, the girls stay in touch through email, letters, phone calls, and of course, by sending those magical pants to each other. After four years of no washing, they must have worked up some kind of magical stink! It wouldn't be a summer of sisterhood if there wasn't a whole lot of drama, brought on by the boys once more. Will Bridget repeat her attraction to an older man? Will Lena and Kostos get back together? Will Carmen find herself again (oh yeah - Carmen lost all her awesomeness her first year at Williams College, and spent a lot of time by herself eating ice cream) with the help of the stage? Will Tibby get pregnant?

Well, don't look at me for the answers. Check out the final installation of the sisterhood saga!

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

I finally read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer over the past few days. I know it came out 2 years ago and I might seem really slow on this, but I have only been a young adult librarian for a few months so, I am not a delinquent librarian! That said, here is my review of Twilight:

Bella Swan moves from sunny Phoenix, Arizona to a small town called Forks in Washington, where a sunny day is a rarity and no one questions you playing a game of baseball in the rain. Bella's a pale, clumsy seventeen-year-old who never attracted the attention of boys back in Phoenix, but for some reason, every guy at Forks seems to be checking her out. The weirdest thing is the effect she seems to have on the very attractive, model-like Edward Cullen, her biology partner. Sometimes he just looks so angry around her. Then one day, things change in a big way. He saves her life, and suddenly, she finds herself falling for him, falling hard, and developing a mental list of questions about this peculiar, hot guy. Is he maybe... a vampire? Clocking in at just under 500 pages, Twilight may look like a chunky read, but its fast pace will pull you through those 498 pages in no time. While I found myself totally interested in Bella's story, I was sometimes distracted by Meyer's lazy writing; she must've called Edward "beautiful" no less than 100 times. On a similar note, there were parts of the story that either left me confused or lead me to believe they would eventually come into play. For one, I thought the fact that Bella was so pasty might be important, but it never really came up as meaningful. Also, I wasn't sure where the author was going with the interactions between the Cullen family and Bella's father's longtime Native American friend. Perhaps these unanswered questions are intended, since there is a sequel: New Moon. As someone who's never read a book about vampires, so this was a first, I found it really interesting. Would you consider giving up life as you know it, exchanging a temporary life on earth, for an enduring life on earth where you could only be out at night?

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

The aptly named Colin Singleton has just been dumped by the nineteenth Katherine. That's right - all the girls he has dated have been named Katherine, and all of them have dumped him. Colin is also a huge nerd/former child prodigy, who just finished high school. This doesn't add up, I thought -- how does a really nerdy guy have 19 girlfriends??? Well, it turns out that he employs the word "girlfriend" pretty loosely. Distraught over the most recent dumping, Colin is dragged out on a road trip with his chubby Muslim friend Hassan who, unlike Colin, passes his time watching "Judge Judy" -- not reading several books a day. Hassan and Colin's road trip comes to a bit of a standstill when a roadside attraction in Tennessee helps them meet a pretty girl who is not a "Katherine." Since An Abundance of Katherines is written by John Green -- whose first novel Looking for Alaska won the Printz award -- you know it's going to be witty and interesting and well-written. Unlike his weightier debut, Katherines doesn't play with your emotions; it plays with your head. In addition to his other nerdy pursuits like anagramming, Colin is also dead set on writing a math formula that predicts a relationship's demise. Yup, that's right, there is real math in this book. I don't know about you, but I don't need any math in my novels! (Don't worry, it's not that much math.) In spite of the math, I still found An Abundance of Katherines compelling and laugh-out-loud funny.

This Is All: the Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

This Is All: the Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
Aidan Chambers

While the size of This Is All can seem intimidating (weighing in at a bit over 800 pages), one quickly forgets the heft as Cordelia begins to tell her story. The premise is that 19-year-old Cordelia is pregnant and writing a pillow book to give her daughter on her 16th birthday. A pillow book, as defined by wikipedia, is a "collection of notebooks and notes which have been collated to show a period of someone or something's life". Cordelia is also a poet so some of her favorite poems (and ones of her own) are included as well. The story mostly sticks to Cordelia's relationship with her boyfriend, and first love, Will.

In general, it is a good story, if a bit longwinded at times, but in that sense it makes it more real that a 19-year-old girl is writing it. There are times when the formatting gets creative, such as in one part of the book where it is divided into two stories (one on the right side, one of the left) and the reader gets to choose which one to read first. In a later section of the book, the main storyline is peppered with short unconnected stories and while that is an interesting choice, it seems to facilitate skimming the stories in order to get back to the suspenseful main story. Another possible issue is that one has to wonder what 16-year-old wants to read a detailed account of her mother’s sex life, no matter how well written.

It takes a little while to get into This is All, but by the end it's difficult not to get attached to Cordelia. If you've ever felt the thrill and desperation of teenage love, then there are many things in this book to relate to or live through vicariously.

Did you like The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl? Do you want to win an iPod???

If you answered yes to at least one of the above questions, then I have the contest for you. According to the contest website: "In the novel, there are three things that Fanboy wants more than anything. He tells you two of them...but not the third.

So...You decide the third!

That’s right — you come up with that magical third thing. Explain what it is and — here’s the important part — why Fanboy wants it. Do this in under 100 words and fill out the form below and you’re entered to maybe win the iPod!"

The contest has another component. As more people enter the contest, the type of iPod they are vying for moves up from a shuffle to a nano to a full-size iPod. For more information, check out the website. Haven't read the book yet? No problem. We have a copy sitting right here on the shelf, so you can literally check it out!

Printz Award Winner Announced Yesterday

The winner of the Michael L. Printz award was announced Monday, January 22, 2007. For the first time ever, the award went to a graphic novel: Gene Luan Yang’s American Born Chinese.


The 2007 Printz Honor Books are:

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; v. 1: The Pox Party
by M. T. Anderson

An Abundance of Katherines
by John Green

Surrender
by Sonya Hartnett

The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak

Princess on the Brink (The Princess Diaries, Volume VIII) by Meg Cabot

Oh Mia. Mia, Mia, Mia. You are always getting yourself into the worst situations!

She's baaa-ack. Yup, Mia Thermopolis is back in the latest entry in the Meg Cabot's popular and well-written Princess Diaries series. All of Mia's diary entries from less than a week are crammed into this title, which probably makes you ask, what does Mia have so much to write about? Well, my friend, Michael (Mia's beloved college boyfriend of the several books now, not to mention her best friend Lilly's brother) is moving to Japan. FOR A YEAR!!!! Yikes. This revelation has Mia thinking seriously about her game plan, and leads her to think that maybe she could give him Her Precious Gift (!!! she had been waiting until prom to do this). How is this one going to backfire? You know you've got to read Princess on the Brink to find out!

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, by Charles J. Shields

As you may know from spending any amount of time on Facebook.com, To Kill A Mockingbird comes up again and again as a favorite book. One of the most-assigned books in high school, and the best-selling novel of the twentieth century, To Kill A Mockingbird has reached heights of fame never anticipated by its author, Harper Lee. Mockingbird, Shields' biography of Harper Lee, whose real first name is Nelle (a backwards spelling of a relative's name, Ellen), explores the woman behind the book as well as the forces that influenced her writing - in particular, her father A.C. Lee, on whom Atticus Finch is based. Raised as the daughter of a prominent lawyer in small-town Alabama, Lee dropped out of law school and moved to New York City to attempt a career in writing. It was there that, with the encouragement and financial backing of two friends, she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird. At this point in her life, Nelle is somewhat of a recluse, refusing to grant interviews and appearances to pretty much everyone. As a result, the sources Shields uses are the people around her and the print material he found researching at libraries across the country. Still, I finished the book with a strong sense of who Nelle really is - how spunky she was as a child and young adult, how close she once was to another famous writer and neighbor in Alabama, Truman Capote, and how baffled she was with the success that came from her first and only novel. If you're curious about the woman who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird or about the writing process of a successful writer (I sure was), I highly recommend this book.

Cathy's Book

There's a new book in the Teens Only! section at the Homewood Public Library, as of a few days ago, and it's unlike any other book you can check out right now. This book, Cathy's Book - is really Cathy's journal, and it comes with over a dozen clues - in the form of notes, tickets, and photos. Cathy was dumped by her boyfriend Vincent, and while that was pretty awful, what's been going on since is even worse. More than that, she's starting to think Vincent isn't quite who he said he was. Things aren't quite adding up, so to speak. Cathy's Book entices you to examine her diary and myriad clues as you read. This exciting new book, recommended for fans of Donnie Darko and Lost (wow, I guess that means me), is much more than a book. Come check it out, literally!

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

So much can happen in one night. This is certainly true for Nick and Norah, the narrators of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. After Nick's band takes the stage as an opener, he runs into the one girl he doesn't want to see at the show - his ex, Tris. To show her he's over her (he's not), he asks the girl standing next to him if she'll pretend she's his girlfriend. She goes along with it - he's cute, she's getting over someone, why not? - but then she realizes his ex is someone she knows too. And as the night goes on, and on, Norah can't decide how much she likes Nick, if he's really over Tris enough to be with her, or if she's over her ex. Nick is similarly confused over what's so quickly transpiring, and what he wants. We also see how Nick and Norah are perceived by each other, when they are not narrating. Rachel Cohn wrote the Norah chapters, while David Levithan wrote Nick's. The two of them drag you into the noisy, sometimes vulgar music scene, where your life can kind of change in a night, if you let down your guard, and allow it. A must read for scenesters and music lovers.

For all you audiophiles

Do you like to listen to audiobooks, on your iPod or in the car or just hanging around the house? Well, there's this pretty neat site that has book reviews of audiobooks that are podcasts, so you can hear clips of the the audiobook (find out if you dig the reader's voice, or maybe find it annoying) and get a better sense of what the book is about. Check it out; it's called Audiopolis.

A Great and Terrible Beauty

How I Live Now

More Book Trailers - The Book Thief

Got Guitar Hero?

Yesterday I played Guitar Hero II for about 4 hours. It was awesome. I was wondering, do you guys/girls play Guitar Hero? Would you like to play it at the library? FYI: The library is about to purchase DDR equipment! So exciting! The first DDR program at the library will be happening Monday, January 22nd, at 7:00 PM and is for Junior High TAB (grades 7-8). The following month, the library will host a DDR evening for High School TAB. Start practicing!

Please comment on how much you want to play video games at the library!

GAAAH!

A certain librarian in Illinois is very excited that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice books are going to be made into a movie. Right now, it's called "The Alice Movie," and Luke Perry is slated to play Alice's father, and Penny Marshall is going to play Alice's teacher Mrs. Plotkin. There may even be a SERIES of Alice films.

Only a few more days until the final Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book comes out!

In the meantime, check out this article in the New York Times today about Ann Brashares, her husband, and her house.

Am I a slow librarian or is this somewhat recent news

Josh Schwartz, the creator and executive producer of the canceled The O.C. is going to be adapting and directing John Green's awesome "Looking for Alaska," last year's Printz winner. I can't wait to see it! I already knew he was working on developing the book series Gossip Girls for a tv show. He sure has a lot on his plate, a lot of really fun work!

Breaking News

Okay, not the real kind, but I just found out that The O.C. is officially over. How do you feel about this? (Sound off in the comments section!) I love and own the first season on DVD, watched the second, missed most of the third due to a timing conflict with "Everwood," but I've been trying to get into the current (final) season. Did the show get worse as it progressed? Surely. The brilliant, witty lines and scenarios of season one were short-lived as the show went on, but I still find myself endeared to the characters, even as they become caricatures of themselves.

UPDATE: The CW might pick up the show?!?

Book Review - Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Don’t you just hate it when your teachers decide to give you assignments on the same topic but don’t allow you to pass in the same thing for all of the classes? Pennsylvania teen Miranda’s knows that feeling. A meteor is scheduled to hit the moon one Wednesday night, and three of her teachers, including her French teacher, want her to write up an assignment on it. This was Miranda’s biggest worry and annoyance until the meteor actually hits the moon and, to the surprise of scientists all over the world, brings it a bit closer to the earth. The trivialities that consumed Miranda’s diary – Life As We Knew It is written in diary form – are replaced by concerns for basic survival, while tsunamis wreak havoc across the globe and life as they knew it changes forever. It’s difficult to review this book because so much of what happens needs to be revealed as you read the book. Life As We Knew It is in turn suspenseful, depressing, hopeful, horrifying, and inspiring. Like The Rules of Survival, this book is about a teenager trying to make it, but at least in Nancy Werlin’s book, the whole world wasn’t thrown into question. Cut of from communication for most of the book, Miranda and her family make a concerted effort to make it, but make it until what? They can only guess and hope.