Wishlist Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
Do a post about one book from your wishlist and why you want to read it.
Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My wishlist book this week is:

Reality Boy by A. S. King
(release date October 22, 2013)

From Goodreads:

Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school.

Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone’s just waiting for him to snap…and he’s starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that.

In this fearless portrayal of a boy on the edge, highly acclaimed Printz Honor author A.S. King explores the desperate reality of a former child “star” who finally breaks free of his anger by creating possibilities he never knew he deserved.

Why do I want to read this?

I read Ask The Passengers by A. S. King a few months ago, and thought it was wonderful. The author has a gift for portraying young adults as real people facing hard choices and dealing with the fall-out. I’ve been wanting to read more by this author (an earlier novel, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, was a Printz Honor book in 2011) — and Reality Boy sounds like a great choice. I’m intrigued by the concept, following a boy forced into a public role via reality TV at such a young age. I’d really love to know what happens to him, and whether he finds a way to escape his past and lead a normal life.

What’s on your wishlist this week?

So what are you doing on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a blog hop or book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

13Aug2013

Wishlist Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
Do a post about one book from your wishlist and why you want to read it.
Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My wishlist book this week is:

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith
(release date April 2014)

From Amazon:

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and twelfth floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they’re rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen’s relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and — finally — a reunion in the city where they first met.

A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith’s new novel shows that the center of the world isn’t necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

Why do I want to read this?

I’ve read and enjoyed Jennifer E. Smith’s two previous young adult books, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and This Is What Happy Looks Like (reviewed here). In both, we meet likable, unusual characters who fall in love — but with clever twists, a few obstacles, and quite a lot of intelligence. I really enjoy the author’s writing style, the light, upbeat approach, and the sweet romance of it all.

Plus, those titles! I’m a sucker for a book with a great catchy title, and this is yet another good one. Count me in!

What’s on your wishlist this week?

So what are you doing on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

9Aug2013

Book Review: Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

The main thing I want to say about Openly Straight is that I loved it. But that’s not a very helpful book review, is it?

Okay, I’ll get more specific. What’s it about and why did I love it?

Openly Straight is the story of Seamus Rafael Goldberg (but call him Rafe, unless you’re his best friend Claire Olivia, in which case “Shay Shay” is acceptable). Rafe is going into his junior year of high school and is frankly quite tired of being the gay kid. Not that he’s ashamed or wishes he was other than he is. It’s just that Rafe has grown up in Boulder, Colorado with parents who are totally loving free spirits — parents who threw him a party when he came out in 8th grade, complete with party hats that said “Yay! Rafe is Gay!” on them (I kid you not). Rafe’s mom is the president of Boulder’s PFLAG chapter, and Rafe regularly speaks at local schools about being gay, answering kids’ questions and in general being the face of “gayness”. To the extent that when the civil rights movement was discussed in history class, Rafe was asked for the “gay perspective”, and random girls at school approach Rafe to get “gay” input on current events.

Finally, Rafe decides to change his life and enrolls at the Natick School, an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts. Tiny detail he neglects to share with his parents: At Natick, he intends to not be gay. That is, he’ll still know he’s gay, but he’s not going to tell anyone. He’s tired of being seen first and foremost as gay, rather than just as Rafe, and he’s determined to start fresh with a new school and see what it’s like to just be one of the guys.

And at first, it’s kind of brilliant. He gets invited to play football! He’s accepted by the jocks! Guys include him in their guy-talk, and he’s seen as that cool new kid from Colorado. But as Rafe forms one particularly close friendship with a truly wonderful boy, the downside of his plan becomes apparent. Can he form a real friendship — and maybe more — when he’s hiding such a key piece of himself from the world? When does not telling — a passive act of omission — turn into actively lying?

It’s quite the dilemma. When Rafe finally tells his parents and Claire Olivia what he’s doing, they’re appalled and question him about going back in the closet. Rafe states that he’s not back in the closet; he knows who he is, but he chooses to keep it private — but is he just fooling himself? On the one hand, it’s easy to see the appeal for Rafe. Finally, he’s able to make friends and go through school without labels. He’s just the new kid, a decent soccer player, pretty fun to hang around, but not especially different than the rest of the gang. Rafe is careful to keep his head down. Despite his interest in writing, he declines to join the literary magazine for fear of drawing the jocks’ attention to his non-jock-like interests. And yet, as the school year progresses, Rafe comes up against more and more situations that make him uncomfortable, and the lies start piling up.

There’s a love story at the heart of Openly Straight, and it’s beautifully told, from the first moments when the eye contact lasts longer than Rafe expects, through the soul-baring late night conversations between two friends. Rafe’s love interest is a straight (until now) boy who has a heart of gold, and eventually it’s clear to both of them that their friendship has moved beyond brotherhood into some new and unknown territory. Except, of course, it’s not really unknown to Rafe, and because he started off school “openly straight”, the other boy believes that they’re exploring something new together while Rafe knows that for him, it’s not just exploration — it’s something he’s sure of. Heartbreak is inevitable, and boy, when it comes, it’s devastating.

Rafe is a smart, wonderful, lovable main character. Through his first-person narration, we can easily understand why he makes the choices that he makes, even as we wonder whether those choices will come back to bite him. (Obviously, they do). What’s wonderful about Openly Straight is that Rafe really struggles to do right. He doesn’t want to deceive, and he refuses to feel shame. But he can’t avoid the question — and neither can we as readers — whether anything he does and any connections he makes are actually real if he’s only sharing a part of who he is.

There aren’t any easy answers for Rafe. The deeper he gets, the more he realizes that he’s trapped himself in a situation that can only go badly. No matter how much he wants to fix things, some hurts and deceptions leave permanent marks. Does Rafe learn from his choices and his mistakes? Absolutely. But there are still consequences, and I suppose part of growing up is learning that good intentions don’t necessarily override damage done.

Openly Straight makes some great points without ever feeling heavy-handed, as when a boy in English class claims that Natick is a “tolerant” place, and the teacher questions the intention of the words “tolerate” and “accept”:

I thought about that. It reminded me of the excerpt from Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story that Mr. Scarborough had assigned us. White had talked about the strange sort of tolerance his roommates had had for him back at his boarding school in the 1950s. I remembered underlining the word tolerance. I mean, if you accept something, you take it for what it is. Tolerance is different. Less. So is acceptance at the top of the pyramid? Is that what everyone wants in the best of all possible worlds? Acceptance? I rolled the idea around in my head. It didn’t feel right, somehow.

For Rafe, part of his growth in the story is coming to the realization that acceptance isn’t enough; it’s being welcomed and celebrated for yourself — all parts of who you are and what makes you you — that really is the goal. And while he’s been comfortable being out for years, Rafe has to wonder whether he’s been accepting who he is all along without fully celebrating his own self. By the book’s end, Rafe is taking definite strides toward a new way of being open and being who he is — with less worry about how others see him, and a new commitment to interacting with the world while showing his real self.

Openly Straight is a lovely, funny, sweet book that moves along quickly yet gives its characters room to breathe and live. I felt like I really knew Rafe (and I often wanted to hug him and tell that everything would work out). With relatable characters and a unique premise, this book challenges the reader in very interesting ways. Many books in the YA market today tell a version of the coming-out tale; what makes this book so special is that it deals with life after coming out. Rafe’s journey is relevant to anyone, gay or straight, who’s had to deal with fitting in, wondering how others see them, and figuring out just how they want to be seen.

__________________________________________

The details:

Title: Openly Straight
Author: Bill Konigsberg
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication date: June 2013
Genre: Young Adult
Source: Well, it’s kind of a funny story. I was approved to read a review copy of this book, but was unable to access it. (Thank you anyway to NetGalley and the publisher!). In the end, I borrowed this book from the library. So it goes. And given how much I loved the book, I’m sure I’ll end up buying it one of these days!

7Aug2013

Thursday Quotables: When You Were Here / Openly Straight

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

If you’d like to participate, it’s really simple:

Follow Bookshelf Fantasies, if you please!
Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now.
Link up via the linky below (look for the cute froggy face).
Make sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com).
Have fun!

This week, I’m featuring two different passages from two different books — one that made my heart ache, and one that put a smile on my face.

Thursday Quotable #1:

My body is filled with complete emptiness and complete longing at the same time, only there’s not enough space in me for both, so they fight and argue and run masking tape down my middle to divide me.

Source: When You Were Here
Author: Daisy Whitney
Little, Brown and Company, 2013

Thursday Quotable #2:

If it were up to my dad, my entire life would be on video.

Anything I do, he grabs his phone. “Opal,” he’ll yell to my mother, “Rafe is eating corn flakes. We gotta get this on film.”

Source: Openly Straight
Author: Bill Konigsberg
Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

Link up, or share your quote of the week in the comments.

6Aug2013

Book Review: When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney

When You Were Here The death of a parent hits hard in this moving young adult novel by Daisy Whitney. Danny Kellerman, high school senior and class valedictorian, watched his mother slip away from him after a five-year battle with cancer. Despite telling Danny that she was holding on for his graduation, she passed away two months before the big event, and Danny has been walking through life in a fog ever since. He’s financially well-provided for, but that’s about the only thing going right for him. Danny’s father died in a sudden accident years earlier, and his older sister Laini walked away from the family soon after that. Even the love of Danny’s life, girl-next-door Holland who promised to love him forever, dumped him abruptly a month after she started college. Danny’s only source of comfort is his loyal dog Sandy Koufax, but it’s not enough. After blowing up on stage at graduation, smashing a car, and watching his friends celebrate life while he views it all from a haze of numbness, Danny knows something has to give. When he receives a letter from the caretaker of his family’s Tokyo apartment, hinting at a secret life his mother lived during trips to Japan for medical treatments, Danny decides that a summer in Tokyo might be just what he needs to get himself back on track and figure out what he has left.

Secrets abound in Tokyo. Why did everyone who encountered his mom remember her as being so happy? What did the mysterious doctor prescribe for her that gave her so much hope? And why, once he arrives in Tokyo, does Danny keep uncovering bits and pieces of his mom’s life there that make no sense to him?

As Danny explains to Kana, the girl who seems to have insight into his mother’s time in Japan:

“And I guess, most of all, I want to understand why nothing’s working for me. Why she was the happy one when she was dying, and I just can’t seem to manage anything when I’m living.”

When You Were Here is less about death and dying than about life and living. I found it very sad to read about Danny’s pain and loneliness — and yet I was also filled with admiration for this boy who held his home together while the most important person in his life was suffering. Danny makes no pretense about his love for his mother, and yes, the circumstances are extraordinary (how many teen-aged boys take their mothers to chemo treatments and clean up when they’re sick?), but it’s still quite touching to read his unembarrassed statements about her role in his life.

Likewise, Danny’s love for Holland is strong and true , despite the pain he experiences over what he sees as her desertion. Again, he is refreshingly honest about his feelings when it comes to Holland, and that’s a nice treat in a book about a boy of that age.

I did feel that the book veered a bit close to preachiness in parts, as Danny comes to certain realizations about his mother. The takeaway message that gets hammered home is that what counts is how you live your life, not how long you live, and that we need to find happiness in our small moments rather than focus on sorrow. That’s valid, but at times it did feel a bit heavy-handed.

That’s a minor quibble, however. Ultimately, by digging into his mother’s secrets, Danny is able to reconnect with feeling — feeling anything, both joy and sadness — rather than walking through life numb and alone. As Danny opens himself back up to emotions, he makes important discoveries about his mother, his sister, Holland, and himself, and finds a path forward past mourning and into a new future for himself.

When You Were Here is not a long book, but it is lovingly written and full of honesty and depth. Danny is a smart, likeable character, and it’s hard not to ache for him as we read about how much he’s already had to go through at such a young age. When You Were Here presents a portrait of a teen in a unique situation, and shows the power of love in all its varieties and shades to heal unfathomable hurts and to forge connections that might seem impossible. Don’t miss it.

__________________________________________

The details:

Title: When You Were Here
Author: Daisy Whitney
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: June 2013
Genre: Young Adult
Source: Won in a giveaway! (with thanks to The Perpetual Page-Turner)

3Aug2013

Book Review: The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Shade of the Moon (The Last Survivors, #4)

The Shade of the Moon is a continuation of Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Last Survivors series, which began with Life As We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone, and This World We Live In.

In the first three books in the series, the Evans family is the primary focus as they live through a horrific global disaster. When an asteroid strikes the moon and knocks it closer to Earth, “life as we knew it” comes to an end, as the changed gravitational forces lead to tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions — which in turn lead to an ash layer blocking the sun and causing world-wide winter. Agriculture fails, civilization begins to fall apart, and day-to-day survival is constantly a struggle.

The Shade of the Moon picks up four years after the original asteroid strike, and three years after the end of the original trilogy of books. The first three books revolved around teen daughter Miranda; in The Shade of the Moon, Miranda is a background character as the focus is now on her younger brother Jon. Jon was always the baby of the family, but as the story opens, he is now 17 years old, living in an enclave of the privileged — people deemed so important to the future of mankind that they live in guarded communities with access to food, clean air, nice homes, and health care. The not-so-fortunate live outside the enclave but work as laborers — although the “clavers” refer to the laborer population as “grubs”, which gives you a pretty good idea of the esteem in which they hold them.

Jon is a “claver” because he is a “slip” — through a connection, he was able to get a pass to live in the enclave, even though he doesn’t come from an important family or have the status of true clavers. Because he’s a slip, he has to constantly be on guard not to mess up, not to go against the grain. Protesting the treatment of grubs, especially as a slip, is a sure way to get himself, and probably his loved ones too, thrown out of the enclave and sent to the mines, or worse.

My question as I began reading The Shade of the Moon was: When did my disaster book turn into a dystopian novel?? This was not exactly what I’d expected, and not really what I was looking for. What I found so compelling in the first three books was the story of a family’s struggle for survival. It was quite a human story, with parents sacrificing for their children, children forced to grow up too quickly, people coming together in adversity and wondering whether a future would exist for any of them.

In The Shade of the Moon, life has moved on, but the survivors now live in a caste-based society in which human life has little or no value, at least if the humans in question are grubs. Claver boys are encouraged to go raise hell in the grubber town — and it’s clear that their version of fun involves random beatings, arson, and even rape. Clavers debate whether the grubs should have a clinic in their town — why waste resources on them? The grubs may have had lives of note before (Jon’s housekeeper is a former professor of philosophy), but that doesn’t matter. Clavers have domestics to manage their households, and domestics can be beaten, starved, and mistreated in myriad ways, so long as their productivity isn’t compromised.

In reading the Last Survivors books, I accepted the premise even if I wasn’t sure whether the science of the global disaster was at all realistic. In The Shade of the Moon, it’s not the science, but the sociology, that has me puzzled. I’ve certainly read plenty of books set in dystopian societies; that’s not the problem. The issue for me in The Shade of the Moon is how quickly this new dystopia has become the norm. It’s only been four years since the initial disaster, and less than that since the enclaves were set up and developed. Frankly, that just doesn’t seem like enough time for such a dramatic change in beliefs and attitudes to have become so strongly internalized by the people in this world. The members of the enclave don’t just enforce the caste system as a means of self-preservation — they truly believe that “grubs” are less, are not fully human, and are not worthy of adequate food or even a decent burial. Ultimately, I didn’t buy it, and my inability to suspend my disbelief was a constant distraction from the story itself.

That said, The Shade of the Moon is fast-paced, and once I got past the early chapters, it was compelling enough to make me keep going and to want to know how it would all turn out. Author Susan Beth Pfeffer doesn’t pull any punches, and she certainly isn’t kind to the characters we come to care about. The members of the extended Evans family are all wonderful and rich characters, but that doesn’t protect them from the very bad things that come their way in this book. I understand that young adult fiction needs a teen lead character, but Jon is less interesting to me than the rest of his family — and after spending the previous books with Miranda, I missed her throughout The Shade of the Moon, in which she’s older and therefore only relevant to the story as she relates to Jon and his struggles. The Shade of the Moon is also yet another YA book that features an “insta-love” relationship, and I just didn’t buy that either.

If you’ve read the first three books, should you read The Shade of the Moon? Mixed feelings on this question. This new book isn’t so much a continuation of the previous story as a new direction entirely. You’re not necessarily missing out if you don’t continue — but if dystopian settings appeal to you, then you might want to give The Shade of the Moon a try.

In fact, The Shade of the Moon may even work (possibly better) as a stand-alone. Once you understand the backstory, it can be read as a novel of a dystopian world, and while the family connections may not be as clear or powerful, the plot itself works along the lines of all the other “dystopians” in the market — a cruel, divided society with harsh rules, a courageous young person or two willing to risk their own safety in order to make a stand, and hey, even a love story!

It was unclear to me at the end whether there will be more books in the series, although I suspect that there will be. I suppose I’d like to know what happens to the characters and whether their lives improve, but I’m not sure that I’d feel all that compelled to continue. I’d recommend The Shade of the Moon for those who particularly enjoy the dystopian society genre — but if “dystopians” aren’t your thing, I’d say this one is not a must-read.

__________________________________________

The details:

Title: The Shade of the Moon
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Publication date: August 13, 2013
Source: Review copy courtesy of Edelweiss, in exchange for my honest review.

2Aug2013

Book Review: Out Of The Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Out Of The Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Out of the Easy

In New Orleans in 1950, being the daughter of a prostitute is a guarantee that you’ll never amount to much. But 17-year-old Josie Moraine intends to change her fate. Raised more by the tough-but-loving brothel madam Willie than by her own careless mother, Josie is whip-smart and determined. A hard worker, Josie cleans the brothel each morning, brings Willie all the miscellaneous objects she finds along the way, then works in a bookshop alongside handsome Patrick before retiring to her small bedroom upstairs in the store.

Josie sailed through school, mostly friendless due to constant mocking and disdain about her mother, and is saving up for a college education, even though she realizes that the odds of actually attending college are not in her favor. Meanwhile, Josie knows everyone in the French Quarter and everyone seems to know her.

When two strangers enter Josie’s world, her life suddenly changes as she realizes that people can see the good in her and treat her with respect and kindness. But as Josie sets new goals for herself and starts planning an escape, her old life seems to hold her more and more tightly, and no matter how she struggles, she keeps getting sucked back down into the dirt and squalor of life in the Quarter.

The plot of Out of the Easy follows Josie’s fight to claim a new life for herself, as she deals with a murder investigation, abandonment, threats, and betrayal, extortion, loss, illicit propositions, and the glimmer of a chance at love.

That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?

This is definitely not your typical young adult novel. Josie does not live in a world of black-and-white morals, and she doesn’t always make the best decisions. She’s dealing with the life she was dealt, and she really does pretty well for herself. How many seventeen-year-olds could live on their own, make their own way, deal with corruption every day without succumbing to it, and still dream of a better life?

The essence of life in the Quarter is sharply painted through the author’s descriptions of the sights, the smells, the sounds. There’s a grittiness and joy amidst the decadence and dirt, and the people in Josie’s world know how to live their lives to the fullest. Along the way, we meet servants, prostitutes, “information men”, and johns, and most are well-developed characters in their own right, making Josie’s world feel very lived in and real. Madam Willie is especially memorable, if a bit stereotypical, as the sharp-tongued, sharp-nailed businesswoman who scolds Josie yet loves her dearly and makes sure her destiny does not lie within the walls of a whorehouse.

Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the plot and the characters, the writing style got in the way quite a bit. For me, it came down to the old writing advice of “show, don’t tell” — and I felt that there was just too much “telling” going on in Out of the Easy. The sentence structure throughout was repetitive, with declarative sentences telling events in line after line:

I took a deep breath and stepped back. I started humming. Charlie stopped bucking. I continued humming and once again picked the towel up off the floor. I walked behind Charlie… I applied pressure to his forehead… I heard the key in the lock…

Those are lines from a page chosen at random, but I can literally open to any page and find the same pattern of noun/verb, noun/verb, noun/verb throughout the entire book. And yet, despite the focus on action sentences, much of the action happens “off-screen” or is resolved within a page or two. We find out through other characters’ conversations about a key development with Josie’s mother; we are introduced to a major threat to Josie — and then see it easily resolved within a chapter. Something about the writing style just left me feeling unsatisfied — it felt more like reading a journal about a set of events rather than being allowed to enter a fictional world and be swept away by it.

And yet, there are some lovely smaller moments. Early on, Josie goes to a rich-people’s party Uptown, and notices a table filled with family photos in sterling frames:

I stared at the pictures. If someone meant something to you, you put their photo in a silver frame and displayed it, like these. I had never seen anything like it. Willie didn’t have any framed photos. Neither did Mother.

Toward the end of the story, it’s significant that Josie does at that point finally have a few cherished photos in frames of their own. It’s a small moment, one presented without much fuss, but it gives a hint at the power of the story and the writer’s ability to create emotions and impact out of a few low-key details.

Overall, I enjoyed Out of the Easy and have no hesitation about recommending it. Still, I felt that there was a certain momentum lacking in the story and in the depth of the characters. I found the setting unusual and interesting, and the characters are a memorable and flavorful bunch, but there was something in the writing that kept me at a distance from the heart of the story throughout the book — so that ultimately, although I was interested, I walked away feeling unsatisfied. I suppose I expected more; what I got was fine, but it just wasn’t as strong or as deep as I’d hoped.

31Jul2013

Thursday Quotables: Out of the Easy

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

If you’d like to participate, it’s really simple:

Follow Bookshelf Fantasies, if you please!
Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now.
Link up via the linky below (look for the cute froggy face).
Make sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com).
Have fun!

This week’s Thursday Quotable:

We walked up St. Peter to Royal, back toward the shop. Neither of us spoke. We moved through the afterbirth of celebration, kicking cans and cups out of the way, stepping over pieces of costumes that had been abandoned through the course of the evening. Jesse grabbed a string of milky glass beads hanging from a doorway. He handed them to me, and I put them over my head. The day had a peace about it, like Christmas, when the world stops and gives permission to pause. All over the city, Orleanians were at rest, asleep in their makeup, beads in their beds.

In case you ever wondered what New Orleans was like the morning after Mardi Gras…

Source: Out of the Easy
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Philomel Books, 2013

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

Link up, or share your quote of the week in the comments.

26Jul2013

Book Review: If If Ever Get Out Of Here by Eric Gansworth

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: If If Ever Get Out Of Here by Eric Gansworth

In If I Ever Get Out Of Here, main character Lewis Blake faces yet another lonely year as the only Native American kid in the all-white smart kids’ class at the local junior high school. As a rez kid in 1975 Buffalo, New York, Lewis knows that 7th grade will probably bring more of the same for him — sitting alone, talking to no one all day until he rides the school bus back to the Tuscarora reservation with the kids he grew up with. Much to his surprise, though, one of the new kids from the town military base doesn’t seem to care that they’re from different worlds, and the two boys soon strike up a friendship over their love of the Beatles and Paul McCartney.

But friendship only extends so far. George and his family welcome Lewis into their home and their lives, but Lewis just can’t quite bring himself to return the favor. Lewis lives with his mother and uncle on the reservation in a house that’s literally falling apart around them, and he’s sure that George would drop him in an instant if he ever got a real sense of just how poverty-stricken Lewis really is.

If I Ever Get Out Of Here is both a coming-of-age story and a portrait of Native American life. In it, the author vividly describes the challenges faced by the children of the reservation, who may attend the white schools but know that they’ll never really leave the rez. In this pre-PC world, outright racism is common in the local community, and when Lewis is targeted by a much-feared bully who’s known for his hatred of “Indians”, none of the adults are willing to intervene. It’s up to Lewis to take a stand, and his bravery leads to both triumph and betrayals as the repercussions are felt throughout the school and the town.

Above everything, If I Ever Get Out Of Here celebrates two universal forces for good: Sincere, unwavering friendship, and the power of rock and roll. George and Lewis are good kids with their heads on (mostly) straight, who understand the importance of family, and who’ve grown up in one form of isolation or another. They bond and connect with a sense of trust that moves beyond the barriers of race and economic class. What truly brings them together, however, is the music, and this book is saturated with the delight of discovering something new and true through the grooves of a vinyl album.

George and his father manage to find tickets to a Paul McCartney and Wings concert in Toronto (although Lewis has to endure the comment from a friend’s dad, “Hope you didn’t get scalped,” complete with hand gestures illustrating just what a scalping would look like). Yet once the concert starts, all the stresses of being the lone Indian among a sea of white people fade away, as Lewis observes the awesome glory of being in a crowd at the perfect rock concert:

The guy next to me grabbed me by the armpit and insisted that I stand on my seat. I was short enough that doing this didn’t make me much taller than anyone else, but I still crouched a little to even the view for the guy directly behind me. A minute or so later, that guy tapped me on the shoulder and yelled that I was fine standing. He was tall enough to see… The strangers around me made me one of them. It was almost like being home on the reservation, and I let myself enjoy the surging excitement.

The Beatles, Wings, Queen, Bowie — these form the soundtrack of the boys’ lives during their junior high school years (and provide the chapter titles in If I Ever Get Out Of Here), and the author thoughtfully provides us with a detailed, lovingly compiled playlist at the back of the book.

This young adult novel strikes me as appropriate perhaps for older middle-grade readers as well, although they may be less familiar with the historical elements that come to life here. In all the different facets of life facing Lewis, the settings ring true. The casual racism and cruelty experienced by Lewis may be shocking to young readers raised in today’s more aware society, but the fear and pain caused by bullying are certainly something that kids of any era would be able to relate to.

Written as a first-person narrative using straight-forward language, If I Ever Get Out Of Here lets us inside Lewis’s head and Lewis’s world, and both are fascinating places to be. As a visit back in time and to a world that most white Americans either can’t or don’t want to see, this book engages the reader’s heart and mind. Lewis is a terrific main character — not a perfect boy by any means, but an overall really good kid who is proud of his people but doesn’t want to be confined by old rules. If I Ever Get Out Of Here vividly captures the dichotomy experienced by the Native American youth who feel a deep sense of belonging within their communities on the reservation — but whose opportunities for better lives lie elsewhere.

I recommend this book for teens and adults alike. The people feel real, the dialogue and events capture the essence of the 1970s, and the music just makes it all come to life. Most of all, it’s a tribute to true friendship — the kind that’s loyal, steadfast, and lifelong — and the difference it can make in a lonely boy’s life.

Review copy courtesy of Scholastic via NetGalley. I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

9Jul2013

Wishlist Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
Do a post about one book from your wishlist and why you want to read it.
Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My wishlist book this week is:

In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright, #3)

In The Age of Love and Chocolate by Gabrielle Zevin

From Goodreads:

All These Things I’ve Done introduced us to timeless heroine Anya Balanchine, a plucky sixteen year old with the heart of a girl and the responsibilities of a grown woman. Now eighteen, life has been more bitter than sweet for Anya. She has lost her parents and her grandmother, and has spent the better part of her high school years in trouble with the law. Perhaps hardest of all, her decision to open a nightclub with her old nemesis Charles Delacroix has cost Anya her relationship with Win.

Still, it is Anya’s nature to soldier on. She puts the loss of Win behind her and focuses on her work. Against the odds, the nightclub becomes an enormous success, and Anya feels like she is on her way and that nothing will ever go wrong for her again. But after a terrible misjudgment leaves Anya fighting for her life, she is forced to reckon with her choices and to let people help her for the first time in her life.

Why do I want to read this?

In the Age of Love and Chocolate is the 3rd book in Gabrielle Zevin’s very enjoyable Birthright series. Set just slightly in the future, the trilogy takes place in a New York in which chocolate and caffeine are illegal. Anya is heir to the Balanchine Chocolate crime family, and has to figure out where she fits in among the crime lords, the crime fighters, and her teen schoolmates, who’d really like to make it to prom without too much trouble. True, the illegal chocolate concept may not work completely as a parallel for Prohibition, but trust me — despite the occasional odd moments, the Birthright series really delivers.

Gabrielle Zevin is the talented writer of YA hits Elsewhere and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. You really can’t go wrong with any of her books — but if you haven’t experienced the Birthright series yet, start with All These Things I’ve Done, then move on to Because It Is My Blood. In the Age of Love and Chocolate comes out in October. I can’t wait to see how it all works out!

Besides — chocolate! Mmmmm.

What’s on your wishlist this week?

So what are you doing on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!