Fic Qui (Reviewing "Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock")

Hoo boy. How do you talk about "Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock" by Matthew Quick? The book is disturbing, to be sure, but it has a sense of humor, a deep self-depreciation, and a wonderful back and forth dialogue.

A quick summary for you: Leonard is a bit different. He loves Hamlet by Shakespeare and movies with Humphrey Bogart. He sometimes skips school to pretend to be an adult, dressing in his "funeral suit" to follow the most miserable adult on the bus wherever they're going. And on the day of his eighteenth birthday, he decides that he is going to take his grandfather's WWII war trophy, a P-38 Nazi handgun, and kill both his former best friend, Asher, and himself. But before he decides to "shuffle off this mortal coil", he wants to deliver gifts to those who have meant the most to him: his Bogie loving neighbor, Walt, a violin playing classmate from Iran named Baback, a home schooled student, Lauren, and his history of the holocaust teacher, Herr Silverman. As he delivers his last gifts, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets and what has led to his startling decision to commit murder-suicide.

Yes, this book is a little depressing. Yes, this book is a little disturbing. Yes, this book is DEFINITELY for a more adult reader. Between the subject matter, the language (the f-bomb is dropped numerous times), and the general mental stability of our main character, the book is great for a more advanced, more mature reader.

Five Defects

1. This book has sporadic footnotes. I don't mind reading a novel or info book with a plethora of foot notes (I mean, I'm a Mary Roach fan for goodness sakes), but the foot notes exist in the beginning of the book and suddenly no longer exist! Where did they go?
2. I disliked the portrayal of some teachers in the novel. Granted, I take it with a grain of salt - it's teachers from a student's perspective. But I distinctly dislike the portrayal of female educators in this book. It doesn't ruin it for me, though. That and the whole idea of "mandatory reporting" is NOT done in this book.
3. Ugh. Leonard's mother is SO messed up.
4. I understand the letters, I do. They almost made me feel that the book was going to go Sci-Fi on me instead of realistic fiction, though.
5. Why isn't there a firm ending? WHY? I want there to be something a little more firm, but I think the ending is beautiful in its own way.

Five Delights

1. Oh, the humor! It's what makes the serious, really dark subject matter of this book bearable. Without the laughs here and there, the book would be too depressing to read.
2. The book keeps you guessing and doesn't really let you know what's happening until the end. I love how it unfolds as the story progresses.
3. Oh, Herr Silverman. That is a teacher, folks. That is a teacher.
4. The book has a very authentic voice. Matthew Quick obviously understands trauma and mental illness very well. I appreciate a book dealing with some serious mental issues that doesn't handle it like a traditional "mental illness" book.
5. The book messed with my mind and I love a novel like that. As things unfold, I kept on being surprised, turned around, and off balance. I really enjoy that.

Fic Gre (Reviewing "The Fault in Our Stars")

It ended in snot and tears my friends, but what a glorious, heart-wrenching piece of work it was. There are now THREE books/series that make me sob uncontrollably as I finish them:  1) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, 2) His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, AND NOW 3) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Read the summary at the link to Goodreads. I'm not going summarize it in this blog post.

I immediately knew I had to read this book when the TITLE of the freakin' book was straight outta Shakespeare. I've always loved quoting Shakespeare's Caesar, saying "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings", and how perfectly did John Green work the quote into the novel? PERFECTLY. No really. I'm still a little shell shocked by this book 24-hours after completing it, and I do NOT know how to talk out loud about it yet without getting a little teary. Evidence of a good book that really caused a great deal of TRUE catharsis? Walking into the bedroom with the book to get ready for bed after finishing, being kinda weepy, and then having one's husband ask, "Are you okay?" and only having the response of full-out open weeping while saying multiple times "It's so sad and so beautiful" through a plethora of snot and tears while holding the book to one's chest.

My husband pulled me to him and laughed. Apparently great emotional distress over the lives of fictional characters is a laughing matter.

I was so filled with the book and processing it that I didn't sleep well. I ended up reading another book from 10:45 pm to 1:45 am in order to actually calm myself enough emotionally to sleep. Do all books affect me so? Definitely not. But the books that made me do so before (and EVERY time I read them) are listed above. I've had profound endings I love (see the last book of Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, for example), but only a few books have made me crazy weepy and emotional. John Green's book is now one of them.

Five Defects:

1. The book really isn't as accessible as I'd like it to be. You need to really GET metaphor, GET nuance, GET the super high-brow vocabulary. This book definitely isn't an "any reader" book. It's for the brainy kids (SORRY!). I wish it was more accessible for more readers.
2. Does the vocab and intelligence of this book sometimes (RARELY) interfere with storytelling? Once in a very little while, but it is a point to make. Green balances it well, but there are a few instances where I wish they could have dropped a joke or two.
3. This book WILL offend someone. Just warning you. It's also one of my reasons for LOVING this book, but for some it will be a defect.
4. DON'T read the last 1/3 of this book in public. You risk crying uncontrollably and looking a fool. As a fellow SLIS student mentioned, it was awkward reading the end of this book at the service desk. Don't do it. I was lucky enough to be in the privacy of my own home with only my hubby to witness my breakdown. (I really have been lucky with these books... I always finish them in relative "aloneness" with someone close enough to hug afterwords). Read the first part wherever, leave the last 1/3 for home.
5. Why does it end like that? WHY???? Okay, I know why. It's a cancer book, people. But really? John Green? You're killing me.

Five Delights:

1. This book WILL offend someone. It has cursing, it has sex, it has death, it has 'violence' and destruction of property. It has groping and inappropriate topics. AND IT'S OKAY! Granted, I'm REALLY open minded, but I think that the REALNESS of this book will hit home for teens.
2. It is FILLED with black humor and INTELLIGENT sarcasm. I grew up with an oncology nurse for a mother; I was always taught that death and dying, while tragic and definitely very personal and serious at times, should always be treated with a side of laughter. Yes, we tell jokes at funerals. Yes, we've joked with a family friend passing from cancer about the sheer amount of puke he could heave after a chemo treatment. It's kinda how I grew up and I LOVE that Green fills the novel with this light-hearted fare. Without it, the book would be awful and depressing. With it, it shines.
3. I love how it has a "sex scene" without actually writing a sex scene... and the freakin' Venn diagram afterwords! Thank you for an absolutely GORGEOUS handling of sex in a teen novel, John Green. As an adult reader, I really appreciated it.
4. The metaphor, the poetry, the use of literary devices throughout. The story is great, but the prose is marvelous. I'm so wrapped up in it. It's so full of marvelous quotes and poetry. Simply amazing.
5. I KNEW how it was going to end, but I couldn't stop reading. Green does a fantastic job of writing some of the saddest subject matter EVER - it's a cancer book, people. But it's not the "magically I'm cured" type of cancer book, it's the true nitty gritty cancer book. Thank you for that, especially thank you for a book that an audience LIVING the book will appreciate.

Fic Col (Reviewing "W.A.R.P.: the Reluctant Assassin")

Passing the time when taking a LONG car trip with my husband can be difficult. It's never a problem for me to read while he's driving and listening to music, but my husband is a reader who must have absolute silence to enjoy a book and I'm a driver who must have music or conversation to drive. To make it possible for me to get through the two books I brought with me on vacation, I spent two days of driving reading one of my books out loud to my husband. This book was "W.A.R.P.: the Reluctant Assassin" by Eoin Colfer, the author of the Artemis Fowl series.

And what a FABULOUS read aloud. This book was EVERYTHING I hoped an Eoin Colfer book would be. It was high action, packed with British goodness, and had that quirky, beautiful sarcastic sense of humor through out that the Artemis Fowl series had and that Colfer carried through beautifully into this first book in this series.

The book focuses around two main characters, Riley, a 14-year-old orphan living in Victorian London who is the unfortunate apprentice to Albert Garrick, a dark, twisted, illusionist assassin, and Chevron Savano, a seventeen-year-old native american FBI agent. The two meet when Riley's intended first kill turns out to be a time-traveling scientist who developed wormhole travel for the FBI's Witness Anonymous Relocation Program (WARP) who pulls him through the wormhole on his return trip to modern day London. Unfortunately for the two youngsters, Albert Garrick manages to make his way through to the future and is after his wayward apprentice to either collect him or kill him.

This book is DEFINITELY made for a slightly older reader than Colfer's Artemis Fowl series - there is a lot more blood and gore and swearing in this book than in the Artemis Fowl series, but the same intelligent, sarcastic humor is there throughout the novel. This book definitely is for a more advanced reader as well, the syntax and vocab is definitely at a higher level than perhaps the low end of the interest level.

Five Defects

1. This book is always going to be compared to the Artemis Fowl series and I think that comparison is a little unfair. It's a little more sci fi and a little less magic. The two should be viewed separately, but it's hard to do so.

2. The gross-ness of some of the descriptions of blood and gore and Victorian London's ghettos are a little much sometimes. They aren't too much for me (I like Mary Roach's books, for goodness sake), but they might be a little much for some readers.

3. Albert Garrick feels a little schizophrenic sometimes. I love the complexity of the villain in this story, but the complexity sometimes is too much.

4. The cliff hanger at the end and the next book isn't out yet! AHHH! I hate this and yet I do it all the time - reading the first book without another book to follow it.

5. The denouement was a little to short for my tastes - the villain was destroyed quite triumphantly and Colfer offered us only a part chapter and an epilogue to deal with it. I wanted a little more end.

Five Delights

1. The humor! It's dark, it's sarcastic, and it's sometimes punny. It's also very intelligent humor. It's just lovely all around.

2. The development of characters, both his protagonists and his antagonists (perhaps even more so his antagonist in this particular novel). Colfer always crafts well-rounded, well-described characters and he has a wonderful way of working description into the story. I'm in love.

3. NON-STOP ACTION. No, really. There is so much action in among the brain work. I love it. Such a "boy" book in that way (granted, I'm a girl and prefer that kind of book).

4. This is a book of street smarts and quick thinking, not so much straight up intelligence. I love that none of the main characters are geniuses but are living successfully in the world of geniuses. Fantastic stuff, that.

5. This is going to be a series! I'm so excited to see where this series goes - are we going to follow Riley? Chevron? Where is this going to go!?! I can't wait.

Fic Bra (Reviewing "A Great and Terrible Beauty")

I just finished reading Libba Bray's novel "A Great and Terrible Beauty" and I do have to say that it was a difficult read to the finish. While the writing of the novel was solid, this book was a filled with too much teenage female angst for me to really appreciate it.

Set in the Victorian era, the novel is told through the first person view point of Gemma Doyle, a sixteen-year-old Brit living with her family in British occupied India. On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, tragedy strikes Gemma's family and her mother is murdered, but under the most peculiar set of circumstances; Gemma has a supernatural vision of her mother's murder before it happens. After her mother's death, the family returns to England, where Gemma is sent to Spence Academy, a finishing school for girls. Here, Gemma's powers continue to develop and she begins to learn about her mother and her connection to a shadowy group of magic users called the Order. Part fantasy, part horror, part historical fiction, the novel is strongly written and the girls of Spence Academy well developed characters.

My main trouble with his novel is that it has a LOT (I mean A LOT) of teenage female angst - the struggle to fit in, the cattiness of girls, the embarrassment, etc. I felt that a lot of the angst was over wrought and I struggled to make it through chapters that weren't a part of the magic story line. After two action packed novels, this book seemed to move too slowly for me and included too much of the quotidian of British boarding school girls. I will NOT be reading the rest of the series, but I WOULD definitely recommended them to a teenage reader. The book is solid, just not my cup of tea.

Five Defects

1. No, seriously. The angst! Maybe I'm just too old for this book, but the angst felt spectacularly overwrought. <-- Facebook discussion with my fellow librarians leads me to believe that my statement about my age might be true.
2. The magic use felt so underplayed. I wanted something that felt more dangerous or had bigger consequences throughout the novel.
3. What kind of ending was that? I'm not sure I liked the denouement and conclusion of this novel. 
4. Am I missing something about this book that makes it fantastic? I've read the reviews and they seem to be completely positive without any issues besides the cover of the book being a little too girly for boys. 
5. It took far too long for anything interesting to really happen. I felt like the entire beginning of the book was exposition and that the climax didn't happen until much farther along in the novel - somewhere in the last 100 pages or so.

Five Delights

1. The writing is solid. The prose isn't too soppy and character development, setting description, etc. are all done with an obviously skilled hand.
2. The last 100 pages or so of this novel are great. The action picks up and I'm far more involved in what is happening.
3. I love the descriptions of British occupied India that exist in the beginning of this story.
4. Gemma has quite a few marvelous one-liners that zing wonderfully.
5. The book keeps you guessing - I do have that to thank.

523.8 (Stars)

Last class of the Wilton III course is covering a cake with fondant and decorating it. Here's mine!

Fondant balls and star cutouts

I went with a simple yellow base with purple and white fondant cutouts and rolled balls. The technique is fairly simple - cover the cake with buttercream (enough to have a fairly smooth surface), roll enough 1/8" fondant to completely cover the cake plus an inch or two on each side. I played with the pearl powder to make the cake very shiny. You can see the effects of pearl power in the photo below.

Fondant ball border with pearl powder

Gum paste glue holds the stars on the cake and the balls on the base. It's a fantastic technique, but I HATE the taste of fondant. Blech. I'd prefer buttercream alone anyday.

Fic Rig (Reviewing "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children")

Started and finished in a handful of hours this afternoon/evening, "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs was a particularly pleasant read.

In this novel, the gruesome death of sixteen-year-old Jacob's grandfather sends Jacob on a journey to a remote island off the Welsh coast, where he discovers that the stories his grandfather told him of his childhood are more than the mere fairy tales that Jacob had thought them to be. Using a strange and bizarre collection of vintage photographs from the personal archives of collectors, Riggs tells an spell-binding, haunting story using first-person narration, allowing reader's to unravel the mystery of Miss Peregrine and what makes her charges so peculiar alongside Jacob. Riggs blends together elements of time travel, mutant powers, and the quick action and plot twists of a thriller to create a truly delightful novel that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Five Defects (extremely nitpicky)

1. I wanted MORE description in some places, but this is probably because I like flowery writing and Riggs doesn't use excessively floral language or sentence structure.
2. The photos, while connected strongly throughout most of the book, sometimes seem superfluous.
3. With so many kids in Miss Peregrine's Home, I wanted more background for some of the kids beyond a statement of their powers.
4. Why do Jacob's parents exist? They play very narrow roles in the novel and seem very flat. Mom barely exists at all. And what was the point of making him the future heir of the Smart Aid empire? Some parts of the back story for Jacob aren't really important at all.
5. WHY IS THERE NOT ANOTHER BOOK, YET!?! Correction - there is another book! Why do I not have it yet!?

Five Delights

1. I love the X-Men/superpower feeling of this book without actually making it a superhero novel. It feels fairy tale like, but definitely has a "superpowers" vibe.
2. The novel keeps you guessing enough that even I didn't completely figure out who the bad guy was going to be!
3. The most gentle, non-obtrusive magical time travel ever! Cleverly hidden worlds make me very pleased.
4. The photographs are creepy in just the right way to add to the story.
5. I love any novel that has some sort of historical setting. This meets both the needs of readers who want something modern and something historical. I want to know more about the other Homes for Peculiar Children mentioned in the book. I want to know what happens beyond this novel! So excited to read the next book!

Fic Cla (Reviewing "Clockwork Angel")

It has been a spectacularly long time since I've read anything but children's books, but getting ready for a teaching placement this fall at a local high school, I'm back in the world of reading YA literature.

My first novel as I dive back into the world of YA lit is "Clockwork Angel" by Cassandra Clare. The first book in Clare's "The Infernal Devices" series and prequel to her "Mortal Instruments" series, the book was a fantastic, beautifully sculpted read. This book threw together some of my favorite things in any novel: Victorian England, the supernatural, a tiny romance side plot (love triangle?), and a smattering of steam punk sensibilities.

I think the thing that pleasantly surprised me about Clare's novel was that even with a female protagonist, it was romance light and extremely action heavy (blood, guts, slaying, etc). Tessa Gray, our female protagonist, finds herself in dire peril (kidnapped, held prisoner, and "tortured") within the first few chapters of the novel, and the action doesn't let up after that. How could I possibly say no to a book that opens with the line "the demon exploded in a shower of ichor and guts"?

If you want a synopsis of the book, you can go read the summary and review provided by Amazon by clicking the link above. I don't want to go into the details here. There is far too much awesome in this book for me to even being writing a decent short summary. I'm just going to include my Bottom 5/Top 5 list below.

Five Defects

1. Sometimes the plot moved SO much, I felt a little disoriented if I wasn't close reading.
2. This book starts with a prologue. It really didn't need one... even though it did have an AWESOME opening line.
3. The character of Jessamine. I never did like a stuck up rich girl. I'm hoping there is more character development for this poor girl in future books.
4. How very many times Will's looks were mentioned in the book. I get it. He's pretty.
5. WHY DO YOU END LIKE THAT!? You answer none of my questions book!

Five Delights

1. Poetry and literature integration throughout the novel is fantastic. I love that Tessa, Will, and the other characters often quote poetry or prose that fits the moment. I also love that each chapter begins with pieces of poetry that are by and large taken from poetry the characters would have read and been familiar with.
2. I think it might be shaping up to be a Team Will or Team Jem decision. I don't know how I feel about this, but I know that I like it. Who's side are you on?
3. Beautiful, descriptive prose that doesn't get too flowery or long winded. I love that Clare is just as likely to write about the blood and battle as she is about Tessa's feelings and thoughts. I have no problems imagining this world in gritty, glorious detail.
4. A female protagonist who OBVIOUSLY changes in the book and learns how to make decisions for herself by the end. Yes, some of her decisions are based on "female propriety" and "pretty boys", but generally, I'm not annoyed by Tessa at all. She's hardly what I would call wishy-washy.
5. I cannot wait to read the next one! If all my questions are left unanswered by future books, though, I will probably start to hate this series... but the ending definitely makes me want to read the next book.