new blog of bloggity newness

So, I'm essentially phasing out this entire Google account from use in the next few weeks, something I've been meaning to get to for about a year, because the email address is a pain in the ass to tell people and, well, it's old. Nearly three years. On and up!

Which means deleting the YouTube account I technically still have, deleting the Twitter account linked to this I never use, getting rid of old calendars, and cleaning out all of these blogs so others can actually use the addresses.

In case anyone's reading this, the new address for book reviews and other bloggity goodness is http://penserquoi.blogspot.com/.

This blog will be up until 1 June, when it will be deleted along with all the others.

legal to go on leave

...because I am again devoting all of my time to planning, plotting, cooking and sleeping, after being sick for a few days.

I vill be bach(!) as soon as I've a suitable buildup of reviews again. Currently, I have none--reading has slowed significantly for one reason or another.

Also: I need some suggestions on things to read, having completed every Maureen Johnson book ever written (still need to review a couple on Goodreads before the reviews can be posted here) and with about two books left to read in the general vicinity of the YA genre. Any suggestions?

Speak (Laurie Anderson Hale)

Ok, ok, short review, and at one am. Yes. I am a bad person. I have two books still waiting to be reviewed, even. And I don't even really have a decent excuse. Promise I'll get a better review for this book sometime soon... but for now, a minireview.



My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Four and a half stars. I'll admit to having high expectations for this book. Perhaps higher than I should have. I've read too many good reviews, had too many friends swear by it. It's good. Very, very good. But through the entire novel I was stuck wondering when it would be more. Don't get me wrong, I loved Speak. Melinda is witty and sarcastic, her narritive has an almost vicious bite to it at times. Her story is undeniably brilliant, masterfully told. The author's characters are genuine and her voice is honest. I read the majority of it in a day, reading through multiple classes. It flows and it's addictive. It's good. Really, really good. But it's not that good. Read the book because it's good. Don't look for a message--the author didn't purposefully write one in {according to the interview in the back}. Don't get your hopes up; be pleasantly surprised rather than wondering what you missed.

If I Stay (Gayle Forman)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Seventeen-year-old Mia loves her life. She lives for her cello, her friends and her family. She might even have a shot at Juilliard. Sure, her life's not perfect, but whose is? Today was supposed to be perfect. It was a snow day; school was cancelled. She'd go and hang out with some family friends for a while, and then go to see her boyfriend's band play in Portland.

And then there's the crash, and now: the choice.

Does Mia stay here, with both parents gone and her brother's fate hanging on the balance? Or does she go, leaving behind Adam, her boyfriend, and Kim, her best friend?

There's very little to be said about the book without giving spoilers, it's so short. What there is to say is almost only good: The narrative is beautiful, weaving in and out of past and present. Personally, I loved all of the jumps back into Mia's past, but the present was far from badly written. Adam is larger-than-life in a very real way, and Kim, warm and loving, will remind readers of their own best friends. All of the characters are neatly and perfectly drawn. Mia's parents are great; eccentric and funny, not run-of-the-mill but still not hideously unusual adults who didn't care about their own children.

Additionally, Mia is truly torn by her decision. Her life hangs in the balance for the entire book, as well as whether she even could make the decision.

All in all, it's the perfect book. Mature writing, by the way that it doesn't seem at all like a debut. Forman knew what she was doing when she wrote it.

Yet... it still lacked something for me. Everything was so perfect that it seemed there was something missing. It was too textbook. Don't get me wrong, the premise isn't textbook at all, nor is the plot. But the execution and the narrative seemed almost so well-done that they were lacking. Maybe I'm crazy and imagining things, but I couldn't give it five stars.

Cut (Patricia McCormick)

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars



Callie doesn't talk. She used to cut herself, but she can't here at Sick Minds (a.k.a. Sea Pines, a "residential treatment facility" a.k.a. loony bin). They can't make her speak, though. It's not that there's anything wrong with the other people here, just that they're crazy and she's not. Right? She's not crazy.
You know Callie isn't crazy, don't you? You're her therapist. If you don't believe she's sane, no one will.
Well? Is she crazy or not?

It's a short book. More of a novella than a novel. Usually 'short' is followed by 'powerful', but in the case of Cut it's really just short. It's not blockbuster, but it's so short it doesn't really matter, even. It's so short that even though I can't really think of very many redeeming factors of it there aren't enough pages for there to be something wrong.

The premise on the surface isn't particularly creative. Been there, read that, worn holes in the T-shirt. There aren't that many books about mental hospitals, but they're definitely there. There are books about self-mutilating teenagers as well, more of them than there are about the hospitals. The really creative part of the book is the narrative itself--written like a letter from Callie to her therapist. A letter written as it happens, ever-lengthening in present tense.

Callie as a character is perfect. She knows exactly why she's in the hospital, but not how she got to that point. She's simple and complex at the same time; knowing more than she realises but not understanding. But she knows she wants to get better, and that she can be helped.

If you come across it, it's worth the read. But it's not so ground breaking nor is it so beautiful that it deserves paying seven bucks plus tax plus shipping. Just seven plus tax. Or the walk to the library.

Willow (Julia Hoban)

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Three and a half stars because Willow frequently pissed me off. She's so... grrr. She's rather thick and rather full of herself through much of the beginning. Guy mellows her out a bit, as do his friends. But still.

Willow is seventeen, but if you asked her what she is, that's not what she'd think of. She'd have to decide between orphan, cutter, and murderer. All of which are new, seven-month-old titles. Seven months since she moved in with her brother, David, after that March storm and the dinner party, where Willow's parents drank too much and had Willow drive. It was a dark and stormy night, and Willow didn't have her license, even. She crashed. Both of her parents died.

Since then, Willow has had to come to terms with her grief. The only way she sees fit, though, is courting a razor blade. Arms, legs, stomach, all the same--it all produces pain. And physical pain is much preferred to mental.

I had high expectations for this book. The UK title, Scarred, is probably more appropriate for those expectations. The USA title, though, is Willow, and that's exactly what it was: all about Willow. Willow's world centres around Willow. Willow's world includes no one but Willow. And that really, really annoyed me. She pretends to care about David and Cathy, and deep down it's clear she does, but she doesn't make an effort. At all. Because it's all about Willow. Does she try and make her own life better? No. Not at all.

I know I sound insensitive, and I know I don't have any basis to go on. I'm not in Willow's position. Both--well, all four, really--of my parents are in perfect health; I don't have to deal with the same kind of pain Willow does. But still. Willow's just so over-the-top. Some people call it an intimate look into a character's mind. I call it the author making their character ridiculously insensitive to everyone else in the world.

Guy annoyed me more than once as well. His tirade of "Do you know what you've done to my life?" was rather out-of-place, considering how devoted to Willow's health and happiness he generally is, as well as how caring. It's not like he says it once and then apologises because it's absurdly rude. No, he says it again, and again, and again.

The plot itself is rather good. It's a good premise, a good topic. Eventually, it gets better. There's a particular scene that I love from their simple awkwardness (you'll know it when you read it). But there's just too much foolishness where Willow and Guy are concerned for me to rate it higher than three stars.

Shiver (Maggie Stiefvater)

It isn't really the eighteenth. No, it's the seventeenth. Right? Right.



My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I still want to know what's with the blue ink. But anyway.

Grace lives with wolves. Well, kind of. There are wolves that live in the forest her yard backs up into. Several of them. There's the white she-wolf, the black wolf, and her wolf--one with pale yellow eyes. Her wolf, who saved her life six years ago when she was dragged off her tire swing in the backyard by the wolves. Her wolf saved her. Ever since that day, Grace's been the slightest big obsessed with the wolves. So when a boy is reportedly killed by one, she can hardly believe it. She has to, though--especially when hunters go into the woods, hell-bent on killing some wolves.

Grace doesn't believe in werewolves, either. Until she sees her wolf on her porch, bleeding from his neck, yellow eyes fearful. Human.

It's Sam's last change, and he knows it. He's going to have to fight for every day he remains human. The wolves change forms depending on the temperature, and as it grows colder and colder, Sam is closer and closer to turning wolf again. Unless they can find a cure, and fast, Sam's days as a human may be numbered.

Tetch. Seemed too close to Twilight for my comfort. And it kept reminding me of Twilight as it went on. Yes, yes, Shiver was begun before the whole Twi-craze, but that doesn't mean they aren't remarkably similar. Still, Shiver wasn't all too bad. For one, I don't hate the protagonist. And they both joke about how it's kind of creepy that Grace is so into wolves and that wolf-Sam was in love with human Grace. Grace's parents struck me as unusually distant for a bit, but after thinking about it more, they're not too far off-base from what could be reality.

The cynical side of me, though, can't help but make fun of Sam for a moment, though. He's too... nice. Too perfect. He and Grace never argue. Ever. Maybe twice in the entire book. Sam lives with her for weeks and weeks. There's only one bed in Grace's room. Not an issue at all. Someone in a café asks how long they've been together, Sam says six years without missing a beat. It's kind of hilarious, actually, while still being very sweet. I'm tempted to say it's not realistic enough, not possible. But hey, it could be, right? So I'll just leave off with a footnote: Sam's a total softie. Didn't ruin the book for me, though. And I certainly can't wait to get my hands on the second.