2010 Book Challenge #7 & 8

This week started a long run of Kate Brian's "Private" series books. I'm a big fan of these, so seeing them all lined up on the shelf makes me very, very happy. And better still, when I went to get the cover images for the blog, I found out that book #11 Scandal, comes out tomorrow! (squee!).

Inner Circle
By Kate Brian
Ages: 14+

The Private series is a fun suspense/drama mix that centers around Reed, a blue-collar gal who gets a scholarship to Easton, one of the top boarding schools on the East Coast. She's way out of her league here since almost every student is super rich or famous, or both. The dorm to be in is Billings House, and the "Billings Girls" are the creme de la creme of the already fabulous. Reed will do anything to get into Billings, and let me tell you, these girls really make her work for it. I don't want to go too much into what this particular book is about so as not to ruin the series for anyone picking it up, but there's always a juicy mystery or two going on (frequently involving a murder), and Reed gets herself into some crazy situations. This series is definitely a PG-13 one though.

Legacy
By Kate Brian
Ages: 14+

If I wasn't already a huge fan I might have been put off by this one. I've always liked Reed, even though she doesn't always make the choices I think she should, but in this one, she really turns into an unlikable girl. (The stuff she does to her boyfriend, Josh! Ack! How could she?) I strongly suspect that was Brian's plan, though, and now that Reed has learned that absolute power corrupts absolutely, she'll start her hard road back to being the likable her and correcting the mistakes she made this book. Although ow she's going to get out the mess she lands in at the end of Legacy is beyond me.

This week's books:
Ambition, Kate Brian
Revelation, Kate Brian

I also have a book to read for someone in my crit group, so there's a good chance I won't get either of these read this week. But I'm still reading, only something that won't be published until next year or so. (It's the second book to a series a friend of mine just published this past January, (Servant of the Underworld) Aztec noir. Very cool stuff.

And I heard about another cool book this morning that I threw on my wish list, called The Line, that sounds like it's right up my alley.

Future books:
Paradise Lost, Kate Brian
Privilege, Kate Brian
Black Angels, Linda Beatrice Brown
Jhegaala, Steven Brust
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
Princess in the Spotlight, Meg Cabot
Princess in Love, Meg Cabot
Heist Society, Ally Carter
Empire, Orson Scott Card
A War of Gifts, Orson Scott Card
Deep Dark and Dangerous, Mary Downing Hahn
Deadtown, Nancy Holzner
Crank, Ellen Hopkins
Mainspring, Jay Lake
How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden
Gods of Manhattan, Scott Mebus
Hellgate London - Exodus, Mel Odom
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson
The Scent of Shadows, Vicki Pettersson
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Holes, Louis Sachar
Wicked, Sara Shepherd
Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair
The Harrowing, Alexandra Sokoloff
It's Kind of a Funny Story, Ned Vizzini
Uglies, Scott Westerfield
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson

2010 Book Challenge #5 & 6

It was a good reading week, as I finished two and got halfway through a third. (Traveling and staying in a hotel room gives you lots of time to read). Two excellent books, and I even got a few new ones to add to the list.

The Name of This Book is Secret
by Pseudonymous Bosch
Ages: 8+

This book surprised me, because I usually don't like books that break the fourth wall and talk directly to the reader. I often find them distracting. But Bosch really proves that if you do it well, you can do anything. His narrator tells you the secret tale of two kids (but he can't tell you their names, so he makes some up) in a town (that he can't tell you where it is, so he says to use your town) trying to find a terrible dangerous secret (which he doesn't want to tell you about, but he's so bad at keeping secret he just has to.)

Wonderful voice, great plot, delightful characters, this book was a treat to read. Clever and fun.


The Compound
by S.A. Bodeen
Ages: 14+

Had I not been presenting on a panel the next day and needed to be wide awake, I would have stayed up until the wee hours to finish this book in one sitting. It was so hard to put down. But I did wake up early to read the final chapters and was almost late for breakfast. This one's a major contender for favorite book of 2010, and I'm only a teeny way into my list.

When Eli is nine years old, his nuclear-war obsessed billionaire father rushes their entire family into the "Compound" the fallout shelter Dad built so his family could survive a nuclear attack. Six years later, things are not so great in the Compound and Eli faces some terrible choices. I'd say more, but I don't want to give anything away or it will ruin this fantastic book. This one might be a little intense for my younger readers out there.

This week's books:
Inner Circle, Kate Brian
Legacy, Kate Brian

Future books:
Ambition, Kate Brian
Revelation, Kate Brian
Paradise Lost, Kate Brian
Privilege, Kate Brian
Black Angels, Linda Beatrice Brown
Jhegaala, Steven Brust
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
Princess in the Spotlight, Meg Cabot
Princess in Love, Meg Cabot
Heist Society, Ally Carter
Empire, Orson Scott Card
A War of Gifts, Orson Scott Card
Deep Dark and Dangerous, Mary Downing Hahn
Deadtown, Nancy Holzner
Crank, Ellen Hopkins
Mainspring, Jay Lake
How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden
Gods of Manhattan, Scott Mebus
Hellgate London - Exodus, Mel Odom
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson
The Scent of Shadows, Vicki Pettersson
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Holes, Louis Sachar
Wicked, Sara Shepherd
Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair
The Harrowing, Alexandra Sokoloff
It's Kind of a Funny Story, Ned Vizzini
Uglies, Scott Westerfield
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson

2010 Book Challenge #3 & 4

I am so on a roll. Got two books read last week, too (yippie!)

First up was The Trouble With Magic
by Madelyn Alt.
Ages: Adult

Maggie is a gal who isn't happy with her life in a boring desk job, and when she gets fired, she ends up working for self-proclaimed witch, Felicity, at her antiques shop. When someone close to Felicity is murdered and she becomes the main suspect, Maggie is determined to prove her innocence. Maggie doesn't buy into the whole witch nonsense, except as things progress, she realizes she has more in common with the witches than she first thought.

This was a really cute cozy mystery that mixes witches and the occult with the real world in a more traditional way, which I thought was a nice twist. I know that sounds odd, but magic is often treated like an everyday thing in books, and there's often that "magical world" co-existing with the real world and the two don't really meet except for the protag. Alt approached it in a more realistic fashion, and that added to the mystery and helped the plot along. Maybe I'm just too used to fantasy since cozies is a genre I don't read much of, but I thought it was handled well and really added to the book.

Next up was Going Bovine
by Libba Bray
Ages: 14+

I've heard lots of good stuff about this book, so I was looking forward to this one. The voice is just fantastic and I loved her characters. This is an odd book to describe (those who read it know why) but I'll do my best.

Cameron is a high school student who discovers he has mad cow disease. He winds up in the hospital, and ends up on a road trip to find the cure with a dwarf, a punk rock angel and a garden gnome. The story branches off into a surreal trip and Bray masterfully mixes things from Cameron's life into it, so at first, you just don't know if this trip is for real or if it's just a hallucination in Cameron's Swiss-cheesed brain.

I've never read the Gemma Doyle series because I'm not a historical reader, but after seeing Bray's writing I'll have to give them a try. And it turns out there's a supernatural element to them, so they weren't what I thought anyway!

This week's books:
The Name of This Book is Secret, Pseudonymous Bosch
Inner Circle, Kate Brian

Future books:
Legacy, Kate Brian
Ambition, Kate Brian
Revelation, Kate Brian
Paradise Lost, Kate Brian
Privilege, Kate Brian
Jhegaala, Steven Brust
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
Princess in the Spotlight, Meg Cabot
Princess in Love, Meg Cabot
Heist Society, Ally Carter
Empire, Orson Scott Card
A War of Gifts, Orson Scott Card
Deep Dark and Dangerous, Mary Downing Hahn
Deadtown, Nancy Holzner
Crank, Ellen Hopkins
Mainspring, Jay Lake
How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
Gods of Manhattan, Scott Mebus
Hellgate London - Exodus, Mel Odom
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson
The Scent of Shadows, Vicki Pettersson
Holes, Louis Sachar
Wicked, Sara Shepherd
Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair
The Harrowing, Alexandra Sokoloff
It's Kind of a Funny Story, Ned Vizzini
Uglies, Scott Westerfield
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson

2010 Book Challenge #1 & 2

Week One: Two books down, yippie! Okay, yes, I did cheat a little since I was halfway through the first, but I'm still taking the victory. So, what did I think about them?

The Curse of the Bane
by Joseph Delaney
Ages: 12+

This is the second book in The Last Apprentice series. I really enjoy these tales because they're dark and spooky and have a delightful creep factor. The illustrations are beautiful and really add to the mood of the books.

In this one, Spook's apprentice Tom had to deal with an evil entity called the Bane, which is trapped in the catacombs beneath the cathedral in a city called Prieststown. Priests don't take kindly to Spooks or their apprentices, so there's danger from both sides for poor Tom. He gets in over his head (with a little help from a "is she good or is she evil" witch named Alice, who we met in book one. Alice is a fun character, as you never know which side of the coin she'll fall on. She's apt to do something bad as much as good, and that keeps you guessing. Tom has to make some tough choices that make you really admire the guy. I'll be buying the next in the series for sure.

A Certain Strain of Peculiar
by Gigi Amateau
Ages: 12+

This is a book I first head about when I was at the SIBA trade show last fall. I met the author and we exchanged books right before the big book signing. This is a book I'd probably never have picked up otherwise, because I usually read genre and this is a quieter, more literary coming-of-age tale. It probably never would have crossed my radar.

I'm glad I traded with Gigi, though, because this was a lovely book. 13 year old Mary Harold Woods is the daughter of wild child Bye (short for Tabythia), who left her small home town of Wren, Alabama and never told anyone who Mary's father was. Mary has a rough time at school because she's a bit peculiar, and has regular panic attacks where she thinks she's dying. She can't take it any more and one night she steals her mom's old truck and drives over 600 miles by herself to her grandmother's in Wren. She talks Mom into leaving her there for the summer, hoping she'll be able to convince her to move back so they can both start over. She has quite a few adventures and turns herself from a too-scared-to-stand-up-for-herself girl into a strong defender of the underdog (with a quick stop at being a bit of a bully). Lessons are learned and secrets are revealed, and you really fall for the Woods gals, from Mary, to her mom, to her feisty grandmother, Ayma.

The voice in this is wonderful, and it really captures the flavor of the South. I read it with a Southern accent because it just naturally read that way. I'd pick up another one of Gigi Amateau's books.

So now we're on to this week's books. I counted my To-Read shelf and have 31 books, not counting some of the ones I just ordered (three I'm still waiting on). I usually just put the new ones on the shelf and grab randomly when I'm in the mood for a book, but I think I'll go through these more systematically for this challenge. I'll read them alphabetically by author. That lets me shuffle them and mix in the new ones and not have to wait eight months to read my new stuff -grin-. It also puts some old ones that have been there a while closer to the front.

There are some books not on the list that I've been waiting for, and those will get slipped in ahead of the weekly ones. Like Ally Carter's Heist Society comes out tomorrow, and I KNOW I'll be buying that right away and reading it. I'll be doing the same thing with Gallagher Girls Four, Only the Good Spy Young, come June. I'm sure others will pop up that I can't wait to read.

Here's the list for those curious (there's a mix of YA and adult):

This week's books:
The Trouble With Magic, Madelyn Alt
Going Bovine, Libba Bray

Future books:
The Name of This Book is Secret, Pseudonymous Bosch
Inner Circle, Kate Brian
Legacy, Kate Brian
Ambition, Kate Brian
Revelation, Kate Brian (while doing the links I saw I missed one of this series! Must buy by the time I get here)
Paradise Lost, Kate Brian
Privilege, Kate Brian
Jhegaala, Steven Brust
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
Princess in the Spotlight, Meg Cabot
Princess in Love, Meg Cabot
Empire, Orson Scott Card
A War of Gifts, Orson Scott Card
Deep Dark and Dangerous, Mary Downing Hahn
Deadtown, Nancy Holzner
Crank, Ellen Hopkins
Mainspring, Jay Lake
How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
Gods of Manhattan, Scott Mebus
Hellgate London - Exodus, Mel Odom
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson
The Scent of Shadows, Vicki Pettersson
Holes, Louis Sachar
Wicked, Sara Shepherd
Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair
The Harrowing, Alexandra Sokoloff
It's Kind of a Funny Story, Ned Vizzini
Uglies, Scott Westerfield
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson