Book Challenge Update: Time for New Material

So I've been reading this book I'm supposed to review for a different blog, which has a rather long and interesting title:

Who Really Goes to Hell?

THE GOSPEL YOU'VE NEVER HEARD

What a Protestant Bible written by Jews says about
God’s work through Christ

(A book for those in the church and those offended by it)

However, it took me nearly an hour to read nineteen pages plus a foreword. It's interesting and makes sense, but it's also dense and more difficult to read. And it's a PDF on my computer, which is also harder for me to read. So I think I'm gonna switch it up and read some of my library books instead.

I also have few remaining responsibilities for the evening, so I can devote myself to books.

Time reading since last post: 50 minutes. Time blogging: 15 minutes (2 entries). Total accumulated time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

Book Challenge Update: Unwind

Just so you know, I'm not taking this super-seriously. I just looked at someone else's posts which detailed their hours spent reading and then writing about the books, and I'm just not going to go into that much detail. I'm also not going to spend every waking hour on this. But I will be reading!

Unwind was a really good story. It's about a future in which people can send unwanted teenagers to be harvested for body parts, and in which there is a huge market for such parts. Basically, people just replace broken body parts instead of attempting to heal them. If you break an arm, you can just get a new one instead of having a cast put on. Bald? No problem. Get a new scalp.

The story follows three characters: Connor, whose parents are sending him to be "unwound" for being unruly, Risa, who is a ward of the state and is being unwound to save money, and Lev, who is being "tithed" by his super-religious family.

At first it seems rather ludicrous -- after all, what kind of parent would really give up their teenager, no matter how unruly, to be unwound? But there is an explanation for how all of this came about. And I'm not going to tell you what that is, because that's part of the book -- things get revealed.

Reading time last night: 1 hour. No, it didn't take me an hour to read -- I was already 2/3 through it.

48 Hour Book Challenge

Okay! I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna read as much as I can for 48 hours (like I don't do that anyway). Check it out over on MotherReader. Heck, you can probably still sign up yourself!

I'll be working around a softball game and other normal family activities, but I'll keep you updated on the books I'm reading. Tonight I'm reading Unwind by Neal Shusterman.

Official starting time: Friday, June 4 at 11:24 p.m.

The Clearing by Heather Davis

Amy has recently ended an abusive relationship, and is being sent away from her hometown, Seattle, to live with her aunt in a small, rural town in Washington state. She’s not too sure about the other kids in town, but just before school starts, she meets a boy she does like, out in the back of her aunt’s farm somewhere.

And it turns out that Henry really isn’t like those other kids. He doesn’t show up in school, because he’s actually stuck in a little pocket of 1944 that’s hiding on Aunt Mae's land.

But Amy doesn’t spend all her time with Henry. She’s also re-learning how to interact with kids her own age, especially boys, with whom she is naturally skittish.

I won’t spoil the ending, but it was satisfying. I really liked this book and stayed up late to finish reading it. Definitely recommend!

Find out more about author Heather Davis at her website.
This review is part of an ARC tour through Around the World Tours.

Forget-Her-Nots by Amy Brecount White

The blurb:

When someone leaves three mystery flowers outside her dorm door,Laurel thinks that maybe the Avondale School isn’t so awful after all — until her own body starts to freak out. In the middle of her English presentation on the Victorian Language of Flowers, strange words pop into her head, and her body seems to tingle and hum. Impulsively, Laurel gives the love bouquet she made to demonstrate the language to her spinster English teacher. When that teacher unexpectedly and immediately finds romance, Laurel suspects that something — something magical — is up. With her new friend, Kate, she sets out to discover the origins and breadth of her powers by experimenting on herself and others. But she can’t seem to find any living experts in the field of flower powers to guide her. And her bouquets don’t always do her bidding, especially when it comes to her own crush, Justin. Rumors about Laurel and her flowers fly across campus, and she’s soon besieged by requests from girls — both friends and enemies — who want their lives magically transformed — just in time for prom.

Another blurb on the cover of Forget-Her-Nots says something about Laurel discovering that she's part of a "secret society" of people who know the language of flowers. My daughter read that and immediately asked "How can someone be part of a society without even knowing it?" I promptly replied "Harry Potter, hello?"And there are similarities -- Laurel's attending boarding school, and learning her own brand of magic. But instead of attending a school for magical people, she's learning her magic in the midst of the Muggles.

Laurel's a freshman in this book, but boys and girls from all years of high school (as well as adults) are part of the story. It will probably appeal most to girls ages 12 and up.

I enjoyed reading the story, as well as learning a bit more about the Victorian language of flowers, which was actually used in the 19th century to convey messages to friends and romantic interests. You might recall the words Ophelia used in Hamlet: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts." Shakespeare wrote that long before the Victorian era, but the meanings remained and are included in Forget-Her-Nots. And in Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys, she has Demi propose to Alice using roses, and Alice gives her response accordingly. So the idea of using flowers to convey feelings and messages was both familiar and charming.

Amy Brecount White lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband, three kids and Jessie the Wonder Dog. Forget-Her-Nots is her first novel.

This review is part of an ARC tour through Around the World Tours.

Restoring Harmony by Joëlle Anthony

Heading off on her own to a big American city might have been a fun adventure for sixteen-year-old Molly McClure in the good old days before the Collapse, when nearly all the oil ran out; but in 2041, when family calamities strike all at once and Molly must leave her isolated farming island in Canada for the very first time, the world she meets is anything but fun.

Hey! Peak oil is one of my, er, favorite subjects. Not that I want us to run out of oil, just that I think it’s a real possibility. So of course, a fictional treatment of the situation intrigued me. Author Joëlle Anthony is also a former schoolmate; we attended the same high school in Portland, Oregon.

Restoring Harmony follows Molly from her home in Canada to the Portland area; her grandparents live in Gresham, just outside Portland. Molly has to travel alone to Portland because her grandmother has been ill, but due to spotty telecommunications, they don’t know whether she’s still alive or whether her grandparents need help. And Molly’s mother is nearing the end of a high-risk pregnancy and the local doctor has died, so they want her grandfather, also a doctor, to move to the island to help out.

This novel is full of action, as Molly moves from one crisis to the next. Sometimes it feels like the crises are resolved too quickly and easily; I would have been happy to delve further into the problems of a post-oil world, although the pacing may work just fine for young adult readers.

Anthony’s detail and description are very good; her descriptions of Portland are spot-on. In fact, a day after reading this novel, I rode MAX (the local light rail system) into downtown, and seeing all of the graffiti and damaged or abandoned buildings along the rail line, it wasn’t hard to imagine Portland descending into disrepair pretty quickly, something like this:

From the wide windows I could see an old highway on one side, rutted with potholes and so overgrown that saplings had struggled through the cracks. A few people walked along it, and I saw a couple of carts and horses, and more cyclists than we have on our entire island.

Another thing I appreciated about this novel is that it doesn’t involve teenage sexual activity, which seems to be a feature of so many contemporary young adult novels. There is a romance, but the focus of the story is on the action – getting to Portland, getting food and money, getting back to Canada.

Restoring Harmony is a good first novel. Again, I’d like to see Anthony go a little deeper into the crises, and not resolve things so easily (one technology solution in particular made me uneasy; as a sci-fi reader it didn’t seem plausible to me). But it’s an enjoyable read, and I would recommend it especially to young adults who like reading about dystopian futures.

Restoring Harmony will be released May 13, 2010, and is currently available for pre-order. This review is part of an ARC tour through Around the World Tours.

Predictions

This week I've been visiting my sister Wendy (we live far apart) so we had the pleasure of discussing the Fuse #8 Top 100 Children's Novels countdown each morning. (Before I got to Wendy's, I was in Portland, where I spent an afternoon exploring Beverly Cleary's neighborhood with my mom, sister Kathleen, and eldest niece. My family is pretty great.) Last night we came up with what we are absolutely certain will be 1-7 (though we are not certain about the order). Anything else we will consider a major upset.

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (#5)
The Giver (which was indeed #7 this morning)
A Wrinkle in Time (#2)
Holes (#6)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (#3)
Charlotte's Web (#1)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (#4)

I have read and liked all of these books (two of them, Mixed-up Files and Wrinkle, were on the top ten list I submitted), so I'm OK with this list. But Wendy and I were feeling melancholy over the books that are not on the Top 100 list at all, such as Anastasia Krupnik (which is, at least, referred to in the post about The Giver) and Wendy's beloved The Diamond in the Window.

Here's the updated complete list of what's in the Top 100 so far.