Books I Read in 2010 (Kathleen)

Apparently a lot of people make these lists, and like to see other people's lists. I'm not sure mine is totally accurate. This is based on a combination of my Goodreads list, my e-book history on my phone, and my reading history at the library (my library system will save your check-out history online if you allow it). It only includes books read for the first time in 2010. It may or may not be missing a few books. They are in no order at all, but I did put a star in front of those titles I rated five stars on Goodreads.

Blogger doesn't want to show you the line numbers, so I'll just tell you that there are 102 books on the list.

1. Creepers, Joanne Dahme
2. Tombstone Tea, Joanne Dahme
3. Lompoc: Padres to Pinot, John McReynolds
4. Rock What You've Got: Secrets to Loving Your Inner and Outer Beauty from Someone Who Has Been There and Back, Katherine Schwarzenegger
5. Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1), Paolo Bacigalupi
6. *Lockdown, Walter Dean Myers
7. Dark Water, Laura McNeal
8. Breathless, Jessica Warman
9. A Blue So Dark, Holly Schindler
10. Red Glass, Laura Resau
11. Cookie, Jacqueline Wilson
12. On The Wings of Heroes, Richard Peck
13. The Canning Season, Polly Horvath
14. Bread and Roses, Too, Katherine Paterson
15. The White Darkness, Geraldine McCaughrean
16. The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox
17. Peak, Roland Smith
18. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit
19. One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia
20. As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth, Lynne Rae Perkins
21. Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever
22. Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream, William Powers
23. Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy
24. Colors of God, Dave Phillips
25. Makers, Cory Doctorow
26. Peter and the Starcatchers (Peter and the Starcatchers, #1), Dave Barry
27. On the Hill, Lisa Jahn-Clough
28. The Beatles: The Biography, Bob Spitz
29. Starter Vegetable Gardens, Barbara Pleasant
30. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg
31. Ash, Malinda Lo
32. *Frindle, Andrew Clements
33. Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker, Matt Love
34. Illyria, Elizabeth Hand
35. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, Shannon Hayes
36. The Clearing, Heather Davis
37. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated, Alison Arngrim
38. The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis
39. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green
40. Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson
41. *Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver
42. Unwind (Unwind, #1), Neal Shusterman
43. Forget-Her-Nots, Amy Brecount White
44. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Ranch Wife, Ree Drummond
45. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1), Rick Riordan
46. *Cabin Fever: Notes from a Part-Time Pioneer, William L. Sullivan
47. Anastasia Krupnik, Lois Lowry
48. Quaking, Kathryn Erskine
49. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Kelly O. McNees
50. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman
51. The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, Ben Hewitt
52. *Mockingbird, Kathryn Erskine
53. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth Grahame-Smith
54. Shadow Tag, Louise Erdrich
55. Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, Bill Buford
56. Love is the Higher Law, David Levithan
57. House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest, Craig Childs
58. Heat, Mike Lupica
59. For The Win, Cory Doctorow
60. Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel, Robert Conroy
61. Bamboo People, Mitali Perkins
62. Anything But Typical, Nora Raleigh Baskin
63. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, Harriet Reisen
64. Cracked Up to Be, Courtney Summers
65. The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2), Patrick Ness
66. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1), Patrick Ness
67. The Drifters, James A. Michener
68. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly
69. Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks, Dwight J. Friesen
70. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
71. Alcott in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates, Daniel Shealy
72. Live Sent: you are a letter, Jason C Dukes
73. Genius of Common Sense, Glenna Lang
74. Jenny Kimura, Betty Cavanna
75. How to Hook a Hottie, Tina Ferraro
76. *Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk
77. The Dead-Tossed Waves (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #2), Carrie Ryan
78. Restoring Harmony, Joelle Anthony
79. Elske (Kingdom, #4), Cynthia Voigt
80. What I Saw And How I Lied, Judy Blundell
81. *When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
82. One True Thing, Anna Quindlen
83. The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton, Patricia O'Brien
84. Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, Francine Prose
85. Hungry City, Carolyn Steel
86. Lips Touch: Three Times, Laini Taylor
87. The Sixty-Eight Rooms, Marianne Malone
88. Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne
89. Crunch, Leslie Connor
90. Tin Lizzie, Allan Drummond
91. I Am the Ice Worm, Maryann Easley
92. Sweet Treats & Secret Crushes, Lisa Greenwald
93. Zombies vs. Unicorns, Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier
94. *The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, Carol Deppe
95. White Sands, Red Menace, Ellen Klages
96. Edges, Léna Roy
97. The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
98. Agnes Grey, Anna Brontë
99. The Abbot's Ghost, Louisa May Alcott
100. The Sleeper Awakes, H.G. Wells
101. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
102. Origin, J.A. Konrath

Mock Newbery in Oregon

I just came across this in my local newspaper -- a group of kids at Boones Ferry Primary in Wilsonville, OR (near Portland), have chosen Out of My Mind as their Mock Newbery winner. There's also a nice picture in which they're all holding up books (presumably their individual favorites?).

I haven't read Out of My Mind. What say you?

Reflections on the 2010 National Book Awards (YPL)

I've finally finished reviewing all five of the 2010 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature. Yes, I did read them all before the award ceremony! But I didn't get my review of Ship Breaker posted until yesterday.

Naturally, I'm thrilled that Mockingbird won. Of the five books, the two I rated most highly were Mockingbird and Lockdown (both got five of five stars on Goodreads). I gave four stars to both One Crazy Summer and Ship Breaker, and three stars to Dark Water.

Mockingbird is still my favorite, mainly because I think Kathy Erskine nailed the voice of Caitlin, an eleven-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome, as well as the reactions of the people around her.

One Crazy Summer and Mockingbird are both being discussed as Newbery contenders on Heavy Medal. However, the guidelines and criteria for the National Book Award are very different from those for the Newbery Medal. The NBA is awarded by a panel of authors, who are allowed to make up their own criteria, while the Newbery Medal is decided by a committee of librarians, who are given very strict criteria. So winning the NBA doesn't make Mockingbird a favorite for the Newbery; in fact, One Crazy Summer seems to be holding that position.

So what's next? I may read a few other Newbery contenders, but as we're heading into the holiday season, I have no formal plans.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

This is the fifth and final installment of Kathleen's reviews of the 2010 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature.

Ship Breaker is a dystopian novel, set in a post-oil future. Oil is scarce, and the earth is showing the effects of climate change (New Orleans is all or mostly underwater). The rich have developed alternative travel technology in the form of fast-moving clipper ships, but naturally these are only available to the rich.

The poor, like Nailer, live in squats, camps and shacks, and earn a bare living doing salvage work or working in shipyards. And the workers aren't much better off than slaves. Nailer's job is to scavenge copper wire from wrecked and abandoned oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico. But a "city-killer" hurricane leads him to a clipper ship, a girl, and adventure.

The book is fast-moving and cinematic. Bacigalupi's descriptions of Nailer's adventures would fit right into an action movie. It's also suspenseful and kept me reading.

Bacigalupi has a sequel on the way, titled The Drowned Cities. It's due out in 2011.

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

This is the fourth of Kathleen's reviews of the 2010 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature.

As you may have heard, One Crazy Summer is the story of three sisters who are sent to spend a month with their mother, in Oakland, California, in 1968. Their mother doesn't seem to particularly want them there, so she has them spend their days at a Black Panther day camp. In day camp, the children learn "Power to the people"-style slogans, make "Free Huey" posters, and post flyers for a big Black Panther rally, which is the climax of the book.

The story is told through the older sister, Delphine, who is the only one old enough to remember their mother at all (she was four or five when her mother left them). She's eleven in the book.

It was a quick read for me; I think it's well-paced for middle grade children. The period details are good, but not overwhelming -- the focus is really on the story, and the mother and children finally coming to terms with each other. Delphine's voice is well done; she's an eleven-year-old who's had to grow up too quickly and help take care of her sisters, but she still has the emotional maturity of an eleven-year-old.

I also thought the development of Cecile/Nzila was well done. She's totally off-putting at first. I wondered what in the world their father was thinking, sending them out there. And she doesn't change that much during the book. But there are little things along the way. She starts accommodating the children in small ways: giving them a radio, letting Fern into the kitchen to cook, and getting a stool for Fern to sit on in the kitchen. And more. It's subtle, and gradual, and she's not a completely different person at the end of the book. But she has made a little bit of room for the children in her heart, and (one hopes) in her life.

I've noticed elsewhere that people have nitpicked on the geographical details. I've lived in Oakland, and felt like the atmosphere described in the book fit. The geographical details are fairly vague (or renamed, or made up; I'm not sure), and this was well before I lived there, so I never placed the story in any particular location in my head.

Overall: excellent story and writing. I can see why it's in the award-watch category.

Sweet dreams

Last night I went in my daughter's room to tuck her in and turn out the light. She had started a new book.

"The animals can talk, in Narnia," she said thoughtfully. "The beavers can. And going through the wardrobe is cool."

Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

This is the third of Kathleen's reviews of the 2010 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature.

I had never read anything by Walter Dean Myers before, despite his award-winning status, so I really had no idea what to expect from Lockdown.

This book took me into another world, but not a fantasy, sci-fi, or dystopian post-apocalyptic world. It's the world of a juvenile detention center, and a world where violence, drug use and drug-dealing are common. And yes, it is also a world of mostly non-white people.

The blurb says "Lockdown explores an unlikely friendship between fourteen-year-old Progress inmate Reese and a man he meets through his work program at a local senior citizens’ home. " However, this is only part of the story. Myers shows us the violence inside the detention center, the cluelessness, cynicism, and cruelty of several adults there, and the cycle that keeps so many detainees coming back into the prison system.

Reese matures in this book, but at a reasonable pace. He starts figuring out what he needs to do to stay straight on the outside, but he doesn't have it all together by the end of the book. And he makes plenty of mistakes throughout.

Interestingly, the adults in the book grow, too. Mr. Hooft at the senior citizens' home at first fears Reese, because he is African American and an inmate, but learns to accept him and perhaps call him friend. Mr. Pugh, a guard, is a bully at first, but becomes friendlier later. And other adults who seem to think there's no hope for Reese begin to come around, too. I think this adds a lot to the book.

Lockdown is rich with detail and action. When I finished reading it, I actually went straight back to the beginning and read the first few chapters over again, because I felt like I hadn't gotten everything out of them the first time. If I didn't have several more books to read, I might have read it straight through again!

I think this book might be a keeper -- I'd like to read it again and get to know it better. Definitely award-worthy.