The Sunday Salon - 2 November 2008

Good morning, fellow Saloners! For those of you in the U.S., did you enjoy your extra hour of sleep this morning? I know I did! :)

I got quite a few books read this week. I finally finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, among others. Here's the list:
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart
Paper Towns, John Green
The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love, Rosie Rushton
Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling (yes, again)
Reviews coming soon!

Book links:
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has created some new scents based on The Graveyard Book. Yum!
House made out of books!

I still have reviews to catch up on from the 24-hour Read-a-Thon, but right now I'm off to write my NaNoWriMo novel. Happy Sunday, everyone!

Book Awards II Challenge: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Author: Junot Díaz
Genre: Fiction
Published: September 2007
Pages: 335
Rating: 7 / 10
Challenges: Book Awards II Challenge
Awards: Pulitzer Prize

Synopsis (from the back cover):
"Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú - a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from the Dominican Republic to the United States and back again."

My Review: I really wanted to love this book. I had read so many great reviews, it had such a promising premise, and I really love discovering allusions. Unfortunately, something about it just didn't grab me. I loved the beginning, I loved the references (I really would like to see an annotated edition, with all of the allusions explained), I loved the Spanish slang (I even learned a few new words) and I especially loved Oscar. But the way the book jumped around and changed characters really confused me. It helped to explain the idea of fukú and how it affected Oscar, but I found it disconcerting. The narrator was an interesting choice - "The Watcher" is Oscar's college roommate and his sister's ex-boyfriend - but he's just so easily distracted. He wanders off on tangents and I just kept thinking, "Okay, and...?" The footnotes were also helpful, most of the time, and I liked them because they were so Terry Pratchett. But on the whole, I just didn't "get" the book. I had to force myself to read the middle part, and it ended up taking me a few months to get through the whole thing. And it's not even that long! There are some funny parts (Oscar's idea of a great pick up line: "If you were in my game I would give you eighteen charisma!"), though, and I am glad I read it. Essentially, it's a book about a nerdy kid who wants to be loved. Who hasn't felt that way at some point in their life?

Other Reviews:
Care
Nymeth

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Booking Through Thursday: Conditioning

Today's Booking Through Thursday question:

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

I actually don't have an absolute on this. My books that I've re-read over and over (the Harry Potter series, anything by Jane Austen) are pretty rough-looking, although I prefer to think of them as "well-loved." A friend of mine once saw my copy of HPATPOA (my favorite HP book, and thus the raggediest of the lot) and almost had a conniption. I have some books that stay pretty pristine (usually hardbacks), but on the whole my books take a little wear-and-tear. Some of them even have - *gasp* - writing in them, a habit I got into in college. The only books I refuse to deface in any way are library books, because that's unfair to other readers.

More "Thriller"!

Wouldn't you know, after I posted last night's ode to the greatest Halloween song ever, this showed up in my Google Reader:

(via I Am Bored by way of mental_floss)

And here's a "Thriller" wedding dance, courtesy of Fyrefly:


Maybe next year I should do a "Thriller" Halloween countdown or something...
FYI: More book-related posts coming soon. I just started Paper Towns a few days ago and am getting through it pretty quickly. Because it's so awesome!

Thriller

I love Halloween. One of the best parts? All the "Thriller" covers and remakes that start popping up this time of year.

Exhibit A: This guy recorded 64 different voice tracks to create a completely A Capella version. It's amazing, to say the least.
François Macré - Thriller (reprise A'cappella 64 pistes)

(via Neatorama)

Exhibit B: A group of French students filmed this lip dub at their community college. What is it with the French and "Thriller"?

Lip Dub IUT SRC Rouen 2008
by arcanes-prod

(via Videogum)

Exhibit C: Well, I couldn't find the EXACT video I wanted for this one. See, at last week's football game, the opposing team's marching band played "Thriller" during their halftime performance, which was awesome enough.* But then, the entire band put down their instruments and did the zombie dance! Ashley and I were in heaven, and I actually stood up and cheered when they finished. Probably a no-no, given that they were, you know, the opposing team, but it was so incredible I couldn't resist. I couldn't find a video of that exact performance, but this one is pretty similar.


* Full disclosure: when we first saw the color guard, they were wearing black velvet cloaks with the hoods pulled up. I turned to Ashley and said (way too excitedly), "Do you think they're doing a Harry Potter-themed show?" To which she replied, "I was thinking Twilight." We are dorks. Dorks who enjoy marching band performances much more than football games.

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Author: E. Lockhart
Genre: YA
Published: 2008
Pages: 342
Rating: 9 / 10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: None (yet!), but it is a National Book Award Finalist

Synopsis (from the inside cover):
"Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind."

My Review: This was an excellent book! I loved the character of Frankie. She's smart, sassy, incredibly clever; she also tends to make up new words:

"Mmmm," she whispered. "Now I'm gruntled."
"What?"
"Gruntled. I was disgruntled before."
"Why?"
"It's drizzling, there's nothing to do but study, the vending machine's broken. You know, disgruntled."
"And now, you're..."
"Gruntled."
She had expected Matthew's face to light at the new word, but he touched her chin lightly and said, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
"What?" Frankie didn't think it was a word. She thought it was - she thought it was what she'd later call a "neglected positive."

It was nice to read about a character who enjoys playing with the English language as much as I do, and this wordplay factors heavily into the story. Of course, not everyone appreciates this wit. From the same scene:

What annoyed her now was not that Matthew was right - but that he wouldn't just enjoy the made-up word. That he needed to be right. And that he'd chucked her - actually chucked her under the chin, like you do to a dog, when informing her that, essentially, her cleverness with gruntled had been completely trumped by his stellar memory for obscure bits of the dictionary.

Poor Frankie is really under-appreciated. All she wants is to be taken seriously, not just by her boyfriend and his friends, but by her family as well. The action of the story - the way Frankie infiltrates the boys' secret society, gets them to do her bidding, and deals with the consequences - is amusing, but not as great as Frankie herself. I loved watching her strategize and stand up for herself - I'm torn between wanting to be her best friend (if she'd have me) and wanting to be her.

Other Reviews:
bookshelves of doom
Michele

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

The Sunday Salon - 26 October 2008

Good morning, fellow Saloners! I'm still in recovery from last week's 24-Hour Read-a-thon. I have five reviews that I'm working on (two for the Book Awards II Challenge, which I am woefully behind on) and a few books that I'm still trying to finish. I've done a few other house-keeping-type things around the ol' blog, though. I updated my links list and added quite a few new blogs that I discovered as a result of the 'thon. I've also created a template for my reviews, which makes it easier for me when I upload them. And I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo - my goal is to actually finish a novel this year!

So, short post from me today - I've got too much reading and writing to do! I will leave you with these two links, though:
A purse made out of books
30 second Tales of Terror

Happy Sunday! :)

Review: Enthusiasm

Title: Enthusiasm
Author: Polly Shulman
Genre: YA
Published: 2006
Pages: 198
Rating: 10/10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: None, which is a travesty.

Synopsis (from the back cover): "'There is little more likely to exasperate a person of sense than finding herself tied by affection and habit to an Enthusiast.' Julie knows from bitter experience. Her best friend, Ashleigh, veers wildly from one obsession to the next, dragging Julie along on her crazy schemes. Ashleigh's current fancy is also Julie's own passion: Jane Austen's great love story Pride and Prejudice. Dressed in a vintage frock and dragging her feet, Julie finds herself sneaking into a dance at an all-boys' prep school with Ashleigh, in search of heroes. Unfortunately, they both fall for the same one: the handsome and gallant Grandison Parr. Will Julie have to choose between loyalty and love? Or will Ashleigh's embarrassing antics drive him away before Julie gets a choice?"

My Review: I love Jane Austen. I have read all of her completed novels at least twice. I've read quite a few JA para-lit novels, and this is by far the best of the bunch. It includes allusions to not only P&P, but Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, and even a little Mansfield Park, too. Although she borrows from Austen's characters, Shulman does a great job of making them (and the story) fresh and unique. There was never a doubt in my mind as to the ending (it is, after all, a romance, and a YA one at that), but getting there was so much fun! I wanted to read it all over again after I finished, and I probably will at some point in the future. I'm loathe to give out any details of the book, because I want everyone to discover it for themselves, but I will say that musical theater (more specifically, a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream) comes into play. There are also sonnets, chocolate turkeys, fun new words (like "igsome" - "ig" for short - which is used to describe something/someone bad), romantic mix-ups, and all the usual high school drama.

I bought my copy through Scholastic's Book Club, and if it's ever made available again I'll probably buy a few more. Even if you're not a fan of Austen, I'm pretty sure you'd enjoy this book - it's just that wonderful.

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Booking Through Thursday: Coupling

I'm still trying to get caught up from the Read-a-thon; I have tons of reviews and a long overdue wrap-up post to write, but those are going to have to wait until after I finish grading this week's assignments and get my lesson plans under control. For the record: tenth graders find Julius Caesar incredibly boring, until you start comparing it to Mean Girls. It's amazing how easy it is to compare Ancient Rome to Modern Day High School.

Today's Booking Through Thursday question is:

“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.”

As a Jane Austen fanatic, I'm sure I'm supposed to name Elizabeth and Darcy or Emma and Knightley, but my favorite literary couple is actually Lady Jessica and Leto Atreides from Dune. Sure, the relationship itself doesn't last long - I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it and might possibly in the future - but the love between them endures to the final line of the book. She even gives him a son because she knows how happy it will make him. And he never even legitimizes their relationship! Which probably has something to do with my supremely screwed up ideas on marriage...

But you don't have to take my word for it. Check out Booking Through Thursday for more opinions.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Twenty-Four

Title of book(s) read since last update: n/a
Number of books read since you started: 3, parts of 2; 4 short stories; 3 comic books
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce; The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman; "The Festival," H.P. Lovecraft; "The Watcher in the Mill," W.J. Wintle, The Ghosts of Charleston, Edward B. Macy and Julian T. Buxton III; Serenity: Better Days, Joss Whedon
Pages read since last update: 0
Running total of pages read since you started: 845
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 0
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 671 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge, Tracy's Mini Challenge-Caption This Photo, C.B.'s short story mini-challenge, Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge, Hour 21 drawing, Bart's giveaway
Other participants you’ve visited: J.C. Montgomery, Patti, Callista, Chris, Jen, Twigga, Laurie, Michelle, Bybee, Nymeth, Becky, Traci and Brandon, Alexis, gautami tripathy, Kimmy, Andi, Debi, Annie, Shannon, Jess/Pennie, Bart, Tammy, Heather, Heather, Wordlily, cCymraeg Ddewines, Jessica, Laura, Shauna, Laura, Brittanie, Annette, Paula Marie, L-squared, Ivan Girl, Yati, xicanti, Jenn
Prizes you've won: none (yet!)

Well, I pretty much gave up trying to read this last hour. I am SO SLEEPY. I decided instead to jump around and encourage everyone else. And now I'm off to bed, after I finish the wrap-up survey:

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? Probably this last one - I gave up on reading (WAY too tired) and just blog-hopped instead, to encourage anyone else still up.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? The Twilight series, Uglies (although I never got around to Specials), graphic novels

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Nope, it was awesome!

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? I liked being able to go to The Hidden Side of a Leaf and find out what was going on for a particular hour.

5. How many books did you read? I finished 3, read part of 1, listened to part of 1, read 4 short stories and 3 comic books

6. What were the names of the books you read? Pretties, Bella at Midnight, The Ghosts of Charleston (I didn't finish The Graveyard Book or Harry Potter y la camara secreta)

7. Which book did you enjoy most? I loved The Graveyard Book, but I just couldn't stay awake listening to it.

8. Which did you enjoy least? None

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? I wasn't a cheerleader, but I tried to visit everyone at least once. I think I got pretty close! :)

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? Very likely! I will definitely read and probably host a mini-challenge

Great job, everyone! I had so much fun. Thank you to all of my cheerleaders who kept coming by and motivating me! You guys rock! :)