Title: Marcelo in the Real World
Author: Francisco Stork
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: It released in 2009, and I was in the mood for something new.

Summary: 17-year-old Marcelo has a condition similar to autism—he hears music in his mind that no one else can hear. Marcelo loves his school, but in order to keep going there, first he has to prove to his father that he can make it in “the real world.”

Review: I found this book a little difficult to get into at first because the main character is so guarded with his emotions, but I appreciated and completely understood the realism. And I ended up thoroughly enjoying this story. I got especially wrapped up in the plot around a decision Marcelo has to make in “the real world.”

One trivial thing bugged me an eensy weensy bit. A lot of times, the characters didn’t use common contractions when speaking, like always saying “it is” and “you are.” While I bought that Marcelo would talk that way, it made the other characters’ speech sound stilted.

This is a sweet story, and I actually found myself missing Marcelo as I typed up this review.

Side note: A lot of people have compared this book to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, although some disagree.

Would you consider these books similar? Leave a comment to share your thoughts!

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Title: The Fetch
Author: Laura Whitcomb
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: It released in 2009, and I was in the mood for something new.

Summary: Calder is a death escort who breaks his sacred vows to enter the body of a dying man.

Stopped on Page: 159
Why I Stopped: The subtitle on the cover is A Supernatural Romance. On page 159, I was still waiting for the romance to pick up in earnest, so I stopped.

Maybe if that subtitle hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have stopped. I generally don’t like to read more than a sentence or two about a book’s plot before I read the book myself. But in this case, I think reading a more thorough plot summary might have helped set my expectations.

Regardless of missed expectations, though, the book was a tad morbid for my taste.

Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Note: As an aspiring author, I respect the extraordinary amount of effort that goes into writing a book. I did not write this review in order to be unfair or negative about the book. My goal is simply to articulate why the book wasn’t for me.

Title: School for Dangerous Girls
Author: Eliot Schrefer
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 2/5
Why I Read It: It released in 2009, and I was in the mood for something new.

Summary: When Angela’s rebellion crosses the line, her parents ship her off to Hidden Oak boarding school, where she’s lumped in with all the other dangerous girls whose families have given up on them.

Review: The premise of this book and its first few pages pulled me in, but the rest of the book was predictable. I never connected with the main character, but I’m not sure why that is.

I do know that I wanted Angela to question herself more than she did. For a character with supposedly low self-esteem, she was all bluster and outrage most of the time. In a setting where the faculty and doctors were playing mind games with the girls, I expected Angela to wonder if she was off her rocker or at least have a serious moment of self-doubt.

If you’ve read this one, can you help me pinpoint why it was hard to connect with Angela? Or did you enjoy it more than I did? Leave a comment either way!

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Last week, I started reading the cobbled-together monster that is my NaNoWriMo 2008 novel. Let me just say this: WOW. It reminds me of what my dog might create if I gave her some blank paper and her own excrement to spread around. Anne Lamott was not wrong, no sirree:

Now, practically even better news than that of short assign­ments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts…I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Still, it’s hard not to be completely demoralized by the stark contrast between my novel and the fabulous creation I’m currently reading, Broken Soup.

But the awesomeness that is Jenny Valentine gave me an idea. You know how in middle school, to learn proper grammar your English teacher made you diagram sentences until your eyes crossed? It sucked, and I am totally not condoning such heartless torture of defenseless kids. But I have to admit—and please don’t tell any teachers this—that it kind of, sort of, maybe helped me learn grammar.

Could I “diagram” a great novel to learn how to de-suckify my own novel? Kind of like taking apart a car engine to learn how it all works together?

Leave a comment to chime in with your thoughts on whether this is viable:

• Have any of you aspiring writers tried to diagram a novel before? And if so, how did it go?
• Or: If you haven’t ever tried such a thing, do you think it would be useful to your writing? How would you tackle it?

Photo by miconian.

Audience Pick!

Title: American Born Chinese
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Jin Wang moves to a new school where he’s the only other Asian kid. He eats lunch alone and has no real friends. Will he ever be like the other kids?

Review: This is the first graphic novel I’ve ever read. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I think that’s more to do with me getting used to a new story medium than with this specific story.

The message of this book—to accept yourself—is universal, and the artwork is crisp and vibrant. And I enjoyed how the three different storylines come together in the end.

I’d like to try reading more graphic novels to see if I can get into the format. Which titles would you recommend to a graphic novel neophyte? Leave a comment or add your recommendation to the Pick My Next Book section in the sidebar!

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