Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them and The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon–and me, Ruby Oliver
Author: E. Lockhart
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: The Boyfriend List was a good read, so I wanted to finish out the series.

Summary: Ruby Oliver just started her junior year, but she still doesn’t have much to speak of in the way of friends—and definitely no boyfriend. Not only that, but the one boy she wants to move into the BF column? Roo’s former girlfriend who’s slowly warming back up to a friendship with her happens to have a crush on that same boy.

Review: The rest of this series made for quick, fun reads. The two issues I had with The Boyfriend List—too many footnotes and a confusing story timeline—did not crop up in these two books.

Just pure, clean fun. Well, except for the flirty bits and also the kissing.

This exchange between Roo and her crush Noel made me smile. Someone at school called Roo a slut, and she’s telling Noel about it over an afterschool pizza.

“I wish I’d responded to the slut thing, though.”

“What is there to say?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ‘I prefer tart’?”

“Tart is nice. It’s a pastry.”

“Maybe I could reclaim the word slut,” I said. “Like gay people have reclaimed the word queer, so it’s not a whatever.”

“Epithet.”

“Yeah. I could run around with signs. ‘Slutty and Proud!’”

“Sluts of America Unite!”

“Exactly.” I took a sip of my pop.

“Your mom could wear a T-shirt: ‘I’m proud of my slutty kid.’” Noel fished around in his backpack for a pen. “Here, I’ll design you a slut logo.” He found a ballpoint and started to draw on a piece of notebook paper. A sketch of a woman wearing a superhero cape, glasses like mine and a strange pointy bra.

“I don’t think I ever told you that none of the stuff people say about me is true,” I blurted out.

“About the boyfriend list?”

“I was never with all those guys.”

Noel shook his head. “I wouldn’t care if you were.”

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

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• An Abundance of Katherines—My rating: 4/5
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After the craziness of this year’s NaNoWriMo, I decided to put myself on a writing hiatus for the month of December. But the thing with hiatuses (hiati?) is that one day, they end.

With January nipping at my heels, I’ve started thinking about what I’ll tackle first. The options:

• Pick up where I left off in the third rewrite of last year’s NaNo novel. Currently at 6,421 words in the rewrite, compared to 51,358 in the first draft.
• Read this year’s novel and start revisions.

Even though I have about 90% left to go in my rewrite of last year’s novel, the logical thing would be to go back to that because at least I’m on the third rewrite and not the first one.

But—please don’t tell my first novel—I’m not sure the spark is there anymore. This new hussy of a novel sashayed her way into my life, and every time I think about my first January of the aught persuasion, it’s her I imagine spending it with.

I’m just afraid that if I don’t go back to my first now, I never will.

Who should win out: Logic or love?

Photo by Anna Gay.

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 5/5
Why I Read It: I loved Green’s other novels, so I had a hunch I’d like this one too.

Summary: 16-year-old Miles leaves his comfortable but friendless life in Florida to go to boarding school in Alabama. His roommate Chip quickly adopts Miles as a friend and introduces him to a girl who lives down the hall—Alaska. Beautiful and brilliant, Alaska flirts with Miles and he falls for her. But it could never work, and they both know it.

Review: This is my favorite novel from Green.

On the surface, the book offered up plenty to make me laugh. Here, Miles just found out his new school, Culver Creek, has a basketball team:

I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them. In third grade—the very last year that one could play T-ball—my mother wanted me to make friends, so she forced me onto the Orlando Pirates. I made friends all right—with a bunch of kindergartners, which didn’t really bolster my social standing with my peers. Primarily because I towered over the rest of the players, I nearly made it onto the T-ball all-star team that year. The kid who beat me, Clay Wurtzel, had one arm. I was an unusually tall third grader with two arms, and I got beat out by kindergartner Clay Wurtzel. And it wasn’t some pity-the-one-armed-kid thing, either. Clay Wurtzel could flat-out hit, whereas I sometimes struck out even with the ball sitting on the tee. One of the things that appealed to me most about Culver Creek was that my dad assured me there was no PE requirement.

But the soul behind Miles’s story, behind his love for Alaska—that’s what made me fall for this book. My heart ached for Alaska right alongside his.

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• How I Live Now—My rating: 5/5
• An Abundance of Katherines—My rating: 4/5
• I Am the Messenger
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Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Audience Pick!

Title: The Bermudez Triangle
Author: Maureen Johnson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Mel, Avery, and Nina do everything together, and they always have. But the summer before senior year, Nina goes to leadership camp, leaving Mel and Avery to figure out how to be the Bermudez Triangle minus the Nina Bermudez side.

Review: I am officially caught up on all of MJ’s novels. More, please! (No, fo rilz. When is her next coming out?!)

This one wasn’t my favorite of hers, but it was an enjoyable read. Alternating points of view made it hard for me to settle in and fully connect with any one of the main characters.

But who cares when they’re packaged in MJ’s unique brand of funny? Sometimes, I am seriously concerned for that woman’s mental health. I truly hope she is, in fact, sane and healthy in the head because if one day we find out she’s got some rare brain condition, I’ll feel awfully bad for laughing at the early warning signs.

In this scene, Mel, Avery, and Nina are going to see a movie. Mel and Avery took off in one car together, leaving Nina with their new friend from work, Parker, whom Nina doesn’t know at all.

Parker and Nina were left staring at each other.

“I guess I’ll follow you,” he said. “Unless you want to ride in the Roach.”

“The Roach?”

Parker pointed to a corroded red VW Bug with a taped-up back window.

“Why do you call your car The Roach?”

“She will outlive us all,” he explained, swinging his key ring around his finger. “In the end, it’ll just be some rocks, Styrofoam, and my car.”

“Right,” Nina said. “I’ll just take my car.”

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Did you like this book? Try:

• Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List
• Devilish—My rating: 3.5/5
• Girl at Sea—My rating: 2.5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Ash
Author: Malinda Lo
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: A friend at work lent this to me, not to mention I love a good fairy tale retelling.

Summary: Ash’s mother is gone. Then after her father remarries, he dies too. Ash’s stepmother forces Ash into servitude to repay her father’s debt. When Ash meets the fairy Sidhean, she forgets her grief and her lack of freedom. But will forgetting be enough for Ash?

Review: I probably would have picked this up eventually, but I’m so glad my co-worker thought to lend this one to me.

I’ll let you in on a secret about this retelling of Cinderella: Prince Charming doesn’t come to Ash’s rescue. Thank God. I’ve been known to indulge in candy like Twilight as much as the next girl, but the world has way too many stereotypically weak characters like Bella and not nearly enough as strong as Ash.

The second chapter slowed the story down a bit, but after that Ash’s journey swept me away.

I did have a few questions about some loose threads of the story at the end, which made me think there would be a sequel. But according to the author’s site, no sequel. Could be I just wasn’t reading closely enough because I was so caught up in finding out what Ash would choose.

Your Turn: Did you get the sequel vibe at the end of this one?

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• Hate List
• Crazy Beautiful
• Another Faust
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