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When Ben Wolf goes for his yearly physical prior to Cross-Country season, he gets some rather unexpected news. the worst sort of unexpected news really. But Ben has always felt that he wasn’t meant for a nice, long life on this earth, and takes the news about as in stride as anyone can. His doctor is none to pleased, dragging him to a specialist, and swearing him to twice weekly therapy for his silence and pass on the physical. Ben, being 18, knows the decision is his, and threatens legal action should his family find out.
Instead of returning to Cross-Country, where he’s a shoe-in for the State Title, Ben turns out for football, much to the amusement of the other players, and bemusement of the Coach. For a pint-sized guy, he’s quite the surprise as it turns out. And for a large part of the season, he’s their best-kept secret. The Horseshoe Bend game, which will surely go down in Trout History gives him one of the best moments of his life.
Meanwhile, outside school, he’s somehow landed the girl of his dreams. A thing he’d never conceived as a possibility. But dying made him bold. And is now tearing him to pieces. Not only does she like him, she forsees a future with him. One he won’t be there for. She tells him so secrets so huge he knows he should reciprocate, and yet by that time it seems too late.
The more the year progresses, the more Ben finds that attempting normalcy when the reality is anything but really wasn’t a good idea. And they tried to tell him. The doctor, the therapist, the next therapist, Hey-Soos. heck, even town drunk Rudy McCoy has confided an earth-shattering secret in him, and he still can’t get the guts to come clean.
He does though. Starting with Rudy, as it happens. And then Coach. And Cody.
Sometimes it goes much better than he could hoped. Sometimes it’s about the worst thing ever. Dying aside. Worse than that, even.
While it would seem that this would be a sad tale and a depressing read, it was uplifting throughout and largely funny, with its supremely serious interludes thrown in at just the right junctures. Definitely a recommended read for all.
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James Sveck is not happy. And that’s really the least of his worries. After realizing he felt separate, alone as in not a part of this species, life took a bad turn for James.
It all came to a head with the whole America Classroom debacle. He doesn’t like to think about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. And so for weeks he plays avoidance games, silence games, power games—pretty much any and every game—with his therapist.
His parents are worried. His sister is worried. James is just annoyed.
He doesn’t have much use for people, especially those his own age. Which makes college an extremely daunting proposition. He can’t see any point. He doesn’t want to be in that kind of environment, considers it an appalling waste of money, and would really rather just skip it and learn from books. To him, the idea is brilliant. To his parents, not so much.
And then there’s the whole sexuality debate. Suddenly, both of his parents become keenly curious as to his interests. As if knowing he were gay would suddenly answer all questions, solve something, allow them to help him. As if it were so simple.
And he’s alienated one of his only friends. John, who works at his mother’s gallery, and is one of the few people James feels he can talk to, liked to surf the web at the front desk, and wasn’t so good with covering his tracks. After stumbling upon John’s profile on a dating site, James creates John’s ideal mate. Anyone else would have realized, more than likely, what a bad idea this was, but to James it was just fun. A joke. Not to be taken seriously. To John, when James shows up in place of his date at a party, it’s nearly unspeakable. And it leaves James out of a job; fired by his own mother.
His college, or lack thereof, plans are falling to pieces, no one seems to understand him, everyone is hounding him, and now James has only Nanette (his Grandmother) to turn to. Luckily, Nanette is very good with both listening and advice. And she’s right about John coming around. The very next day James gets his job back. And faced with a pleading mother and sister, he even picks up the phone to speak to his future roommate, unsure what else to do.
There might just be hope after all.
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Zoe Elias has grand dreams of being a pianist. For her, there is nothing better to be. She imagines evening gowns, audiences awaiting in anticipation, beautiful recitals, much adoration. So you can understand how, when her father comes home with a Perfectone D60 Organ, instead of her lovely piano, why she’s a little upset. In fact, she’s fairly sure this might be unforgivable.
But the organ came with free lessons, which she reluctantly agrees to take. Miss Person (read: Persaaahn) is not the world’s most enthusiastic teacher. In fact, during lessons, Zoe doesn’t get into much of her instrument’s capabilities. But when Miss Person isn’t around, she likes to kick things up a little. Which is how, after a lesson one day, upon forgetting her purse, Miss Person comes to realize Zoe has talent, and decides she ought to enter the Perform-O-Rama.
And so Zoe spends the next few weeks practicing and practicing the same song: “Forever in Blue Jeans”. Not knowing the words, she’ll often make up her own. In the Kitchen, baking up a storm, her father, and schoolmate turned constant house-guest enjoy the show.
With the competition nearly upon them, Zoe’s mother not only misses her birthday, but has an emergency at work, which means she won’t be able to take her to the Perform-O-Rama after all. Disaster. Mr. Elias is not exactly known for his worldly skills. In fact nearly every time he goes out, he has to be guided home by a local mechanic. But he knows how important this is to Zoe. Armed with pre-programmed cell phone, ready for any disaster, they set off.
And he does get her there. But doesn’t make it to her first performance, which she would tell you, was not all that bad, since she was not all that good.
This was a very cute and extremely quick-reading story. Through her music, and her enthusiasm, Zoe manages to bring her family together, help a schoolmate, and inspire her dad. So maybe the Perfectone wasn’t such an unforgivable gift after all.
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I find Dexter to be a really likable guy, despite his serial killer nature. I’m interested to see where the TV show has gone in its second chapter, as it didn’t stick with the books. After reading the story, I can see how it might be extremely traumatic if translated to television, though with the amount of violence people watch today, I’m not sure it really would have mattered.
This installment centers around relationships, and a mystery killer who enjoys mutilating and dicing his victims, leaving them alive but witless with terror. For those who are squeamish, this might not be the best read, since there is a fair amount of detail to the distressing murders throughout.
On the flip side is the fun of seeing Deb in a relationship, and not only as a macho cop, and Dexter getting himself unwittingly engaged. Really.
I’m not sure I liked this as much as the first, but I did like it better than the most recent installment to the series.
Anyone who likes a great mystery, or the irony of a good serial killer, or a loveable bad guy, will enjoy Dearly Devoted Dexter for sure.
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This is not the book to read if you’re looking for a happy story. Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t end well, but it’s not going to leave you feeling uplifted and light.
Set in small town Minnesota, this is the story of a family. A mother who never quite wanted to be, a father who can’t quite get it right, and isn’t happy enough with what he has, a son who gets lost inside himself, and a daughter just trying to keep up. The story is told from ever side, each looking a little different.
Claire speaks to trying to cope first with a drunk, depressed husband, and then to life without him. Esau speaks to his time in the hospital, and to trying to cope with life outside of it. Kate speaks to all of it. Her missing brother, her lost father, her mother, lost in a different way. Trying to fit the pieces together.
The book is beautifully written, and seeing the story unfold through three sets of very separate eyes is…for sudden lack of a better term, eye-opening, to say the least. Fans of Hornbacher’s memoir will likely enjoy her foray into ficiton, as will anyone who appreciates a good book.
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Also not a book to jump into without having read its predecessors, Magic’s Child finds Reason Cansino wondering how her life could have changed so much in the span of two weeks. Her mother’s still locked up, she no longer hates her grandmother, Esmeralda, though she still doesn’t trust her, she has two close friends, a bundle of crazy new magic, and to ice the cake, she’s pregnant.
Of course, she’s just days pregnant, but Esmeralda saw it with her magic. Her friends Jay-Tee and Tom are sure that her creepy ancestor did it to her, while giving her his magic, but Reason and Esmeralda known the truth: the father is Jay-Tee’s brother, Danny, who Reason spent the night with in New York. She figures she needs to tell him, and head through the door to do just that. Only she catches him about ready to head out to catch a plane, on his way to visit them in Australia. And she can’t do it. Which turns out to be good, at least as far as Danny’s concerned, since he tells her that the other night shouldn’t have happened, and while he really likes her, she’s too young.
Back in Australia, a surprise visit from a Social Worker leaves Reason feeling ill at ease, since she’s sure her friends did more harm than good in trying to help her out. She’s also not looking forward to the academic testing she knew nothing about but is scheduled for in mere days.
Things take further turns for the worse as Reason goes to rescue her mother only to find she’s been kidnapped by Jason Blake, aka Alexander, aka her evil grandfather. En route to find them, Jay-Tee nearly dies, throwing one more wrench in the works. And overriding it all is the fact that Reason is changing, and incredibly fast. In a span of days she’s ceased needing to eat, can no longer feel hot or cold, has lost her hair, and to top it all off, glows. Her main struggle becomes that of humanity. To stay in the heavy, dull world she’s known her whole life, or to disappear into the world of magic: all lights and space and nothingness.
Can she save her friends and family before it’s too late? Will she stay in the world with them, and her daughter, or complete the change and become what Raul Cansino had in mind for her. If it is what he had in mind when he chose her over the rest of her family, to be the one to receive his gift.
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Rating: 
After her summer in NYC, Cyd Charisse has a slightly different outlook on life arriving back in California. Happy to have her freedom, she’s lookingg forward to the year, which she plans to make the year of Shrimp.
Much to her dismay, Shrimp is MIA, and rumors abound about his whereabouts and whether he’ll be back or not. After running into his brother’s girlfriend, Cyd finds out that he will indeed be back, but with a slight change: his parents.
As it turns out, that will be only the first of many surprises, and it won’t be the year Cyd, now CC, expected. The uneasy peace with Nancy, the making of actual girl friends, who turn out to be not so bad, the roller coaster of CC and Shrimp. But through it all, CC learns a lot–about herself, people in general, and life.
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Fanboy’s school life has been less than stellar, especially after the forced move to a new school, where he got off on the wrong foot and never got right. While he had his moments, like The Great Ecuadorian Tortoise Blight, all in all, he could really do without daily interaction with his classmates.
When Mitchell Frampton starts pounding on him daily in gym class, it seems unusually cruel, and yet perfectly normal for his life. The middle-of-the-night IM he receives about it isn’t. Against his better judgement, he agrees to meet the mystery writer, who he realizes must be the black and white blur who’s been watching his gym beatings.
Life gets even stranger, after Donnie and Kyra meet.
She’s moody, she likes graphic novels, but makes fun of the ones he reads, she’s always showing up in a different car and driving recklessly…on top of it all, she’s his first female friend, and only his second friend in town, period. Despite all her quirks, he likes her. Enough to share his work-in-progress, a graphic novel his only prior friend doesn’t even know about.
The more involved Fanboy and Goth girl get, the worse things seem to go. While he’d like to be different, Donnie is still first and foremost a guy. And while Goth girl is different, she’s also first and foremost a person with feelings and sensitivities.
There’s no shortage of tension in this story. But it’s also full of laughs and deep thoughts and great anecdotes. Self-realizations and epiphanies. And while it’s a story about a comic book geek, it’s a story that any book-lover should enjoy. Myself, I’ve never gotten into comics or graphic novels–it’s not a style I can manage to read. But this book was great. I had a blast reading it, and I’ll be looking forward to Lyga’s next work.
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Colin Singleton has issues with his life. Mainly that he doesn’t understand it, and as a recent high school graduate, is sure of little other than his status as a failure. Utterly disgusted with his best friend’s state of mind, Hassan decides what they needs is a road trip. After somehow making their parents agree, off the head, no destination in mind.
A random highway exit boasts the grave of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who Colin had been thinking of not long before, and so begins the journey to Gutshot, TN, where the road trip becomes stationary.
After the tour to the Archduke’s grave, Colin and Hassan meet Hollis, their tourguide Lindey’s mother, who brings them home for dinner and offers them a job for the summer. At $500/week, the pair can’t refuse.
The days soon settle into a sort of rhythm. Recording oral histories of Gutshot for Hollis in the morning, killing time in the afternoon while Lindsey goofs off with her boyfriend, and for Colin, working on the Theorem he’s come up with to predict the pattern of a relationship. First he can only get it to work for a few of the Katherines. With some tweaking, it works for all but one. After further delving, he realizes he’s misremembered this one, and once he adjusts the formula to show the true events, the Theorem is rock solid.
And yet…while History is easy to study (like they say, hind-sight is 20/20), the future is a different animal altogehter. And this is the realization Colin really needs to come to. That life can’t be predicted, there is no certainty, and the only sure thing to do is to get out there and try.
Excellent book. Unique story, great characters, much lighter than Looking for Alaska. Definitely worth a read.
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Fanboy (aka Donnie to his mom) wants three things in this life: a copy of Giant Size X-Men #1; a chance to meet Brian Michael Bendis and show him his own graphic novel, Schemata; and a third thing that he won’t tell anyone, because he’s afraid it won’t happen. Beat up in gym, ignored in school by his best friend, and dealing with his new stepdad and pregnant mom, Fanboy is just waiting to go to the Comic Con where he can finally meet Bendis and show him Schemata (which he just knows Bendis will love).
Enter Kyra, a goth girl with a mysterious past and a totally destructive attitude. The two form an unexpected friendship when she sees him getting pounded on in dodgeball, as the teacher stands oblivious talking to someone else. As the two precariously try to get through the daily grind of high school, they learn that the things that they want aren’t always as important as they’ve thought them to be.
A hilarious story, Fanboy and Goth Girl has a little fan-service in it for all comic book fans, geeks, goths, and those who just feel invisible and overlooked in high school. Full of angst and anxiety and humor, this is definitely one of the best books of 2006. Look for it in October, when it hits the stands (and the library!)
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