FitG Update: The Giver

I'd seen THE GIVER by Lois Lowry on so many favorite-book lists over the years, and what with it being a Newbery Medal winner, I couldn't resist adding it to my Fill-in-the-Gaps list (which I have neglected for much too long, by the way).

I can see why THE GIVER received such accolades. What a fascinating concept and world! And it was a page-turner, too. I was so curious to find out what would happen to Jonas (who was precious!).

I think what makes this book so sticky (in a good way, in that it STICKS in your head) is that the world was so haunting and brilliantly (and patiently) unraveled. As a writer, I received a good lesson in what it looks like to show-don't-tell.

Have you read THE GIVER?

Next up in my Fill-in-the-Gaps reading challenge:

I'm only on the second chapter, but the voice in this book is freakin' amazing. I'm enjoying it so much! 

What are you reading?

FitG Update: The Brothers Torres

Synopsis (copied from Goodreads):

Frankie Towers has always looked up to his older brother, Steve. And with good reason—Steve is a popular senior gets whatever he wants: girls, a soccer scholarship, and—lately—street cred. Frankie, on the other hand, spends his time shooting off fireworks with his best friend, Zach, working at his parents' restaurant, and obsessing about his longtime crush, Rebecca Sanchez.

Although Frankie has some reservations, he doesn’t spend much time thinking about about Steve's crusade to win the respect of the local cholos. Then Frankie gets into a fistfight with John Dalton—longtime nemesis of Steve's, and the richest, preppiest kid in their New Mexican high school. After the fight, Steve takes Frankie under his wing, and Frankie’s social currency begins to rise. The cholos who used to ignore him start to recognize him; he even lands a date to Homecoming with Rebecca.

But after another incident with Dalton, Steve is bent on retaliating. Frankie starts to think that his brother is taking this respect thing too far. Soon he'll have to make a choice between respecting his brother and respecting himself.

In an honest and humorous debut novel, Coert Voorhees examines what it means for a young man to come of age. A compelling look at where loyalty ends and the self begins.


Read my full review here.

In a nutshell:

Excellent book, but if potty-talk bothers you, read with caution. There's also a hot-and-heavy scene near the end that I kind of skimmed because I personally don't like reading in great detail about characters' backseat make-out sessions.

Besides that (and maybe because of it), Voorhees gives his readers a very realistic portrayal of a sophomore boy's struggle to figure out how he relates to his older brother. I was impressed by the writing, the plot, and the unforgettable characters. There were natural consequences, but the book never crossed over into "preachy" territory. And I loved the minor characters as much as the major ones. Voorhees has a talent for staying out of the stereotype pit.

Great read!

FitG Update: Jellicoe Road

Synopsis from Harperteen:

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.



In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.


You can read my full book review here on the Fill-in-the-Gaps Project site.
 
In a nutshell:
 
I wish I'd read a synopsis like the one above or a few reviews before I dove into this book. I had questions answered just now from reading the reviews that plagued me through the entire reading.
 
The Booklist review on Amazon says younger readers may find the complex backstory offputting. Well, I'm here to say older readers may also be confused by it. I was!
 
But with that said, please do not let my confusion stop you from reading Jellicoe Road. Read a few synopses like the one above, and then sit back and enjoy a very interesting read. The characters are compelling, the setting wonderful, and the writing top-notch. Just go into it ... prepared.
 

FitG Update: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I jumped straight out of Octavian Nothing into Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which was on my Fill in the Gaps Project (FitG) book list. Talk about a contrast!

But Wimpy Kid is awesome in its own right. Click here to read my full review on the FitG blog, if you're interested.

I have a few other FitG books on deck to read, thanks to my local public library. I love you, library!

Here they are:


Vampire Academy isn't my usual reading fare, but with FitG, I'm trying to read out of the box. For me, "the box" doesn't include a lot of popular series like this one (or vampire novels, for that matter). I'm already more than halfway through and I have to say, I am enjoying it so far. It's entertaining and I'm learning a lot about plotting and heightening tension.  



I don't know much about The Brother Torres, but I think I found it on an American Library Association list and most of those books are amazing. So, I'm excited.



I've heard great things about Jellicoe Road, so I'm super excited to read it.

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

What's on your reading list this week?

FitG Update: Ten Cents a Dance

Another excellent book! My favorite part of this one was the incredible setting. I felt like I was in 1940's Chicago. If you're interested you can read my full review here on the Fill in the Gaps project blog.

Here's a blurb about the product description from Amazon:

With her mother ill, it’s up to fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski to support her family. But in the 1940s, the only opportunities open to a Polish-American girl from Chicago’s poor Yards is a job in one of the meat packing plants. Through a chance meeting with a local tough, Ruby lands a job as a taxi dancer and soon becomes an expert in the art of “fishing”: working her patrons for meals, cash, clothes, even jewelry. Drawn ever deeper into the world of dance halls, jazz, and the mob, Ruby gradually realizes that the only one who can save her is herself.  A mesmerizing look into a little known world and era.

Read any good books lately? Or have you read this one? Share in the comments.

FitG Update: Bog Child

This was an awesome book.

Here's the jacket blurb to whet your appetite:

Digging for peat in the mountain with his Uncle Tally, Fergus finds something that makes his heart stop. Curled up deep in the bog is the body of a child. And it looks like she's been murdered.

As Fergus tries to make sense of the mad world around him -- his brother on hunger-strike in prison, his growing feelings for Cora, his mam and da arguing over the Troubles, and him in it up to the neck -- a  little voice comes to him in his dreams, and the mystery of the bog child unfurls. 

If you'd like to read my full review, click here.

And one more thing: is anyone else shocked that it's Thursday already?

FitG Update: City of Bones

I finished City of Bones by Cassandra Clare a couple weeks ago. Overall, it was a fun read. You can read my full review over at The Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project site if you're interested!

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Mini-post #5: Abandon

I've made the decision to abandon another book on my Fill in the Gaps project list. I'm so embarrassed to admit which one it is, because I *should* enjoy it. The author is celebrated, beloved. It's literary, it's middle-grade, the subject matter is deep and personal.

Still, I wanted to quit on page 64. I had no desire to keep reading.

But I made myself keep reading.

Now I'm on page one-hundred-something. Again, no desire to keep reading.

The book is due on Thursday. I've had it out for two months and have run out of renewals. Maybe it's time to move on.

Besides that, City of Bones arrived for me at my library today. And also The Yiddish Policeman's Union. And also the amazing Annie Dillard's Living By Fiction. I have to move on with my reading life.

Now I'll admit it. The book I'm abandoning is Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. Don't all throw tomatoes at me at once!

Write Like a Man

What's cooking? Nothing because we're heading up to Yakima again for the Girls' Basketball 2A State Finals. Go Mustangs! So, it's fast food tonight.

I bet that title got your attention.

I don't want to generalize. There are obviously thousands of female authors who write very, very well. And there are men out there who write very, very badly. Some of the purplest prose I've ever read in my life came out of a guy.


But I got to thinking about this the other day while I was reading Gary Paulsen's The Beet Fields. It was one of those books I read in a state of awe.

Don't get me wrong. I hated the ending. I thought it was incredibly cliche and not anything I'd ever want my son reading when he's a teenager. The YUCK factor was too strong for me personally.

BUT, Gary Paulsen is an amazing writer. I was in awe of his writing. How he could show so much in a few words. He didn't have to lead us through his protagonist's emotions. We knew exactly how the mc was feeling without Paulsen ever having to give a word of explanation. Because of that, the man's a genius as far as I'm concerned.

I felt the same way when I was reading Matt de la Pena's Mexican WhiteBoy. Paulsen's writing made me think of de la Pena's, even though they write in markedly different styles. It was their brevity that awed me.

And I guess because they are both male authors, I began to wonder, is it a guy thing?

I'm reading Cythia Voigt's Homecoming right now. I like it. It's good writing, but I'm not in awe.

So, I keep wondering. Is truly succinct writing (think Hemingway) something that mostly men achieve?

Can you think of female writers you've read who have been known for their few, but powerful, words?

Do women tend to use more words than men? And why is that? What's your experience?

FitG Update: Kira-Kira & Mexican WhiteBoy

I'm practically tap-dancing with joy, because I just read two excellent, outstanding, brilliant books in a row: Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata and Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Pena. They were both amazing, and yet, so different. The only thing they really have in common is that they grabbed me out of my own, small world and set me down in theirs.

Kira-Kira is set in the 1950's in the deep south. It follows two Japanese-American sisters, Lynn and Katie, who are bound to each other not only by blood, but by a deep love for one another. Lynn explains the world to Katie. She's bossy, brilliant, beautiful. Katie absolutely adores her sister. When Lynn becomes terminally ill, Kadohata offers us a touching account, through Katie's eyes, of her family's struggle to keep Lynn alive.

I loved the Japanese angle on this book. If this had been a white family, the story would have been completely different. I thought it was so interesting -- and real -- how Lynn's family dealt with her illness, how they kept it a secret from Katie for so long, how they suffered quietly, and yet, how their Japanese community came together to support them in their time of need. I think my favorite character, after Katie and Lynn, is their father's older brother. He's loud and obnoxious, but he also surprised me by being Katie's soft-hearted comforter.

A well-written book is nothing less than a work of art. The author knows exactly how much to say and exactly when to say it. Kadohata's characters' rich, vivid and varied personalities, her settings, and the details she chooses to include all work together to attach her readers' heartstrings to her story. I love that balance and I wonder how an author develops a sense for when a scene is just right.

Mexican WhiteBoy is no less sensational. In fact, I think this has become one of my favorite books ever.

First of all, Matt de la Pena penned incredible dialogue. You can hear these kids talking in your head. They're real. When I finished the book, I was ready to get online and google Danny Lopez to find out if he actually made it into the major leagues. This book felt that real to me.

I loved Danny, but you have to love Danny. He's sweet, innocent, hard-working, talented, cute. He's also struggling because his dad moved to Mexico three years ago and left his family behind. He writes letters to his dad, telling him about all the amazing things he's doing and accomplishing. But in real life, Danny's silent, digging into his arms with his fingernails so he can feel the emotional pain that's chewing away at his insides. Danny's spending the summer with the Mexican side of his family in National City. It's run down. The kids are tough, street-smart. Danny doesn't really fit in. He doesn't even speak Spanish. But this summer changes his life. He makes a friend, Uno, who doesn't even realize he's walking with Danny through a healing and truth-finding process that will help Danny overcome his fear and internal pain.

This is a powerful book with great characters. I developed a soft spot for Uno's dad, an ex-gangster who spends every weekend with his son, giving him long lectures about how his life changed once he was saved by God. Hilarious, wonderful, powerful, all at once. Even his nonsense tended toward the profound, as weird as that sounds.

Like Kadohata, de la Pena is an artist. He knows exactly the information we need and exactly when we need it. The conversations between his characters are perfectly pitched. They never drag. Characters never say something uncharacteristic just so the author can make a point. I love that. I love that he knows he's telling us something important just by keeping things real, describing truth.

I've started reading Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. No offense to Asher, but after reading de la Pena, Thirteen Reasons Why is like reading an exchange between cardboard cutouts. So far, I'm not convinced, I'm not pulled into the story. I'm having a terrible time swallowing the premise. If some mysterious person sent me a bunch of cassette tapes in the mail, I think they'd end up in my trashcan....

I guess that's what happens when you read two amazing books in a row. You just start getting picky.

FitG Update: Speak

Amazing. An absolutely amazing, hilarious, vivid, heart-wrenching book.

Speak speaks to the teenage experience and to the terrible realities of misunderstanding, loneliness, and emotional damage.

I could not put this book down. I stayed up late reading it last night and then could hardly fall asleep I was so affected.

There were lots of things I liked about it, but here are a few particulars:

• Melinda seemed real to me. It's ironic that even though Melinda hardly ever talks, you hear her all the way through the book. You know exactly why she can't tell her parents anything. You know exactly why she's estranged from her best friends. Laurie Halse Anderson, the author (who I'm convinced is a genius), never has to tell you. She shows you.
• The narrative is beautiful. And since it's written in first person present tense, it's also unusual.
  
• Melinda starts off as a victim. You feel horribly sorry for her, so sorry you want to climb into the book and wrap your arms around this dirty, depressed, silent, fearful child. You want to be the listening mother she doesn't have. But on the other hand, there's a strong side to her too. A hilarious side. I almost peed my pants laughing when she described her Spanish classes: the teacher who wants to speak only Spanish and ends up teaching entirely in charades. Life through Melinda's eyes is funny. Painfully funny. Ridiculously funny. But nobody in her world gets to see this side of her because she hides inside herself, silent and tangled.

Speak is incredible. Read it.

FitG Update: The Graveyard Book

On the night when a mysterious man called Jack murders an entire family, there's one who escapes the edge of his knife. A baby boy toddles out of the house of death and finds refuge in a graveyard. He lives there for fifteen years, adopted by ghosts, with a guardian who is neither alive nor dead.

They give him the name Nobody Owens, "Bod" for short, and they give him the Freedom of the Graveyard, which means that he can pass through walls, see clearly in the dark, and interact with the graveyard's inhabitants. But Bod is still very much alive, and even though he loves his home, his adopted family, and his neighbors, he yearns to be among the living.

But he can't leave the graveyard. It's too dangerous. The man Jack is still looking for him, desperate to finish the job.

I loved this book. Endlessly creative, it was easy to lose myself in the plot. The unusual caste of characters from ages past -- Bod's ghostly neighbors -- were delightful. Bod is a perfectly likable character, bold and brave. You have to be to live in a graveyard with ghosts, I guess. To sleep snuggled in a grave. To face the ancient Sleer in a long forgotten tomb.

I would recommend this book to every adult I know. Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend it for children, which is ironic since this is technically a children's book. My eight-year-old daughter, for instance, loves books at this reading level, but I know the plot would be too scary for her. The story opens with the man Jack murdering a family and stalking a missing toddler. That's enough to give any kid nightmares.

On the other hand, I love how The Graveyard Book takes some of childhood's classic fears -- ghosts, monsters, murderers, darkness -- and shows Bod overcoming them. Granted, Bod's not entirely a normal kid. He has special powers given to him by the inhabitants of the graveyard. He has learned from his 800-year-old tutor and from his guardian's friend werewolf skills that regular children would never know. This special knowledge helps him to face his enemies. He never runs away or backs down. I was impressed with his fearlessness in passages when my own heart was racing.

So, if you're over twelve-years-old, I recommend The Graveyard Book. I'll be looking out for more of Neil Gaiman. They can't all be this scary ... can they?

FiTG Update: Criss Cross

I'm glad I read Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins. She captures something about the beginnings of adolescence, something intangible.

I loved her characters. They're regular people in a small town, but they have wit, spark, and a million questions about life.

At first I didn't like it. I kept waiting for something to happen.

Then I decided to stop hoping something would happen (good thing, because nothing really did happen) and just let myself enjoy the people she was writing about. There's this group of kids: Hector learning to play the guitar, Debbie driving a stick-shift, Lenny taking things apart and putting them back together. And all of them sitting around watching fireflies.

Unfortunately, I always read books as a writer. It's a curse, because the only books I can truly enjoy are books by dead people. I think this is true because you know dead people are not your competition. Whenever I read a book by someone who's alive, I'm always comparing. Many times I'm trying to learn, too, but even learning turns books into a lesson and not a means of enjoying oneself.

I learned from reading Criss Cross. One of the things I learned is that it's okay to write something different from what everyone else is writing. This book was the polar opposite of fast-paced, pop fiction. But that's okay. It stands as it's own contribution. And it won the Newbery medal when fast-paced, pop fiction books did not.

I'll probably remember it a lot longer than fast-paced, pop fiction too. Not so much the plot, because there wasn't one, but the feelings I had while reading it, how it played out a rhythm in my brain, reminding me what it's like to be a twelve or thirteen year old again.

It wasn't one of those page-turners. I didn't stay up all night reading it. It didn't have a universal lesson where I walked away feeling enlightened or liberated. It was a little sad, a little funny, a little lonely. And it felt real, which is a great achievement unto itself.

FitG Update: Just Listen

Just Listen was my first Sarah Dessen book.

I don't know how I feel about it, so bear with me.

Sarah Dessen is a very celebrated writer, a best seller in YA.

I liked a lot about this book. The dialogue was real. I liked the character Owen. I liked the way Dessen built the story. (The climax was a bit of a let down after all the careful build up, but, that's okay. We'll all live.) I could relate to Annabel, the main character, but I'm not sure if I could relate for the right reasons.

And here's why I'm not sure how I felt about the book. It seemed to me that Dessen broke all the rules with this book. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but, when you're reading agent blogs about what they're looking for and what the main pitfalls of many first-time writers are, and then you pick up a book by a bestselling YA author who falls into all of those pits and still has a best selling career ... it just makes you wonder.

Here are some rules that Dessen broke.

(1) Back story. The whole beginning of the book seemed to be back story. I almost didn't read the whole thing because I got bored waiting for something to happen.

(2) Narrative. What happened to the writing golden rule: show, don't tell? Main character Annabel tells us everything we want to know about her. She doesn't show us much.

(3) Passive main character. I can relate to Annabel because I'm a passive person, too. Passive people usually aren't very interesting. Annabel, unfortunately, wasn't very interesting. There were other interesting characters, but the mc wasn't one of them.

It just goes to show you that once you get 5-10 best sellers under your belt, people are buying your name and the rules can go out the window.

That should be encouraging ... I guess.

Overall, I didn't hate this book. I wasn't crazy about it, either. I'll probably read another Sarah Dessen as part of my YA education, but I think I'll go for something on the best seller list to see what got her there in the first place.

FitG Update: Just Like That

Wow wow wow.

I haven't done this since I read the Anne of Green Gables series as a fourteen year old.

I actually finished this book in a matter of hours. I stayed up late reading Just Like That last night. Then I woke up early this morning, and lay in bed for awhile thinking how stupid it was to lie in bed awake thinking about a book when I could be getting up and reading it. So I pushed the warm covers aside, curled up in a comfy chair in the front room, and finished it.

Finished it. Mothers of four young children don't usually do this sort of thing.

Wham bam thank you ma'am. I need to make another trip to the library.

I wasn't surprised when I read the author's bio on the back jacket flap after I finished the book. Marsha Qualey has written quite a few books, and her writing shows it. She's a smooth writer, confident in the world she has created, and her characters are interesting and realistic.

And she wrote a great first chapter. I've never been so hooked by a first chapter in my life.

The book is deeply secular, so don't read it expecting any profound revelations. I guess what hooked me the most was just the unpredictability of it all. Qualey and I must have completely different ways of thinking about things, about life, because the characters said and did things I wasn't expecting at all. And I liked that. It was refreshing.

There was a dark thread running throughout with themes of death and loss, so it wasn't a shallow book by any means. But at the same time the book didn't answer any questions. It told a simple story with a satisfying ending. And that was all. It didn't preach at you. I also liked that.

The simple story with a complicated problem -- two people thrown together by tragedy -- was the perfect showcase for deliciously multi-layered characters. The main character Hanna is incredibly interesting. I'd always heard that your main character is supposed to be the most interesting person in your book, but I couldn't find a lot of examples of this in the fiction I was reading. I mean, think of Charles Dickens, for example. His main characters tend to be a little boring. It's his cast of supporting actors that are the fascinating ones. They always drive the plot, tinker with the main character's destiny, throw those splashes of flamboyant color into his work.

In Just Like That, Hanna truly is the most interesting character. That's not to say the other characters aren't interesting too; they are. But Hanna is outspoken, bold, determined, stubborn, and likable without being over the top. Best of all, she's unpredictable. You don't know what she's going to do next, what she'll feel strongly about, how she'll exercise her unique combination of impulsiveness and restraint. She's intuitive and strong. She does things in this book I would never have the gumption to do. And she makes dumb mistakes sometimes, too. Like we all do.

So, on my next trip to the library -- which might even be TODAY -- I'm going to check the shelves for other Marsha Qualey books. I'm not sure how long I can go without a good night's sleep, but I may have to get a stack of Marsha Qualey and see how long I can hold out.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

FitG Update: The Blind Faith Hotel

My main goal in joining the Fill-in-the-Gaps 100 Book Project was to read more YA.

Because I'm trying to be a YA writer, it only makes sense to read more of what I write.

My only problem is, I'm having trouble finding many of the titles on my 100 book project list at my local library. Plus, now that I'm actually looking around an American library, I'm realizing a lot of what I had on my list that I thought would be YA isn't YA.

I have a lot of Newbery Medal winners on my list, but after looking for titles in the library and reading Bud, Not Buddy (which is an excellent middle-grade book, by the way), I realized most of the books on my list are middle grade.

So, I resorted to plan B, scrapped my list, and perused the YA section instead, looking for realistic, contemporary fiction. Since there aren't any RULES in the FitG project, I figure I can just replace some of the books on the list with these random books I'm picking off the shelves.

My first random pick was what I would consider a literary YA novel called The Blind Faith Hotel, by Pamela Todd.

Definitely character-driven, I think Pamela Todd's novel was wonderful in many ways. The writing was beautiful. Really beautiful. And she had some pretty funny dialogue thrown in there too, especially between main character, Zoe, and her self-centered older sister, Nelia.

The problem for me was that with a character-driven plot, I'd expect to feel like I knew the characters extremely well at the end. With this one, I got all the slow-moving, slow-developing plot of a literary novel, but not much of the character depth.

There was beautiful writing, yes, but there were three different times where I got so tired of the long, meandering plot that I almost abandoned the book all together. And you know, I read a lot of classics. I'm used to meandering plots!

The jacket copy talks about the main character Zoe and how "a brush with the law lands her in a work program at a local nature preserve." The only problem is, this particular event doesn't even start to happen until half-way through the book.

There's another main character mentioned in the jacket copy; a boy named Ivy who is the main character's love interest. We see Ivy once from far away about a fourth of the way into the book. We see him a little later, again, from a distance. Half way through the book he's still not even a central character. I think it wasn't until I was two-thirds of the way through that he actually says something. And then instantly we're expected to know him, to invite him in, and treat him like a central character.

When something actually HAPPENS at the end of the book, I didn't feel like I knew Ivy well enough to really care. I knew that he was well-built and wild. And I knew Zoe liked him, and other facts about him. But that's all they were. Facts. The writer didn't really show me enough about him. His introduction felt rushed. Here she wrote a long, drawn-out beginning, and thenc contented herself to choppy generalizations when describing Zoe and Ivy's relationship.

It's always interesting to be a person-who-writes critiquing another person's book. I'm probably harder on other writers than I should be. And when it all comes down to it, Pamela Todd is published and I'm not. So she must be doing something right.

To be fair, she's doing a lot right. She has a wonderful writing style, so I think her books can only get better. Her descriptions of the prairies are incredible. I could see exactly what she wanted to show me through her words. If anything needs work, it's pacing and character development. Pacing may be slightly easier to improve; character development is hard. But practice makes perfect.

Would I pick up another Pamela Todd book again if I saw one? Hmm. I think I'd have to be blown away by the jacket copy and if the first chapter didn't absolutely grab me, I would be quick to abandon it.

Musketeers, Vampires, and Fairy Tales, Oh My!

Finally. Finished. The Three Musketeers.

It took me over three months.

It wasn't boring. The plot was intricate and interesting, if not a little melodramatic in places. (Why are all the female characters biting their lips until they bleed? Has anyone in the world actually been that distressed? I actually tried biting my lip and realized it would take quite a lot of force to actually puncture the skin. Maybe people back in King Louis XIII's France had much sharper teeth than we do now?)

My biggest problem was that since I do most of my reading in bed at night, I kept falling asleep with the Musketeers. I'd be reading along and not even realize I'd dozed off until I woke up and still had the book open in front of me. And when you're reading a 627-page book with teeny print, you have to read more than a few pages a night to EVER finish.

Next, I read Twilight.

It took me less than three days.

Not because it was so suspenseful and wonderful I couldn't put it down. No, not quite. More like, "I really have to finish this book because I don't want to write anything while I'm reading it."

Have you ever noticed how much your writing is effected by the books you're reading? My own writing tanks when I'm reading a poorly-written book.

And, not to be mean to Stephenie Meyer who wrote it, but Twilight is ... uh ... not a book I'll be holding up as a paradigm of good literature. I can maybe see the allure to certain readers: infatuation with a bad boy, the forbidden fruit. There was a lot of emotion packed into the book, a lot of sexual tension, but for me it was just Ew.

So, after staying up late speed-reading Twilight, I glanced at the first chapter of the sequel, New Moon, which the publishers helpfully printed at the back of the book. "Thank goodness the sequel's not on my books-to-read list," was my only thought as I slammed it shut.

Then, I opened a YA book I picked up from the library yesterday: A Curse Dark as Gold.

Reading through the first few pages gave me a rush of satisfaction.

This is great writing.

This is the kind of thing I want to emulate: rich detail, deep characters. Plus, it's based on the Fairy Tale Rumpelstiltskin; I have a soft-spot for fairy tales.

It's the difference between being satisfied with Nestle-brand ice cream or paying a little more for the Dreyers.

Elizabeth C. Bunce is at the Dreyer's level, my friends. She's a scoop each of mint chocolate chip, cookie dough, and double fudge brownie. Fabulous.

I lay in bed, pea green, grinding my teeth and muttering, "Wish I could write like this."

FitG Update: Dark Fire, Sovereign

I'm finally able to cross two books off my Fill-in-the-Gaps Project list: Dark Fire and Sovereign. I've been a little bit of a slow reader lately, but I did enjoy C.J. Sansom's historical mystery series. The plots were compelling (I guessed who the murderer was in Dissolution, but he fooled me in both Dark Fire and Sovereign) and I loved the setting: Henry VIII's England.

Dissolution and Dark Fire are both set in Cromwell's England, a time period I didn't know very much about. Sovereign is set a few years after Cromwell's execution, during Henry VIII's infamous progress to York. All three books immerse us in the bloody intrigues and conflicts of that time period. Henry has become head of the church, beheading papists and Anabaptists right and left, and Matthew Shardlake, the hunchback lawyer protagonist with a sharp eye for detail and a talent for solving mysteries, finds himself tangled up in it all, first working for Lord Cromwell and later for Archbishop Cranmer.

I like Shardlake as a protagonist and as a detective. At the same time, oddly, if anything struck me as unbelievable in this series, it was him. He was too modern in some of his thinking, which I thought spoiled the realism. However, I don't blame Sansom for making him modern. It would be hard, if not impossible, for modern readers to relate to a full-blown sixteenth century character. Our cultures are too different. This was a day and age when people were hung for stealing and had their fingernails pulled out for their faith; a time period when the King was attempting to rule the religious roost, claiming to be God's chosen one, and using brutal force to make the British people comply. Most of us can't relate to that in the modern world. I think Sansom needed to give his readers someone they could empathize with, someone who wasn't as bloodthirsty and dogmatic as most men of standing seemed to be in that day and age. The fact that Shardlake is a hunchback makes his modern, inclusive views more understandable. He has spent his whole life as an outcast; it makes sense that he would have learned to think independently too.

It wasn't until I was looking up links for this post that I realized Sansom wrote a fourth book in this series: Revelation. It's not on my FitG list, but I may have to squeeze it in. I'm curious to find out what could possibly motivate Shardlake to get involved with politics again. From the beginning of the series, he's been trying to get these men of power to leave him alone, to let him lead a quiet life. But they always have other plans for him. In Henry VIII's England, where blackmail and intrigue abound, even an unassuming lawyer doesn't get much of a choice in how he spends his time.

Fill in the Gaps 100 Project

I'm super excited about this.

I found out through Editorial Ass (a blog I follow; it stands for Editorial Assistant, so don't freak out, Mom) that there is a fun, fun project going on called Fill-in-the-Gaps. You make a list of 100 books you haven't read yet, and set yourself a goal of reading at least 75% of them over the next five years.

This seemed a great chance to get organized with my reading, so (in my spare time) I compiled my own list. Most of these books are Young Adult (YA), because that's what I write. I badly need to fill in the gaps of my reading list with more YA novels and "tween" books. I didn't include too many classics since that's what I have mostly been read up to this point. The gap there isn't as startling as the YA gap, though of course I left some space for some of my all-time favorite classic authors: Charles Dickens, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Mansfield. There are also some adult books that sounded fun on the list, including a couple of Annie Dillard's, just because she's always amazing and inspiring.

So, here's my list: (in no particular order)

1. Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
2. Laura Amy Schlitz, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village
3. Lynn Rae Perkins, Criss Cross
4. Cynthia Kadohata, Kira-Kira
5. Kate Dicamillo, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, A Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread
6. Avi Crispin, The Cross of Lead
7. Linda Sue Park, A Single Shard
8. Richard Peck, A Year Down Yonder
9. Christopher Paul Curtis, Bud, Not Buddy
10. Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
11. Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why abandoned
12. Elizabeth C. Bunce, A Curse as Dark as Gold
13. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
14. Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask  abandoned
    
15. Leslie Conner, Waiting For Normal
16. Siobhan Dowd, Bog Child
17. Christine Fletcher, Ten Cents a Dance
18. Matt de la Pena, Mexican White Boy
19. Joseph Monninger, Baby
20. Terry Pratchett, Nation
21. Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamakim, Skim abandoned
    
22. Coert Voorhees, The Brothers Torres
23. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
24. Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road
25. Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels
26. Stephanie Meyer, Twilight
27. Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Whimpy Kid
28. Richelle Mead, Vampire Academy
29. Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
30. Scott Westerfeld, Extras
31. Jenny Downham, Before I Die
32. Laurie Halse Anderson, Twisted
33. Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
34. Eudora Welty, The Robber Bridegroom
35. Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart
36. Eudora Welty, Losing Battles
37. Annie Dillard, The Maytrees
38. Annie Dillard, Living By Fiction
39. Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
40. Katherine Mansfield, The Aloe
41. Charles Dickens, Oliver
42. C.J. Sansom, Dark Fire
43. C.J. Sansom, Sovereign
44. Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
45. Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
46. Ayelet Waldman, Daughter’s Keeper
47. J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
48. S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
49. Robert Lipsyte, The Contender
50. Chaim Potok, The Chosen
51. Paul Zindel, The Pigman
52. Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice
53. Robb White, Deathwatch
54. Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War
55. Pamela Todd, The Blind Faith Hotel
56. Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin
57. Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese
58. Harry Mazer, The Last Mission
59. Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming  abandoned
60. Bruce Brooks, The Moves Make the Man
61. Richard Peck, Remembering the Good Times
62. Brock Cole, The Goats
63. Gary Paulsen, Hatchet
64. Walter Dean Myers, Fallen Angels
65. Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat
66. Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee
67. Michael Cadnum, Calling Home
68. Virginia Wolff, Make Lemonade
69. Karen Cushman, Catherine Called Birdy
70. Cynthia Voigt, When She Hollers
71. Rita Williams-Garcia, Like Sisters on the Home Front
72. John Marsden, Tomorrow When the War Began
73. Christopher Paul Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963
74. Victor Martinez, Parrot in the Oven, Mi Vida
75. Edward Bloor, Tangerine
76. Robert Cormier, Tenderness
77. Virginia Wolff, Bat 6
78. Joan Bauer, Rules of the Road
79. Gary Paulsen, Soldier’s Heart
80. Paul Fleischman, Whirligig
81. Sarah Dessen, Dreamland
82. Richard Peck, A Long Way from Chicago
83. Chris Lynch, Gold Dust
84. Gary Paulsen, The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer
85. Judith Guest, Ordinary People
86. Joseph Bedier, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
87. David Klass, You Don’t Know Me
88. Carol Plum-Ucci, What Happened to Lani Garver
89. Jerry Spinelli, Star Girl
90. Sonya Sones, One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
91. Ann Brashares, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
92. Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust
93. Lois Lowry, The Giver
94. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
95. Michael Chabon, Summerland
96. Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
97. Marsha Qualey, Just Like That
98. Newbery Winner
99. Newbery Winner
100. Newbery Winner

Phew! Anyone else want to join me and compile their own list?

Special thanks to Ren Feathers for the cool artwork, and to Emily Cross who started a blog for those participating in Fill-in-the-Gaps.