AMae’s Book #50: Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins

I saved the best for last!

I first heard about Anna and the French Kiss from John Green’s Twitter. John Green is one of my favorite authors, and I have enjoyed all his recommendations, so this jumped to the top of my “to read” list. And once I learned that the author, Stephanie Perkins, was the wife of wizard rocker Jarrod Perkins of Gred & Forge, I was even more excited to read it. And when I got to finally meet Jarrod at Wrockstock this past November, and found out what a great hugger he is and how sweet, I was anxious to get my hands on his wife’s book. And let me tell you, I was not disappointed!!

What a treat. What a treat! I was immediately drawn into the book because the main character, Anna, is from Atlanta (where I went to high school), and mentions many locations – not by name, but still very recognizable to me. These were places I hung out at with my friends in high school. Right there I loved the book. And I continued to love the book because here was a teenage girl I could get behind. This is a girl with actual problems, who deals with it in realistic ways.

Okay, so her dad is basically Nicholas Sparks. He writes cheesy romances set in the South where someone dies, and makes a mountain of money doing it. Anna doesn’t give him a lot of respect for that. And when he decides to send her to a prestigious boarding school in Paris to ostensibly give her a great educational opportunity (but really to impress his friends) she’s kind of upset. Interrupting your high school career, when you have friends and a crush-that-might-become-more, to move anywhere is rough. I’ve been there. But it turned out alright for me, and it was sweet to see things unfold for Anna.

Of course there’s a hot guy in this Paris boarding school. And of course he’s unattainable. And hot guy (who goes by St. Clair) is luckily not a jerk, so the reader can like him, too. I mean, he’s a guy so he goes jerky things at times, but he’s not overly jerky. One thing I love about John Green is that his teenage characters act like real teenagers, and Stephanie Perkins is blessed with the same talent. You can relate to these characters and not get too annoyed with them because you know it’s how you would react and feel in a similar situation. I beamed the whole way through because Stephanie Perkins GETS IT.

Y’all, this was a fantastic book. Written with a great sense of fun and youth and excitement. I hope I can one day meet Miss Stephanie and gush to her about how wonderful her book is. She’s got another scheduled to come out next year, and I will be just as anxious to get that one as well!

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Folks, this brings us to the end of One Year, 50 Books. It’s been nice having you along for the ride. If all continues to go according to plan, I will start the new year blogging about my next great adventure – grad school!

Happy 2011!

AMae’s Book #49: iDrakula, by Bekka Black

Get this – a new look at the Dracula story, as told through the eyes of teenagers on their iPhones, web browsers, and e-mails. VERY teenybop, I grant you, but this was getting passed around my store, and I had to have a look. I reread Bram Stoker’s Dracula last Halloween and was very much amused. The whole vampire thing is entertaining to me, and though I’m all about some Twilight riffing, I haven’t gotten into True Blood or Vampire Diaries, or hearkened back to Dark Shadows or anything. But some good old-fashioned blood sucking makes for a good evening’s read in my mind!

So, iDrakula started out promising, with the dialog succinctly put in text form. I mean, the original book is mostly in letters and diary entries, so this is a fresh take. But once I realized that Jonathan, Mina, Lucy, etc were all teenagers or barely twenty, it stated to lose its charm. Jonathan Harker is a lawyer helping a very wealthy count move from a mysterious country to England. I can see that being a complicated business. So why, even in a bizarre mental state, would anyone think it a good idea to send the intern (in this book’s case) to a foreign country to help some strange guy you’ve never met move? That seemed a little out of whack to me. A lot of very adult things are going on, and KIDS are running the show. Where are the parents in these books?!

Then with so much being put in text format and whiny e-mails, it really did seem to be turning more into Bella in New Moon (what with her repeatedly sending e-mails to a dead e-mail account). A lot of deep thoughts are turned into “ORL?”s and “how r u?”s and nonsense like that. I began to think that iDrakula is a lot like that modern retelling of Jane Eyre I read: interesting concept, but doesn’t quite follow through on execution. So a classic book I really enjoyed is turned into a joke. And Van Helsing? Meh. Not nearly as cool or funny. (Dude is still Peter Cushing in my mind!)

But, you know, I get it. This is a great introduction to the classic tale that might make some teenage kid crack open the Stoker tome, and be intrigued enough to follow it to the end. Being a bookseller (and soon, if my luck works out, a librarian) I’m coming to appreciate the “tricks” employed to get kids to read. I read voraciously as a kid, but I have to realize not everyone is like that, and sometimes we need a little push of fluff to get us moving in the right direction. iDrakula may not be the book for me, but I can easily see it working for someone else.

AMae’s Book #48: Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly

So, um… wow, I kind of disappeared there for awhile. No posts in November? Dang. Sorry. Well, I am near the end of my year goal!

Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly, came out in October, but I had the advanced reader copy lying around, and finally decided to read it. I was anticipating it being a melodramatic teen story about time travel, and though it was at times a little melodramatic, and at one point did involve something akin to time travel, I still rather enjoyed it!

Andi is a modern teen, the daughter of a wealthy and prominent scientist, who attends a high school for the offspring of wealthy and prominent people. (The other students aren’t mentioned a lot, but one of the girls near the end of the book starts dating Mickey Rourke. I found this amusing.) Her mother’s gone a little crazy since the death of Andi’s little brother, and when her mostly absent father finds this out, he puts the mother in a hospital, and bring Andi with him to Paris so he can keep an eye on her while she works on her senior thesis.

Andi is obsessed with music, and I’ve had LOADS of problems with teen books when music is mentioned. The authors are frequently middle-aged mothers who have NO idea what they’re talking about. But Donnelly seems to do an okay job – Andi really likes Pink Floyd, and an eighteenth-century composer created specifically for the book. Not a lot of random name-dropping to try and sound cool. Andi may be a messed up kid, but at least she doesn’t sound like a poseur hipster.

So, anyway, Andi and her father are staying with an old college friend of her father’s, and in the house Andi discovers a secret compartment in a guitar case that reveals a very old diary dating back from the French Revolution, written by a young girl named Alex who was a poor theater performer, but found herself entertaining the son of the king, because she seemed to be the only one to make the sad little boy smile. Naturally, she is swept up in the Revolution, and details it all in her diary.

I probably would have been more affected by it all if I was more knowledgeable about French history, and knew more about the Revolution besides “Let them eat cake.” (And now I’m having flashbacks to the Wishbone episode of Tale of Two Cities.) But Donnelly did a good job of making the story very intriguing, and making the character of Andi develop in a believable way over the course of the story, which is something I greatly appreciate in a teen novel. It’s a good, solid read, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who digs historical fiction.

AMae’s Book #47: Jane, by April Lindner

Shoot, I’m zipping through these! Well, that’s Young Adult for ya.

Growing up, there were certain books that made huge impressions on me. Anne Frank’s diary, the Redwall series, Matilda by Roald Dahl, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I read Jane Eyre at least four or five times when I was in middle school. So I perked up when I saw this arrive at my bookstore – a modern re-telling of Jane Eyre! And I got a little more excited when I saw that the Mr. Rochester character had been remade into a rock star! *swoon*

A few chapters in, I was a little weary of how the concept would turn out. Jane is a recent college-dropout, who only had to dropout because her parents died and left her worthless stocks. And her two siblings are worthless as well, so she enters the nanny racket. This is where she gets picked up to be the nanny to the little daughter of a famous rock star – Nico Rathburn.

Now, I haven’t hung out with the Bruce Springsteens of the world, but I’ve been around musicians. I thought Nico was pretty convincing – gorgeous in a not-so typical way, mood swings the people close to him know how to handle and understand, a heart of gold earned through mistakes made in his early twenties, and a celebrated genius. (Actually, I kept picturing Butch Walker in my mind when I envisioned Nico.) But the Jane Moore character… she reminded me too much of Bella Swan. I didn’t see much appeal in the girl. She’s into painting, and is apparently pretty good at it, but she has no other interests that I could make out. And what kind of a nanny wears skirts all the time? Every time Jane’s clothing was described she was wearing a skirt! She just seemed drab and kind of annoying.

I was definitely more interested in reading about Nico’s character than Jane’s. Sad, really. But I’m a sucker for the boys in bands. I did not see the attraction between the two besides the close proximity. It was totally Edward and Bella all over again. And [*spoiler alert*] – the crazy wife in the attic? Come on. A major celebrity could not hide a former supermodel of a wife like that. And Jane running away and not hearing A THING about tragedy at her former lover’s estate? Please. That’s the kind of thing that makes the front page. (And who ever heard of a girl who doesn’t check her cell phone for over a week and never even gets a glimpse at the AOL homepage? Obviously written by a middle-aged woman. Sorry – me ranting.)

I think the plot of Jane Eyre makes it hard to adapt to a modern setting, but it was an honest effort. I did get into it, despite it’s flaws. As with most of the YA selections I’ve put up on the blog, it’s a good, light read, something fun for the weekend, but not worth praising too much. I will say that now I want to pull out the original and get that re-read ASAP!

AMae’s Book #46: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

Let me start out by saying I’m not an Ernest Hemingway fan. Earlier this year I attempted to read his The Garden of Eden, and was bored to tears three chapters in (what with all the non-action), and I think I read The Old Man and the Sea in high school, though it also bored me so much I can’t quite recall. But I really wanted to give A Moveable Feast a try because it’s about his time in Paris in the 1920′s (a topic that I’m intrigued by), and F. Scott Fitzgerald is mentioned (a literary figure I greatly admire, as those of you following along at home will recall). It wasn’t a hard read, and not horribly boring, but I’m still not a Hemingway fan.

A Moveable Feast is basically a collection of vignettes about different places and people Hemingway and his small family (a wife, later joined by a baby boy) encounter while he struggles to make a living at writing. He spends a lot of time talking about betting on horse races (yawn), but once he starts bringing in other members of the ex-pat literati, it gets more interesting. He admires Gertrude Stein, but I found her awful. She seemed to be a woman who thought very highly of herself, and didn’t think any of her artistic married men friends should be married. Her unnamed companion (whom I’m pretty sure is the famous Alice B. Toklas) would talk to the wives while Gertrude and her male writing friends discussed art. Baby-sat them, basically. Sounds terrible to me.

Hemingway spends a lot of time talking about how poor he and his wife were because he was trying to get his writing career up and running, and also mentions how cheaply they could live in Paris and all the drinks one could have. You also get the sense that Hemingway thought a great deal about himself, too, and since I don’t like the guy or his style of writing, that got tiresome.

But the chapters with the Fitzgeralds are rather entertaining. I’m convinced Hemingway and Fitzgerald were the original frenemies. Each admired the other’s talent, Fitzgerald got Hemingway a publishing deal with Scribner’s, and they were a part of the same social circle. But Hemingway goes at length to show Fitzgerald as being something of a fop (I never thought I’d get to use that word!), which, let’s face it, he kind of was, but you don’t get much of a redeeming light about Fitzgerald unless you count that this was around the time he was about to publish The Great Gatsby. It was a little comical.

After looking at the Wikipedia page on the work, maybe it’s the editing that contributed to my underlying dislike of the book. It was published posthumously, and my edition was assembled by his forth wife Mary, and there were definite criticisms about her input. Eh, maybe, maybe not. I don’t think I wasted my time reading A Moveable Feast, but it’ll probably be awhile before I attempt any other Hemingway novels.

AMae’s Book #45: Vixen, by Jillian Larkin

Vixen, the debut novel of Jillian Larkin, is the first in a series called The Flappers about a group of young Chicago ladies who explore the limits of their social standing, social mores, and social drinking in the Roaring 20′s. It isn’t being published until mid-December, but with me in the book business I got an advance reader’s copy. Actually, I picked it up at work this afternoon, and read it all evening. Did not expect that, but it was a nice workout for my brain!

It’s a young adult novel, much in the vein of the Luxe series by Anna Godbersen (who has just published the start of her new flapper series, Bright Young Things – the 20′s are cycling back into fashion), down to the fashion magazine-spread cover. It started off a little predictable – a “perfect” young socialite who yearns for more than what her privileged life can give her, her cousin who appears to be sweet and naive but has a secret past, and a best friend who’s jealous of both of them. And of course the men in their lives are fairly stereotypical – the fiance who seems great on the surface but turns out to be jerky, a handsome man who’s rakish but loveable (the Rhett Butler factor, as I’ve taken to calling him), and the man who makes up the EPIC LOVE of the story. But as evidenced by the fact that I read it in one evening, I totally got sucked in, and found some intriguing plot lines to keep me guessing. And had to listen to some Dixieland band music in the background for mood.

While the writing is not spectacular, the dialogue is great. When these ladies snap into their “flapper mode” they have great comebacks for every remark, and engage in almost Mae West-like repartee. Definitely fun to read and imagine saying yourself! Oh, and while reading I found what is now one of my favorite sentences: “And then he stood, tipped an invisible hat, and walked out of her room, leaving a scent of shaving balm and promise in his wake.” Swoon, what a romance novel line!

The author has the story set in Chicago, and was smart to limit the landscape to a few famous landmarks that are immediately familiar to the average reader. The Green Mill plays a significant role in the plot, and it made me smile because, while I’ve never been in, I did once live a few block away from the famed speakeasy and have seen a documentary about it’s history and secret bootlegger passages! (Lame, I know.)

I recommend it. Vixen isn’t too heavy, but a fun, engaging read. If you’re into YA historical fiction, or Jazz Age stories, it’s a series to check out. The next book, Ingenue, comes out sometime next year!

(This also reminds me that I absolutely MUST check out The Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry – the story of the flapper murderess who inspired Bob Fosse’s Chicago!)

AMae’s Book #44: Gods and Generals, by Jeff Shaara

Being the War Between the States buff that I am, I had to get the Shaara trilogy in at some point! While Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, the lauded book about the Gettysburg battle, is considered one of the best Civil War novels ever, Gods and Generals by his son Jeff Shaara starts at the beginning of the conflict, as the main characters featured in Killer Angels are assembled.

I didn’t start out my recent fascination with the Civil War thinking I’d read these books. Reading about the battles isn’t my thing – I prefer reading about the home front, and in my own novel that’s what I intend to focus on. But early this year I found a cheap double feature DVD of the films Gods and Generals and Gettysburg… and LOVED them. (The part with Chamberlain at Little Roundtop always puts me in tears.) After that, I decided the books should be read.

People say that Jeff Shaara’s prose isn’t quite as good as his dad’s, but I still found it a good read. Hancock, Lee, Jackson, Chamberlain and others are presented as the war presses closer, in their various stations in life. The film version focuses a lot more on Stonewall Jackson, I felt, and while I’ve come to find him a fascinating man, it was nice to get more background about the other men. I wanted a little more from Chamberlain, but his big moment in the war happened at Gettysburg, so perhaps once I get to the next book I’ll get that.

A lot of battles occur in Gods and Generals, and unless you really know military history, they do start converging as one, but each account is intriguing to read, and getting a more human approach to the battles is how a person like me learns about them better. It’s also heartbreaking to learn about the wives and families these men left behind, and the friendships that were barred because of the war. Reading about Hancock and Armistead as they each prepared to leave California and take commissions on different sides tears you up inside.

Definite good read, and will be getting to Killer Angels before too long.

AMae’s Book #43: Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan

Bonjour Tristesse is a book I first became aware of from reading Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson. The books was written when the author, Francoise Sagan, was only 19, and focuses on complicated emotions and relationships between a young woman  and her playboy father, playboy father’s fun-loving young mistress, and a more serious-minded woman playboy father’s age who intends to tame him. It’s quite a punch of a book, especially when you remember it was published in the mid 1950′s.

In Minor Characters, Johnson mentions the publication of the book, the infamous young woman who wrote it, and the effect it all had on her married college professor boyfriend:

[Francoise Sagan's] prose was like an elegant shrug of Gallic detachment and sophisticated regret. Sagan’s schoolgirl face, knowing and slightly melancholy behind her gamin haircut, appeared in every magazine for awhile. Her right thumb hovered just at the corner of her mouth, an indecisive gesture half infantile, half provocative. She seemed, however, to have taken possession of her fame with great aplomb, living it up the way young male writers were supposed to. She had a predilection for very fast driving in expensive sports cars; she dashed from literary parties to weekends at chateaux, alighting occasionally at cafes to be photographed with her thumb in its memorable position. Anyhow, that was my envious vision of her. She was a girl F. Scott Fitzgerald could have invented to torment poor Dick Diver. Americans forgave her amorality because she was French.

[...] Alex read every interview with her he could find. There was something in her speed, her coolness, that seemed to him totally new. He kept saying he wished there was some way he could meet her. Fortunately this wasn’t likely. I loved Alex so much myself I was positive Sagan would find him irresistible.

(BTW, Johnson earlier mentioned reading Tender Is the Night by Fitzgerald during the course of a weekend, and identifying Alex with the Dick Diver character. I was prompted to read this one because of Johnson’s mention as well. That, and a trip to Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s childhood home in Montgomery, AL with my mother.)

Thinking on it now, I can see Bonjour Tristesse being an early sign of the Beat movement. But because the book was written by a woman (and a very young woman), and the characters come from wealth, it can’t really be, or at least hasn’t been given that distinction to my knowledge. Regardless, the main character is “beaten” – she’s bored and directionless, and acts in ways without fully thinking of the consequences. And (spoiler alert!) there is a senseless death to end on, rather like Go by John Clellon Holmes. Huh. I hadn’t thought of that until I was writing it. (Hey, English majors, I just gave you a prompt for your thesis!)

I felt rather sophisticated pulling this out on the bus. This is a rather obscure title. But an intriguing read, especially with how it had been introduced to be so many years ago. I did not like taking French, much preferring German and Italian, but there was a sliver of me that wished I knew French well enough to read Bonjour Tristesse in the original French, as there were some places in the English translation that felt a little awkward and out of rhythm, but my flow quite lovely in its original form. If you’re looking for something different for your literary palate, try this one out.

AMae’s Book Catch-Up

I moved cross-country a few weeks back, and in the midst of getting adjusted to life in Chicago again I’ve put off doing a lot of other things, like blogging about the books I’m reading! So I’ll take this time to catch y’all up.

I finished the Hunger Games trilogy (#37 & #39). WOW. I will not put spoilers up, because we’re still in that period of time when you shouldn’t do that to people about a major book like Mockingjay, but WOW. I got my Amazon shipment of books on a Friday, and as luck would have it, my little bro was a having a nerd party with some of his buddies (they play war strategy games and eat pizza), so I was holed up in my room, and read Catching Fire in its entirety. Couldn’t put it down! Left me a little stunned at the end. Each chapter ending was a cliff-hanger, and it was a fast-paced experience.

In between the second and third Hunger Games books, I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (#38). That’ll get your blood pumping – a bunch of books about teenagers in full-on rebellion. I had wacky dreams for two nights involving armies fighting with wands and crossbows. Magic and technology. Probably should have watched some Star Wars and then I could have had some lightsabers, too. (Oh wait, I did!) Umbridge still makes my blood boil. I envision in her as a combination of all the pathetic, worthless, annoying, and downright nasty customers I have to deal with on a daily basis in the bookstore. (Slightly off-point, but it is kind of amazing how many people walk in to bookstores who don’t know how to read. Or reason.)

Then, for research purposes for my novel, I read The Education of the Southern Belle, by Christie Anne Fanrham (#40). Since I’ve already done quite a bit of reading on the subject of higher education for female Americans, I didn’t garner a lot from it. But it’s an excellent primer if someone is interested in the topic. Very well organized and to-the-point. I did learn more about the daily schedule in one of those female colleges, and how heavily chaperoned those girls were (many couldn’t even go outside of the school into the gardens without a chaperone!). A lot of the female schools were modeled after male schools, and women were encouraged to gain an education, but for the near sole purpose of getting a husband. Men of a certain class and calibre needed women who could at least give the appearance of that class and calibre, so women were encouraged to gain an education to be that better mate. Interesting thought.

Then I FINALLY read The March, by E.L. Doctorow (#41). A good friend of mine recommended this book to me over a year ago, I got it, and then let it sit on my shelf. But the other week I finally cracked it open! It’s about Sherman’s March to the Sea that ultimately kicked the South in the bread basket and put an end to the Civil War. You follow a number of characters from Georgia through South Carolina and up to North Carolina: plantation mistresses, doctors, slaves, even convicts. It was an extremely well-written story of all their lives intertwining throughout this horrible happening. I’ve found that good writing mixed with good historical fiction (in particular America in the 1860′s) is rather hard to find – at least for me – so this was a refreshing find.

And then I reread An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green (#42), my favorite young adult author. I LOVE JOHN GREEN! This was the only one of his books I didn’t yet own, but found a great deal online and had to read it when I got it. It’s about a young man, a prodigy, who spends a summer in a little town called Gutshot, TN (yep, Podunk) and ultimately learns many new things about himself. The main character reminds me a lot of my little brother, who is actually now reading the book on my recommendation! As I’ve said before, John Green has a very witty way of writing teenagers that doesn’t condescend, but really sounds like true teenagers. This is how they talk, this is how their thought process works, this is how they react to various situations. And the characters are all so memorable in their idiosyncrasies. Quick weekend read, too, if you’re in need of one.

Well, that brings us up to date. WHEW! Currently working on #43, another quick read, so hopefully I won’t wait so long to post about that. Only eight more to go!

AMae’s Book #36: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was my favorite writer as a kid. I devoured his books! Matilda was definitely my favorite, but each one was special and wonderful, and held dear. I discovered my copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night – my mother had a bunch of bags of stuff to take to a rummage sale, and I discovered it near the top! My brother had acquired it at some point, and was now giving it away! I saved it, luckily, and when I woke up today thought it might be fun to re-read.

Something I quickly realized is that my copy has a different illustrator than Quentin Blake, the man who seemingly goes hand-in-hand with any Roald Dahl novel! The illustrations are by Joseph Schindelman, and are much “grittier” than Blake. Schindelman was actually the original illustrator, and for the editions made since 1998, Blake has done them! Interesting. I may need to get another copy to compare.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is like a light-hearted horror story. Five children and their parents/guardians, touring an enormous and wonderful chocolate factory with a strange little man, surrounded by other little people who laugh hysterically at everything. One by one the children are bumped off in one sense or another, as payback for their wicked ways. It’s rather like a Grimm’s fairy tale!

I didn’t particularly like the recent film adaptation with Johnny Depp – I love Johnny Depp, but he was super creepy as Mr. Wonka. And the Oompa-Loompas were all played by one man, Deep Roy, who I (and Kenny from The Films) recall with fright as the creepy little man on wheels in that one episode of X-Files that scared the pants off us!! Anyway, I did love the 1971 version with Gene Wilder, especially after the Rifftrax take on it:

It’s such a fun book! What child wouldn’t love the chance at a lifetime supply of chocolate? Or to tour a place so fantastical, no one would believe you? Or to laugh at children who are spoiled rotten and get their comeuppance? With little bearded men singing morality songs? What’s not to love?!