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books

What Should I Read Next?

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I’ve been in a bit of a reading rut lately. It’s not that I’ve been reading bad book after bad book, more like nothing amazing has been grabbing me lately, nothing that I want to shout to the world about and beg everyone to read. My Jen’s Favorites shelves on Goodreads has been mysteriously lacking in 2012 reads.

Inspired by Janssen’s Tell Me What to Read series, I figured I’d ask YOU what I should pick up next. I have a few choices in mind that have been lingering in my stacks, but feel free to offer other choices, too. What am I going to love, what am I not going to want to put down?

So far my options are:


Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
I bought this years ago. Most everyone I know seems to rave about it, and it’s a Printz Winner. I just haven’t got around to it, no matter how many times I’ve picked it up for consideration.

Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown
Jennifer Brown is one of my favorite authors and I just got this one a few weeks ago. I’ve heard good things.

11/23/63 by Stephen King
Except for On Writing, I’ve actually never read a Stephen King book. But this one has time travel (my favorite), and my husband loved it. I bought this one a few months after it came out, but keep getting intimidated by the size.

Any other suggestions?

Fables: Inherit the Wind by Bill Willingham

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Warning: Spoilers for the previous Fables volume, Superteam, abound in this review.
A new Fables volume is always a good thing. I was a little disappointed with the last installment, but even when a volume is a bit off, it’s still better than most comics I’ve had a crack at. Inherit the Wind is a fine follow-up to the somewhat anticlimactic defeat of Mr. Dark, mostly because it promises new directions and new storylines to explore.
The title is a reference to the death of the North Wind, aka Bigby Wolf’s father and the Cubs’ grandfather. The main storyline involves the zephyrs’ deliberations to determine who will be the new North Wind – one of the cubs, naturally. They’re put to a series of tests, and the new King is not who you might expect.
The other main story follows Bufkin and his sidekicks as they try and undermine the Nome King’s tyrannical rule over Oz. It should come as a surprise to no one that I love how much Willingham writes about Oz and its inhabitants (definitely a new perspective on Ozma!).
Another story follows Rose Red’s return to the Farm, and yet another shows how newly-thin Mrs. Spratt is coping with her master’s death.
There’s a lot going on, and most of it is set-up for the new stories Willingham has planned after the Mr. Dark arc, but it never feels like straight exposition. I really enjoy seeing how the events of the past volumes have impacted each character. My one quibble is that each of these stories is broken up into little chunks, and told in rotation. It became distracting after a while – I just wanted to get on with one story without being interrupted after just a couple of pages with another. 
Still, that’s often the nature of comics. And as always, there are some smaller stories with guest writers and illustrators appended at the end. I enjoyed all of these, and that’s saying something, since I usually find them pretty erratic in quality. And of course the art is uniformly outstanding.
Book purchased.

Earthling! by Mark Fearing

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Earthling has just what I like in a graphic novel: colorful, vibrant art and a story to match. Nine year old Bud moves with his dad to a new home, and he’s pretty nervous about it, particularly his first day at his new school. Little does he know that he is in for a first day unlike any other…
While waiting at the bus stop, Bud mistakenly boards a bus on its way to outer space school: Cosmos Academy, to be specific. At Cosmos, alien kids from all manner of planets intermingle – all planets except Earth, that is. Bud quickly learns that the aliens at Cosmos all believe Earthlings are the terror of the galaxy, and the principal in particular has a vendetta against them. Bud quickly befriends an alien named Gort, who keeps his secret and tells him to pretend to be a Tenarian, a race of aliens that are more reclusive.
Bud and his new friend concoct a plan to get him back home, which involves winning the school’s Zero-Ball competition so they can hop a ride back into space on their way to the finals and hopefully catch a ship back to Earth. Amid this main storyline, Bud also has to contend with bullies, the suspicion of the principal, and the fear that he will give himself away as an Earthling.
I loved how much fun Fearing had with both the story and the art. With so many different alien cultures as his disposal, he could be really creative with the way the aliens look and how they interact. (One alien race molts periodically and it causes a minor crisis for a Zero-Ball team.) He also clearly enjoyed creating fun, out there (pun intended) school rules. (When a child is expelled, he or she is placed in suspended animation.)
Fearing treads a lot of old ground (the underdogs try to win a special alien sport; a fish out of water has to find his way home) and some of the plot devices are obviously there just to keep the story moving (a basic piece of technology allows all aliens to understand each other), but it doesn’t really matter. There’s action and humor and pathos and all the other good stuff that is integral to a successful story. And have I mentioned how much I love the art? Fearing creates terrific facial expressions, and his aliens have tentacles and lots of eyes and all manner of oddities that make you want to look and look again.
This is a good pick for your reluctant readers for sure, and it’s a pretty substantial book, so it feels like a real accomplishment to finish it. I read this on the heels of Legends of Zita the Spacegirl and I think they’re good readalikes – they both have just the right amount of space wackiness coupled with an ordinary kid who becomes extraordinary.

Hardcover to Paperback Cover Switch: Six to Check Out

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My list of books getting new paperback covers keeps growing, so I thought it was about time to share some of the ones catching my eye, either for good or not so good. This time, I even got one of the authors to give me a little bit of her mind on her book’s redesign.

Dandi Daley MacKall’s The Silence of Murder was the 2012 winner of the Edgar Award. I read it last year and found it unmemorable. What I do remember, though, is really digging the hardcover look, which is on the left. I love the image of the shattered bottle and the stark look of the green against the black background. It’s an exceptionally simple cover but I think it’s effective in not only being eye-catching, but it captures the idea of a mystery. The cover on the right is the paperback look and I think it’s a huge step down from the original. The color scheme is odd, but maybe more odd is the choice to have an illustrated person on the cover. Granted, it’s not a stock image, and while the boy in the hoodie with his mouth covered certainly follows what happens in the story, the cover looks very juvenile. The font, the unrefined lines, and the color scheme make it look very young — I’m especially put off by the almost too-happy color choices of yellow and orange in the tag line (“An Unspeakable Crime. A Voiceless Defendant”) and in the alternating colors in the author’s name. It’s a shame in the change because that original cover is so good. The paperback edition of The Silence of Murder will be released in October.

Apologies in advance for the bit of blur on the paperback cover, but I couldn’t find a full-size image outside the publisher’s catalog. Melissa Walker’s 2011 release, Small Town Sinners, is getting a slight change in look, too. Before I dive in with my thoughts, I asked Melissa what she thought:

I loved the hardcover image on Small Town Sinners — the girl, the apple, the field. I think it’s beautiful. So when I saw the paperback cover, which zooms in on the apple, I had to take a step back. I missed the setting, to be honest. But I also know that the apple is what people talked about when they saw the cover. That heart bite, the arresting red… it definitely catches the eye, and hopefully it will bring more readers to the paperback. 

I’m with her on this one. I really dug the hardcover look, which featured not just the apple, but the girl in the field in the background. There is a lot of symbolism in it, particularly noting the topic at hand in the book. The girl in white, the struggle she feels with following her faith straight and narrow or letting herself to feel around outside it highlighted in the way she shields her face. It is the apple that’s maybe most memorable, though, and I don’t think the paperback gets it wrong by focusing in on it. I’m glad to see the font and design of the title didn’t change in the process; I dig the light cursive for “Small Town” and the contrast in the straight look of “Sinners.” Note that the paperback edition of the book gets a tag line that the hardcover did not: “Does falling in love mean falling out of faith?” I’m not a huge tag line fan, and I think the downside of it here is that it suggests the book focuses more on the romance than on the struggle of faith (and family!) that Walker successfully delves into. Overall, it’s not a bad change, but I wonder what sort of readership this look would bring, as opposed to the original since the change isn’t that drastic. If you haven’t, I highly recommend checking out the entire cover story for the hardcover look over at Melissa’s blog (and if you dig cover posts and aren’t reading her “cover stories” posts, get on it). The paperback edition of Small Town Sinners will be available in January.

Joshua Cohen’s Leverage still makes my stomach turn when I think about it. It’s a hell of a powerful book if even thinking about it looking at the covers makes me hurt. The hardcover on the left is so perfect for this book. The stark look with the arm, vein-y and steroidal, stands out. You know immediately this is going to be a painful book and there is no doubt readers know this book will appeal to male readers and to sports fans. I love the way the font looks for the title — it’s very athletic, very sports jersey looking. I love the white cover a lot and the simplicity really conveys the enormity of the story inside (I know that sounds contradictory, but I think it’s true). The paperback cover, though? Also a real winner. This time, the design offers a greater insight into the fact this is a book that tackles sports head-on, and I love that it looks gritty. Like the original cover, the title design and font choice have that athletic look and I’m glad to see Cohen’s name gets to be even bigger on the paperback. But what I don’t care for? The tag line: “Too much pressure, too many victims — who will take a stand?” It’s so generic and while it does get at the heart of the story, it’s still fairly leading. I think that’s really my issue with tag lines. They force an interpretation of the story on the reader, whether intentional or not. Either way, both covers win in this change up, and I do hope that the new football-inspired look will draw more readers to this intense and gripping novel. Have I mentioned I love this one? Leverage will come out in paperback September 27.

I really liked Carol Lynch Williams’s Glimpse, a gritty verse novel about sisters and family secrets. The original hard cover look on the left stands out to me because of the brightness. Even though it’s a dark novel, I think the way the sun’s light contrasts with the darker woods and the way it’s setting instead of rising gives it that eery feel, that something isn’t quite right. I love that the girl’s face is all there, but it’s obscured enough to show only the look of trepidation and little else. I’m a fan of the way the title is centered and how the font is so narrow, almost whisper-thin, despite being right in the middle of the cover begging for attention. I think that’s fairly representative of the story itself. Of note is that the author’s name is almost buried in the lower right hand corner. The paperback cover isn’t bad, but for me, it’s forgettable. It looks very much like the cover that her latest novel, Waiting, gets in terms of a muted palate. The two girls are looking away from the reader, and I think there is a lot said in the fact the girls aren’t holding one another’s hands or embracing each other. Since this is a sister story, I like that there are two girls; however, the image of one girl in the hardcover is almost more authentic to the story and more haunting. I appreciate, though, how the thin font is still there for the title in paperback and I like how Williams’s name is more prominent. But for me, the winning look is still the hardcover. The paperback is far too generic for me and really reminds me a lot of the Cook redesign I talked about here. Glimpse is available in paperback now.

This is a book I keep meaning to read because it sounds like something that might be up my alley. Marcus Sedgwick’s White Crow cover make over might be one of my favorites — the hard cover on the left does absolutely nothing for me. It’s creepy, but more than anything, it’s just weird to me. The design, with the goth-like face floating above the too-narrow, too-cheap looking title and the random raven (or crow — it could be a crow) just does nothing. I really dislike the font choice for the author’s name too; it looks really old, and not in a good, vintage sort of way. The black-white-red look, which can often make a cover stand out, isn’t effective in capturing any sort of mood for the book. But let’s talk about the paperback. I love how creepy it is. The blue-grey coloring gives a much more haunting feel to it than the black and white look of the hardcover does. More than that though, it’s the girl. She’s got her back to us as readers, and she’s sitting in a simplistic chair in the corner, surrounded with candles. Is she performing some sort of ritual? Channeling the spirits? What the heck is she doing? I love the title font choice, as it’s much more haunting than the original. The paperback reminds me of so many horror film looks, and it draws me in much more because of that. I want to know what the story is here because I know there has to be one. I think it’s interesting that the hardcover look features a person with dark hair and the paperback appears to have a girl with much lighter hair in it. Both feature a pretty lame tag line: “What’s on the other side of death?” but despite being lame, I think the paperback cover draws readers in with those words a little bit more. For me, this is paperback all the way. I’d love that one on my shelf. White Crow will be out in paperback September 18. 

I read Lindsey Leavitt’s Sean Griswold’s Head a while ago, and I remember it being a sweet story about a girl juggling her father’s illness with figuring out who she is amid that stress. There is a little romance in the story which emerges as Peyton engages with her focus object — the back of the head of the boy who sits in front of her. I dig the hardcover look of this book because it’s not only pretty gender neutral, but because we don’t see the boy’s face. Again, it’s a fairly simplistic cover and concept. It’s appealing because, despite being simple, it’s also different enough to stand out. I dig the handwriting font for the title, though I think it is very easy to overlook the author name on this cover. It’s shoved in the corner in a narrow font. The paperback cover, on the right, conveys an entirely different feel than the original. This cover? Romance. This is the cover that will appeal to readers wanting a story with kissing in it (though that plays such a small role in the story that ultimately I think readers might be a little mislead). The couple, though, looks so modern and relatable, I think; these kids are freshmen in any high school right now, no question. There’s a much more feminine feel to the paperback version, and on many levels, it reminds me of the newer looking Lurlene McDaniel books. I think that’s because of how modern the couple appears. I am glad to see Leavitt’s name gets a lot more attention on the paperback, but the title is easy to miss, I think. I wouldn’t say the paperback nor the hardcover does it better. Rather, they aim at two entirely different audiences and I think readers will be drawn to one over the other, depending on what they’re expecting to get from the book. Sean Griswold’s Head will be out in paperback September 18.

Thoughts? Any do it better than others?

Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown

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Jennifer Brown’s third book, Perfect Escape, follows Kendra and her brother Grayson as they take off across America on a road trip to see one of the biggest faults in California. Grayson’s a geology addict, so Kendra sees this as their perfect destination.

Except, the story isn’t that simple.

Kendra’s older brother suffers from OCD, and he’s always been the center of attention in her family because of it. She’s lived in his shadow her whole life and has always felt this immense pressure to be Miss Perfect to impress her parents (and really, to impress herself and keep herself as distanced from Grayson’s illness as possible). After his return from a recent stint in therapy, Kendra isn’t all that convinced he’s better. But worse: Kendra’s done something horrible herself that threatens to change the dynamics of her family forever, and she did it because she needed to be perfect. When word gets out she might have to face consequences for her actions — when she might have to fess up and face her parents — she grabs her brother, her car, and decides right then and there she needs to get out of town. They are going to the big California fault, but that’s not her true destination. Kendra wants to reconnect with her former best friend, who happened to also be Grayson’s former girlfriend and the one person who loved him regardless.

Perfect Escape covers a lot of ground — there’s mental illness, challenging family dynamics, the desire to succeed, and the ever-shifting nature of relationships. The story’s primarily Kendra’s though. She’s struggling with figuring out how to be herself in a world where she’s really not allowed herself to figure out exactly who she is. She’s under the belief she needs to be perfect because she has to fill the hole that her brother can’t. More than that, though, she does it to prove something to herself. To prove that she’s never going to be like Grayson with his strange ticks, his obsessions, his disappearing acts, and his inability to be “normal.” She pushes herself to be the best at school, and when she realizes too late she can’t handle all of the pressure as well as she thought she could, she does something bad. And while it doesn’t seem all that bad on the surface, as the road trip progresses and the relationship Kendra and Grayson forge grows tighter, she explains exactly why her behavior was so bad. And it is. It’s much more serious than she’s lead readers to believe.

Kendra, for me, was an unsympathetic character. She’s extremely selfish, and her reactions to situations she puts herself in don’t beg for much from the reader. Rather than face her problems head on, she avoids them by running away. She not only does that, but she lies to cover her tracks on multiple occasions. More than that, though, she is resentful and at times completely hateful toward her brother. It’s understandable, really: she’s lived in the shadow of his disease and his OCD has been center stage in her family’s life. But as much as it’s understandable, it didn’t make me sympathize with her behavior at all. Here’s the thing — Brown is successful at writing a character who is unsympathetic. Much as I didn’t like Kendra, I was curious to know her story and understand why she was that way. I wanted to know what about her brother caused her such anger and why she decided to run away from home, rather than face her problems. Another interesting aspect about Kendra was that as much as I found her unsympathetic, I didn’t find her entirely unlikable. I think this is because what she learns on the trip with her brother shines a light into the real good within her.

When Kendra takes Grayson on the road trip from Missouri to California, she and he do no packing. They just leave. Grayson’s an unwilling companion, but he doesn’t complain too much. Kendra’s convinced him that their parents won’t get too concerned (a lie) and while they’re traveling, she learns a lot about the things that set him off. More than that, though, she learns what bits of him she really loves. Interspersed in their trip is back story that are crucial to understanding the second biggest aspect of the plot. See, Kendra’s best friend Zoe, who used to live near her, was uprooted and moved to California. Taken from Kendra completely. The reason was that Zoe had been together with Grayson and loved him, and her parents did not at all approve of the relationship. But it had been so good for Grayson and it had been so good for Kendra. Now that it’s gone, they’re both emptier, and Kendra hopes she can bring them all back together at the end of the trip. Through these moments and through the in-time road trip, we get a clearer picture of both Kendra and Grayson, and they, too, begin understanding each other better.

The thing is, it’s not that simple, and that is because of both Kendra’s behavior and because of Grayson’s OCD.

There are a number of things in the story that require suspending belief, and it was a mixed back in terms of success. I found some of the road trip experiences to feel right with the characters and story, including the fact Kendra chooses to pick up a hitchhiker (who she’d met the previous night at the motel she and Grayson stayed at). But other things, including the fact Kendra’s parents were so out of the picture and not as invested in tracking her or Grayson down, to be a little harder to work around. While it works to propel the story forward and to shine the light into the sibling relationship, knowing how their parents operated made me feel this was a bit of a stretch. I also had a difficult time with the money situation, though the explanation for how they’ve funded this trip emerges at the end and ties right into what it was Kendra was running away from in the first place.  On the whole, the road trip elements worked, and they made sense in context of the book. 

Perfect Escape is strongly-written, and the pacing is smooth. It’s not exceptionally fast nor is it slow, but right on target. Brown is able to drop readers into a story well. One of the elements I really liked about this story came through Grayson’s fixation: rocks. He spends a lot of time at the quarry near his family’s home in his early years, and when he’s on the road with Kendra, he insists on not only picking up rocks, but telling stories about why those rocks matter. Because of this obsession, Kendra concocts the story about visiting one of the biggest faults in California, and that is what keeps Grayson on board with the trip (rather than bailing out or seeking out their parents immediately). The relationship between Kendra and Grayson plays out in the metaphor of the rocks, and when the story ends, it’s probably one of the more powerful takeaways. It’s not at all over-the-top nor does it try too hard; it’s spot on. I also found the ending of this story to be one of its strengths: it’s not cut-and-dry. Readers are instead invited to imagine what goes down and the consequences awaiting Kendra. They’re not given to us.

Hand this book to readers who like realistic stories about family, about siblings, and those who like a good road trip book. There is also a nice story about friendship in here, too, both the kind between siblings and the kind between people who aren’t related. This isn’t a dark book at all, either, so readers who like contemporary books that don’t delve into dark topics will appreciate this one. It’s not light-hearted, though, but it’s also not too heavy.

Review copy received from the publisher. Perfect Escape is available now.