Deadline by Chris Crutcher

Getting the worst possible start to the school year ever when his doctor tells him he has a rare and deadly blood disease, 18-year-old high school senior, Ben Wolf, decides he's going to forgo treatment and telling anyone. Then he embarks upon a quest to join his school football team, date the girl of his dreams, and fully live life for as long as he's able. Classic Crutcher elements like thrilling sports scenes, quick-witted dialogue, and sympathetic characters combine with the compelling life-versus-living theme of this novel to make it a high-interest YA read. Some readers may question Ben's ability to keep his health situation secret from his immediate family as well as the extraordinary number of abuse and mental health issues that work their way out of the woodwork as supporting characters reveal their secrets to Ben, but those who are able to suspend their disbelief and go with the flow of the novel's layered and likeable narrator will find Chris Crutcher’s Deadline to be a thought-provoking, heart-breaking page-turner.

The Girl With All the Gifts

In general, I am not a fan of literature involving zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies excepted), but I picked up this gem after listening to Sean and Dietrich's emphatic recommendation on their podcast, The Library Police. Boy, am I glad I did! Despite the zombie-thing which I have, for some reason, been avoiding until now, this book has all the other elements of fiction that have sucked me in since I learned to read: a flawed-yet-likeable hero (in this case, several heroes) on a journey of self-discovery, a series of seemingly-insurmountable challenges that must be met and eventually overcome, masterfully amped-up suspense, characters I care about, characters I don't think I care about but end up rooting for, characters I want to see defeated...the whole shebang! The Girl with All the Gifts delivers these much-loved elements and wraps them up in a zombie-related ethical dilemma that sets this book above others of the genre, for M.R. Carey forces his readers to wrestle with the question "what makes us human?" through the lenses of characters who each must question and confront their own beliefs about this issue. Ethical dilemma aside, this book is an edge-of-your-seat, thrilling adventure story that is at once horrifying, heart-breaking, and inspiring. And the ending...WOW! I'll be thinking about this one for a long time...

My review of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

Hope is the Thing...

Cindy L. Rodriguez has tackled the issue of depression in When Reason Breaks, a novel about two Latino high school students thrown together by way of their English class. Emily and Elizabeth are both struggling with depression and they are both drawn to the poetry of Emily Dickinson which they are studying in Ms. Diaz' English class. Rodriguez has skillfully woven Dickinson's poetry and biographical information throughout the plot and within the characters. This insightful and, at times, suspenseful first novel delivers a gripping and ultimately uplifting story that will most likely compel young readers to investigate Emily Dickinson's life and poetry

A Hard Pill to Swallow...

It's inevitable that fans of To Kill a Mockingbird will be disappointed (and possible devastated) by its newly released predecessor, Go Set a Watchman. Like the character, Scout, many lovers of Harper Lee's Mockingbird set Scout's father, Atticus Finch upon a mythological pedestal from which he single-handedly fought racism in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Go Set a Watchman takes place two decades later as the town of Maycomb (and the United States as a whole) is embroiled in the struggles of the civil rights movement. I can't say I enjoyed reading this book, since my illusions of Atticus Finch's nobility were painfully shattered along with Scout's, but I have to admire the way Lee personified the struggle of our nation's conscience in the character of Jean Louise Finch. Jean Louise is forced to take a hard look at everything and everyone she has loved through eyes altered forever by her experiences in New York. Nothing much happens in this book; rather, it is a series of conversations made difficult to read for modern readers sensitive to today's politically correct language and rhetoric. If we, like Scout, are willing to face honestly the issues of race which, in light of recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and other U.S. cities reaching the boiling point, have merely been simmering beneath the surface, perhaps we can begin to have meaningful conversations that will lead to understanding and move us forward together. Reading this book is like taking medicine--distasteful, yet beneficial. To Kill a Mockingbird is much more tightly constructed and dramatic, with characters who are better fleshed out. If readers take up the challenge to read Watchman, they will not be treated to a nostalgic and inspirational tale; they will be forced to examine their own values, beliefs, and attitudes as they are allowed a rare glimpse into the evolution of a revered writer's process as she struggles with the desperately important message she wants to relay. I recommend this book for those who are ready to feel the sting it will inflict.

The Great Stories...the Ones That Really Mattered

Sam Gamgee, in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers, tries to make sense out of all the violence and destruction that surrounds him...

In a sense, that's what all fantasy helps us do--make sense of the world and events around us.

Alexander Lloyd, author of The Chronicles of Prydain, claimed that “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”  I couldn't agree more.  Having researched fantasy literature for the past week for a graduate school project, I have been immersed in the imaginary worlds conjured by some of my favorite authors of fantasy (as well as some intriguing new ones), and, as a result, I've been transported back to my childhood and young adulthood when I was joyfully reading any fantasy novel I could find.  At that time, I thought I was just in it for an entertaining and escapist read, but looking back on it now, I realize that I identified with the heroes in those fantasy novels who felt different from everyone else, as if they were on the outskirts of their world.  Reading about them and how they eventually used the very qualities that made them different in order to triumph against seemingly insurmountable odds gave my young self hope that I could eventually triumph against my own dragons.

This connection and inspiration that fantasy literature offers are only two benefits to reading works in this genre; there are so many others.  Today's readers have unlimited titles from which to choose--check out the Best Fantasy Books website for oodles of fantasy titles.  I will be!

An Old Love Rekindled

Yesterday, flipping channels while working out, I happened upon the movie, The Jane Austen Book Club, and of course had to watch:)

Jane Austen first worked her magic on me in college, though, like so may of the relationships Austen portrays in her novels, mine with Pride and Prejudice was a reluctant one at first.  After all, I had hundreds of pages to read for my Psych 101 class and this novel where nothing much seemed to be happening was really mucking up my schedule...until the afternoon I curled up on one of the filthy dorm couches to muscle my way through Lizzie's stay at Charlotte Collins' house when Darcy burst through the sitting room door to unexpectedly and reluctantly propose, only to have Lizzie...REFUSE him?!  I was IN from that moment on, alternating between wishing the worst upon the haughty Mr. Darcy and rooting for him to win Lizzie over.  Like Lizzie's attitude toward Mr. Darcy, mine toward Pride and Prejudice did a complete 180-degree turn...

...which is exactly what happens to some of the quirky characters in The Jane Austen Book Club, which I read a decade or so after my first encounter with Jane Austen and just watched yesterday.  Watching the movie adaptation of the book, I was struck by the myriad of ways Karen Joy Fowler's characters identified with Jane Austen's.  Both authors have found a way to show both humor and sadness in seemingly mundane human experience.  In their stories we recognize bits of ourselves and the people who populate our lives and so are able to think about how our own lives are progressing and puzzle out the meaning of it all.

There are those who may think that Austen is outdated and irrelevant and not for them, and to these poor souls, I say, just give her a try.  Fowler's character, Grigg, did this and it worked out well for him.  Even my husband, who meets my occasional spouts of  love for Jane Austen's works with a sigh and a good-natured half-eye-roll and who unfortunately (he thought at first) found himself also working out in the basement when I discovered the movie, found himself chuckling at parts and putting off his shower so that he could see how it ended (happily, of course).

Newly added to my "to-read" list:  my final Jane Austen novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

Newly added to my "to-watch" list:  The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Enjoy, and READ ON!