Past present future.

Hello dear unlikely but (still) potential readers. I am back from my hiatus. Life was hard there for a little while. I am now officially a librarian in a Northwest suburb of Chicago. Hooray! I also live in Chicago and so thusly have a commute. The commute, while it has its drawbacks, has one major perk: reading. I read on the el and I read on the metra and I listen to books on cd in the car and sometimes I even read or listen to story podcasts while I'm walking. I start and finish at least 5 books a week. I really enjoy my job too and I'm really excited about teen read week.

Today I'm going to mention a few things I really liked and a few disappointments. For more complete reading lists check out my goodreads or shelfari pages.

A short list of good things I've read lately:
Magnificent Pigs
Catherine Murdock-Dairy Queen and The Off Season: really well done character portrait of a girl who decides her life as a dairy farmer needs spicing up.
Mercedes Lackey-The Fairy Queen:A formula romance disguised as fantasy but well done for what it is.
John Green-An Abundance of Katherines: Intensely coming of age and coming into one's own story.
Judith Clarke-One Whole and Perfect Day: Serendipity at its finest. I almost cried.
Two books I absolutely loved:
Andrew Davidson-The Gargoyle: I was skeptical. I did not want to think this book would hold my attention but I couldn't resist the title. Instead I was propelled through love stories and the history of the book as well as modern day burn recuperation practices and a man who fights his many demons. I couldn't put it down.

Perry Moore-Hero: holy homosexual batman! I love the way this book plays with the superhero genre and at the same time is not illustrated. Instead Moore paints with words.

Finally, some disappointments:
Cohn and Levithan: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist was GREAT. However Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List left me wanting more. More defined characters, more crisply distinct voices. More plot and action. Just...more.
Barry Lyga-Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth girl. Unreliable narrators are fine, unlikeable characters all around leave me disconnected to the story. Speaking of the story, I'm not sure what was supposed to be astonishing there at all. Oh well. Maybe Boy Toy is better.

God's Town

Ribeiro, Andrea Barata, et al. Cidade de Deus City of god. [United States]: Miramax Home Entertainment, 2003.

I abhor violence and like kids so this movie seems on the surface to be the opposite of everything that I would want to watch in a movie. The story is basically the timeless tale of a slum druglord's hostile takeover, his salad days, and the war for territory that ends up killing nearly every one involved. The story is told in a series of shorter tales by the observer, Rocket, who ends up building his career as a photojournalist off of the pictures he takes of the gangs and the violence. The movie is based off of a true story and it feels bloody realistic. No one important to the plot is much over the age of 18, and a number of key players are small children who seem to view the war as a game. The body count is immense, but the stories are like puzzle pieces that snap neatly into place. Though some might claim this to be a lack of subtlety, I say it is more an abundance of candor. Though all of the gangs and the warfare is compelling (as the ever growing number of bloody Grand Theft Auto franchise has taught us) the true heart of this story isn't the main druglord Little Ze, nor is it the opposition forces Carrot and Knockout Ned. No, the real crux of the story, the reason why the movie is compelling is the little peep show we get into Rocket's life and his somewhat detached involvement, his bit part in the greater story. All of the actors are beautiful and believable and deliver their lines with an appropriate nakedness that one would imagine comes with that sort of life. So even though I have to turn my head almost every scene to avoid watching another child get their foot shot or another woman get raped I think this movie was worth watching what I could of it. Because sometimes a good story told well is worth a little discomfort, especially when that story is true.

Meg Cabot is not fat.

Cabot, Meg, and Justine Eyre. Size 12 Is Not Fat. A Heather Wells mystery. Westminster, Md: Books on Tape, 2007.
It is hard to suspend your disbelief when the main character of an amateur detective story can't seem to suspend her own. Heather Wells is a size 12, 28 years old, and a former self-proclaimed "teen pop sensation". Heather has been forced, due to dire circumstances, to take a job as an assistant residence hall director. But, just a few weeks after students move into Fischer Hall for the fall semester, two girls die in quick succession. Both are found at the bottom of the elevator shaft, but for some poorly explained reason, no one except Heather suspects their deaths are in any way suspicious. Heather just happens to also have recently moved with her philandering ex-boyfriend's older brother to save on rent. Conner is both conveniently a private investigator with connections all over town and also evidently so mouth-wateringly-delicious that we must hear about it every other paragraph. Oh, also, her ex-boyfriend is heart-throb superstar Jordan Cartwright and he wants her back, but by now she's completely in love with his brother, Conner.
The plot of the book starts of far fetched (because what police force really doesn't investigate two bodies in the same place in a one week span of time?) But, it could be believable, if only Heather would stop making so many asides all the time. Obviously the humor and sass that should drive a chick-lit mystery is supposed to be in the asides. And who doesn't love a sassy average sized woman who is proud of her size? Evidently, not Meg Cabot. Some of Heather's asides dwell for an absurdly long time about the slender beauty and intelligence of other women around her and how much she longs for junk food and abhors exercise. Heather also tends to believe any thought she has is ridiculous and constantly second guesses herself. Anytime someone objects to one of her ideas she folds like a bad hand in Texas Hold 'em. Cabot, skinny herself, could definitely use a lesson in "lush women psychology" from Jennifer Crusie or Jennifer Weiner. The characters are flat, predictable, and read without much shifting, differentiation, or faceting by Justine Eyre in the CD book. Though, to be fair, Eyre had 20 characters in the story and only 5 of them were significantly different from the others. I guess she did what she could. The most realistic relationships seem to be the twisted ones between Heather and her mother and/or her former record label. At least the love scene was mercifully brief. Too bad the book on CD lasts an excruciatingly long time.

For a more personal and less restrained review; click here.

Promises, promises

The past few weeks have kept me busy and unable to update this site. I also realized that I started to stray some from the more professional reader's advisory purpose of the site with the quickfire review challenge. On the other hand I had fun with that so I'm not apologizing.

Anyway a quick preview of what I'll be reviewing here, on Library Thing, and on the Reading Sarah Livejournal.

I've been on a series Chris Crutcher kick here lately so Deadline, Whale Talk, and Stotan! are all on the list.
Harmless by Dana Reinhardt
The Hollywood Nobody series by Lisa Samson

I'll also be doing reviews of two illustrated novels and then comparing and contrasting them. This may not be fair, but I read them both over the course of one night and it really struck me how very different Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is from Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Before I go I'd just like to say that Freaks and Geeks, a short lived tv series by Judd Apatow was much better the first time I watched. I can re-read the same book a thousand times, I have seen Princess Bride probably 200-300 times, and this is not an unusual trend for me. So it is very sad that other than the character "Bill" no one and no plot is truly holding my attention for a full second viewing.
Oh, and also, Kung Fu panda was adorable, energetic, and funny. I understand why it gets the criticism it gets, but I throughly enjoyed it. Skadoosh!

Blink once for Yes and twice for No.

Kennedy, Kathleen, et al. Le scaphandre et le papillon. Burbank, CA: Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2008.

As this blog is mostly for reader's advisory purposes and not so much general media reviews I am only sneaking little tidbits of film and music and television in every once in a while to spice things up. And because as a librarian I am extremely interested in storytelling and good stories can be told well in a variety of ways.
Plot Synopsis
Anyway, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as this movie is more often known is a great story of a man trapped in his own head. Literally. One minute Jean-Dominique is the editor of the French Elle, and the next he's had a stroke and can't move except to blink. He has something called "Locked-in syndrome." The consequences are interesting he is helped to "break out" by communicating through blinks by two beautiful therapists.
The movie was hard to watch at the beginning since everything was shot as though you are Jean-Dominique just waking up from a coma after the stroke. But later the interplay of his past and his present and his now vast internal world is beautiful and striking.

Things to come

This page is changing (again, as I try and work out my exact presence on the web). Soon this blog will be for me to give you professional quality reviews. And now not just of books but of other popular media as well. If you want to know about the more personal side of what I'm reading and how it affects me (and sometimes how I went about finding the material) you'll have to visit Reading_Sarah at livejournal.com
Thanks,
Sarah

Reviews Coming Soon

Books and Graphic Novels
Clem Martini's Feather and Bone Trilogy
Frank Portman's King Dork
Cecil Castellucci (Author), Jim Rugg (Illustrator) The Plain Janes

Movies
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
Appleseed Ex Machina
En Soap

Albums
She and Him Volume 1

Webcomics
Questionable Content
Anders Loves Maria
Minus