#9books9days

If you've been following our twitter (or our Facebook page), you might have noticed that I took a little trip!  And since I had nine relaxing days away from work, I decided to read nine books while I was away.

I'm only going to review seven of them today (you're going to have to wait until the end of the week when Alex and I do Bunnicula books), but I'm going to review the rest of them right here, right now, including TWO books that aren't out yet!!

Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld (Release date 9/29/15)

Really, did you expect a Westerfeld book to be bad?  Well, if you're waiting for one, this isn't it.  You have dynamic characters, who grow not only in their characters but in their powers too.  And you know what?  They pushed the envelope on what we think super heroes are.  We think of people with powers as either good or evil, but these kids?  They could really go either way.  And that's kind of what I love about this book.  At the end of the day, they're still just people.

Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman

This is one of Shusterman's earlier ones and, honestly, I was a little weary.  I had read Downsiders and had been a little disappointed, so I wasn't sure how I would feel.  the Unwind distology is a high bar to set, and some of his other writings hasn't met it.  However, Full Tilt isn't in that category.  It was gritty and in your face and really made you think about life.  It was this nice middle ground between Goosebumps and Fear Street.  Scary, but not so scary you had to put the book down.

The Lightning Thief Graphic Novel (Percy Jackson #1) by Rick Riordan

What is there to say about Percy Jackson that hasn't already been said?  Do I love him?  Of course I do.  Percy Jackson is one of my go to book series.  And, if your kid isn't big on the reading, I might direct you towards the Percy Jackson GNs.  Graphic Novels are great things, and I think they fill a certain niche.  But at the end of the day, this just doesn't even hold a candle to how good the first book was.

Poison by Sarah Pinborough

This one was the only real wildcard in my books this month.  All the other books were either ones I'd read before or by authors I adore.  Pinborough was the only author I knew nothing about, and really didn't know much about her books other than they were retellings of fairy tales.  But I like fairtale redos and the covers on her books look beautiful if nothing else (plus, I got them fairly cheap during employee appreciation.)

However, it was the biggest disappointment this week.  Really, Poison just ended up being the same old Snow White story we always knew, with a twist ending.  The only problem was that twist, wasn't really good enough to make up for the rest of the book.  Her writing was mediocre so, really, the book ends up just being something to look pretty on my shelf.

Sold by Patricia McCormack

I have found I have a love hate relationship with McCormack's book.  Some are AMAZING, some are... eh.  Some I think the topics are important, I think the execution just is a little wanky.  Sold I think falls into the last category.  It most definitely gets better as it goes along, but the beginning of it was just really slow and hard to get through (and not in the 'this is so terrible it's hard to read' kind of way.  In the 'this is kind of boring; please get to the story' kind of way.)  But once our main character had entered the brothel and we saw her deal with her life, her reality, and learn to make friends and negotiate her situation, I think that's where the real story came out.  So, good book, but one that you had to stick with to get there.

Rumble by Ellen Hopkins

I actually expected more out of this book.  That's not to say that I didn't like it, because I did.  I think I've just gotten used to the shock factor in her books and this wasn't one of those books.  BUT I will say that I really did like her approach to the ideas of religion and there being a God.  The main character of our book is an atheist, and there are varying degrees of religious belief all around him, from his overtly christian girlfriend, to his mildly religious aunt, who believes in a creator, but doesn't push it.  As usual, Hopkins hits those topics that people are afraid to talk about, like the idea of a creator, and how people believe, and THAT is what I liked about this book.

Another Day by David Levithan ( Release Date 8/25/15)

When I saw this sitting on the break room table just two days after David Levithan had posted a picture of the cover, words can not describe the excitement I felt.  Seriously, I was jumping up and down in our break room, I was so stoked (we hardly ever get ARCs that I TRULY want to read.)  And this book was every word as good as I thought that it would be.

Levithan really pushes the bounds of sexuality for us, really making us rethink what is male and female, gay, straight, does it even matter, if we're in love?  And I like that it's not a straight forward answer either.  A has been like that his whole life, but it's much harder for Rhiannon to get past the conventions.  Either way, Levithan construction a most wonderful love story that pulls at our heart strings.  I've been waiting for this book for years, and I was not disappointed for a moment.

Blog to Book

There are a lot of books that started out as just humble little blogs.  Our book this week, Hack by Melissa Plaut is one of them.  She started her blog (newyorkhack.blogspot.com), where she documented all of her stories in her cab.  Eventually, culminating them into a book.

So what makes a blog good enough to transition into a book?  Well, as much as Alex and I love our blog, it would be a terrible book transition.  We, for one, talk a ton about other books, so the copyright laws would be a nightmare to get around, and, let's face it, while there are some quirky fun things in here, and our reviews are (we like to believe) original, for the most part, our material is a lot of informational stuff we get from other places on the internets.  We frequently (and loudly because we don't want people to sue us) proclaim that we pull our information from places like Wikipedia and the authors pages and the like.

However, Hyperbole and a Half, which we reviewed awhile back, transitioned very well into a book.  Not only does was it original in the sense that it was taking from her every day experiences, it was also original in the sense that she was using a lot of poorly drawn web comics to get her point across about some very serious topics.  It's probably why not only was her blog hugely popular, but so was her book.

What If?, the book we reviewed just last month, is another one that transitioned well.  Though not a true blog to book, it was based off of Randall's web comic xkcd.

The key seems to be originality.  A lot of the blog to book authors are talking about their lives, or putting their everyday lives down in the blogs.  Their every day lives also happen to usually be pretty interesting.

Don't forget to enter our contest!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review Me Twice - Gulp by Mary Roach

Ok, so here is the thing about this book.  I really like Mary Roach.  I liked this book.  It was interesting and informative and it wasn't super boring.  Roach gets REALLY interested in whatever it is she's researching, and she always researches the things that no one really thinks about.  She researches and talks about the things that kind of gross people out.  Stiff was all about cadavers and how we die and what happens to our bodies.

Gulp is along the same squicky vein.  It starts out innocently enough:  it's all about taste buds and what we eat and why we eat it and where it goes and what we taste when we eat it and the nutrients we get in our mouths and what our teeth do, not to mention, she always finds the coolest stories about it.  I mean, some of the medical things that are going on are just awesome.

That being said, three fourths of this book are about poop and your butt.  I mean, I learned more about the colon than I honestly probably ever needed, or wanted to know about.  Not to say it wasn't interesting (apparently, Elvis died due to an over-sized colon and his own waste product finally exploding within him and killing him.  Not the the drug overdose as is believed), but let's face it.  It's a lot of a book about poop.

So if you don't really want to read about how we poop and how our bodies make waste... then this might not be the book for you.

I loved this book! The focus on poop and whatnot didn't really bother me, because I help my husband study for med school all the time.

My favorite parts were the chapters about taste, and how it relates to culture and personal preference and how all of that works. And, of course, every time Mary Roach said something funny, which was really often. This was a really funny book and, at the same time, a really informative one. I had a great time reading it and I'm so glad Cassy suggested it.

Let's Learn A Little Anatomy

This week, we're reading Gulp by Mary Roach.  And while we do want you to go read the book and learn all about the digestive system, I'm thinking just a little bit of background might be for the best in this case.

Do you remember that song about the bones you learned as a kid?  You know, "the toe bones connected to the foot bone."  No?  Well, here's a little reminder.

The digestive systems is kind of the same way.  Your mouth is connected to your throat, which is connected to your stomach, on to your small intestines, large intestines, down to the colon where it all comes out.

Now, of course, it gets a lot more complicated.  There are nutrients being pulled out along the way so that your body can power itself and the food is being broken down so that you can push it out the other side.  You also have tons of taste buds so that you put something in your mouth to begin with.  If food was nasty, we wouldn't really want to nourish ourselves.

So why is our digestive system to important that Roach felt the need to write a whole book on it?  Well, we started out as the digestive system.  We started eating and wasting before we started walking and talking as a species.  Evolution decided that if we were going to be eating, we should have a way to go find that food.

So brush up a bit on your digestive system before diving into our book this week.

Author Bio - Mary Roach

Reading about Mary Roach's life, I basically just want to be her.  She grew up in New Hampshire, and eventually, she ended up working for the Zoological Society in San Francisco, writing press releases.  It's really what got her interested in the science portion of her life.

From 1996 - 2005 she worked for "The Grotto", a community and project of writers and filmmakers.  It was them who inevitably pushed her to writer her first book, Stiff.

Roach has done everything from travel to Antarctica, to taste test food, to have sex in an MRI machine while researching her books.  Her travels have taken her far and wide, exposing her to all sorts of interesting people and places.  Often, then need volunteers for their studies and Roach is quick to do so.

She says she never set out to write science books, but when she had to cover stories, the science ones were always the most interesting.

Roach is currently living in Oakland, CA with her husband.  She also has two step-daughters.  You can find all of the information you need about her and her books at her website.

Review Me Twice - Dark Witch by Nora Roberts

I'm kind of glad that this was the final book we read this month.  I mean, what better way to end the month than with the queen of romance novels?  Who hasn't heard of Nora Roberts?  And while you may not have read any of her books, you sure know what's going to be in them when you pick them up.

I actually enjoyed this book WAY more than I thought I was going.  Ok, so bullet point time.  Obvious flaws of this book:

-The main characters is super all powerful special snowflake witch
-She falls in love with main character male
   *Who just happens to be super hot.
   *and constantly compared to horses which, ok, in all honesty, really doesn't have to do with    
     anything, but listening to a guy trying to me manly compared to a horse over and over in a Irish
     accent is just a little ridiculous (I had the audio book.)
-They fell in love in about a week.
-They were married in like... six months.
-I'm fairly certain they hopped into bed in under week.

So the romance half of the book... ridiculous and predictable and not how real life works at all even a little bit.  So why did I like this book?

Well, because outside of the horrible romance, there was actual plot going on.  Iona (our main character) moves to Ireland to find family, and finds two cousins with magical powers like hers, powers that have been passed down through her family for generations to fight off this witch (Cadvan) that's been trying to kill her family for a couple hundred years.

There is her coming into her powers and having a growing relationship with her family and getting friends and starting a life in Ireland.  I mean, the characters are surprisingly round and dynamic (when they're not sleeping with each other every five seconds.)  So is it a typical romance novel?  Well, yes, but I kind of liked it.  Not enough to go seek out the second book, but enough that one day I might pick it up.

I'm so glad this month is over. If I'm lucky, we'll never revisit romance here on the blog again. I figured, if I'm ever going to like a book that belongs solidly in the romance genre, it'll be one by Nora Roberts. Everyone gushes about how amazing she is; if she can't convert me to a romance reader, nobody can. Well, apparently nobody can, if that logic holds.

I just didn't care about anything in this book. I tried to. I could see why I should care. I just didn't. I do appreciate that there's something larger than the romance aspect going on - the "actual plot" Cassy mentioned above - but I didn't care about that, either.

This is definitely one of those times where I'm fully aware that this is just my personal preferences talking, though. It's a well-written book. It's just not the book for me. In library science, we have five "laws," called Ranganathan's Laws. One is "every book its reader" and another is "every reader their book." This book has the right readers, and I am not a part of that group. And there are books for me, and they don't live in the romance section. Sorry, romance; it's not you... it's me.

Author Bio - Nora Roberts

This week, our last reading romance novels, we taking on the queen of romance, Nora Roberts.  We're reading the first book in her new trilogy, Dark Witch.

Roberts starting writing when she got snowed in with her three boys when they were young. There was a huge blizzard and not a lot to do, and so she wrote.  She submitted her manuscripts to Harlequin Romance, who rejected about six times.

She was finally accepted by Silhoutte books and became incredibly successful, having her books hit the bestseller list almost every time.  She was recently inducted into the Romance Writing Hall of Fame (who knew there even was such a thing?).

She currently lives in Silver Spring, MD with her family.  She has a website, a twitter and a facebook page.

Favorite Science Book

Our book this week is very technical and sciency and such, so we're going with our favorite science books this week.

I love Mary Roach.  If you haven't read her, you really should, because she's probably one of my favorite non-fiction writers of all time (ok, so it's not like I have an over abundance of those, but you get my general point.)  She writes a lot of science books (Gulp is all about the anatomy of the mouth and our taste buds and we'll actually be reviewing it in a few months) but Stiff is BY FAR my favorite.  It talks all about cadavers and how we die, and what happens WHEN we die.

She also discusses the various things you can do WITH your body after your die.  Programs take lots of donated bodies.  One university takes bodies and decomposes them with different factors involved so, when we find murdered bodies, we can get a better estimate on how long they've been dead based on environmental factors.

It's really just a cool book to read and she presents it in the COOLEST way.  She writes really well and she is definitely a non-fiction author you should pick up (though maybe not THIS book if you happen to be squeamish.)

Here's a sneak peek into the future of the blog... we will be reviewing this book in the next couple months. So I actually won't go into too much detail. But What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is factual and entertaining and all-around amazing. Plus, I have a signed copy, so that's really cool. The subtitle describes the book perfectly; Munroe answers silly questions with researched, scientifically accurate answers. Plus there are drawings in the style of his amazing webcomic, xkcd.

Favorite Sequels

To kick off our month of sequels properly, we're picking our favorite sequels!

You guys well know that I love Catching Fire and that it's my favorite of the Hunger Games books, so it would be the obvious choice for me here. And you also know that Cassy and I both picked not-the-first-one as our favorite Harry Potter books, so we clearly like those sequels. So instead, I'm going to tell you that I really like all of the sequels in the Uglies series.

I think Specials is probably my favorite of them all, but Extras is really incredible too. They're good in different ways, so it's hard to choose. I'm fairly certain that it's very difficult to make a series get much better as it progress, and I believe that's what Scott Westerfeld did with the Uglies series.

I've talked about the Percy Jackson series a lot on this blog lately, which is good, because everyone just really needs to go read it.

And there were a lot of runner ups for this particular favorites today.  Like Alex mentioned, I LOVED Extras (which is interesting because it was 100% a tack on for him.  Completely unplanned when he originally planned to do the series.)  I also really love book seven in the Chronicles of Narnia series (The Last Battle).  You get to revisit all the people that you love and adore in it.  There's just something about the way Lewis brings it all together.

But book four in the Percy Jackson series, The Battle of the Labyrinth, just is amazing.  There is a quest that has been going on for three previous books that finally comes to a conclusion in book four.  And it's wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time.  Grover gets a TON of face time in this book.  In fact, I would argue that this book is almost more about him than it is about Percy, which is nice that we get a little break from Percy to be reminded that there are other characters in the book, other heroes.

It's the book that really brings the series together, I think.  Sure, everything culminates in book five and the Big Battle happens in book five, but I think book four is what really sets that up and gives you a lot of answers to questions you'd been asking for the whole series.

Some of the Best Books This Season

So one of the benefits of working in a bookstore is that I get to see what some of the most popular books of the season are.

Now, I'll let you know in advance, I haven't read all of these.  But they have been bought in HOARDS and people have been telling me nothing but good things about them.  So that that for what you will when buying your last minute book gifting.

Yes, ok the movie is coming out, but I sell no less than five of these a day, sometimes more.  And for every five I sell, I get asked five more times where the book is.  It's a story of a man, surviving the wreckage of his plane in WWII and his journey through life, along with his journey of survival.

Boys in the boat is about the 1936 Berlin Olympics team.  It shows you a bunch of ragmatag guys who manage to come together and go for the gold for the rowing.  Another one that has passed through my hands more than a few times this Christmas season.

To be honest with you, I didn't even know what this one was about till I read the synopsis (which you can go read here.  It sounds really good.)  It sold really well this summer, but when Christmas time came, we couldn't even keep the book on the shelf.

Ok, so Miss Peregrine's is a little weird, and it's a little different, but I have yet to meet a person who didn't enjoy this book.  There's mystery and there is a little bit of super powers and there is some definite danger and it's a good transition book.  Not SO hard to read that a high 11-12 year old couldn't pick it up, but still interesting enough that your teens are going to want to read it.

Alright, this one comes with a lot of conditions, but also, a lot of ideas if you need them last minute for the Christmas season.  This is book five in a series.  And, what's more, it's book five in a SEQUEL series.  Do you remember The Percy Jackson Series?  It's pretty much fabulous.  In fact, it was SO fabulous, Riordan took those characters and started a SECOND series with them!  Cue The Heroes of Olympus series (see above).  So if the person you're buying for has never read Percy Jackson, Ta-Da!  If they have, but haven't gotten into this second companion series, there are five whole new books for them to pick up.  And, the best part, is that this is the last book, so they don't even have to wait for the end.

Review Me Twice - My True Love Gave To Me by Multiple Authors

I am actually a big fan of anthologies.  I have the theory that, by sheer odds, you're eventually going to hit ONE story that you like in it.  And I did.  In fact, there were a number of stories that I liked in it.  I really liked the one by Rainbow Rowell, though probably more so because when I went to see her at Politics and Prose, she read it.

If you ever get the chance to hear an author read their own work, do it.  It's SO MUCH BETTER than what happens in my head (and what happened there was pretty good.)

Some were definitely better than others, because you have twelve authors and while some are great authors, not all of them are meant to be short story writers.  David Levithan's was not one of my favorites.  I love him, and I liked his better when I heard him read it out loud, but I still didn't enjoy his story as much as I have enjoyed his books.

But probably my favorite out of the whole batch was Gayle Foreman's.  It was funny and poignant and sweet and just a great story.  I thought it was well done and one of those stories that was satisfying where it ended but still full of potential.

The book was a good anthology, and definitely worth reading, especially if you're just looking for a nice Christmas book.

I promise, one of my New Year's resolutions is to read every single Review Me Twice book beginning to end. But it's still 2014, so I didn't finish this one. What I did read, though, I really loved. My favorite thing about anthologies (other than what Cassy mentioned above, finding at least ONE you like) is how different authors take different approaches to the same theme or topic. I think a major reason why I didn't manage to finish this book on time was that I had to put it down between stories (and there are a lot of stories... twelve, so sayeth the subtitle). I don't read different authors' short stories back to back. When the anthology is all the same author, I can read straight through, but I have to do that thing where you put it down and digest what you read before I can pick it back up in the multi-author situation.

Twelve Author Bios

This week, we actually have TWELVE authors, because we're reading a Christmas Anthology!!  So, I thought it might be fun to actually do a quick bio on each of them (and that means most of them will be almost directly copy and pasted from Goodreads.  So be prepared for that.)

Stephanie Perkins

Perkins writes novels for teens (and for adults who aren't afraid to admit that teen books are awesome). She was born in South Carolina, raised in Arizona, attended universities in San Francisco and Atlanta, and now lives in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.

Her best friend is her husband Jarrod. Their house is almost a hundred years old, and every room is painted a different color of the rainbow. They share it with a cat named Mr. Tumnus.

She's always worked with books—first as a bookseller, then as a librarian, and now as a novelist. On weekdays, you'll find her at her desk, typing away, downing cups of coffee and tea. On the weekend, you'll find her at the movies, waiting for the actors to kiss. She believes all novels and films should have more kissing.

Holly Black

Holly Black is a best-selling author of contemporary fantasy novels for kids, teens, and adults. She is the author of the Modern Faerie Tale series (Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside), The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), and The Good Neighbors graphic novels (with Ted Naifeh) The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction, and The Curse Worker series (White Cat, Red Glove, and Black Heart). She is also the co-editor of three anthologies, Geektastic (with Cecil Castellucci), Zombies vs. Unicorns (with Justine Larbalestier), and Welcome to Bordertown (with Ellen Kushner). Her most recent works are the middle grade novel, Doll Bones, and the dark fantasy stand-alone, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret library.

Ally Carter

Ally Carter is a writer living and working in the Midwest. She loved school so much she kept going...and going...and going...until finally she had to graduate. Now she has degrees from Oklahoma State University and Cornell University and a house and a job and other very grown-up things.

Her life is either very ordinary or the best deep-cover legend ever. She'd tell you more, but...well...you know...

Gayle Foreman

My name is Gayle Forman and I love to write young-adult novels. Because I do. So thank you for reading them. Because without you, it’d just be me. And the voices in my head.

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in such publications asJane, Seventeen, Glamour, Elle, and The New York Times Magazine, to name just a few. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Jenny Han

(Han like Han Solo, not Han like hand) was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. She went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Heels!) and she went on to graduate school at the New School in New York City, where she received her MFA in Writing for Children. She lives in Brooklyn.  She is the author of To All The Boys I Have Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty

David Levithan

David Levithan (born 1972) is an American children's book editor and award-winning author. He published his first YA book, Boy Meets Boy, in 2003. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a Young Adult imprint of Scholastic Press.

Kelly Link

Kelly Link is an American author of short stories born in 1969. Her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: sometimes a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism.

Myra McEntire

Myra McEntire is an avid Doctor Who fan and will argue passionately about which incarnation is the best. She loves to search thrift stores for things to upcycle, as she’s a big believer in second chances. She lives with her two boys and husband near Nashville, Tennessee. Myra is the author of the Hourglass trilogy, which has been nominated for two RITAs and a YALSA Teen Top Ten, and was chosen as a SIBA Okra Pick. She’s currently contracted with Storybird, where she’s serializing a middle grade novel, called THE SHADOW GATE.

Matt De La Pena

Matt de la Peña is the author of five critically-acclaimed young adult novels—Ball Don't Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, I Will Save You and The Living—as well as the award-winning picture book A Nation’s Hope: The story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis. Matt received his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and his BA from the University of the Pacific, where he attended school on a full athletic scholarship for basketball. de la Peña currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He teaches creative writing and visits high schools and colleges throughout the country.

Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults (ATTACHMENTS and LANDLINE). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (ELEANOR & PARK and FANGIRL). But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they're screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she's not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

Laini Taylor

Hi there! I'm a writer of fantasy books for young people, but my books can be enjoyed by adults as well. My 'Dreamdark' books, Blackbringer (2007) and Silksinger (2009) are about faeries -- not dainty little flowery things, but warrior-faeries who battle devils. My first young adult book, Lips Touch, is a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award! It's creepy, sensual supernatural romance. . . about kissing. I am also an artist with a licensed gift product line called "Laini's Ladies."

Kiersten White

Hi! I'm the New York Times best-selling author of Paranormalcy and Supernaturally. I also give the most awkward hugs in the world. You should probably opt for one of my books over one of my hugs, but then again, maybe you like awkward hugs.

As for me, I like writing flirting scenes, and fighting scenes, and sometimes I write scenes that fall somewhere in between the two, but only if I can't avoid it.

And don't forget to enter our contest to win a signed copy of Unwind!!!

My Author count is hitting the stratosphere this year.

Because I like to keep you posted on all of the authors I see, here are some pictures from the book signing I went to tonight.

On the left is me with Rainbow Rowell (hard to tell, but she's holding a copy of Fangirl) and on the right is me and David Levithan.  I know: I can feel the jealous rolling off of you in WAVES right now.  It's practically tangible.

There were also some other awesome authors there, Coe Booth (Kind of Like Brothers), Tanuja Desai Hidier (Bombay Blues), and Bill Konigsburg (Openly Straight).  They were all funny and hilarious and wonderful and read passages from their books and really, if you get the chance to see David Levithan ever, go see him because he's hysterical, I think more so because he was with a group of people he was so comfortable with.

 And yes, I was close enough to David Levithan that the man was practically sweating on me.  It was fantastic.  And did I mention that he complimented my shoes?  I almost had to go die in a corner I was fangirling so hard.

Favorite Book about Suicide

Morbid, right? But this week's book is about suicide, and many YA books (and other books) are, because we - as a society - are talking more about it and related topics (see last week's Bullying is Bad post for another example). So here are some of our favorite examples of the subgenre.

I love this book. I hate that it exists, because it's autobiographical, so it's horrible that all these things happened to Brent Runyon, but I have to admit that I'm really glad he wrote about them, because he wrote it well.

Long story short, Brent Runyon lit himself on fire in a failed suicide attempt and this is the story of his recoveries (physical, mental, and emotional). He has a great sense of humor mixed with serious talk about important subjects.

Because this is easily one of my favorite subgenres, I feel the need to give you a list of runners-up: Girl, Interrupted; Suicide Notes; Impulse; and I could give you a dozen more if we included self-harm (which is different, though related).

Fair warning, there are going to be some spoilers for this book.

So this book, one of my favorites, is about an older sister, Kate, who has cancer, and her younger sister, Anna, is basically perfectly genetically engineered by her parents to be a perfect match for her older sister in ever way.  In a lot of ways, she was meant to be the replacement parts to save her older sister.

Kate needs a kidney to live, and Anna is expected to give up one of hers.  So Anna sues for the right to her body, the right to NOT give her organs to her older sister, to make all of the decisions about her body.

So what does all of this have to do with suicide you might ask?  Well, inevitably it comes out that Anna isn't doing this because she's a big old jerk who wants her sister to die, but because she's actually making the biggest gesture of love to Kate she can... and giving Kate exactly what she asked for.

Kate is tired of the surgeries and the hospitals and the blood draws and never, ever, getting to be a normal girl... ever.  The kidney was her final straw.  So she asked Anna to say no.  To help her die.  To just let her pass on.  It's, essentially, assisted suicide.  Which, really brings up the big ethical question of should it be legal or shouldn't it be?  In the US, it's currently legal in Washington (state), Vermont, New Mexico and Oregon.  In Montana it's not legal, but it's not technically ILLEGAL either, so take that how you will.

The book is incredibly powerful and moving and raises a lot of questions and issues like this one.  Is assisted suicide OK?  Especially in cases where there is absolutely no other way out?  Or how about a case where it seems all but hopeless, and the patient could live, but not a life that's really worth anything?

Favorite Literary Bullies

This week's book is quite clearly about a bully. Her name is right there in the title: Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. So this week, we're picking our favorite bullies from books.

Draco Malfoy was the very first character I thought about when I tried to come up with my favorite bully from a book. Then I considered some others (The Chocolate War, and Thirteen Reasons Why - but probably not for the reasons you think) but I don't LIKE them as much as I like Draco.

One thing I really love about the Harry Potter books is that, by the end, there is really only one bad guy, and if you have a big enough heart, you can even see that Voldemort was only a victim of circumstances and bad decisions. But the two characters you've hated since the beginning, Draco and Snape, become lovable. Did you ever think, back in the late 1990s, that you would wind up feeling such pity for Draco? By the end, you can go back and look at everything he ever did in the books and see exactly why. Just watch him in the last book/movie, making the hardest choice of his life, picking between his parents AND Voldemort - who hand-picked him for an extremely high honor and difficult task - and doing the right thing. I'm just so proud of him.

You might wonder why I chose Draco and not Snape. I feel the same exact way about Snape, with one major difference. An adult, and more specifically an educator, - no matter how deep and painful their emotional wounds run - should know better than to treat a young student the way Snape treated Harry all those years.

I love Merteuil from Dangerous Liaisons.  I mean, how could you not?  She's a fantastic bully, mainly because half the time, you probably don't even realize that she' bullying you.  She manipulates and strategies and moves everyone around like pieces on a chess board and most of those pieces think she's their friends!

Really, it's only through her letters to Valmont that we realize what a bully she is.  She's retaliating through an innocent girl, completely ruining her life for no other reason than she feels she was slighted by a guy.  She's the ultimate bully, if you think about it, and, up until this point, has gotten away with it.

Favorite Book With Magic

Our book this week, Trial By Fire, is all about magic.  So this week, we're telling you our favorite book with magic in it.

I feel like the Percy Jackson series is one that just doesn't get enough props.  It came out during the HP craze (2005-2009 and the last HP was 2007) so it got a little lost in that in terms of being dealt it's fair share.

That's not to say it's not famous in it's own right.  According to NYTimes.com, Percy Jackson (which is slot 8 on the best sellers list this week) has spent 340 weeks on the NY Times best seller list.  Not bad for a book and longer than everything else on the list in its category, including The Hunger Games and Divergent.

The books incorporate the Greek myths in awesome ways, and probably one of the more original ways that I've seen.  All these kids, ranging from about 12-17 years of age, are all demi-gods.  And, until they come of age, they're all in danger of being killed.  It's pretty dangerous to be the son or daughter of a God, and the camp they stay at is the only thing that protects them.  Percy has five books of adventures, all of which are fantastic.

But, I think for me, one of the best things is that book four and five are probably my FAVORITE of the series.  Too often the end of the series ends up being the worst, but that's not so for Percy.  The end is what's the best part.

The obvious choice, for me, would be Harry Potter. But since we talk about that series a lot, I'm going to skip that as my real favorite book(s) with magic, and tell you about...

The Magic School Bus series is just the COOLEST, right? I mean, let me count the ways. First, they're available at the annual event that makes nerdy kids like me flip out like early Christmas: the Scholastic book fair. Then, you have Ms. Frizzle, the world's coolest teacher (no offense, every teacher I ever had). She actually reminds me a lot of my 2nd grade teacher, Ms. Merrill, who dressed up as characters and did wacky things to get the reluctant learners to participate and just make everything even more fun for those of us who were already excited to be at school.

But let's address the "magic" part of these books, since that's why I'm talking about them today. You know how popular Bill Nye is? It's because he took real, scientific fact and made it fun and interesting. That's what these books do. But instead of camera tricks and sound effects and regular segments like "Consider the Following," these books have what seems to be at least a mildly sentient, morphing school bus that can survive extreme environments, including inside the human body, at the bottom of the sea, outer space, and the inside of a volcano! I distinctly remember one book (I think the dinosaurs one?) where a new student joined the class, and she kept being skeptical, talking about how the bus can't do that, and they should all be dead, and Ms. Frizzle was a lawsuit waiting to happen, and everyone else just brushes her off because (1) they're obviously all fine, (2) they've totally done things like this before, and (3) SCIENCE!!! Magic in the name of science is the best kind of magic, in my opinion.

Review Me Twice: Anthem by Ayn Rand

You might have been able to tell by my choice of topic yesterday that I thought this book was a little didactic. You'd be right, but since it's such a short book, it wasn't a huge problem. (No matter how over-the-top didactic you are, if the story is under 100 pages, it can't get too bad. Now that I've invited that upon myself, feel free to send me examples that disprove this assertion.)

I quite liked this book. I never thought I'd like Ayn Rand, but I had only really known about The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which are both bricks and get teased a lot elsewhere in pop culture.

My friend Missi suggested that I read this book, and called it a great introduction to Ayn Rand's work, and I agree with that.

I like the way the story is told, from the protagonist's first-person perspective, with all the ideas of his society ingrained into him. For example: in this society, the pronouns "I" and "me" have disappeared. Everything is about "we" and "us" because each person's entire life has to be about serving their fellow man. So even though our protagonist is breaking away from this society and learning how to be an individual, he's still using the language of it because it's what he knows.

I like the idea of this book: The world has thrown itself back into the dark ages.  Everything is for the good of humanity and the candle is the pinnacle of technology.  But you know what?  I wasn't a fan.  Like, at all.

First of all, I couldn't handle the third person that the main character spoke in.  I get the point: "I" and "me" and such similar pronouns had been eliminated from the language.  There was no individuality because everything had to be for the good of the whole, or it was evil.  If you weren't doing it for your fellow man, to further society, then you were sinning.

But honestly, it drove me crazy to continue to read it and, by the time he had switched over to the "I" and "me" pronouns, I was kind of over the whole thing.

Alex did make a fair point that, while incredibly didactic, it was incredibly short, so it didn't get on your nerves as much as it could have.  But at the same time, if I had to go read something like Atlas Shrugged, I feel like her didacticism would make me want to shoot myself.  So, I probably am never going to pick up her large works.

However, that being said, she does have a certain type of flair to her work, and her writing isn't BAD, per se, just not something I particularly enjoy.

Least Favorite Dystopian Novel

We love dystopian novels around here.  LOVE, love, love them.  But, let's face it, not every one can be good, and that applies to dystopian novels as much as any other book.  So this week, we're giving you a least favorite.

Ok, I don't want to give too much away with this because, well, let's face it, it's the third (and sort of final) book in the Divergent series.  There's a lot to give away.

But I hated it.  And not for the reason a lot of other people hated it (which I won't reveal), but there was a particular thing everyone hated, which I actually thought improved the book tenfold.

(Ok, fair warning, this part will be a little spoilery).  

But for the first, oh, I don't know, two thirds of the book... NOTHING HAPPENED.  I mean, absolutely nothing.  They sat and putzed around a complex and talked about what happened in the past and it was about 300 pages of exposition, with this fake rebellion in the middle of the book as if to say, "yes, I know I'm getting boring, so here's the plot of the last two books in 40 pages.)

So, Divergent and Insurgent good, Alligiant super boring and did not live up to its predecessors at ALL!

Guess what I learned about myself? I can't find a single book of dystopian fiction that I genuinely dislike that I've read. Turns out, there's so much of this stuff out there, I just don't read the ones I don't think I'll like. So to avoid cheating you out of half a post, this is the dystopian book I liked the least (though I don't really dislike it)...

I wasn't introduced to The Giver by Lois Lowry until college (despite having a whole shelf full of books by that woman, I had never even heard of this one, somehow) so I don't have a childhood experience with it.

I don't feel emotionally invested in it like I do with Hunger Games or even Divergent, and I don't think I'll see the movie in theaters when it comes out, like I did with the aforementioned.

And I don't think it has to do with the protagonist not being female (though, you've noticed that's the recent trend, right?)... I think it has more to do with his age than with his gender. He's younger than your average dystopian hero.

Now remember... I don't actively dislike this book... it's just the one in the genre that I like the least.

Author Bio: Ayn Rand

That's right, we're reading a book by Ayn Rand this week! Don't worry... it's not The Fountainhead (1943) or Atlas Shrugged (1957). In fact, I hadn't heard of this week's book, Anthem, until a friend recommended it to me as a good introduction to Ayn Rand's work.

Ayn Rand lived from 1905 to 1982; she lived in Russia until she moved to the United States in 1926. She is best known for the two ginormous novels I mentioned above, as well as developing the philosophy known as Objectivism.

At its most basic, Objectivism has a few central tenets: reality exists independently from consciousness, people have direct contact with reality through their senses, people can obtain objective knowledge via perception using concept formation and inductive logic, the moral purpose of your life is the pursuit of your own happiness, the only social system that matches this concept is laissez-faire capitalism, and art's role in human life is transforming humans' metaphysical ideas via selective reproduction of reality into physical forms that nobody comprehends and people can respond to emotionally. Yeah... I did say that was "at its most basic."

As you can probably guess, Rand wrote a lot of essays about these concepts and more, in addition to her body of fictional works.

For more on the woman and her work, check out aynrand.org.