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.

Some YA Books to Buy Your Teen

Ok, so tomorrow we're actually going to be talking about our favorite YA book of all time, but I figured, with Christmas coming up, there are probably a lot of you out there buying for teenagers, or kids getting right into that age.  So I'll save my #1 favorite book for tomorrow, but today, I'm going to give you a list of some great books for teens.

The Book Thief is an AMAZING book about friendship and family and doing the right thing (but on the most extreme level.)  It's about love, and caring, and reading and the importance of all of it in life.  While the book will make you cry basically from start to finish, it's so moving and heartwarming and the perfect book for really any kid between the ages of 12-100.

There's not much by Spinelli that I don't just absolutely love, but Stargirl is probably one of his best.  It's such a great story about being true to yourself, and being who you should be, despite those around you.  The point is happiness, not to make other people happy.  The book is actually from Leo's point of view, telling us the wonderful, and the terrible, ways that he sees Stargirl.

Honestly, I could put John Green on this list about five time (which is about how many books he's written), but I put this one on here, even over Looking for Alaska (my most favorite by him.)  If you're kid is a band nerd, buy them this book.  It's funny, so HILARIOUSLY funny, and most of that humor came from being a band kid for years.  Seriously, this book is for band kids.

You know why I love this book?  This whole series, actually?  Because it's such an awesome portrayal of friendship.  And, if you ask me, a pretty realistic one.  Shit happens, and sometimes, it happens without your friends around.  And sometimes you can only communicate to them through letters and magical pants.  And sometimes your friends are on your side, and sometimes they're on your side, even if you think that they aren't.  But at the end of the day, good friends are always there and give you exactly what you need.

Really, pick anything by Ellen Hopkins ever.  We've always recommended her on here and big reason is that she doesn't lie to kids.  She writes from a very personal place, a place that she saw her daughter in, that sometimes here daughter is STILL in.  If your going to discourage kids from doing drugs, this book is probably the best way to do it, because it's so very real.

I know Unwind has come up on here a lot, but honestly, I can't recommend this book enough.  It is so moving and powerful and, honestly, has one of my all-time most favorite, most powerful and well written scenes I've ever read in my life in it.  Shusterman handles the volatile subject of abortion so perfectly, so powerfully, and so respectfully, that I can't even begin to recommend this book enough.

Stay tuned tomorrow for mine (and Alex's, of course) all time favorite YA book.

ReviewMeTwice- The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson

This week we're doing something a little different and fun!  We're reviewing a picture book.  My mom read this book to me when I was little, always around Christmas time.  I remember lovingly looking at the pictures and listening to the story and just sitting in my bed as she read.

****Just so you know, I'm going to tell you the end of the book.  But I don't feel so bad about it because it's a picture book and you can go read it in about 2.5 seconds.******

Now that I read it as an adult, I can view it with a little more of a critical eye.  The story is still fabulous, don't get me wrong.  Hans Christian Anderson is a master of tales and story telling.  I love that the ending wasn't changed.  It's a heartwarming and tragic story, all at the same time.  It shows a little girls hopes and dreams, at the same time, showing us how awful her life really is, how hard life really is.  But even though she dies in the end, it's still very hopeful, that death somehow frees us all.

This version is my favorite, mainly because it was the one read to me as a kid.  But Rachel Isadora does an amazing job illustrating this book.  Throughout the book, the little match girl sees all these wonderful things as she's slowly freezing to death.  Isadora manages to use the illustrations to give us a clue as to what's going to happen.  If you look closely, in one of the pictures, The Little Match girl is completely blue and curled up into a corner, a prelude to her freezing to death.

I really love this book, and love the illustrations that go along with it.  They're beautiful and mesmerizing   I also like the story.  Hans Christian Anderson wasn't one to shy away from terrible topics, in fact, most of this fairly tales were incredibly depressing, but I think this one has just the right amount of heartbreak and hope.

To the surprise of many, I did not know the story of the little match girl before Cassy suggested this book for review. I do love it, though. I know old fairy tales (and stories of that ilk) tend to be darker, then they are shined and polished and made "family-friendly" (usually by Disney), so I really appreciate it when one survives intact, like this.

As Cassy told you, this story has a sad ending. (Although I see it as a happy ending. At any rate, your protagonist dies, and she's a little girl, so it's pretty sad no matter how you slice it.) That's not something you see a lot of in children's books... particularly picture books. I love when children are treated as thinking people, not as delicate little faberge eggs that can't be exposed to anything scarier than the sound of the washing machine.

On top of that, the illustrations by Rachel Isadora are beautiful. Just look at that cover up there at the top of the post! Lovely. As an aside, here is a small bio of Isadora from Harper Collins.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa, or just Happy Holidays (if you're the non-denominational type.)

Here at ReviewMeTwice, we just want to tell you to have a wonderful day with your families.  Enjoy the holidays and make sure to eat lots of food.  And don't forget the presents. :)

ReviewMeTwice- The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

As we've mentioned once or twice this week, this book is largely a biography on Dickens.  It mostly focuses on A Christmas Carol, so a lot of the things that Standiford talks about has to do in reference to A Christmas Carol, but that still includes a lot of biographical information.

To be honest, this book was extremely hard to become interested in.  And, even when it did become a little more fascinating, it wasn't spectacular.  Standiford really isn't very good at story telling with non-fiction.  Some authors are great at making non-fiction seem like fiction.  They tell you a story and so it's interesting.  Standiford doesn't really have that talent, so you get a lot of information at once, not all of it interesting.

Probably the biggest flaw about this book is that Standiford tells you a lot of things you don't really care about.  There's a ton of people that are hard to keep track of, and frankly, pretty inconsequential.  He also, at one point, spends almost an entire chapter just quoting reviews of A Christmas Carol.  Considering almost all of them were positive, this gets ridiculously redundant, really quickly.

He also repeats himself a lot.  I mean, I understand that certain things let Dickens to his current situation, but there was so much repetitive material, I just didn't care when I reached something that was new information.

However, it wasn't all bad.  I really enjoyed knowing the effect other authors of the time had on Dickens' work and vice versa.  I also really like learning about, historically, where a lot of our Christmas traditions came from.  Not all of them came from Dickens' novel.  But it was interesting to see what traditions did correspond.

Overall, not the best biography.  At the end of the day, this post would probably be a better read.

My Bottom Line 2 out of 5

I agree with Cassy: this book was not interesting. We would have been better off reading the actual A Christmas Carol instead of this.

It was easy to be distracted from the "story" and I often was. It was easy to put down, and hard to pick back up again.

In writing the post for Monday, I realized that it really is difficult to sum up anything about Dickens' life, so I feel for Mr. Standiford; it's a really enormous undertaking to write a book about this man, his life, and his work. But I believe it could be - and probably has been - done better.

I also agree with Cassy that the parts about Christmas traditions were more interesting, but we have a book at our library that is essentially an encyclopedia of Christmas traditions that makes a more informative, more interesting read.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I thought, since we're so close to Christmas and it's the end of the year, I would give you a list of my all-time favorite books.  I've given everyone of these books either four or five stars and I think they would make great gifts! (if you still happen to be looking this late in the game.)  All pictures and descriptions from Goodreads.

I've even starred the best of the best.

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire #1) by George R. R. Martin:
Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men. All will play the Game of Thrones

Summers span decades.Winter can last a lifetime.And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.It will stretch from the south where heat breeds plot,lusts and intrigues to the vast frozen north,where a 700-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond. The Game of Thrones. You win,or you die.