Book News Returns: Borders Closing for Good, Apple Hurts E-Book Sales, and Joshilyn Jackson Gets (Rightfully) Hyped

So much happened in the book world during the three weeks I was gone to Africa, I could never catch up -- or catch you up. I'll just attempt to hit the highlights, the biggest and best stories.

First of all, the biggest news was the closing of Borders bookstores. Although Borders had been in trouble for a lengthy period of time (and very publicly so), they also were in the process of being bought. The bookseller announced on July 19 that it would be closing all of its stores as a result of the deal falling through. Many book lovers, including book bloggers, have lamented Borders fall. For one book blog I follow, Write Meg!, the closing of Borders was personal. Read what she had to say about losing her area's only bookstore.

For Sale on Zazzle.com!

In further depressing book world news, the L.A. Times laid off all of its freelance book reviewers and columnists last week. I am especially sad about this, as the newspaper is one of my favorite sources for book news. They report that their book coverage will not be affected or diminished, but that in-house staff will fill in for reviews previously written by freelancers.

I'm really glad I ended up buying a Samsung Galaxy tab, which I use as both a mobile internet device and an e-reader. Why, you might ask? Well, I was previously using my iPod as an e-reader (albeit a small one), and Apple -- Steve Jobs specifically -- just made the iPod a whole lot less user friendly for readers. Apple is demanding third-party e-book sellers like Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and Amazon pay them 30% of their e-book sales for them to continue to allow customers to purchase e-books through apps on their iPods and iPads. The booksellers refused, rendering their apps on Apple products useless for purchasing new titles.

While I suppose Apple -- like any company -- can do whatever it wants with its products, I have to say this decision is disappointing to say the least. Not surprising, just disappointing. I love the openness of my Galaxy, on which I can purchase e-books from whichever bookseller I choose. And I do choose all of them. I've purchased e-books from every e-book seller out there, and like them all for different reasons. I know Apple users love Apple products; I myself have been a lifelong Apple groupie. But this decision makes me question that devotion a bit.

Charlaine Harris with Tru Blood

True Blood started its fourth season just before I left the country for almost a month. I read Charlaine Harris's latest Sookie book, Dead Reckoning, while I was overseas to help assuage my depression over missing episodes 3-5. I have, of course, been catching up on those missed episodes (oh, how I love my DVR). But in the meantime, bad news in Sookieverse. Harris has stated that she will stop writing the series after book thirteen. As Dead Reckoning was only book eleven, Sookie lovers still have two more books to look forward to from Harris. And maybe -- just maybe -- she'll change her mind between now and then.

Just one list for book news today: NPR's summer book series included a short list of cooking memoirs this week. I've read Lunch in Paris (and loved it), and Blood, Bones, & Butter is still on my to-read list. I suppose I'll have to add the other three, as well. I mean -- what's a girl to do?

Also, BookPage's book blog Book Case hyped Joshilyn Jackon's new novel A Grown Up Kind of Pretty this week. I, for one, cannot wait to read Jackson's latest book. She is one of my absolute favorite authors, and I live for her witty, hilarious rants and ramblings on her blog Faster Than Kudzu. Can't wait to read it, and so glad she's getting excellent publicity this early.

This weekend, I am planning on writing some of those Africa/ traveling blog posts I've been promising. That and getting some things ready for school. Since I was traveling four weeks out of my summer, I feel like I haven't really had any down-time. I had my first in-service day yesterday, and I've got to get busy working on my classroom. Lots of excellent ideas, and very little time to carry them out.

I am still planning on reading (some). Right now I'm reading Take It Like a Mom by Stephanie Stiles, which is hilarious. I also had a stack of books for review delivered while I was gone, so I'll be catching up in the next week or two.

BBC Meme (Well, Not Really): 100 Must-Read Books (Or: Just How Well-Read Are You?)

We all know how I love lists. I have notebooks that literally have only lists in them. Like, they are full of lists. It's a manifestation of my OCD on many levels, but it works for me. I delight in other people's lists, too -- lists don't have to be my own to bring me pleasure.

I recently read on a friend's blog that he has only read four of the books on the following list of 100 Must-Read Books from the BBC. According to the meme, the average is supposed to be six. After searching around on the internet for more info about this list, I discovered fairly definitively that it isn't actually a BBC list, but rather a Facebook meme based in part on a list by the BBC.

Regardless, as a girl with an English degree, I had to check it out and test myself. So it's confession time; maybe I'm not very well-read at all! Below, bold titles are books I have read. Italicized titles are books I've read part of but never completed. The others, I've never read at all.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So I have read 28 of the books on this list. Thirteen others, I have read parts of or started and never finished. That makes a whopping 59 that I have never picked up or read a word from. Doesn't sound very good for someone who calls herself an "avid reader" does it?

As a short explanation, I often hated the books we were required to read in school (both high school and college). I still maintain to this day that a book that is not enjoyable shouldn't be in the oft-taught literary cannon. Moby Dick, for example? Truly one of the most boring pieces of fiction I have ever been asked to read. Classic novel, though.

It would be interesting to look a century or two into the future and find out what books being published today will make it onto future must-read lists. Will they be books that people actually enjoy reading, or books that make it on the list for some other reason?

Literary Road Trip: William Faulkner's Rowan Oak

I know, I know. I keep promising posts about Africa... Once again, I will say: they are coming. But for today, a trip down memory lane to a road trip I took with my mom several years ago.

When I got home yesterday from Africa, my soon-to-be hubby had an amazing surprise for me: a new laptop! The first new laptop I've ever had. (Previously, I have had several wonderful hand-me-downs.) I am currently running on about five hours of sleep within the last 48 hours -- jet lag is real! I've spent my time since I woke up at 3:30am this morning uploading old pictures onto my new computer.

I discovered tons of great photographs, especially some I've meant to share on the blog for a long time -- I just didn't know where they were!

In high school, I was first introduced to William Faulkner through The Sound and the Fury. I learned to appreciate that novel, even if it will never be a favorite of mine. After that, I read "A Rose for Emily," which I thought was amazing. My mom and I traveled to the southern literary mecca that is Oxford, Mississippi, several years ago to attend the Oxford Conference for the Book.

While in Oxford -- for a book conference, especially -- we had to visit both Faulkner's home Rowan Oak and the penultimate southern book store, Square Books. Rowan Oak was closed to inside tours for renovations, but I took dozens of pictures of the grounds where Faulkner lived and wrote:

Rowan Oak through the trees

Rowan Oak out building

Rowan Oak out building

Rowan Oak grapevines

Rowan Oak stables

Rowan Oak from the side

Rowan Oak rock garden

Rowan Oak pebble path

I also found pictures from Savannah of both Flannery O'Connor's childhood home and the Mercer Williams house, which was the setting for John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. So those will be coming soon on another Literary Road Trip post!

Leaving Tanzania

After almost three weeks here in Tanzania, we have almost come to the end of our journey. Our last "big" Africa thing to do is go on safari.

Tomorrow morning, we will travel up across Lake Victoria, through Mwanza, and north to the western corridor of the Serengeti. If you are unfamiliar with the Serengeti, here's a bit about it from the official website:

Tanzania's oldest and most popular national park, the Serengeti is famed for its annual migration, when some six million hooves pound the open plains, as more than 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle join the wildebeest’s trek for fresh grazing. Yet even when the migration is quiet, the Serengeti offers arguably the most scintillating game-viewing in Africa: great herds of buffalo, smaller groups of elephant and giraffe, and thousands upon thousands of eland, topi, kongoni, impala and Grant’s gazelle. Golden-maned lion prides feast on the abundance of plain grazers. Solitary leopards haunt the acacia trees lining the Seronera River, while a high density of cheetahs prowls the southeastern plains. Almost uniquely, all three African jackal species occur here, alongside the spotted hyena and a host of more elusive small predators, ranging from the insectivorous aardwolf to the beautiful serval cat.

In other words, we are going to see a lot of animals. The great migration may be over by the time we arrive on Saturday, but we are still sure to see elephants, hippos, gazelle, crocodiles, and various types of monkeys. 


We will, of course, take hundreds of pictures during our safari. I can't wait to share those with you after I get home. 


In my reading life, I've still been reading up a storm. I've finished twelve books in the few weeks we've been here. This week, I have read:

• The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue
• Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Paradise, Piece by Piece by Molly Peacock

I am currently listening to Lisa Gardner's Love You More, which is entirely creeping me out -- especially since I listen to it before bed each night. I'm also reading my brother's copy of Rob Bell's Love Wins and -- to my surprise -- really enjoying it. Both his writing and his ideas are intriguing. 


I don't generally choose titles from religious or inspirational authors, but my brother was right to press Bell's work into my hands. He has two other books by Bell: Velvet Elvis and Jesus Wants to Save Christians. Wonder if I can manage to finish Love Wins and then also read the other two in the next couple of days...

Tales from Tanzania

As promised, my posting has been drastically reduced while I've been in Africa. It's been a nice break, but I look forward to posting lots of book reviews when I get back. I have read an enormous amount during the past two weeks, much of it very unlike my normal reading choices. I've read several nonfiction titles, including Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and both Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics. I've also finished lots of novels.

Currently I'm reading poet Molly Peacock's memoir, titled Paradise, Piece by Piece. It is beautiful and devastating and selfish and exhilarating, all at once. I'm struggling through it a bit at the moment, only because I can't see where it is going that is hopeful. But I'm wanting hope for her, and hoping it will come before the book ends.

I assume you'd like an update on the experiences we've been having here in Africa. What I can say is this: Africa is both the most surprising and the most predictable place I've ever been. In Tanzania, Africa looks exactly as you would expect Africa to look -- wild, heavily populated, thatched-roof huts, dilapidated roadside dukas (stores), bicyclists everywhere, Western clothing from Goodwill. But then there are surprising things, as well.

Everyone uses cell phones. My sister-in-law says most people skipped the step of house telephones on lines, and went straight to cell service. Even in the village we visited, far away from town life and with no electricity, the people have cell phones. A man comes every few days and charges them on a car battery. The women wear kangas (think pashminas but cottton, wrapped around as a skirt) to cover their legs to below the knee, but often shirts are low-cut or gaping open between buttons to reveal a lot of skin.

In Tanzania, it is both a beautiful life, full of calls to prayer in the evening and rich-voiced singing and a difficult life, with many hours spent on survival. Water, a basic necessity, is scarce during their dry season. The place where my brother goes to get water every other day has recently been running out of water mid-morning. There is more mid-afternoon, but the lack of water means some go without.

We have been enjoying visiting our family here, in addition to learning about a new culture. My sister-in-law has written several blog posts during our visit. She posted several pictures of family time (especially with my cutest-kid-in-the-world nephew). She also posted about our visit to the village of Kasilo last weekend.

A difficult thing for me while being here has been the lack of exercise I'm able to get. After losing more than 45 lbs in the last year and a half, I am used to going to the gym at 4-6 days a week and getting in some heart-pumping cardio workouts, as well as strength training and yoga. Tanzanians simply don't understand running, which would be my only real exercise option here. My sister-in-law and I did go to the workout room at the Geita Gold Mine and run on the treadmills on Saturday, but this isn't an everyday option.

We have been going on long walks, which is an acceptable thing to do. After all, most people walk to and from the market, water sources, their friends' homes, etc. However, they often ask my sister-in-law where she is going (assuming the answer will be the market, water, a friend's home) and are extremely confused when she says it's for exercise, or for fun. Holly wrote a post about one of our walks a week or so ago, along with pictures.

I will be writing many, many posts with pictures and video after we return home (in less than a week). Until then, visit McNeals in Geita for updates and pictures.

We have a week full of activities planned for our last few days in Tanzania. Tonight we will go visit Christie and Brett Harrison for a cookout at their home. Tomorrow, we will be the honored guests of Elizabeth's Tanzanian family and get to eat a traditional meal in her home. On Saturday and Sunday, we are going on safari in the Serengeti and staying at the Kijereshi tented camp at the edge of the Western Corridor.

State of Wonder Knocks My Socks Off (And -- Kind Of -- Prepares Me for Africa)

I have a confession: I own Ann Patchett’s prize-winning novel Bel Canto, but I’ve never read it. I’ve tried several times. I get about twenty pages in, and then I get overwhelmed by the references to opera and foreign culture and lack of interesting characters, save the mysterious and influential Mr. Hosokawa. I understand fully that further into the book, the plot will develop and characters will pop off the page. The setting will be described to the most minute detail, all of which will create a rich reading experience.

But I haven’t gotten that far; at least, I haven’t been able to yet.

Patchett’s latest work of fiction, State of Wonder, worked exactly the opposite for me. From the first page, the first paragraph, the first word, I was drawn entirely into Patchett’s world. Main character Marina is both sympathetic and relatable. Although her choices may not be ones I would make, she is a character who connects to the reader in both manner and emotion.

State of Wonder was extraordinarily interesting to me as reading this summer because of the setting and plot. Marina embarks upon a journey to the heart of the Amazon, as part of an assignment for her employer Mr. Fox. She is primarily a research scientist who works with cholesterol data; field work is far beyond her norm. But Mr. Fox feels she is exactly the person for the job, and so -- being agreeable Marina -- she acquiesces to his demands. She is plunged into a new world full of confounding cultural customs and insects that attack.

I read State of Wonder just before leaving for a journey of my own to highly unknown territory: Africa. Although State of Wonder takes place in Brazil and the Amazon jungle, Marina encounters many situations and issues similar to that of the African bush. Marina takes Lariam, an anti-malaria pill that I was also prescribed before my trip. She recalls taking it in childhood before visiting her father in India, and the horrific nightmares that ensued as a result. My own fears were therefore exacerbated by Marina’s fictional experience; I put off filling my prescription because I was terribly afraid the Lariam would worsen my own life-long problem with vivid, erratic dreams. 

I hate to gush unintelligibly from this point forward. The truth is if you are looking for a strictly academic review of State of Wonder, there are dozens of choices from reputable review sites all over the internet. Some links, if you are interested:

• The NY Times
• NPR
• LA Times
• Entertainment Weekly

My interest in the book was multi-fold: my previous experience with Ann Patchett’s work, for one thing. I didn’t read Bel Canto, but I did read Patchett’s first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars and loved it. I also like the idea of reading local-to-me southern authors, and Patchett -- a Nashvillian -- fits that bill. Additionally, I saw Patchett speak and read from State of Wonder a few weeks ago in Nashville. Author events always drive me to read more from authors who I see and hear in person.

The plot is intricate and well-planned. It is new enough to be entertaining, but not overwhelming in its uniqueness (it’s real life -- no vampires or other-worldly creatures lurking about). Patchett’s ability to paint the setting is also an immense talent she possesses. The Amazon leaps off the page, with mosquitos buzzing and snakes slithering and tribal people living their day-to-day existence. Patchett’s characters are realistic and yet highly nuanced individuals. There are no stereotypes within the pages of this novel, but rather rounded, dynamic characters.

I had no idea when I purchased State of Wonder that I would feel as connected to it as I did. Even with all the positive buzz it garnered in its first few weeks after release, I still wasn’t prepared for it to grab me. I mean, let’s be honest -- oftentimes, buzz means nothing when it comes to personal connection and enjoyment. A oft-praised book can, for whatever reason, fail to work on the individual level. 

But State of Wonder met all those expectations, and even surpassed them. Julie at Book Hooked Blog called it a book that “anyone and everyone can and should read. . . . [And went on to say:] Seriously. If you can read what I'm typing right now, there is no reason I can think of that you wouldn't love State of Wonder.” I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Prepare to be entertained and amazed. Now if I can just get past page twenty in Bel Canto...

Journey to Tanzania

We arrived in Tanzania after more than 48 hours of traveling last week. My mom and I flew out of the Knoxville Airport on Tuesday morning with a flight to Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport. From there, we flew to Ethiopia's Addis Ababa International Airport. The world seemed to change in the twelve hours during our flight.

Addis Ababa Airport

Although it is the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa's airport had little in common with our nation's capital's airport. We debarked from the plane down a staircase onto the runway, then were taken by bus to the terminal. Upon arrival, I learned what it truly meant to be in a place where you are a foreigner -- where you don't speak the people's language. We asked (in English) for "Terminal 1" and were nodded to and directed to the baggage claim. We realized our error and headed back in the direction we had come, to be bussed about 100 yards to another building, which was our actual destination.

The Addis Ababa staff was friendly and (somewhat) helpful -- especially considering they probably had as difficult a time understanding us as we did them, but the airport is exactly that: an airport. No frills, coffee shops, restaurants, or booths to browse. No drinking water to purchase. No toilet paper or soap in the bathrooms. We waited out a short two-hour layover before flying on to our third destination in under 24 hours: the Mount Kilimanjaro airport near Arusha, Tanzania.

Kilimanjaro International Airport

The Mt. Kilimanjaro airport is beautiful, designed (I'm sure) for tourists going on safari in the nearby Serengeti or who aim to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. My mom and I used our English and (her) minimal Swahili to make our way through obtaining me a visa, customs, and finding our hotel shuttle. I'm quite sure our shuttle driver thought we were insane; we insisted on seeing his badge that read "KIA Lodge" before we would go with him, even though he assured us in English that he was "KIA Lodge."

KIA Lodge at Kilimanjaro

The KIA Lodge is absolutely beautiful. It is a series of more than forty buildings in a compound, with guest cottages, an open bar area, a hilltop pool area, a reception hall, and an open-air restaurant. We relaxed by the pool and explored our first destination in Africa during an overnight stay there.

Mwanza Airport

The next morning we were shuttled back to the airport (which you could literally see from the hilltop pool -- I think our driver told us it was 1.5 kilometers by car). We flew a Tanzanian flight company called Fly 540 from Mount Kilimanjaro to Mwanza, the nearest large city to Geita, where my brother and his family live. They picked us up, and we drove about three hours south to Geita, including a thirty-minute ferry ride across Lake Victoria.

A Lake Victoria Ferry (Not Ours)

I will have many more posts to come after I return about our actual time here in Geita. Also, I have been reading up a storm. Since leaving, I've read:

• The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
• The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel
• I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson
• Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich

I will probably have very few book-related posts in the next two weeks while we are here. Look for some travel posts and updates on my reading, but little to no reviews. I'll have plenty of time for that when I'm not running after a sixteen-month-old, visiting the local market, and seeing the countryside here in Tanzania.

Happy reading!

The End of Everything: A Look at Thirteen In Glaring, Fluorescent Light

Life at thirteen is a jumble of emotions: flying high with excitement, spiraling downward with depression, running headstrong with over-confidence, despairing with never-ending uncertainty. 

In Megan Abbott’s latest novel The End of Everything, main character Lizzie lives the life of every teenager, and yet the life of no teenager. That is the perfection of Abbott’s tale: Lizzie is every girl at the cusp of adolescence, and also a unique individual whose experiences in life are unlike that of any other person. 

She and her best friend, Evie, grew up together as close as sisters. Like so many childhood friends, they are intertwined to almost the point of oneness. They grew up in and out of each other’s houses, with each other’s families, sleeping in each other’s beds, thinking each other’s thoughts. 

And yet at thirteen, Lizzie discovers that she has never truly known her friend at all. One day Evie goes home rather than to the mall with Lizzie, and simply disappears. The police question Lizzie at length, and she diligently tries her hardest to help. A maroon car, secrets hidden in the backyard -- all tips Lizzie uses to help find her friend.

Although the plot sounds like a mystery novel, Abbott’s novel is less mystery and more a portrait of girlhood at thirteen. Abbott captures the confusion and haze of that time between childhood and adulthood with perfect pitch. She expertly describes Lizzie’s loss of innocence and dramatic lunge into womanhood. 

Although The End of Everything is about a single, random, and terrible event, it is also a coming-of-age novel for girls. Abbott’s Lizzie portrays exactly what thirteen is like, when "you don’t know yet what you don’t yet know."

I can’t say that the reading of the novel was entirely enjoyable. It is a story fraught with tension and uncertainty and fear. Additionally, Lizzie as narrator is not always entirely trustworthy. Abbott does this with purposeful precision. As Lizzie is going through the change from child to woman, her truth is our truth as readers. The novel is effective in its authentic voice, even if every thought and action and sentence spoken by the narrator may be poorly chosen and wrong.

Abbott also accomplishes perfecting Lizzie’s voice as narrator by firmly keeping adult story lines on the fringes. Divorce and Lizzie’s mother’s new relationship are all completely side stories, in the way that all adult -- and especially parent -- stories are always side stories to thirteen-year-olds. 

For much of the novel, you as reader have no idea what is and is not real. But neither does Lizzie, and neither do most thirteen-year-olds -- even when they are certain that they do. 

The End of Everything is a dark tale of adolescence and of the shocking occurrences that force children into adults. Abbott spares nothing, laying the darkness out with unerring frankness. Although a coming-of-age novel, the book is far from a YA novel. Rather, it is a look at adolescence through the lens of wise adulthood. 

Lost Voices Begs the Question: Are Mermaids the New Vampires in YA Fiction?

Fantasy fiction, whether it be supernatural or otherworldly, caters to escapist fiction readers. In the YA genre in particular, it feeds teen (and older) readers' deep-seated need to travel somewhere outside the adult-driven universe in which they reside. Sarah Porter's new YA novel Lost Voices works doubly in this scenario; not only can her readers use the novel as a means of escape, but so do her characters.

Lost Voices relates the tale of those often overlooked: the beaten down, the neglected, the abused. In Porter's alternate world, girls who experience such travesties at the hands of adults -- primarily their family members or guardians -- have a way out of the chaos. They can become mermaids, free of all human responsibilities and cares. And, of course, abuses. However, nothing is at simple or easy as it seems. The cliche "too good to be true" comes to mind.

While the characters in Porter's novel escape the human world in favor of a seemingly fantasy-like life, complications arise almost from the get-go. First of all, a tribe full of adolescent female mermaids is much like a boarding school dorm or summer camp cabin -- full of jealousies, rife with conflict, and one power struggle after another. Although these girls (now mermaid creatures) have escaped their abusive human lives, they remain in many ways still very much human. Anyone who has spent any length of time around teenage girls (or boys, for that matter) know that drama is never more than a split second away, given the right atmosphere and hurt feelings, imagined or otherwise.

During my first teaching assignment out of college, I had a boy literally hurl a desk across my classroom. I believe the entire incident stemmed from another boy's comment about his girlfriend. That quickly, teenage emotions can erupt in poor decisions with (sometimes) dire consequences. Of course, we all know teens are not the only individuals who lack restraint; our prisons are full of grown-ups whose emotional reactions also got the best of them.

The mermaid tribe, led by the beautiful Catarina, rules itself based on an oral constitution of sorts. Luce, the novel's main character, quickly discovers after landing in the sea off Alaska that the mermaids all claim to follow their rules to the letter, but in actuality use them as best befits their needs or wants. She finds herself swimming among them, but feeling out of place even here. The mermaids spend their days swimming, diving, eating mussels, avoiding predatory orcas, and enjoying other (sometimes much darker) mermaid pursuits.

Luce begins to have second thoughts about her new self-made family when she is forced into situations -- and to commit acts -- she regrets. The advent of new characters keep the book interesting, despite the limitations involved in setting a book in such a secluded location. The buzz is that Lost Voices is the first novel in a trilogy the author has planned. Although I felt there were some issues (lack of plot in some places, a bit too dark in others), I will definitely read the second book in this trilogy to find out where and what main character Luce is doing.

Despite the darker themes, the writing and characters makes this an appropriate title for my middle school classroom as a book for individual students to read on their own. I would hesitate to read it aloud or teach it as a class novel simply because it is so female-centered; I doubt the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys in my classes would appreciate it as much as the girls would. It is also a novel I would hesitate to recommend to readers outside the YA world. If you are a teen or a YA book lover, you will most likely enjoy Lost Voices. However, it doesn't have the far-reaching power of other recent YA books such as The Hunger Games or Twilight.

My I'm-Traveling-to-Africa Reading List

Mount Kilimanjaro.

The Serengeti.

Safari.

Lake Victoria.

Just a few of the reasons people travel to Africa.

My reason, however, is singular:

My brothers, at a very young age (how young I couldn't tell you). 

The older one (on the right, with his mouth wide open) now lives in Tanzania, Africa, with his family:

My brother Carson, my nephew Jude, and my sister-in-law Holly.

The sole reason for my journey.

I just can't wait to hold this baby (actually, toddler now):

While I'm traveling, my mind will have to be occupied. Thus, an extraordinary number of e-books and audiobooks (with a few actual paper books thrown in, too):

Audiobooks:

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Love You More by Lisa Gardner

Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

H.R.H. by Danielle Steel

Chill Factor by Sandra Brown

Ricochet by Sandra Brown

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

E-Books:

Lost Voices by Sarah Porter

Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

A Place of Yes by Bethenny Frankel

Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich

Blindsided by Karin Slaughter

Real, Live Paper Books:

The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue

I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson

The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Click on any of the above titles to visit either the author's website or another source of more information on the book (Goodreads, Wikipedia, the publisher website, etc.).

It's going to be a fabulous three weeks. And I'm betting the reading won't occupy me much once I actually arrive!

Book News: Flipback Books, Amazon's Best of 2011 (So Far), Worn-Out Phrases, and Bernie Madoff's Prison Reading

I told you the New Yorker's Book Bench blog has good stuff. This week, they linked to a phenomenon that (may be) taking over the reading industry. Abe Books posted about the relatively new flipback book, a printing style that results in a book that is as small as a cassette tape or iPhone. Will this take mobile reading to a whole new (paper, rather than tech) level? Flipback books are printed horizontally and on very thin paper, so as to fit the most words and pages into a small amount of space.

You know how I love a good book list (really, I just love lists, but since I love books it also stands to reason that I love book lists). This week Amazon released their "best books of 2011 so far" list with books in many fiction and nonfiction categories. I've read some (not many), but I'm interested in reading more.

This week's Guardian featured England's Ledbury Poetry Festival and a project completely there each year. Last year, poets and attendees were asked to name their most hated words, and this year they were asked to name their most worn-out words or phrases. Topping the responses were "thinking outside the box" and "devastated." Cliches are very interesting to me. I did a whole unit on cliches in my classroom last year. This coming school year, maybe I can incorporate the Guardian's article!

Two articles from NPR should make it onto your internet browsing this weekend. First, "Hooray For YA: Teen Novels for Readers of All Ages" lists five new books to include on your YA reading list (or, for me, on my classroom bookshelves). Then "Three Critics Pick The Best Books for Summer" gives you three takes on what you should be reading this summer. It's especially nice that you get recommendations from three very different sources, resulting in some titles that haven't already been listed on other summer reading lists.

For some reason, I thought Bernie Madoff was dead. I have no idea why I believed that to be true (though, for sure, there are most likely a great number of people who would like for that to be the case), but I only found out about my snafu when Dwight Garner wrote a piece for the New York Times about Madoff's prison reading. Garner lists what Madoff claims he's reading (Michener, among other things) while incarcerated and also makes some suggestions that might help better Madoff's character.

As I may have mentioned a couple of times previously, I am heading for Africa next week. I will still be posting, but here and there a day or two may pass without a post. However, I will definitely be reading. I have compiled quite a pile of things for travel reading (the trip there will take more than 24 hours, then we will be staying near Mt. Kilimanjaro for one night before going on to the smaller town where my brother and his family live). I will be gone for three weeks, during which I expect to do some reading.

You can expect a lengthier post next week detailing my travel reading, but for now just know that I am completely immersed in Ann Patchett's State of Wonder -- and still loving Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches on audio.

Happy reading this weekend!