Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

It's Christmas break, and after a semester chock-fill of papers, meetings, and heartbreaking football games, damnit, I need some pleasure reading. I found out about Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver while aimlessly clicking around Amazon.com trying to distract myself from the paper I was supposed to be writing. It got good reviews from readers and critics alike, which I usually take as a good sign with books (with movies I say to hell with the critics, I'm pretty picky with what I choose to read for fun anymore, considering I don't get to do it much).

Shiver is about a Minnesota girl, Grace, who watches, with a devotion bordering on obsession, the wolves that live just beyond the safe boundaries of her backyard. "Safe" probably isn't the best description, though, considering those wolves dragged her from her tire swing when she was ten and nearly killed her. But there's one wolf that saved her, the one with yellow eyes, and she's always felt drawn to him. No spoiler, guys, this one is easy to tell from the book jacket's summary - the yellow-eyed wolf is really Sam, an 18-year-old boy who spends his summers as a human and his winters as a wolf. The other ones in his pack are the same, going about compromised human lives when the temperatures stay balmy but inevitably turning into wolves when the leaves start falling. Here's the catch, though - eventually they just don't turn back in the spring, and they just become wolves forever.

Anyway, it's pretty much been billed as "Twilight - but with ONLY werewolves!" I would say that's an apt comparison and a good hook. It is indeed about love-at-first-sight for a human girl and a paranormal boy, and the incessant suspense and sensory imagery definitely makes it a page-turner.

But I'm gonna be predictable here and say IT'S TOTALLY MORE AWESOME THAN TWILIGHT. Which I feel is a pretty standard assessment for about every other book ever written, but I really mean it, you guys. The entire time I was reading Shiver, I just kept marveling at the lyrical simplicity of it. The character's reactions and interactions are so natural and, I guess, appealing in their kind of relationship normalcy. There are no histrionics here, no Bella with a gaping hole in her chest and etc etc DRAMZ. Grace and Sam are wonderful characters with flaws and there is mystery that keeps the plot tightly bound even as there is room to linger on character moments. And there is definitely some sexiness, deliciously embraced and not all repressed and forboden like it is in far too many other YA supernatural romance books (as in every other book in the Twilight vein).

I just want to say thank you to Maggie Steifvater, too. I'm trying to write something right now, and I've flipping between first and third person narration, even going so far as to Control+F and replace every "I" with a character name. But reading Shiver got me back into the mood for writing first person, which is ostensibly easier to spit out but harder to control when it comes to creating a unique character and not just a Mary Sue for yourself.

Stiefvater succeeds in this department, especially refreshing because she was not one but TWO first-persons doing the narration. The chapters roughly alternate between Sam and Grace's perspectives, which lets on just enough but not too much about the characters and the plot. It was the first time in a LONG time that I found a YA book written in first-person that didn't send my "Self-Conscious Aside" meter into critical levels. Basically, this book renewed my faith in use of first-person POV - in Shiver it's insightful and useful to the plot, not smothering the reader with a stream of consciousness.

I really could gush about this book all day. It was a quick read and I've been waiting to read a "fun book" since August, but I also just can't get over how gosh darn well-crafted it is. I am always so grateful to read a smart and pretty book, one that gets me all emotionally invested while also making me think "well, that was clever." The way it all ties up at the end was neat and clean without being too restrictive for a sequel (due in summer 2010!) but it also seriously made me catch my breath because I was so happy for the characters. Aaaah, I hope I get to read another one like this soon.

Sleeping with the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson

Kind of like with Beastly (see previous), I got interested  in this one because of the cover art. I glanced at it (on the "New in Romance" table at Borders) and instantly - "Oo! Mermaid!" Then I registered the author's name, back cover description, and it's placement in the romance area. Oh well. 

I've read exactly two other romance novels. They were both better than this. I know I know - I really shouldn't expect much, these people crank out a book a month. And they always have three names.

This one had something to do with mermaids, something to do with hippie parents, something to do with the mob - and nothing to do with fun. I am actually kind of mad I even wasted time on this.  I guess I just don't have the patience for ultra-fluffy, zero-substance, completely predictable brand of book. Although it has made me wonder if I should be a romance novelist. If Sleeping with the Fishes can get published, and the author can brag in her bio that her husband gets jealous because she makes more money than him - dude, you don't have to be smart, creative, or even cool to succeed! Scooooooore.

I guess my desire to read fun, easy books isn't so strong I can read crappy romance novels and be happy. 

Beastly by Alex Finn

Watching Disney's Beauty and the Beast six times in one week while babysitting my three-year-old cousin really brought back the love for this story for me. When I was little and just introduced to Disney's animated version, I daydreamed about having a huge castle library and pretty dresses all my own. 

 I've read Robin McKinley's Beauty twice - the character of Beauty was spunky but not annoying, and I loved the tweaks McKinley had put on the original French tale. But that's all the luck I've found with B&tB retellings in book form.  Rose Daughter, McKinley's second retelling, with all it's descriptions of rose gardens from a bland Beauty, bored me to death and I hardly got through the first third of the book before putting it down. I later tried Donna Jo Napoli's Beast but at thirteen I found first-person description of  lion sex to be kind of gross and weird so I didn't finish that one either.

I heard about Alex Finn's book while looking at related books for Twilight on Amazon. I thought I would give it a shot - the cover art was cool enough, and while that's usually not a very accurate indicator of whether a book is actually going to be TOTES AWESOME, it worked for me when I bought Twilight last year.

The Beast is Kyle Kingsbury of New York City, a spoiled high school freshman, with good looks and a famous dad. Kyle likes to bully the less-beautiful and hook up with hot chicks. He hatches an elaborate plan to take the new Goth girl to his school dance - as a joke, a la Never Been Kissed. But when she figures it out that he's just screwing with her, she goes all Carrie on his ass, reveals she's really a witch, and curses him to become a "beast" - so his hairy exterior will reflect his mean, ugly interior. From there, things get worse for Kyle - his dad abandons him, basically imprisons him in a different home, where Kyle's only companions are a maid and a blind tutor. The rest of the story follows the traditional B&tB conventions - plain girl arrives in the Beast's castle (here, a ritzy townhouse), Beast scares girl at first, then gets her mad, then they start to get along, then they fall in love, Beast changes for the better, epic battle (here, something to do with girl's drug-addicted, alcoholic, abusive dad), sacrifice, near-death of Beast, and of course a happy ending with the Beast turning back into a normal person, only better.

Beastly has quite a few good aspects - I was intrigued by a modern setting, and having the Beast be a teenager - which is alluded to in the Disney movie but never really stamped in. I also liked how the witch character eventually had pity on Kyle but still had to stick to her original rules. 

It's told from the perspective of the "Beast," like Napoli's book, but I find this probably the biggest problem. Finn's characterization of Kyle just isn't very convincing. At first, when Kyle is still a spoiled, horny, vain teenager, you kind of want to cringe because Finn is trying so hard and still failing. Maybe if the narration wasn't first-person, it wouldn't be so awkward. As the book goes on, Kyle changes into a better person, but seriously, I think he could have done that without all the moping and crying and blah blah blah - I get that he's all sad and stuff because he's a beast now, but there must have been a more engaging way to demonstrate this besides melodramatic monologues and getting all emo and stuff and changing his name to Adrian. 

Even worse is the characterization of Lindy (as in Linda, as in "pretty" in Spanish - see what she did there???) - girl is so lame and boring and one-note that I don't really know how Kyle fell in love with her or how she had any part in his transformation. She's just ... there. And with bad teeth, apparently.

One word sum-up? "Slight." This book could have been so much more (there was an entire TV series about a Beast living in New York City) but in the end it was just perfunctory. It's still a good, quick read for a flight or the beach, but if you're interested in an engaging, beautifully written Beauty and the Beast retelling, pick up Robin McKinley's Beauty. 

Candy Girl by Diablo Cody

I'm 104% sure that Juno is the best movie I've seen in a long, long time. I loved that the characters talked and acted and looked like real teenagers, and that the humor in the movie was true and notthe product of outlandish,  ridiculous situations. Not that I don't appreciate absurdity at the right times, but Juno could achieve the right tone - whether it was comedy or drama - by sticking to reality.

Most of the awesomeness of the film has to come from Diablo Cody's script (for which she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay). I heard she had also written a book a few years ago, Candy Girl, about the time she spent being a stripper in Minnesota. I got this one at the library, too, and read it very quickly.

Cody's style in the book is very similar to what you can see and hear in Juno, especially the vocabulary. It starts off a little oppressive, a little bit pretentious, but the farther you read all the funky word combos aren't so noticeable. 

Seeing as how this is a book about stripping, there were definitely parts that get pretty graphic. But Cody writes with such matter-of-fact frankness that it doesn't cross the line into tasteless - at least for me. And this is coming from someone who skips over the too-sexy parts in romance novels. 

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

I confess. I like the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. Actually, I flove them. Those things are like crack. Please don't think any less of me. I have also searched through many lists of "If You Like Twilight ..." and found this book popping up on a lot of them. 

I can see why it's lumped together with the Twilight books in the paranormal romance category. Kind of spooky, but mostly just an unusual romance. The two characters who fall in love in Light are both ghosts who come to inhabit the bodies of teenagers who are "empty," whose souls have fled. 

I don't usually like ghost stories, but Whitcomb's  fluid prose just sucked me in. She can do dreamlike and harsh reality very well without the tone ever seeming choppy. 

This is the first time in a long while that I have finished a book in a day. This is both a compliment and a complaint - the story is so engrossing but the book is pretty short - unlike the bloated Twilight series.

Of course, I'm also a bit shallow when it comes to picking books to read: This cover sure is pretty.

Another Time, Another Love by Vivian Schurfranz (with some American Girl nostalgia)

In my quest for easy, fun reads, I've of course tried out romance novels. I found this one in the YA section at my library. I was drawn to is because of the cover - duh, historical fiction for the win. I grabbed it and checked it out and started reading it today before it really set in that this is one of those lame time-traveling romance novels. The main character isn't even from the Revolutionary War - she's some inane Mary Sue with a penchant for stirrup leggings and saying "mustn't." I mean, okay, I'll give the author some slack on the clothing choices (the book was written in 1995), but it's the fact that these are always discussed in such excruciating detail that bugs me. I don't care when you write a book - in a few years some of that stuff is going to be horrifically dated and it's going to take a reader out of the story. This book was so overbearing about it I didn't even get a chance to get into the story in the first place. All I really cared about was the Revolutionary War stuff, honestly. Maybe this is a good book if you like The Patriot fan-fiction in book form with the convenient time-traveling mechanism so you can still have high school and mid-90s fashion trauma. 

So, after becoming exasperated with all of Cathy's (that's the Mary Sue) whining about her boyfriend who spends all his time volunteering at a literacy center and not taking her to Olive Garden, I skipped ahead through the book to find the historical fun that surely must ensue (based on the cover, anyway). Um, well, it gets worse - Cathy just goes back in time for little bits. A ball here, some tea parties there. I never got into it enough to figure out how exactly she travels back to the 1770s with her hottie ghost friend Edward (who's British and has a sexy accent, natch). 

    

You know what would be ideal for me? Grown-up American Girl books. Especially Felicity. She and Ben the apprentice should totally hook up. I tried to find some fan fiction a while ago in this vein - unfortunately it was fan fiction, so I couldn't stand it. 

It's because of the American Girl books that I'm kind of obsessed with colonial and Revolutionary War-era America anyway - the only real reason I picked up this Schurfranz novel in the first place. In-between 2nd and 3rd grade I would read all the books in a character's series in one day. I remember sitting on my bed for hours, chain-reading the Addy and Felicity and Molly books. But not Samantha, because she was rich and boring - and all my friends had prissy, frilly Samantha dolls, which didn't really go well with my fairly rustic Felicity Scenes & Settings. And none of them knew what stays were or what side-saddle meant, or how to politely refuse tea in case they were protesting taxation without representation. All the Samantha Parkington girls knew were the various ways to create calling cards and what it was like to read in an automobile. Pffft. (Oh, and how to rescue orphans and how to teach people to read. But ... yeah.)

I dunno, I might even break out my little boxed set of Felicity this summer. I'm pretty sure they aren't as spectacular as I remember (especially with only 75 words on a page), but still. 

Nostalgia beats time-traveling Mary-Sues any day.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

I've wanted to read this for a long time, and finally grabbed it at the library last week. I was expecting something kind of light and accessible (as much as you can be when talking about dead bodies), but I was really pleasantly surprised by how engrossing it was. Pun kind of intended there with the "gross" part. Har har.

I've been on a slightly morbid kick lately - not full-on gore, ick, but I have been reading some young adult fiction (Twilight, A Certain Slant of Light) with paranormal elements. I figured Stiff would be good to read to get all that romantic-death stuff out of my head. 

Despite Roach's frequent LOL-inducing moments (at one point she decides to refer to fly larvae as "haciendas" instead of "maggots" to make the scene she's describing less cringe-inducing to the reader and herself), the overall tone balances morbid curiosity with the necessary respect. Roach's topics range from "willed body" programs that provide cadavers for anatomy classes to the future of cremation - an intriguing process euphemistically called "ecological funeral" (the deceased's body used as fertilizer for a memorial tree - but so far this has only happened in Sweden).

I'm a pretty squeamish person, but there was little in this book that crossed the line for me. The sensory imagery wasn't really the heart the book's substance anyway - the best parts were Roach's discussions with those people who make a living working with dead people. Dissection specialists, plastination experts (the process used in the BodyWorlds exhibit), or funeral home directors all have methods of creating emotional distance between a body and a living person - just so they can go to work everyday. 

If you want something informative, witty, and engaging, definitely pick this up. Chances are even the striking cover photograph will be a great conversation starter.