Teen Book Meme... Of Doom (I Couldn't Resist)

Everyone else is doing it, so I figured I should too.

The following list of books teens love, books teens should read, and books adults who serve teens should know about was compiled IN ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC MANNER and should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

Instructions:
Put an "X" next to the books you've read
Put a "+" next to the books you LOVE
Put a "#" next to the books you plan on reading
Tally your "X"s at the bottom
Share with your friends!

1. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams #
2. Kit's Wilderness / David Almond
3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie X
4. Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson #
5. Feed / M.T. Anderson #
6. Flowers in the Attic / V.C. Andrews
7. 13 Reasons Why / Jay Asher #
8. Am I Blue? / Marion Dane Bauer (editor)
9. Audrey Wait! / Robin Benway #
10. Weetzie Bat / Francesca Lia Block
11. Tangerine / Edward Bloor X
12. Forever / Judy Blume
13. What I Saw and How I Lied / Judy Blundell #
14. Tyrell / Coe Booth
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Ann Brashares #
16. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray X+
17. The Princess Diaries / Meg Cabot #
18. The Stranger / Albert Camus
19. Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card #
20. Postcards from No Man's Land / Aidan Chambers
21. Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky
22. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
23. Gingerbread / Rachel Cohn #
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist / Rachel Cohn and David Levithan #
25. Artemis Fowl (series) / Eoin Colfer X#
26. The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins #
27. The Midwife's Apprentice / Karen Cushman
28. The Truth About Forever / Sarah Dessen
29. Little Brother / Cory Doctorow X+
30. A Northern Light / Jennifer Donnelly X
31. Tears of a Tiger / Sharon Draper
32. The House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer #
33. Breathing Underwater / Alex Flinn
34. Stardust / Neil Gaiman #
35. Annie on My Mind / Nancy Garden
36. What Happened to Cass McBride / Gail Giles
37. Fat Kid Rules the World / K.L. Going
38. Lord of the Flies / William Golding #
39. Looking for Alaska / John Green #
40. Bronx Masquerade / Nikki Grimes
41. Out of the Dust / Karen Hesse X
42. Hoot / Carl Hiaasen X
43. The Outsiders / S.E. Hinton #
44. Crank / Ellen Hopkins
45 The First Part Last / Angela Johnson
46. Blood and Chocolate / Annette Curtis Klause X
47. Arrow's Flight / Mercedes Lackey
48. Hattie Big Sky / Kirby Larson X
49. To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee #
50. Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan
51. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / E. Lockhart X+
52. The Giver / Lois Lowry X
53. Number the Stars / Lois Lowry X
54. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie / David Lubar
55. Inexcusable / Chris Lynch
56. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things / Carolyn Mackler #
57. Dragonsong / Anne McCaffrey #
58. White Darkness / Geraldine McCaughrean #
59. Sold / Patricia McCormick
60. Jellicoe Road / Melina Marchetta #
61. Wicked Lovely / Melissa Marr #
62. Twilight / Stephenie Meyer X
63. Dairy Queen / Catherine Murdock
64. Fallen Angels / Walter Dean Myers
65. Monster / Walter Dean Myers
66. Step From Heaven / An Na
67. Mama Day / Gloria Naylor
68. The Keys to the Kingdom (series) / Garth Nix #
69. Sabriel / Garth Nix #
70. Airborn / Kenneth Oppel X+
71. Eragon / Christopher Paolini #
72. Hatchet / Gary Paulsen X
73. Life As We Knew It / Susan Beth Pfeffer X+
74. The Golden Compass / Phillip Pullman #
75. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging / Louise Rennison #
76. The Lightning Thief / Rick Riordan X+
77. Always Running: La Vida Loca / Luis Rodriguez
78. how i live now / Meg Rosoff #
79. Harry Potter (series) / J.K. Rowling X+
80. Holes / Louis Sachar X+
81. Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger #
82. Push / Sapphire
83. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi X+
84. Unwind / Neil Shusterman X+
85. Coldest Winter Ever / Sister Souljah
86. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli X+
87. Chanda's Secrets / Allan Stratton X
88. Tale of One Bad Rat / Brian Talbot
89. Rats Saw God / Rob Thomas
90. Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien # (I know, I know)
91. Stuck in Neutral / Terry Trueman
92. Gossip Girl / Cecily Von Ziegesar
93. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld X+
94. Every Time a Rainbow Dies / Rita Williams-Garcia
95. Pedro and Me / Judd Winick
96. Hard Love / Ellen Wittlinger
97. American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang X
98. Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin X
99. I am the Messenger / Markus Zusak #
100. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak X

X - 28
X+ - 12
# - 31

Read: 28/100
On To Read List: 31/100

I'm pathetic. :(

*Paradox*

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

Yes! It's my first real review! I'm sorry that it's so long, but I went a bit overboard.

Genre(s) - Fantasy, a little science fiction
Pages - 320
Publisher - Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
Publication Date - September 16, 2008

Rating -

Plot - 25/30
Writing - 18/20
Characters - 16/20
Creativity - 18/20
The *Wow* Factor - 7/10

Grand Total - 84/100

Grade - B

Summary (From Amazon) -

Welcome to New Avalon, where everyone has a personal fairy. Though invisible to the naked eye, a personal fairy, like a specialized good luck charm, is vital to success. And in the case of the students at New Avalon Sports High, it might just determine whether you make the team, pass a class, or find that perfect outfit. But for 14-year-old Charlie, having a Parking Fairy is worse than having nothing at all—especially when the school bully carts her around like his own personal parking pass. Enter: The Plan. At first, teaming up with arch-enemy Fiorenze (who has an All-The-Boys-Like-You Fairy) seems like a great idea. But when Charlie unexpectedly gets her heart’s desire, it isn’t at all what she thought it would be like, and she’ll have resort to extraordinary measures to ditch her fairy. The question is: will Charlie herself survive the fairy ditching experiment? From the author of the acclaimed Magic or Madness trilogy, this is a delightful story of fairies, friendships, and figuring out how to make your own magic.

Review -

Even though HTDYF got a B in my rating system (largely because of loose ends in the plot and characters), I absolutely loved the idea of this book! It’s unlike anything I’ve seen in the fantasy genre. I am constantly looking for original books like this, and I wasn’t let down by the creative setting of the story. The Amazon summary doesn’t go into this much, so let me explain a little. The story takes place in the city of New Avalon, which is fairly modern and a little futuristic and located in a country that is a mixture of the USA and Australia and in a world similar to ours. But the country is never named and there is almost no information given about the world outside of New Avalon. This might be to demonstrate the extreme self-centeredness of the city’s inhabitants. The people of the city don’t really care about anything happening elsewhere and idolize their celebrities (called “Ours.”) One of the major differences between their world and ours are the fairies. They aren’t little people with wings in HTDYF, but invisible beings that give a specific form of good luck to their owner. It is impossible to detect them and little is known about fairies, so some even doubt their existence. The belief in fairies almost seemed like a religion at times, and a person who did not believe was considered an agnostic.

I liked the characters in HTDYF, and they were fairly original, but there were a few things about them that bothered me. It isn’t necessarily the character development, but at times they could be quite annoying. I found it hard to sympathize with Charlie (a girl), the main character, at times. Since the book was written in first person, it also seemed that there wasn’t enough attention on many of the characters. I would have liked to learn more about Charlie’s sister, her friends, and Steffi/Stefan (a new boy who ends up as her boyfriend.) My favorite character was probably Steffi, who had just moved to New Avalon and pointed out many of the city’s flaws.

There were a few things about Charlie’s world that were almost disturbing. One thing was the lack of interest in places outside of New Avalon that the people seemed to show, or even the thought that they were superior to everyone else. Another thing was the school system. There were different schools for things such as sports, arts, etc., which seemed to be set up just to groom students for certain jobs and to pick out future Ours. Anyone in a general school was considered untalented. Also, the amount of privileges the Ours had was scary. A famous person in New Avalon was almost above the law. Even students who were destined to be famous would never get into trouble, even for something like forcing someone to get in their car (like one character did to Charlie.) Even going to court against an Our was useless. Charlie tended to believe that these things were normal. I had hoped she would end up more open-minded in the end, which she did, but it was often more of the opposite. Steffi began to accept some of these things when I was mentally yelling at both of them to do something. This didn’t really fit with the “cute” novel HTDYF seemed like it was supposed to be.

Charlie’s quest to get a new fairy and her trouble on the way to this was the main plot, and it was well done. The story only ran into some trouble with side plots and undeveloped ideas that got to be fairly annoying. The few bits of information about the world outside of New Avalon were like money on a string that gets pulled away as you grab for it. If the book were part of a series, I would understand this. But as far as I know, HTDYF is standalone. Another thing that was never explained was what happened to Fiorenze’s mother’s fairy research and book, which had the potential to enlighten the world about fairies. A few other things were hinted at but never explained in depth, such as the fact that people outside of New Avalon hated the city, or that outside of the city there were many who held different beliefs about fairies.

For the most part, I enjoyed the way that HTDYF was written. It was in first person, so I really got to know Charlie and her unique and funny voice. One thing about the book that other reviewers seemed to have trouble with was New Avalon’s invented slang (for which there is a glossary at the back of the book), which they seemed to find distracting. I didn’t have any problem with it. In fact, I thought it was fun and added character to the world it was set in.

Though I didn’t find HTDYF to be perfect, it was still a lot of fun. But I hope that the author writes more books set in this world so some of the more annoying loose ends can be tied up.

Book From (Review Group, Bought, Library, Publisher, Author, Contest, Etc.) - Library


*Paradox*

A Call To Action... Or Something Like That

Did I get your attention? Well, if you haven't heard already, Laura of Laura's Review Bookshelf (http://laurasreviewbookshelf.blogspot.com/) is recruiting new followers for her blog. Really, go look at it! She has a lot of reviews, especially for upcoming books, and has a lot of contests... and yes, this post is contest related. Two people who promote her blog and two people sent there will get the book of their choice!

So go over to the blog and say that Paradox referred you! ---> http://laurasreviewbookshelf.blogspot.com/2009/02/plea-and-you-get-prize.html

And to make this sound even better... If you go to Laura's blog and leave a message saying I referred you, and then come back here and say you did it, you will get an entry in a sort of contest. This is completely unrelated to the book of choice contest. But after you leave a message at her blog and come back to say you did it, you can also leave the title of a book you'd like me to use in my next fan art book cover! It can be any book I didn't already post in my fan art book cover post. When Laura posts her winners I will use a randomizer to pick a "winner" from among the comments here and make a fan art book cover for the book suggested.

I hope I didn't confuse you.

*Paradox*

Books Read in January 2009

Everyone else is doing it, so here's my list of books read in January:

(I didn't read as much as I wanted to, but I read some great books, which I have starred on the list.)

1. The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman
2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
3. *Welcome to the Ark by Stephanie S. Tolan
4. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling
5. The Wandering Schoolgirl Book 01 by Gary L. Gallegos and Louis C. Gallegos
6. 100 Girls by Adam Gallardo and Todd Demong
7. *Invisible Touch by Kelly Parra
8. *Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley
9. Chalice by Robin McKinley
10. *The Good Neighbors: Kin by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh
11. Gem X by Nicky Singer
12. Runemarks by Joanne Harris

Did anyone else read some of these books? What did you think of them?

I also plan on reviewing some of these (but not all of them, because I'm just too busy to review all the books I read.)

*Paradox*

My Fan Art Book Covers!

I've promised to post these since I started this blog, so here they are! I made these fan art book covers originally as an activity on RandomBuzzers.com, and I picked books that I liked that also could have a fan cover made easily (no fancy photomanipulations or vector graphics).

To anyone who skipped the first paragraph, this is FAN ART, not the actual covers. I'm not trying to steal anything either. I made these myself from public domain photos and the very fact that I spent hours making them means that I am a fan of the books. So go read them!

First I'll put the fan art cover, then I'll show the real cover and a link to Amazon to find out more about the book.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Fan Cover:

Real Cover:

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Adoration-Jenna-Fox-Mary-Pearson/dp/0805076689/

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

Fan Cover (This one is inspired by the movie.):

Real Cover (not the movie cover):

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/City-Ember-First-Book/dp/0375822747/

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Fan Cover:

Real Cover (paperback):

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Airborn-Kenneth-Oppel/dp/0060531827/

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (I'm no big Twilight fan, but I thought I could make a good cover for it.)

Fan Cover:

Real Cover:

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Saga-Book-1/dp/0316015849/

So.... What did you think?

*Paradox*

In My Mailbox (1)

I'm finally starting In My Mailbox! Credit for this idea goes to The Story Siren (http://www.thestorysiren.com/).

I've been trying to get this first edition up for the last month, but I've been busy, have slept through the time when I should have posted it, and lost my camera for a week and was unable to take pictures of the latest books. I finally got the camera back and I will be posting the pictures of every book that's come in the mail for the past four weeks. I won't post pictures of the books I've bought myself (not counting online purchases) because that would take forever, but I will list them. But I won't even be going into the library books I've checked out...

Week 1 - 12/28-1/3:

- 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Anne Brashares - From Random Buzzers. It was a prize.

- The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner - From Random Buzzers. This one has a story behind it. The whole reason I joined Random Buzzers was to earn enough points to get an ARC of this book. I got the last copy they had, and then I waited... for three months. And I never got it. I e-mailed them and they said that it must have gotten lost in the mail, because they sent it out. So they refunded my points. But then they sent me a hardcover copy for free!

Week 2 - 1/4-1/10:

- Invisible Touch by Kelly Parra - Contest prize.

- Top 8 by Katie Finn - From Book Divas.

- The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan - Contest prize.

- Taken by Storm by Angela Morrison - Contest prize.

- The Wandering Schoolgirl by Gary L. Gallegos and Louis C. Gallegos - Contest prize.

- 100 Girls by Adam Gallardo and Todd Demong - Contest prize.

- The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling - Contest prize.

- Sucks to be Me by Kimberly Pauley - Contest prize.

Week 3 - 1/11-1/17:

- Sam's Quest for the Crimson Crystal by Ben Furman - Contest prize.

- Far from You by Lisa Scroeder - For review.

- Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk Growing Up by Various Authors - Contest prize.

- Revelations (Blue Bloods) by Melissa de la Cruz - Contest prize.

- Need by Carrie Jones - Contest prize.

- Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston - Contest prize.

Week 4 - 1/18-1/24:

- I So Don't Do Mysteries by Barrie Summy - Contest prize.

- Rogelia's House of Magic by Jamie Martinez Wood - From Amazon.

- Daylight Runner by Oisin McGann - From Amazon.

- Far World: Water Keep by J. Scott Savage - Contest prize.

And here are all the books I've gotten at used book sales and a few other random places over the last month:

- Mondays Are Red by Nicola Morgan

- Princess Nevermore by Dian Curtis Regan

- Gregor and the Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins

- The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty

- The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancey

- Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
- The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
- The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Anne Brashares
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

- The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Sk8er Boy by Mari Mancusi
- The Juniper Game by Sherryl Jordan
- The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
- Lionboy by Zizou Corder

- Charlie Bone and the Time Twister by Jenny Nimmo
- The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
- The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer
- Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
- Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer

- Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer
- Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
- Switched (Fear Street) by R. L. Stine
- The Babysitter III by R. L. Stine
- Everworld #1: Search for Senna by K. A. Applegate

- Everworld #2: Land of Loss by K. A. Applegate

- Everworld #3: Enter the Enchanted by K. A. Applegate

- Everworld #5: Discover the Destroyer by K. A. Applegate

- Everworld #6: Fear the Fantastic by K. A. Applegate

- Everworld #7: Gateway to the Gods by K. A. Applegate

- Everworld #8: Brave the Betrayal by K. A. Applegate

*Paradox*

Inkheart Movie!!!

I am so excited to see the Inkheart movie! It comes out today! Guess how long I've been waiting for it... 4 months? 6? A year? No, I've been waiting (im)patiently for the movie since September 2007 (about). The movie was originally supposed to come out in March 2008, so I was so disappointed when I found out I had to wait until January 2009 to see it. I'll probably go to it tomorrow with my best friend. I just hope the movie version of the story isn't completely messed up... Ella Enchanted movie? FAIL.

I read the book about five years ago, so I don't remember everything, but I remember that it was GOOD.

I'm too lazy to write out a blurb for the book, but I have provided the trailer (an early one which I like better than the new one, which is trying too hard to appeal to young children), which will give you the general idea:

If you are interested in the new trailer, go to the official movie website: http://inkheartmovie.com/

Here's the IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0494238/
And the Amazon page (not for the movie tie-in, I hate those): http://www.amazon.com/Inkheart-Cornelia-Funke/dp/0439709105/

Is anyone else going to see it?


*Paradox*