Sweethearts by Sara Zarr was a CCBC Book Discussion book today and I was happily surprised to discover that I wasn’t the only one who loved this book. Usually books with adorable pink hearts on the cover (cookie hearts no less) don’t get such huge rave reviews by anyone but me, but this book was so spot on perfect as far as suspense, depth, relationships, and emotions go that it won over lots of readers. My only complaint was that it had such a definite ending and I wished she’d left it open so I could have imagined what happened in years to come instead of having it told to me. But I think that was on purpose. The story is about a girl who’s remade herself in high school into a new person after a difficult childhood with a single hard-working parent and only one friend. When her past and her present connect, everything gets all jumbled and she has to find her way through. Great read!
The best part of the Kevin Henkes reception (besides the chocolate) was his reading from Bird Lake Moon. First, Katy Horning introduced him and then his current editor (whose name I can’t remember — doh!) from Greenwillow spoke. She had a great story about when Susan Hirschman had Kevin call her at the publisher she was currently working for (Simon & Schuster, I think?) because she was trying to get her to come over to Greenwillow and didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing. Of course, that didn’t work out at all. As soon as the secretary announced that KEVIN HENKES was on the phone everyone crowded around her office to listen in. V. funny. This editor also had quite possibly the best reaction of the night too when she announced that this was Kevin’s 38th book. Everyone in the room gasped and Kevin looked more than a little surprised himself. Click on the picture below to watch Kevin Henkes read an excerpt from Bird Lake Moon.
1) I just discovered Bumble and Bumble — the nicest smelling bestest ever hair products. Where have you been all my life?
2) Kevin Henkes book release party for Bird Lake Moon was last night. It was lovely — great chocolate treats and nice short speech. Strangely though I didn’t see everyone there who I thought was going to be there — writers or librarians. It was sort of a spread out party so I think they may have actually been there, but I just didn’t run into them. Then while hunting for them, I got in trouble for accidentally standing in the signing line and generally causing trouble, so that pretty much put an end to that. Plus, Afghani was calling to me.
3) Afghani food. Yum!!! So delicious. Madison is lucky enough to have two Afghani restaurants and we went to Kabul’s last night. My favorite is the vegetarian strudel.
4) Spring. I think it might finally be here. Yes!
5) Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen. Today is the first day of my vacation (at home writing vacation, not going off on adventures vacation) so I splurged and bought this one. I’m totally not going to get distracted and just read this. Really. This is a write til your fingers bleed kind of vacation. But it doesn’t hurt to have something fun to read AFTER writing. Except for the bloody fingers issue.
6) Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson. Double vacation splurge.
1) David Macaulay gave the Arbuthnot lecture in Madison last night. It’s an honorary lecture that floats geographically every year. There had to have been close to 800 people there. He gave the perfect lecture — sometimes serious, often funny and with a nice glimpse at his life as a writer and illustrator. I’m not the ideal lecture audience member because if it’s at all boring and it’s at night I will start to nod off (probably because I don’t drink coffee) or to daydream (something I think writers have a tendency to do — your brain keeps working on the story even when you think you’re done working for the day), but I was with him the whole time.
2) Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King is a great book. I’ve picked it up at least once a year since I first read it and it’s a good reminder on how to keep your writing neat and concise. The examples in it are super helpful — they make it clear why it’s so important to be strict when you’re revising. Sometimes when I’m going through to take out every lazy little blip I’ve made I just want to shout “But everyone else does it! Why can’t I go crazy with adverbs???” Then I read something like this and I think “Oh yeah, that’s why.”
3) I’m half-way through this round of revisions for the novel I’m currently working on. Woo hoo! That half-way mark always makes me feel like the end is in sight. Except that I go back and re-read the first half all the time just to make sure it’s exactly how I want it and sometimes jump ahead to later scenes that I need to work on, so it isn’t a clear sign of linear progress. But it still feels good to know that I’ve touched every word in the first half of the book (and changed most of them at least once).
4) I tried to read Uninvited by Amanda Marrone this week — the vampire story where the girl’s ex-boyfriend dies and comes back to haunt her as a vampire, but I couldn’t get into it. It’s probably not the book’s fault — I haven’t given it enough of a chance to be able to judge it. Might be the wrong book at the wrong time for me, but the ratio of depressing to sexy in the beginning of the book was too high and didn’t work for me this week. It’s a great premise though, so it’s probably just me.
5) I’m just starting The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry. It’s such a different direction for her, I’m excited to read it. It’s got these kids who want to be orphans who have parents who don’t want kids (or that’s my take on it from reading the bookflap). It sounds really dark, but the art is all old fashioned/sort of goth so I’m wondering if it’s dark humor ala Lemony Snickett. It’s a CCBC Book Discussion book this month.
6) It’s Friday. Yay! I will be watching Enchanted tonight (again). It’s sooo funny. When we saw it in the theatre I laughed so hard at her singing scene that I was literally doubled over my stomach hurt so much. Just when I’d start to get my breath back, it would crack me back up again.
Oh My God. That was not how I was expecting City of Bones to end. So shocking. But overall the book was so good, I had to go out and buy the next book City of Ashes. I think the most impressive thing is that it has action, romance AND humor. It’s hard to get that last part in when you have the first two. But I LOVE it when authors do that. Great books, though I have to admit both are mildly disturbing.
The ending of the second one got me thinking about something that Sarah Cloots from Greenwillow said in her speech last Saturday — she said she doesn’t want books that are obviously part of a series without having a satisfying ending in themselves. I’ve heard this from several different editors and I can see where they’re coming from especially with the first book in a series. The writers in my group were talking a lot about this on the car ride home (in which we did not get lost) and we all thought that it was okay to have a cliffhanger for us as readers as long as we felt satisfied anyway.
But the second book in the Mortal Instruments series City of Ashes really made me worry because it was so open and we really didn’t learn any of the secrets that kept getting hinted at that I thought we would know by now — does the author have a plan in which I will one day know everything??? Because I want to feel that there is a master plan here — that one day I will be satisfied (like with HP7). But with series now not being in neat little bunches as much as they once were (quartets, trilogies, sequels) are they just going to go on forever and keep stringing me along? I don’t think I can take it!
Not that I want the Mortal Instruments series to end, I’d like to just keep reading and reading, but at the same time I don’t want to be strung along forever. Like Days of Our Lives — I watched it in college and was waiting for the day that Marlena and John got together (okay, I wasn’t that into their storyline because I thought they were sort of boring, but I did want them to find love) and I just read the headlines of Soap Opera Weekly and they’re still just about to get together! I don’t see it ever really happening, the only conclusion here is for them to get booted off the show or for the show to get canceled. I don’t want that in my books — I want some kind of an ending at least of that story arc. Pretty Little Liars does this too — will we ever know who “A” is? I’m okay with not knowing for awhile but please tell me I’ll know someday!!!!
Sweethearts by Sara Zarr was a CCBC Book Discussion book today and I was happily surprised to discover that I wasn’t the only one who loved this book. Usually books with adorable pink hearts on the cover (cookie hearts no less) don’t get such huge rave reviews by anyone but me, but this book was so spot on perfect as far as suspense, depth, relationships, and emotions go that it won over lots of readers. My only complaint was that it had such a definite ending and I wished she’d left it open so I could have imagined what happened in years to come instead of having it told to me. But I think that was on purpose. The story is about a girl who’s remade herself in high school into a new person after a difficult childhood with a single hard-working parent and only one friend. When her past and her present connect, everything gets all jumbled and she has to find her way through. Great read!
