Editor's note: Okay, Aja-ers, here ya go! As promised, the much-aniticpated play-by-play of Aja's 48 Hour Reading Challenge. Just tuning in? Not sure where we're coming from? Not to worry: Aja's 2009 Reading List now has its own category in our blog...because some people just can't stop talking about books...and one of them is me! Love you, Aja! ~ Kirsten
FIRST DAY (1/2 Day)
Well, I finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. I think, in terms of darkness, that I found it pretty on par with The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Now, I loved The Hunger Games. Both of these books have a handful of things I really like: gritty realism while in a fantastical setting, strong heroine's who take care of themselves, and a love story intertwined in a breakneck rush of run,run,DANGER,action,adventure,run,aaaaaaaah. I was pretty pleased with this read even though it's a bit darker. If you like zombies, moral and religious questioning about what is right in this world, or pseudo-historical settings: this book will rock your socks off. I give it an A+. (NOTE: sequels are now available!)
Next up is Glass Houses, by Rachel Caine. It's the first in the Morganville Vampires series. I read a short story from this universe in Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelnor. I was intrigued enough then that I went and bought this book. I should probably save it until later but I'm going to go ahead and start it now...
So, I just finished Glass Houses. Man, do I love vampire stories. I am totally aware that I went from zombies to
vampires.
I don't want to give away any plot, but the Morganville Vampires series has quite a few clever moves. The town is run by vampires. You play by their rules or you don't play at all. Sometimes this means getting to leave (the further from town you go the hazier your memories become) and often it means you're dead. Michael, Shane, and Eve have been going it alone for a few months when 16-year-old Claire shows up. She's attending the college - planning to transfer to a bigger school when she's old enough that her parents will stop worrying - when pretty much everything goes wonky. She didn't grow up in Morganville. She doesn't know the rules, she doesn't know the players, and she can spare about $100 a month for rent. Glass House is the safest place for her. Which, you know, doesn't really amount to much in a town of vampires.
Also, I really enjoyed how the book set up different kinds of people. Does that make sense? Being human didn't make you good, being a vampire didn't make you necessarily evil, and there is a whole host of things in between. So far, though, this book hasn't fallen to the fantasy curse. This is a strictly vampire universe (yet?). Often, a series will start off with a specific creature for a few books and then suddenly there are also x,y, and z. Which can be done well, of course. Sookie Stackhouse comes to mind. If I get to read any more of this series I will have to let you know how that goes...
SECOND DAY (Full Day)
This is my first full day of reading and I am ambitious. I've got my snacks already chosen, have some people set to help me out with driving/lunch/etc. I am ready to do this!
I just finished The Safe-Keeper's Secret and it was simply marvelous. It wasn't very long, only 222 pages, but it was paced beautifully. There were idyllic moments that spoke of the tranquility of the village. There were people who were good, people who were bad, and people who were just so normal. A barkeep who didn't want to hear people's confessions. A girl who would marry to please her father even though he would be gone long before her marriage would end. Little touches here and there that made this world just so complete.
Fiona is the daughter of the village's Secret-Keeper. Her brother, Reed, was delivered to the family home as a newborn on the day of her birth. He was delivered by the King's Secret-Keeper but no one knows for sure if he is really the King's heir. Fiona and Reed grew up together in a world that was partly obscured by the secrets that their mother must keep. That is what she is tasked with doing - hearing secrets and keeping them safe until it is their time to become Truth. (Side note, there are also Truth-Tellers who cannot lie except by omission. They can choose not to tell a truth that has become known to them but they cannot keep from the sudden knowing.) Intrigue definitely shadows every corner.
What I loved most about this book, though, was its portrayal of love. Damiana, Reed and Fiona's mother, loved both of her children equally. They knew it, every day, that she was dedicated to them. I come from a blended family and so I find it especially important when books acknowledge the power of love to unite. Blood is not the only thing that matters nor is it the most important. Shinn really captured that with this story.
She also tells a tale that doesn't require easy answers. Some things get wrapped up with a tidy bow while opening doors for new mysteries. That is far more reflective of life than a Happily Ever After. Actually, this reminds me of a phrase introduced to me by the book Happily After All, by Laura C. Stevenson. I prefer this ending for two reasons. As the book's protagonist argues, the characters go through so much. It is important to separate all they went through for the 'after all' while still realizing that there isn't a single instance of time after which all heartbreak ceases. It is just enough to know that, with love in your life, you can weather even the most brutal events to still find hope after...
Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates was not anything like I expected. It managed, by its own unique writing format, to
capture the confusion I like to call High School. You infinitely understood how Darren is pulled in conflicting directions. He wants to be a good kid, do the right thing, but what that entails seems to be constantly shifting. You don't rat out your friends. On the other hand, how can you let a teacher get unfairly accused of crimes he didn't commit?
I was really worried, for about half of this book, that the overall message was going to be negative. It ended up being so much more complex than that, though. Darren thinks having his teacher, Mr.Tracy, "proposition" him is creepy, which it completely is, but at the same time he seems to recognize that the exaggerated labeling and response his community takes is just as bad. There are no easy answers here. Oates explores how subjective the truth is and where the line of morality lies. It was an intriguing read, all things considered, but I would place this at the higher end of reading levels. The read was easy but the comprehension required to understand the different levels of the book and the complexity of the issues? Definitely for older YA readers.
I just finished Bones of Faerie, by Janni Lee Simner. I enjoyed it but probably would have liked it better if it wasn't on the tail end of another supernatural story set in the future but with the world living like it was 1830. It's a pretty specific genre and while I enjoy it in general it is the sort of thing that can feel repetitious. On the other hand, modern stories of the same type manage to almost always feel new and clever to me. This is probably a personal quirk.
Something fresh that Simner used in her writing was a love story that was not. Liza and Michael never declare love, they never make eyes at each other, and there is no happy-happy wedding at the end. Yet they are there for each other in the way that true friends can face any situation together. So, while they were partners in a very true sense the story never went into any detail on a relationship. Nor did it take a cop-out and try to rush in at the last second with a declaration of some sort. I'm still rooting for them, though!
Well, I've got to catch a few hours of rest. I think I slept for about 5 hours last night? I will probably do the same again though sleeping feels like such a waste of precious time! Still, 5 books down and 1,387 pages so far. I'm hoping to get another thousand done tomorrow. That's optimism for you!
THIRD DAY (1/2 Day)
Just finished All We Know of Heaven. And I definitely cried through a good portion of the first half. Maureen and
Bridget were just fully developed characters. Mitchard didn't try and make either of them too perfect or ignore that humans have faults. Even though humans often try to idolize the dead, her characters had differing degrees of recognition. To what extent do we hold people responsible for tragedies? If they are responsible for one part does that make them equally responsible for the whole? This book does not give an answer but it does suggest a way to cope with the aftermath.
I knew that the premise for this was based in actual events but not what those events were. The acknowledgments discuss that there have been several cases like the one presented but that this is still a work of fiction. It gives, slightly, that mysterious shine of thiscouldhappen without making it a study of macabre events. I appreciate that in my sadness. It allows me just enough separation that I don't move from tears into heartbreak. If you're a sensitive reader you know what I mean.
I'm going to have to check out more of her work.
I just finished 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. Now, I have had people rave about Maureen Johnson. I have had people link to her blog...you know who you are. I have to say that I understand now. You know how there are movies referred to as "chick flicks"? Right. This book takes the appealing properties from these story-lines - meet a handsome Italian man and go for coffee!- and puts a real world spin on them. Not quite as extravagant as Bridget Jones's Diary in the wacky scenarios department though. Virginia is witty, and vulnerable, and she loves her aunt despite the fact that she's a little bit flaky. I think my favorite quote, out of many that I actually texted people because they were that funny, was the touching note to her deceased aunt:
"You got me over here, made me do all of these things that I'd never have done otherwise. And I guess even though you were telling me what to do, I still had to do them on my own. I always thought that I could only do things with you, that you made me more interesting. But I guess I was wrong."
This book was made for every girl who watched the movies or read the books where it turns out your estranged dad was actually a prince, or a pirate, or your mom was secretly a superhero (is this last one a movie or book? Seriously, get on that). Even more so, because it turns out that your aunt was a little bit crazy but even more brilliant and you can be shy but an adventurer on an exotic island, and for a little bit, while reading this, you are the special someone being sent throughout the world to learn just. how. magnificent. you. are. truly.
(Sorry for the structuring. I find it hard to communicate my emotions without hand gestures.)
13 Little Blue Envelopes was the perfect book to end on because it felt, with the whirlwind tour, that I was revisiting important themes I found in my other readings. Here Virginia learns about self-reliance just as Mary did in The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Now Virginia can truly face the weight of loss like Maureen and Bridget in All We Know of Heaven. She meets a reflection of Joyce Carol Oates' Mr. Tracy in Olivia's repression.
Virginia meet's the social outcast musician punks who are fast, true friends (with romantic interest) that remind me of the family by choice created in Glass Houses. She leaves on a journey, even though it is exhilarating and frightening and exhausting and so enormous you cannot wrap your head around it. While it is not as physically dangerous and for vastly different reasons, this is the central story-line (a journey fraught with peril and a chance at love) from Bones of Faerie. And lastly, but certainly not least, 13 Little Blue Envelopes reminds me of the book that touched me most. The Safe-Keeper's Secret, with its discovery of family you never knew was there to be looked for, is the most important thing Virginia learns. It can help you find where you belong, knowing who you belong to, and with those two things guiding you? You can do anything.
Just to ratchet the sappy-meter just a bit more, I have to say a few things about what this weekend has meant to me. The whole point was to not feel guilty about indulging in something you love. To have the chance, when so often we do not, to say that something you truly love is the most important thing to concentrate on. I love reading. I love the stories. I love crying when it is heartbreaking and laughing when it is absurd. I love texting a truly amazing quote to a friend and calling up someone to say, "You have to read this!" I love getting the chance to pass on a book to one of my younger siblings. (I'm the dork that writes a message in the front first, so you'll always remember.) So I took the weekend off and let me tell you...
Friday afternoon I went to the grocery store with my mom. One half of the cart was for her and one half was for me. I bought crackers and cheese, an expensive pomegranate/mango juice concoction that was delicious, fresh fruit and vegetables, a cube of soda. I helped her pick out a cantaloupe that was going to be carved into a tiki-head for a luau themed surprise party. I love my mom, she often drives me crazy, and I spent time with her in the daylight! And then I read. For hours in a row. A whole book. It was beautiful.
I got up and got to do it again. (Inset hand gestures.) It was like my life was blessed. I love where I work. I love the work that I get to do. I also loved vegging out in my pajama bottoms, drinking cherry limeade and talking about books I loved. How cool was this on a Saturday? I'll tell you how cool. Followed by more reading, a bit of sleeping, and a morning where I sat next to my dad. I read a book, he read a newspaper, and the sun filled the room with a practically magic sparkle.
I had another break, received an awesome book of quotes by the by, and was eating lunch at a buffet while reading. How? My sister got me stuff. She knew I was getting down to the wire and wanted to finish at least one more book before all was said and done. For the past five hours I've been reading in bed while eating chocolate stars. Chocolate stars were the treat of choice from my grandmother and I figured while I was indulging myself I might as well go all out. Nostalgia and calories cancel each other out. (True story.)
So, yes, I read about long ago times and times that might come to pass, and how the tube passes work in London and journeys and people who reveled in life. It was glorious, distracting, hard work and important. It was so important to me. Thank you.
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