Luann's comments (member since Jan 02, 2009)

Luann's comments from the The Book Challenge group.

Finally finished both the Author A-Z and the Title A-Z. I should have finished months ago, but I got distracted with other challenges. I did finish this before the end of the year, though! My final book for the Title A-Z is:

Yolonda's Genius by Carol Fenner. 4 stars.

Yolonda's mom is concerned with the increasing violence and drugs in their Chicago neighborhood, so she moves her family to the much smaller town of Grand River, Michigan. Yolonda's street smarts don't help her much in Grand River, and she has to learn an entirely new set of strategies for survival - especially when she realizes that her little brother, Andrew, is a musical genius and she can't get anyone else to believe her. This was so well written that I felt like I completely knew and understood these characters, even though their lives are very different from mine. This definitely deserved its Newbery honor!

The Xibalba Murders: An Archeological Mystery by Lyn Hamilton. 3 stars.

This was a solid three stars for me. There's nothing really wrong with it, but nothing terribly exciting about it either. The setting and information about the Maya culture was well done, but only mildly interesting. I was never drawn into the story, and the characters all seemed just a bit flat. On the plus side, I can now cross "X" off my Title A-Z challenge. Just one more book to go!

Andie wrote: "what about x titles? does anyone have any ideas for those?"

For my X title, I'm going to read The Xibalba Murders: An Archeological Mystery by Lyn Hamilton. I also looked at The Xenocide Mission by Ben Jeapes, and will probably read that for X if I ever do this challenge again.

I've already read Orson Scott Card's Xenocide, but I do highly recommend it for those who haven't and like science fiction. Although you would want to read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead first. Maybe work them in as your E and S titles.

Thanks, Leola! I appreciate the feedback.

Yikes! I got caught up in challenges for other groups and stopped working on this one with just three books left to go. Journey Home completes the author portion! Now I just have two books left for A-Z titles.

Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida. 3 stars.

I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as Journey to Topaz, although I did still find the subject matter very interesting. I think many Americans don't realize or remember that Japanese Americans were required to leave their homes and live in concentration camps during WWII. This is the sequel to Journey To Topaz: A Story Of The Japanese-American Evacuation, which tells the story of Yuki and her family living in a concentration camp in Utah. In Journey Home, Yuki and her family have been allowed to leave the concentration camp, but cannot yet go back to California. They live for a time in Salt Lake City while waiting for the war to end and the law against any Japanese living on the West Coast to be changed. Yuki just wants to go home and have her regular life back.

When the war ends, Uncle Oka is still sad and tells Yuki it is because of all he has lost due to the war. He says, "In war, nobody wins. Nobody at all." Later, though, he is able to find forgiveness:

"Forgive . . . " he murmured. The word came slowly and softly from his lips, as though he were understanding it for the first time. He spoke the word as a blind man might feel a new object, touching it, discovering it, wondering about it, amazed at the feelings that came alive as he said the word. Then he said slowly, "I guess forgiving does take the bundle of hate off your back."

Jackaroo A Novel of the Kingdom by Cynthia Voigt. 5 stars.

I guess so many people have this shelved as a fantasy because of the "alternate history" aspect to the story. We never really know it takes place in OUR past and no real-world names that I know of are given for places. But there isn't any magic or sorcery. The School Library Journal calls this "an intense and elegantly written historical adventure-romance ." There really isn't even much of a romantic aspect to the story unless you count the romantic, swashbuckling legend of the Jackaroo, who is a type of Robin Hood character the villagers like to tell stories about.

With that said, I absolutely loved this story set in a time with Lords, Earls, and a King who charge taxes and tithes from their villagers and land holders. Gwyn, the main character, is an innkeeper's daughter who lives in the northern part of the kingdom. She is also a strong, independant young woman with a quick tongue who cares about other people and does her best to help even during hard times. Unfortunately for her, independant young women with a mind of their own really don't fit in with the time and community in which she lives. I loved the way the story played out and the ways that Gwyn found to stay true to herself while still attempting to fit into her world.

This is the first book I've read by Cynthia Voigt that wasn't in her Tillerman series, and I think it has now become my favorite by her - although I highly recommend the Tillerman books as well. I'm glad to see that Voigt has written more "novels of the Kingdom," and I look forward to reading them!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. 5 stars.

Why did I wait so long to read this? I think this should be required reading in library schools. I think this should be required reading for everyone who loves books - and everyone who doesn't! This is well-written with a powerful message, yet at the same time a wonderful science fiction story with cool technology!

The edition I read has an author's afterword where Ray Bradbury gives examples of people (or butchers/censors to use his words) who have changed or altered his works in some way. He says, "There is more than one way to burn a book. And people are running around with lit matches."

Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima. 4 stars.

This is the third and final(?) book in Cinda Williams Chima's Heir Chronicles. For some reason this was really slow for me in the beginning. I just couldn't get into the story. I think I would have enjoyed all three books more if I could have read them one right after the other, and most particularly this third one. About half way through the book the story caught my interest, though, and carried me through to the end. I LOVED the ending, even though some parts were sad and not everything was resolved. I enjoyed this series a lot and will definitely read more books by Cinda Williams Chima in the future!

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. 4 stars.

Another book that everyone in the world read in high school, but I never did. I enjoyed it a lot! It was tough and gritty with some violence, but it wasn't littered with strong language for the "realism." S.E. Hinton did a great job of creating characters you really care about - and who learned and progressed throughout the story. Now I want to see the movie!

Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis. 3 stars.

Poor Parvana! Will good things ever happen for her? Good things are few and far between in this book, but I like to think that things would be better for her in the future - if there were another book telling her story after this one. She certainly deserves some good things after all she goes through while maintaining her hope in a better future.

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan. 4 stars.

This is the second in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, which I enjoyed just as much as the first. This is unique from other fantasy series out there now due to its use of Greek mythology. Yet it is very modern and a lot of fun!

Quidditch Through the Ages by J.K. Rowling. 4 stars.

I didn't expect to enjoy this quite as much as I did! It's everything you ever wanted to know about Quidditch and more - the origin and history, best teams over the years, etc. I was especially interested to learn that Quidditch is gaining in popularity in the United States despite the competing American broom game called Quodpot. Very fun!

Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda. 3 stars.

There were some sections of this that I loved, and other sections that I wasn't interested in at all. I particularly enjoyed the section called "The Children's Hour" in his chapter on reading in the home. In that section he gives thirteen common sense suggestions to parents on encouraging their kids to read more. He suggests things like reading aloud to your children, letting them see you read, filling your house with print, and encouraging any reading interest - no matter how frivolous or unacademic you find it. He also had some great things to say about reading only from the bestseller list (don't!) and rereading great books (do!).

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. 4 stars.

A moving story that is even more powerful when you know that the author based it on actual events that had happened to young girls she met in Afghan refugee camps.

Visual Chronicles by Linda Woods. 2 stars.

The ideas presented here are so different from the way I scrapbook, that at first I couldn't really connect. Also, it had much more text than I expected from this type of book. There are some nice ideas here, but none that made me want to rush out and try them. Maybe someday I'll try one.

Under Orders by Dick Francis. 5 stars.

I loved this. I'm sure a lot of my five-star rating comes from the sheer joy of reading a new Dick Francis. And I had been saving this one for a long time. I hated the feeling during the time he stopped writing and it looked like there might never be a new Dick Francis mystery to read. So when this came out, I couldn't read it right away. I bought a signed copy and savored the thought that I now had a new Dick Francis to look forward to - and I savored it for a long time. Until now. It finally felt like time.

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie. 4 stars.

Excellent! I love it that Agatha Christie can still surprise me, even with a book I've already read. Although in my defense it has been years and years since I first read it. It seemed the details I remembered to be suspicious of only led me in the wrong direction! :) Dame Christie truly is a master of misdirection!

This is Lost related because it is one of the novels that Sawyer reads on the Island. He is seen reading it when he is approached by Nikki in "Exposé." The edition I've added to my list is the one you can see him reading. The one I actually read was VERY old from the library and didn't have any picture on the cover at all.

I also think the great misdirection and false clues included in this story can be related to the Exposé episode - and much of what happens on Lost as well. I think we won't know until we get to the very end of Lost how much we've been misdirected by certain events. Just one example - are all of the flashbacks from earlier seasons actually flashbacks? I think some of them will prove to be flash-fowards and we just didn't know it!

Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale. 4 stars.

This was fun! Such a unique and spunky version of the Rapunzel story - with a little Jack and the Beanstalk thrown in for good measure - and I'm sure I also saw some dwarves and a jackalope! (My second book with a jackalope.) A great collaboration by Shannon and Dean Hale with illustrations by Nathan Hale (no relation). I look forward to the sequel.

Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park. 4 stars.

I absolutely loved Maggie in this story, and I learned a lot I didn't know I would find interesting about baseball and keeping score. It doesn't matter what the subject is, I want to read every book by Linda Sue Park!

Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs. 3 stars.

This is my second Kathy Reichs mystery. I did like this more than my first one, although not enough to rush out and read them all right now. I really liked the Guatemalan setting and Sergeant-Detective Galiano. I was immediately drawn into the story, although many of the details were very gruesome. Don't read this while you're eating! Also, the solution was a bit complicated.

And you should really try to NOT compare these books to the TV show "Bones." I still have a hard time reconciling the differences between the Temperance Brennan from the books and the Temperance Brennan from the TV show. They are pretty much opposite from each other except that they share the same name and are both forensic anthropologists. The Tempe Brennan from the book is very emotional and guilt-ridden. She's also tired of so many dead bodies and says, "It seemed I would never get away from death." The Tempe Brennan from the TV show doesn't feel that way at all.