Bookmania!

[rj_anderson]

So I went to my local indie children's bookstore to pick up a special order, and... I may have gone a little nuts. And now I have this pile of stuff, all of which I've heard good things about and thought looked intriguing enough to take a risk on... but I don't know where to begin!

[Poll #1198659]
Endorsements for a book on the list that you particularly loved are welcomed in comments, but if you particularly hated any of these, please refrain. I like to make up my own mind about books, without being prejudiced by somebody else's dislike (even if it turns out they are right).

And speaking of shiny new books I have just read wot are fabulous -- if you have any interest in contemporary YA fantasy and particularly if you're into vampires (which I myself am not, so take that as evidence that this book is a great read), you need to check out claudiagray's Evernight (HarperTeen, May 2008).

I already knew that Claudia was an excellent writer from reading some of her short stories, so I wasn't surprised that I enjoyed her rich and vivid but never overblown narrative style; I also expected the plot would be complex yet readily comprehensible and her main characters believable and sympathetic with flashes of wry humor, which proved true on all counts. But I thought myself very clever for anticipating where the plot was going and what was "really" up with some of the characters -- and I was wrong, wrong, WRONG. There's a twist about halfway through the story that made me literally drop the book and scream right out loud with the delicious shock of it -- and yet it didn't come out of left field, it was perfectly set up. I love books that play (or prey) on my expectations like that, so I have to give Claudia Gray big kudos for this one.

Evernight is the first in a series of four, and I can't wait to see how the next part of the story develops!

I also need to burble excitedly about Elizabeth E. Wein's Telemakos books sometime, but I want to read The Empty Kingdom (which is on back order at my local bookstore, WOE IS ME) first.

Comments

[infiniteviking]

I never heard of any but the last -- which I first encountered as a Shirley Temple movie and only later as a book. It's good. Melchizedek and Ram Daas and Becky and the rickety staircases and the attic room and the wicked schoolmistress... it's one of those ones I'll always look back on with a smile.

[drmm.livejournal.com]

And the book is fifty million times better than the Shirley Temple movie (which would've been better as an original movie because there was very little of the actual book in there).

(Not that I'm bitter or anything. ;))

[infiniteviking]

Oh, yes. It is, in fact, lucky that I saw the movie first; there were some good tap scenes in there. But the book is canon.

;D