Random Acts of Book Adoration
Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 01:26PM In honor of Random Acts of Publicity this week (which I missed due to a very bad mood), I’m doing Random Acts of Book Adoration here on my blog today. I’m going to feature a few books that I love. Some are new books; some are old. These aren’t reviews; they’re just opinions.
First, The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter. Okay, anyone who knows me for longer than thirty seconds knows that Ellen is one of my all-time favorite people/writers/writing partners. But does that mean I have to automatically love everything she writes? I might have read The Kneebone Boy with a gnawing feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, nervously worrying about how to break the bad news to Ellen that I didn’t, in fact, like her book. But happily it wasn’t like that… The pit of my stomach didn’t feel very pit-like when I was reading The Kneebone Boy. No, there was a party in full swing, with whooping and cheering, fizzy pink drinks with cherries on top, and spontaneous whirls of delight. The book was dark, mysterious, dramatic, funny, warm, and delightful. Okay, I LOVED it. Way to go, Ellen! And the cover totally rocks. (Even though I never say things like “the cover totally rocks.”) It just does. So read it! The release date is next Tuesday, September 14th. You won’t be sorry.
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. I wasn’t expecting anything in particular when I read this book. It had great reviews, which were promising, although not a guarantee that I’d even like it. If anything, I was hoping not to hurl this book across the room in disgust, or to return it to the library before I got to page twenty-five. (It happens.) Or to make my neighbors cover their ears when I started to shriek in anger at the bad writing. (Okay, this has never happened, but maybe someday?) Let me say that I was very pleasantly surprised by Elsewhere. I loved it. Maybe even adored it. It’s a brilliant book, brilliantly done. It makes you think, but yet is deeply comforting. It might even be close to a perfect book. (If it is, it’s a fluke of nature. But a really amazing one.)
I resisted reading The Book Thief for a very long time. A story narrated by Death set in World War II? Sounded like too much for me. I didn't care that a million people had read it or that it had won dozens of awards. The first page turned me off and that was that. Okay, it really wasn't fair to give up after only a page. But that's what I do sometimes. The next time I picked it up, I forced myself to read further into the book, where i was richly rewarded for my persistence. I totally fell in love with this one. Amazing characters and brilliant plot. But, above all, this is a book with an enormous heart. And that's all I can say. Except: read it and see for yourself.
And here are some oldies but goodies (the books, not the people; there were pictures of books here that kept disappearing. I haven't yet reinstated them.):
Ellen Raskin. Pure genius. Total delight. Crazy inspiration. Read the Westing Game to start. Or Figgs and Phantoms.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder: The Egypt Game. And many more wonderful books. She's still writing. Hooray!
Sid Fleischman: I’ve adored every book of his I’ve ever read. And I hope I’m not misspelling his name.
Reader Comments (9)
The KneeBone Boy looks really cool, I might go to the book store on Friday hopefully it's there (:
OMG! i want 2 read that!
YAY! Anne posted something! When are you going to post something else, Anne?
Abbyfan, do u kno how old ur skool is? cuz mine is 19 YEARS OLD!
Awesome! i dont know how old it is but, i'd love to go to a really old school with uniforms and bigger lockers : )
haha i kno write! oh and do u hav a top or bottom locker? wen i was at my skool over the summer and wen i saw my locker i was like "WAT?!?! this is all the space i get!" LOL! by the way i hav a top locker
I think they should make lockers 3 times he size of regular lockers. THEY ARE SO SMALL!
haha yea. in the first week of skool, my locker got jammed. so i had 2 bring sum stuff home
i remember reading the egypt game. everyone in my class loved it!!! usually i don't like the books we read in school (this year we read jekyll and hyde, the fall of the house of usher, just so stories, and the illustrated man. happy stories, huh?) but i really liked this book. i read another book by the same other, a ghost story called the cupid's head, and really liked it. she's a good author. i'd recommend her books to anyone.