Bri Meets Books

The Mockingbirds contest (preorder, signed bookmark, US/Canada, ends August 17)

I am a firm believer in soundtracking my own life.  John Williams can’t follow me around with appropriate ballads for my triumphs and failures? That’s cool, I’ll use my iPod and provide my own background.  Like when I begin my move without any job or big decisions firm next week, I’ll play this, Adagio in D Minor by John Murphy.

Music can also be a time capsule, right? I have a small collection of cassettes – yes, I still have a tape player – and among those is the 1990′s music tape I made for driving the course during high school driver’s ed. Just a play of  Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” on that tape and I’m back to 1997 at my high school, walking the dusty road I had to walk up to reach the driver’s ed course.

Isn’t life better with music? Cal believes so. In Kim Culbertson’s Songs for a Teenage Nomad Calle Smith has attended fourteen schools by ninth grade. She’s traveling the whole state of California, she and her mother literally driving to wherever the coin lands on their battered map, Calle’s mom leaving one marriage after another behind.   The only constant thing in her life is the Discman she carries around. It’s almost an extension of her, playing the songs that mark periods of her life, each song conjuring a moment in time.  She remembers her twelfth birthday party, completely Madonna-themed, with “Human Nature” and  Dave Matthews’ “Busted Stuff” as her mom shreds what’s left of her departed husband’s clothes.

But when they land in Andreas Bay, Calle has a new hope.   She finds friends,  school activities, a mysterious boy who likes her, and a clue behind why they keep hopping from town to town.  Will she and her mother finally stop running?

I loved Songs for a Teenage Nomad. I thought DeRap Reads’ review described it perfectly: “It has a bit of the messy brilliance that a good mixed tape possesses.”

This is Culbertson’s first novel and like a mixed tape you play over and over, you can fall into the words and lose yourself in their grip.  Calle’s voice was pitch-perfect as a roving teenager, caught up in her mother’s decisions and longing to put down roots.    I’d love to see this as a film, particularly directed by Greg Mottola (Adventureland), because the writing and story beg to be put on film. I want to see the California coast and the bars and apartments Calle grows in.  I want to see her ghosts.  Culberton’s prose is lovely, delicate, but captures the raw angst of Calle and the life she dreams of very well.

I enjoyed how song titles served as chapter titles, and Calle’s memory  stirred by the music was at the beginning of each.  It let me connect with Songs well, and also feel how music was the only anchor in her life.  The only criticism I had was the number of side characters lacking character development, simply because of their number. Sam and Cass were great, I’d love to read even more scenes with either of them (particularly Cass) but Calle’s friends could’ve been reduced a bit.  Regardless, I loved Songs for a Teenage Nomad, and honestly, like a well-worn set of liner notes, I would’ve read this cover to cover as a teen.

Copy for review provided by the publisher

Title: Songs for a Teenage Nomad
Author: Kim Culbertson
Date: September 2010
Level:  YA
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Pages: 256
Format:  Paperback

Other Reviews

DeRaps Reads

Wow, my move has got me all types of distracted!  Anyhow, here are the winners of my last two contests.  I will email the winners for their addresses tonight!

The Mockingbirds contest..

Jordyn won the 1st prize which is the The Mockingbirds preorder, copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and signed bookmark

Victoria won the 2nd prize, a collection of three classic book magnetic bookmarks and a signed bookmark

Canterwood Crest contest

Chantel Williams won the copy of City Secrets!

Thanks all for entering.  I can’t wait to start blogging once I move.  Crazy time right now..

May contain slight spoilers!

Shy and book-headed Adele, crafty Isabella, and serious Milo have been gathered by their estranged uncle, Silas, at his secluded Sommerset  estate.   Silas has summoned the trio with a letter claiming his “dying wish” to know the children and enclosing a check for expenses for $10,000.  The cousins first think he’s had a change of heart and maybe wishes to find amongst them an heir.  They soon realize their mistake when they meet their ghostly uncle with a fondness for reptiles and scaring children. Perhaps to death.

The children have their own ulterior motives for accepting their uncle’s invitation and soon rethink their visit when there’s some wicked happenings about and they start to turn on each other.  Forget being an heir.. making it out alive is the challenge.

The Death (and Further Adventures of Silas Winterbottom) is a delightful and creepy story. With a Snicket-esque premise, and a cast of characters – some good, some dasterdly, the novel is a funny read.  It moves very quickly, but the details of Sommerset and its inhabitants definitely make an impression.  I love the dark little world Giles has created with his first middle-grade title and hope the epilogue hints at more around the corner, particularly with the Winterbottom children.  And also the dearly departed relatives who proceeded them.  (Winterbottom family tree at StephenGiles.com)

There’s a diverse cast of characters in Silas Winterbottom but they’re well characterized, and I had no problem distinguishing them.  Several times the writing  switched to  where the reader is treated to the actions of a shadowed character.   These transitions were seamless, and added to the creepiness of the story.  We, like the children, were always waiting in the shadows for Silas to strike.  My favorite moments were always those with Silas, whose outright villainy and evilness were all but broadcasted with a “DA DA DUM!” chorus.  Reading over this for the review,  I realized Silas Winterbottom would make a really fun cartoon (maybe from the folks who do Making Fiends?).

The Death (and Further Adventures) is a sinister and hilarious read, which delights in its own wickedness. It’s a perfect read for Halloween.  Well-written and just the right blend of dark humor and camp, it’s great for adults and kids.

Copy for review provided by the publisher

Title: The Death (and Further Adventures) of Silas Winterbottom
Author: Stephen M. Giles
Date: August 2010
Level: Middle grade (8-12)
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Pages: 240
Format: Hardback

Link above is to author’s website

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Silas Winterbottom’s estate is centered around reptiles. His car, cane, they both have an alligator motif. Even Adele notes the beast-like quality of the house. You’re all crazy with your own estate.. what’s it centered around? I suppose mine would be cats. Big giant Sphinx-size cat statues.

Today is the release date for the middle grade comedy Karma Bites.   To celebrate (and because I find them really interesting), I interviewed the authors Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas.  You can visit their website, KarmaBitestheBook.com, to learn more about their title and the authors themselves.

Valerie Thomas

Stacy Kramer

Life kind of bites for Franny Flanders. Her best friends hate each other, her parents are recently divorced, and her crazy grandmother has just moved in. Franny can’t seem to catch a break. The only karma she’s got is bad karma.

Franny’s not sure she can take another moment of her miserable life in suburban New Jersey. She considers heading to Canada on a Greyhound bus, in search of greener pastures. But just when things are at their absolute worst, help arrives in the strangest of ways.

Franny finds a box of recipes, hidden deep in the bowels of her hippie grandmother’s closet. These aren’t just ordinary recipes. They’re magical recipes. Fantastical, delicious, enchanted recipes that could fix all of her problems and possibly even change the world. Recipes so amazing, they could get her best friends speaking, alter the social order of middle school and maybe even get her parents back together again. Life is finally looking up. Way up.

But magic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Franny’s magical box changes the social dynamics of her middle school. What type of recipes would you get from the box? Would you go about changing the order of things as Franny does, or just improve your life in some way?

Just like Franny, we would have liked to make the world conform to our middle school specifications. Who isn’t unhappy in some way during those painful middle school years? We might have opted for bigger boobs, more clothes, thicker hair, though sadly, the box doesn’t allow for this sort of thing. So, like Franny, we probably would have chosen recipes that rid us of our least favorite teachers, made the mean girls nicer, the unpopular girls popular or an aphrodisiac that would have made us irresistible to all our boy crushes.

I’m trying to write a YA comedy and agonize over whether I’m funny or not. What’s some advice you can give me about writing comedy? What do you find funny?

There’s an old saying that goes, if it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s not. We’re not entirely sure what it even means. If you figure it out, let us know. The point is, we think, comedy is a very hard thing to quantify. It’s a mystery, even for those who do it well. You want to push things to the edge of silly or ridiculous, but not over the edge. One of our litmus tests is that if it makes us laugh, after repeated reads, it’s probably funny. In KARMA BITES, a lot of the comedy is situational, rather than joke driven. It’s about
Franny getting herself into situations which are either way over her head or just plain absurd, and then watching her wriggle her way out. Comedy usually has an undertone of something darker to it, like embarrassment or shame or even fear. While you don’t
want to press that stuff too much, the emotional underpinnings are a good thing to keep in
mind when you’re trying to write comedy.

Do you think you’ll write a sequel for KARMA BITES?

That’s something we’re talking about right now. We’re currently finishing up an older YA book and working on a YA thriller for the YA website www.Figment.com. We hope to return to the sequel in a month or so. We certainly wrote KARMA BITES with the
possibility of a sequel in mind. And Houghton Mifflin would like to continue with the character of Franny. We have a lot of fun ideas and just have to land on one for the next installment. We’ll keep you posted.

Coming from such diverse film and television backgrounds, were there any challenges with writing books for YA/MG?

Writing books and writing scripts is a surprisingly similar exercise. While the formats are different, there is much about the process that’s similar. For both, it’s about coming up with the premise, the big idea, and then plotting it out from there. It’s all about
trying to tell the story in a fun, active and new way. A way that doesn’t feel contrived or derivative. With characters that feel fresh and interesting.

The advantage with books is that they give us more freedom because we aren’t as constricted by the parameters of the form. One of the bigger challenges for me (Valerie), since I never wrote screenplays for teens, was getting inside the head of a tween/teenager and really understanding the way kids feel and think. Also, we are grateful for the wealth of fantastically well-written YA books available, all of which have helped to school us on teen and tween writing.

Who are some of the YA/MG authors and books who inspire you?

The books we loved as kids still inspire us – books by Scott O’Dell like THE ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS and THE BLACK PEARL. Or Madeline L’Engle and S. E. Hinton. We were also huge fans of pretty much every single Judy Blume and Roald Dahl
book. HARRIET THE SPY series was also a favorite of both of ours. As for modern day authors, we could go on for several pages, but we’ll limit ourselves for the sake of your readers. We are HUGE fans of David Levithan, Rachel Cohn, Rebecca Stead, Peter Cameron, Gayle Forman, E. Lockhart, Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia, Libba Bray and Ally Carter, to name only a few. Most recently, we both read and loved Lauren Oliver’s WHEN I FALL, which we found inspiring for our latest YA book. When we were writing Karma Bites, we read a lot of Louise Rennison, who we think is one of the funniest YA writers out there.

If you could live inside any children’s book, which title would it be and why?

VALERIE: One of my favorite books growing up was MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH, and I think I’d like to live in that world, which is a mouse and rat world, because it’s so perfectly imagined by the writer and it’s full of intricate detail, lots of
humor, and a fair amount of excitement.

STACY: I was obsessed with the book FROM THE MIXED UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKENWEILER by E. L. Konigsburg as a youth. I read it to all three of my kids and found it equally compelling on each subsequent read. Living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as the kids get to do in the book, would be heavenly. I was an art history major in college and I can’t imagine anything more fun than getting locked inside the Met.

It’s a bit cliché, but since you’re both coming from the film world, what are your favorite movies?

We love a huge range of movies (again, we’re going to have to provide you with an abridged list so as not to lose the audience here with an overwhelming litany). So here’s a partial list, in no particular order – THE GODFATHER films, anything by Hitchcock
or Preston Sturges, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (Val worked on it and it’s also perfect), IGBY GOES DOWN and THE LAST SEDUCTION (Stacy produced them and thinks they turned out much better than her other films), mostly everything with
Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, HIGH FIDELITY, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, BROADCAST NEWS, JERRY MAGUIRE, RAISING ARIZONA, FARGO, ABOUT A BOY, UNFORGIVEN, JERRY MCGUIRE, MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE, PULP FICTION, CITY OF GOD, MY LEFT FOOT, KING OF
COMEDY, TOY STORY, SCHOOL OF ROCK, THE HURT LOCKER, KNOCKED UP, 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, FUNNY PEOPLE, UP, CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, WALL-E, RATATATOUILLE, WEDDING CRASHERS, THE HANGOVER, INVICTUS, ECLIPSE, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, UP IN THE AIR, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT. Okay, we’ll shut up now.

Into which genre would you file the movie of your life? What would be the title and who would play you?

Luckily, we don’t think our lives would be horror or thriller movies (which sounds like an exhausting way to live). We’d probably call the movie of our lives a dramedy (a genre which has been recently coined). Both our lives have a lot of comedy (with kids, jobs and all the juggling that goes along with that), sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, and a fair amount of drama (we’re writers, women, intense and passionate people so that comes with the territory). We wouldn’t want to be a flat out comedy, nor would we want things to be exclusively dramatic. Luckily, the dramedy came along to give us a bit of flexibility.

VALERIE: As for a title, something like TO BE CONTINUED…I have no idea who would play me. I would want a good actress, that’s all that would matter to me.

STACY: My title would be TRYING TO DO IT ALL, WITH MIXED RESULTS. And I’d love Julianne Moore to play me (with Mark Ruffalo as my husband).

What charms would you put on the charm bracelet of your life?

What a fabulous question! This has got to be our favorite question of any interview so
far, hands down. Brilliant.

VALERIE: A Chinese character, because I’m half Chinese, a heart, because I am lucky to have a lot of love in my life, a surf board, because I lived in Hawaii and learned to surf there, a pen, because I’m a writer, a piece of fruit, because I love to eat, and an A for my daughter Amelia.

STACY: I would have an S (for my daughter Sadie), an E (for my son Eli), a J (for my son Jack) and a D (for my husband David). I’d have a macbook pro, an ipad and an iphone charm as I NEVER go anywhere without those three items. I’m always writing on
one of them. I’d have a carrot as I have been a lifelong vegetarian. I’d have running shoes because I can’t write if I haven’t run in the morning. And, finally, I’d have a snowboard as I’ve recently taken up the sport with my kids and I love it.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

VALERIE: I might want to meet Tolstoy because he was an insane genius and I love his books. Ditto for Nabokov. I would have loved to have met Truman Capote because he was an amazing conversationalist as well as writer. And I’d love to sit and talk to Stephen King, because his book about writing is so fantastic and I think he’s a great craftsman. I
could learn a lot from him.

STACY: Oh no, this is like the movie question, I’m just going to have to try and muzzle myself after a certain point as I could go on and on. I would LOVE to chat with SO many authors it’s nearly impossible to narrow the list. But here’s my greatest hits list, both dead and alive. Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Mikhail Bulgakov, Harper Lee, George Elliot, Evelyn Waugh, Henry James, Earnest Hemmingway, J. D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Conner, Norman Mailer, Martin Amis, Phillip Roth, John Updike, Joan Didion. Okay, I’m taking my hand off the keyboard now and forcing myself to stop, otherwise I will go on for pages…

What’s the most challenging thing about being a writer? What’s the most rewarding thing?

By far the most challenging thing for us is the doubts that plague us along the way. The little voices in the back of our heads that constantly say, “this is no good. Toss it out. Give it up. Pack it in. You’re talentless.” It’s hard to face the blank page every singleday and truly believe that what you’re doing is vital and worthwhile. Sure, some days we can’t help but feel pretty pleased with ourselves but there are many other days when we wonder if what we’re writing is completely worthless. Writing is a bit of a rollercoaster and it can take an emotional toll. Positive reinforcement (that comes with other jobs) is not readily available. Sure our agent and our editor help boost our spirits on occasion. But, for the most part, we have no boss and it’s really up to us to just muddle through, keep on trucking and believe, against all odds, that what we’re doing is worth putting out in the world. And when you get it right, there’s no better feeling. Creating something out of nothing, stories from the recesses of our brain that play to laughs and tears for movie goers, tv watchers and readers is a pretty awesome feeling. For better or for worse, there’s nothing else we’d rather do.

What’s your favorite word?

VALERIE: Language.
STACY: I waaaay overuse the word brilliant. It’s a great word that has many meanings
but I think, at a certain point, I’m going to have to try and write a book without using the
word once. Just to see if I can do it.

Can you describe your writing process?

We spend a lot of time talking when we are working on a story initially. We start with a concept that we’re both excited about. Then we beat out the story, point by point. Plot
it out and outline it. Once we’ve figured out a basic story structure, we start to fill in
characters, specific situations, comic moments, emotional underpinnings, etc. And then
one of us writes a chapter. It gets passed to the other, and then back again, many times.
We do this until we get to the end, and then we rewrite everything, over and over again.
It can be an exhausting, pride-swallowing exercise as we “kill our babies” as Tennessee
Williams once said about the rewriting process. We’re both pretty disciplined about
our writing. We treat it like an office job. We go to our computers (we work in our
separate home offices but talk by phone and occasionally meet up at Le Pain Quotidien
in Manhattan for yummy desserts and plenty of espresso) and work from nine to six.
If we’re on deadline, we tend to work after we put our kids to sleep (from eight to
eleven). Having said that, there is plenty of wasted time, where we’re stuck on story and
trolling the web, eating, reading the paper, etc. Neither of us listen to music, as we find it
distracting.

A little book, maybe you've heard of it.

Maybe this isn’t earth-shockingly original, but I really like the titles I’m recommending here to be read with The Hunger Games.

I’m currently listening to The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, thanks to this great YA audiobook program – YA Synch – launched this summer. This is my first read of The Hunger Games.  I expect it will keep me quite enthralled during an 11 hr drive to Ohio in a few weeks!

A few days ago, I was hunting down a Stephen King novella for a customer (The Body), and talking to her about how her son once loved to read, but required reading killed his spirit for it. She hoped he’d like the novella though, because he’d requested it, after seeing Stand by Me. (The movie adaptation of the book).  I mentioned that if he liked King, one of my favorite King novels is a lesser known title, The Long Walk. It was written under one of his pseudonyms, Richard Bachman. Then I suggested that if he read The Long Walk, he should read The Hunger Games.

If you like The Hunger Games, read the short story “The Lottery” (link here) by Shirley Jackson. One day I’m going to do a tribute post (or week) or Ms. Jackson because she’s a fascinating woman, and created some wide-ranging stuff. “The Lottery” was also made into a movie starring Keri Russell.  It’s got to be one of the best short stories of all time.   Jackson was pretty much ostracized by her neighbors after it appeared in The New Yorker.

One of my favorite King novels ever.

Then read The Long Walk!  It’s.. how to describe it..  messed up. violent. thought-provoking. somewhere between reality and a character’s psychological mindset. It’s perfect for a dystopian thriller fan.     There WILL be blood and gore and adult language, a warning.

Scary, scary, scary.

In a government-controlling future, teenage boys sign up for the Long Walk.  An annual event where the winner of the walk receives the big prize: Anything they desire.    And this is a LONG walk. It’s from the Maine and Canada border along the east coast. The finish line is wherever the walk ends.

The best thing about this novel is the pacing. Just dripping with suspense, because it goes outside the walk and delves into the human condition, what drives us, and what can destroy us.

Read all three together!

And the winner of my Despicable Me contest is..

crystal.fournier!

I have emailed you for your address. Thanks to all who entered!

Alexis Singer is having a horrible summer. During a time when she’s supposed to be filled with friends, school events, prom, and college applications, she’s pulling herself further and further away from her peers and seeking out comfort from an electronic source.  When she meets “Phil” on a message board, she develops a crush on the user.  But Phil is 37 years old and married. Soon Alexis finds herself exchanging sexually explicit instant messages and sending images of herself. In the aftermath of realizing the severity of her actions,  Alexis realizes how far gone she really is.

Alexis is the literary equivalent of a car wreck.  Alexis’ decisions are so horrible and ill-advised , and yet you can’t peel yourself away.   I admit, I started this book with a bit of skepticism.  In this day and age, how can girls still be falling prey to men online? Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to read Sea after I met the author on Twitter and saw that this was a hotly anticipated title in the book blogging community. The author, Heidi R Kling, is a lovely and enigmatic person to all of her fans and readers. I knew immediately from the plot I’d love this novel.

This is a review from the ARC!

Sienna “Sea” Jones once loved the sea and all it offered, but that changed when her mother disappeared flying over the Indian Ocean. Now the sea is nothing but the thing that stole  her mother, her family and her sense of security.  Plagued by nightmares of her mother’s death, Sea still grieves, and refuses to set foot in the ocean or ride a plane.   Then her father, a relief worker specializing in treating post-traumatic stress, asks her to join his team on a trip to Indonesia to aid tsunami orphans.  Sea’s reluctant until she sees video of the children and realizes that she’s not alone in her grief.  Once at the orphanage, she meets Deni, a handsome Indonesian who’s a father to the other boys.    Deni isn’t like other boys she’s known – he’s handsome and their attraction feels magnetic.  It’s this magnetism that drives her to leave with Deni when he seeks news of his father.

Inspired by first hand accounts of her husband’s relief work after the tsunami, Kling’s Sea is a romantic soulful account of loss, hope, and redemption through love.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re not aware already, The Mockingbirds is one of my favorite 2010 reads. And now, with the help of the author, Daisy Whitney, I’m having a giveaway for a pre-order of the novel! Plus some other goodies.

1st winner receives…

A pre-order from The Book Depository for The Mockingbirds

A mass-market of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I just love the beautiful anniversary cover, so I chose this edition.

A bookmark for The Mockingbirds signed by Daisy Whitney

2nd winner receives..

A signed bookmark

A package of 3 classic book magnetic bookmarks (one is To Kill a Mockingbird!)

US/CANADA ONLY

Rules

• No extra entries!
• You have to answer the question in the form to enter.
• Contest begins July 29 and ends August 17 (extended date since I’m out of town 10-16th)

How to enter:

Please fill out this form. It will open in a new window.

You must enter an answer to the question.  Daisy will help in the judging and will help pick the one she likes best.

The Mockingbirds, in the novel, are inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird‘s stance on truth and justice. They take their name from the novel.  What book or movie inspires you?  What would you create?

Waiting on Wednesday is where bloggers feature the titles they can’t wait for.  It’s hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

This week my WoW pick is Vixen by Lila Fine.  It’s about flappers and two of my major interests are the 1920s and jazz music. This book has both.  I can’t wait to see if it has a lot of jazz slang (also a favorite of mine) and how Chicago will come alive.  Will she see any famous jazz acts?

“Set in Jazz Age Chicago, the first book, Vixen, follows 17-year-old socialite Gloria Carmody, who longs to be a flapper and is caught between her conservative fiancé and a sexy jazz musician.” - Goodreads summary

I need this book.  I think it will make it an excellent Christmas present..for myself!

What are you waiting on this week?