Bridget Zinn's Blog

Why is it that all of the books I REALLY want to read aren’t coming out until April and May??? Or, even worse, not until this summer. I’m going on vacation this week — I can’t wait for release dates!

Books I would have bought IF they had been available:

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen (not available until APRIL 22)

Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson (not available until MAY 1)

The Host by Stephenie Meyer (not available until MAY 6)

Airhead by Meg Cabot (not available until JUNE 1)

Queen of Babble Gets Hitched by Meg Cabot (not available until JUNE 24)

Stop in the Name of Pants! by Louise Rennison (not available until JULY 1)

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (not available until AUGUST 2)

There must be a conspiracy to keep those of us in the frozen tundra who are escaping to warmer climes from having great airplane books.

I settled on Pretty Little Liars 2 & 3 to read on the plane, but that’s only going to last me one way. If only Pretty Little Liars 4 weren’t coming out until MAY 27!

If I were a smart and savvy librarian, I would have attended ALA mid-winter and picked up some gallies, or gotten on a review committee like my coolest of cool friend Amanda M. (who has to buy new bookcases for all of the Newbery books she’s getting in!!), or I would take up authors on these kinds of offers of advance copies.

Instead I’m left galley-less and advance copy-less, trapped by the late release date conspiracy.

At least I have something to look forward to.

Off somewhere warm(er).

BZ

I wrote this post for Madison Public Library nearly a month ago about needing sunshine and reading books that take place in warm climes. And, sadly, I could have written it today. Nasty cold gloomy weather! Now I’m reading Under the Tuscan Sun. Lots of sunshine and heat, plus it’s chock full with lovely descriptions. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

SEEING ME NAKED by Liza Palmer was SO funny! I don’t read a ton of adult books (who has time, when there are so many fabulous young adult books to read?), but this was definitely worth the trip over to the adult side. I laughed out loud. SEVERAL TIMES. The basic story is about thirty-something Elisabeth struggling with her career as a dessert chef, her family, and her love life. Fine enough. But it’s the way it’s told that is so great. I think I laughed so hard because the funny bits kept popping up unexpectedly. Like this baby shower she goes to — I wasn’t expecting the slogan she writes on the onesie during the onesie decorating game. Shocking, but v. v. funny. The other thing I liked about this book is that the Happily Ever After isn’t held back for the whole book and then thrust on you on the last page. I hate it when authors do that!! (though I may have accidently done that in the last novel I was working on — but it was a first draft! Next draft will definitely have a longer/richer denouement.) I love when you actually get a few chapters to experience some of the good things, even if it isn’t all worked out yet. I ordered Liza’s first book — I hope it’s just as good!

Can’t stop thinking about memoirs of a teenage amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. There’s something about waking up in your own life but having it be completely unfamiliar to you that’s totally compelling. Like when Naomi comes home from the hospital (she’s been hit on the head and can’t remember the last four years of her life) and finds the food journal in her nightstand drawer listing every single thing she’s eaten in the past six months. Is she really the type of person who would do something like that? Or date the Gaterade tasting guy who shows up at her bedroom window? It’s scary to be in this life she doesn’t know anything about but it gives her the chance to look at her life in a really immediate way without her last four years of memories weighing it down.

My only complaint is that you’re totally set up as the reader to fall for this one particular guy and then he ends up not being who you think he is at all (I was thinking Jess from Gilmore Girls) and that was disappointing (because how can you not love Jess from Gilmore Girls? At least a little?).

The other book I can’t stop thinking about is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie– in part because everyone keeps talking about it, but also because I couldn’t finish it! It was SOOOO harsh. I was reading along thinking okay, I can handle that, I can handle that, that’s kind of gross but I can deal, I’m sure it’s going to get better any minute, the tiny ray of sunshine is just about to pop out, AND THEN HIS DAD GETS OUT THE SHOTGUN TO SHOOT HIS DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t feel this is a particular spoiler since it probably actually only happens on page five or something, but the first five pages were really really long pages. Does it get better? Everyone loves this book — it HAS to get better right? I just know it’s going to win the Printz and I’ll have to read it despite my horror of shooting dogs. Why I was okay with his horrid life but not that of an innocent animal getting shot I’m not sure, but there it is.

I’ve been on a ghost teen novel kick lately — they’re perfect fall reading, even though I ended up with more novels on the funny side than on the strictly spooky side. The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper is the most current one I read and it was so incredibly satisfying. Sparrow is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter in a family chock full of mediums. Everyone predicts she’s going to be an amazing psychic but she spends the first fifteen years of her life pretending that there isn’t anything unusual about her at all. And of course the real truth of the matter is that she is a super psychic and doesn’t just get faint impressions or anything like that. She sees, hears, smells ghosts and can sit and have a chat with them, but she keeps it all on the down low. She even tries going to a school where no one knows her or her family of professional mediums so that she pretend to be normal. Of course it doesn’t work and that is what makes the book so fun.

I also read the Mediator series by Meg Cabot which is a little bit older — I think the most recent one came out a couple of years ago. This series is irresistible. I don’t know if it’s the character’s voice, her tendency to kick ghost bootie, or the fabulous Carmel, CA setting, but it’s a super entertaining read that you just don’t want to end. Suze can see and talk to ghosts and feels it’s her mission to help them move on to the other side. Until she meets Jesse the hot dead guy from the 19th century who inhabits her new bedroom. Does he really need to move on?

Also on my list was Beating Heart by A.M. Jenkins which is a the scariest of the ghost books I read. I was so in love with Repossessed that I had to go back and see what else A.M. Jenkins had written and I discovered Beating Heart. Evan moves into an old mansion with his mom and his sister and starts having these erotic dreams about a girl he’s never met. When the contractors renovating the house find a box of old photos and documents in a papered over wall safe, he discovers a photo of THE GIRL. Very creepy. His chapters are interspersed with chapters from the ghost’s point of view all done in poetry. It’s a great medium for her voice — very wispy and ethereal. Evan’s relationship with his real life girlfriend parallels the ghosts illicit relationship from when she was alive with the troubled boy who lived with her family. This adds a whole layer of drama as you start to figure out how she died and what that might mean for Evan. V. exciting.