RTW: Best Book of February

Road Trip Wednesday is a weekly blog carnival hosted by YA Highway. This week's topic is: What's the best book you read in February?

For a short month, I sure read a lot:

One of my favorite voices of all time.
(More on that here)

Very sweet lower-YA, and the
Valentine's theme was perfect
for this month.

I don't think you have to be a '90s teen
to enjoy this one, but it's such a fun trip
for someone who was.

I can't believe it took me so long
to finally read this. Instant favorite.
(Not just because it's my name)

Seriously beautiful writing and
containing just the right amount
of magical realism.

Honest, heartbreaking,
incredibly well-written.

I can't pick a best, so I'll highlight All These Lives,* because it was the only ARC on my list. Here's some info from Goodreads:

Sixteen-year-old Dani is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from situations where she should have died. But Dani’s twin, Jena, isn’t so lucky. She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one life. Dani’s father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it together and prove everything’s normal. And Jena is wasting away.
To cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives. Maybe they’ll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more than she does will get one. Someone like Jena. But just when Dani finds herself at the breaking point, she’s faced with a startling realization. Maybe she doesn’t have nine lives after all. Maybe she really only ever had one.

I loved Dani's voice: insightful, authentic, and sometimes cynical and sometimes very funny. But what I loved most about this book was the very honest and nuanced portrait of Dani's family and in particular the bonds between sisters. Like The Sky is Everywhere, it made me pick up the phone and call my sister when I turned the last page. It releases in June 2012 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

What was the best thing you read this month?

*Full disclosure: I share an agent with the incredibly talented author, Sarah Wylie.

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Cookbook Recs

I feel like I neglect one of my favorite types of books on this blog: cookbooks. I love them, whether I'm reading one simply to stare at the pictures or to actually figure out how to make something. Food writing can be, well, delicious. Even during kitchen-lazy phases in which Easy Mac or speed-dialing for Indian is the most cooking I do, I still spend afternoons reading cookbooks, drooling over the pictures and tabbing the pages of recipes I wanted to make *someday.*

One of the areas in which I'm trying to find balance in 2012 is my eating habits, and so far I have made huge progress. I've greatly improved the ratio of whole foods I eat (especially produce!) to processed stuff, and for the first time in my young-professional life, I am cooking dinner more than ordering takeout. That. Is. Huge. (Don't worry--weekends are still for pizza/nachos. I will never totally give them up. Also doughnuts.)

So I've been dipping into my collection of cookbooks for inspiration and to make sure I don't get sick of making the same meals all the time. My all-time favorite cookbook is this one:

Hey Mom: Your falling-apart-old
edition is a collectible now!

I learned how to bake from this one. I love the retro pictures and nothing beats its recipe for blackberry-cream pie. Of course, on most nights I'm not going to make something from this kitschy classic. Let's face it--mid-century cuisine is pretty heavy on the meat and potatoes, two things I don't eat a ton of nowadays.

More recent finds are:

How hard can a recipe with only
four ingredients be?
(Okay, sometimes surprisingly hard.)

Essential for the TJ's obsessed.
Which I am.

Less a to-make-tonight's-dinner book,
more a drool-over-the-photos book

If it's not a dessert, I still need the
basics to avoid a culinary meltdown.

Give me more inspiration, so I can resist the siren call of takeout! 

What cookbooks are essential in your pantry? Which do you drool over as cookbook candy?

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YA Book Club: The Fault in Our Stars

Last fall Tracey Neithercott created the super-fun Fall Book Club. We read a trio of great YA books and discussed them in blog posts. Go here for my post on our first read, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, or here for the second pick, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and here for the third, The Scorpio Races. It's no longer fall but happily the book club is back in slightly new form: the YA Book Club. In February we read the club's first contemporary YA selection, The Fault in Our Stars. (Actually, I read it in January and posted here, but of course I have more to say.)

I'd describe the books by John Green (that I've read: Looking for Alaska; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; and now The Fault in Our Stars) as contemporary YA, but at the same time I don't know if I'd describe them as completely realistic contemporary YA. This is not a criticism--it's actually a distinction I consider a huge compliment. I'm envious of Green's writing (aren't we all, really) and particularly the way he writes characters/situations/settings/dialogue/etc. that are both authentic and elevated. They are verisimilar: true without being realistic to a fault.

Let's step back with a concrete example. Dialogue is one of the best parts of a John Green book. Example from p.87 (Augustus describing what he likes about a sculpture):
"Two things I love about this sculpture," Augustus said. He was holding the unlit cigarette between his fingers, flicking it as if to get rid of the ash. He placed it back in his mouth. "First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you're a kid, you cannot resist the urge to jump between them. Like, you just have to jump from rib cage to skull. Which means that, second, the sculpture essentially forces children to play on bones.The symbolic resonances are endless, Hazel Grace." 
His characters tend to be whipsmart, hyper-eloquent, effusive, expressive, and really funny. They work in references to Schrodinger's cats and obscure writers and philosophers and really deep intellectual and spiritual theories at the same as dropping likes and awesomes. Do real teens speak that way? Yes, and no. I definitely talked about Big Ideas with my friends as a teen--ruminating on infinity and Marx and existentialism and religion in the way that certain nerdy kids do. Were our thoughts as well-expressed as those of John Green's characters? No. Did we stumble over our words and ideas more? Yes. Would recreating those sorts of authentic conversations make for good fiction? No, probably not. John Green, like the superstar he is, takes the essence of young people's conversations and elevates them to beautifully crafted writing. His dialogue sparkles in a way that might not be entirely realistic, but the heart of the content is. It's not realistic; it's hyper-real (and thrilling to read for that).

Nowhere was this elevation of reality more clear than in The Fault In Our Stars, and not just in dialogue. This is a book about something very real and very sad: cancer and mortality. Yet the world Green has built in TFIOS feels almost like a magical place (if not an always-joyful one), particularly when Hazel and Augustus get to travel to Amsterdam, oxygen nubbins and prosthetics all. We are both shown the gritty truth of being sick--the physical limitations, the sadness, the pain and guilt and fear--but despite that a sense of wonder and expansion runs through the story. It's a contemporary fantasyland, but it's a verisimilar one in which real life happens, the good and the bad. Amazingly, love supersedes the bad stuff, in terms of both the theme and storytelling. Many books are either/or: gritty and true, or ideal and shiny. This one is remarkably both.


What did you think about TFIOS?

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Seasonal Reading

You'd think in the dead of winter I'd want to read books set in warm, sunny places, but no. Instead, I want to read about cold English manors and blizzards and the frozen prairie.
The same is true in summer, but in reverse: I want my books to swelter. Jungles (concrete and the plant variety), deserts, tornadoes, droughts. And when I'm at the beach--the book ought to be set by warm waters, too. I take the term "beach read" literally.

Since winter's grip appears to be loosening on the East Coast (I ran in the park last weekend! Without gloves!), I am sneaking in Eowyn Ivey's debut The Snow Child. It's set in frigid 1920s Alaska. I'm still in the mood for snow, particularly in a book with beautiful writing and a captivating story. From B&N:

Love the cover art

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart—he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone—but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.
This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

Either Shelf Awareness or NPR tipped me off to this pick, and I'm so grateful I clicked on whichever post it was because this book hadn't been on my radar. I've only read 100 or so pages, but I can already say that this is one you will want to curl up with before spring. It's magical.

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Three Beautiful Words

Three-
Day
Weekend

I'm spending my bonus weekend day writing* and birthday partying (not mine).

*Does it count as celebrating President's Day if the WIP I'm working on has two presidential characters, one of whom is entirely fictional? I've decided so.

What about you?

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Kindness and (Self) Criticism

When I need to give myself a break, I like to curl up in an armchair with a glass of wine or mug of tea (depending on the time of day) and read Whole Living magazine. I swear that magazine is calm and self-care in print form, and reading it just makes me feel like I've done something good for myself. And it has really good recipes.

Anyway, I was reading it a few nights ago and I came across an article on how to give feedback, specifically negative criticism. (In the January/February issue, p. 116, in case you're interested in picking up a copy. I tried to find the article online, but had no luck.) Three experts from different fields gave their advice on how to give honest criticism. The career coach, Jodi Glickman, said you always need to have concrete improvement strategies in mind when you give negative feedback, and watch the timing of when you deliver it (i.e. not too soon, and not after a stressful event). The writing instructor, Marion Roach Smith, said you should always start by acknowledging what someone has done right. Makes sense, right? It's always easier to take the bad after you've been treated to a spoonful of the good. She also suggests having suggestions for improvement ready.
 But I found the advice from Mark Matousek, author of Ethical Wisdom and (as identified by the magazine) a Buddhist, the most striking. His take? You have to consider your intentions before delivering negative feedback, and you should ask yourself these three questions:
Is it true, is it necessary, and is it kind? 
Kindness, in terms of negative feedback, being constructiveness.

I would hope we're all being kind to our critique partners, and our notes are delivered because we care, we respect the writer's hard work, and we want to do a good job in our roles as CPs. But what about when we deliver criticism to ourselves? I mean, I certainly don't ask myself those three questions before I launch into a rant against a scene that isn't working or a character who is flat. Sometimes we can be incredibly cruel to ourselves in flinging around un-constructive, unkind comments about our work.

The article was eye-opening, and it made me think that I need to be as mindful of being constructive and kind to myself as to others--even when a WIP is driving me crazy. No, especially when a WIP is driving me crazy. What are my intentions when I sit down to draft or edit? To beat myself up over a paragraph that isn't working, or to find a way to fix it?

Writer and reader friends, how do you deliver constructive criticism? And do you have an easy or hard time dealing with criticism of your own work (from yourself, or others)?

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Ode to Contemporary (Romance)

YA Highway is having a Blog Lovefest today: The Valentine blog posts can be a love note to anything---another blogger, a book, an author, a character, a bookstore, your beta readers...anything and anyone! Love it!

And it wouldn't be Valentine's Day if I weren't butchering an ode (on a worthy subject). Today I'm singing the praises of my favorite YA genre, contemporary. One of the many things I love about contemporary YA are realistic, authentic, yet still swoonworthy romances. So here goes, an ode to contemporary love:

In matters of the YA heart,
I love to read it real.
If this world fantasy or paranormal lovers ask us to depart,
Then their contemporaries ground us as we feel.
A musician found in a forest bedroom under a sky that is everywhere,
A girl and her genius Cricket next door perhaps,
Colby pining after Bev as they travel the coast, no longer friends platonic.
The struggles these couples face never involve a villain's lair
But still our hearts run vicarious laps.
Of all the genres, contemporary love sings most harmonic.

Which contemp romances/relationships are your favorites? Or if contemp isn't your thing, which genre makes you swoon?

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This Week in Books

Maybe less caffeine = more books for me, because I've been devouring them this week. First was Heather Hepler's Love? Maybe, a very sweet (literally; more on that in a minute) lower YA and a perfect February read. From Goodreads:
Just because Piper's birthday is on Valentine's Day does not mean she's a romantic. In fact, after watching her father and then her stepfather leave, she's pretty sure she doesn't believe in love at all. Then her friends concoct a plan to find them all Valentine's dates, and somehow Piper finds herself with the most popular guy in school. But true love never follows a plan, and a string of heartfelt gifts from a secret admirer has Piper wondering if she might be with the wrong guy.
In this heartwarming romance, true love is more than a maybe - and it might be closer than you think.
In reading this one, I discovered how much I love books set in candy stores/chocolate shops/bakeries. Bittersweet just got bumped up on my TBR list as a result. One thing I loved about Heather Hepler's writing is how she subtly (and successfully) works thoughtful, hefty themes into a heartwarming light romance.

Next I read The Future of Us, in a day. I've been known to get a little compulsive about refreshing Facebook (um, when procrastinating perhaps?) and I feel like I did the same thing while reading: Must. Find. Out. Next. Status. Update. For. Josh. And. Emma. And the mid-90s setting was so welcome for this nineties teen. Doing the macarena at dances! 1-hour photo places! Folding notes in class because nobody has a cell phone and texting doesn't really exist! I collapsed into a nostalgia puddle after reading one line about slow-dancing to Boyz II Men at a school dance. (Granted, in my days I was watching other people slow dance and staying in the corner by the food, but whatever. Same thing.)

And now I've started Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, after finding out it's a favorite of eleventy-billion people I know. Sidenote: Reading a book with your name as the title feels weirdly narcissistic. I wonder if any Jane Eyres out there, or Emmas, feel the same way?

What are you reading this week?

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True Grit

About a year ago I watched the film True Grit and loved it; I pledged to read the book (particularly after a friend raved about it). Although I was suspicious, never having read a Western before. I finally got around to True Grit last week. My question is, why hasn't everyone read the Charles Portis classic?

The voice, the voice, the voice. The best part of the book and the film is Mattie Ross's deadpan, blunt, blase, unintentionally hilarious retelling of her great adventure. I could listen to her tell a story all day long. All of the characters have distinct, authentic ways of speaking--Donna Tartt, in an afterword to the book, remarks that "No living Southern writer captures the spoken idioms of the South as artfully as Portis does." She also compares True Grit to Huck Finn, and I have to agree. Like the Twain classic, this is the adventure story of a plucky young American--and, as Jonathem Lethem blurbed, both "capture the naive elegance of the American voice."

I wouldn't be me if I didn't add that I seriously had a hankering for frontier grub while reading: some fried bread, bacon sandwiches, and (of course) grits.

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Groundhog Day

50% of why I love Groundhog Day* is because it means we are (maybe) 6 weeks away from spring. In less freakishly mild winters, hitting Groundhog Day is like hitting an oasis** in the middle of the desert of winter. The other 50% of why I love Groundhog Day is the 1993 Bill Murray instant-classic movie. Which I always try to watch on Feb. 2, because I am a dork.

One of the worst things about having to repeat a single day for eternity, in my opinion, is having to repeat the same reading choices. Considering all the books in the world, most of which I want to read, being stuck with one would be horrible. As horrible as eating the same meals, wearing the same clothes, hearing people trot out the same small talk . . . ugh.
Let's pretend you're stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario. Assuming you can't spend that day at a bookstore or library and you don't have an eReader, what book would you hope to have available to you on your endless day? I have actually thought about this a lot. One obvious answer is an old-school Choose Your Own Adventure book because you could at least shake up the plot on a daily basis. (Maybe a new-school choice would be a Coliloquy interactive title?) But if I had to pick 1 traditional-narrative book, I'd go with: The Westing Game (mysteries mean you can reread for subtle clues you've missed; also I love this book) or The Great Gatsby (simply because I have not gotten sick of reading it yet and I'm not sure whether I am capable of getting tired of it).

Which book(s) would you pick for a Groundhog Day?

*It's unclear whether the shadow was seen today, but Punxsutawney Phil says more winter. Related: hardest town to spell, ever. 
**I guess it would have to be an oasis of hope or something, as it's usually still cold and gray.

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January Reading

Is it me, or is January the longest month ever? Maybe it's the lack of sun, but it certainly feels that way.

There will be no "best book of the month" this month because I read five seriously amazing books in January:

State of Wonder: I am officially an Ann Patchett groupie after this one. It's just, well, wonderful. Also, I don't think it's coincidental that whenever I am reading one of her books in public, someone stops me to gush about how gorgeous her writing and stellar her storytelling is.

Revolution: Blending historical fiction and contemporary, and fake diaries = some of my favorite things. Of course, I might be a little biased.

The Fault in Our Stars: One of those rare super-hyped books in which the crazy buzz is still less than it could (or should) be. There are no perfect books, but damn it if John Green doesn't appear to write them.

The Disenchantments: Have you preordered this one? Are you going to your bookstore on 2/16 to buy it? It's one of the best contemporary YAs I've read in a while, and a must for anyone who loves music. And road trips. And realistic relationships.

The Handmaid's Tale: Modern classic, feminist classic, dystopian classic. Moving, hilarious, and terrifying and (in my humble opinion) a cautionary tale perfectly told.

February has a lot to live up to.

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