What YA book are you reading RIGHT NOW?

Rot & Ruin. Pretty good so far.

I love the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian!

I love that one, too. And the illustrations are fabulous -- and essential to the story.

cherita said:

In fact, I put it on hold to start Devil's Kiss, which has the same problem. Without the darkly hilarious bit.

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That book was a skimmer for me.

Just picked up Abandon by Meg Cabot.

Finished Monsters of Men and Linger this week.

MoM - great, although for some reason I didn't enjoy it as much as the second book. Overall this trilogy is stunning, though - so dark and gripping.

Linger- YAWN. I really struggled to finish this one, because there wasn't even a proper plotline -just whining. I don't think I'll finish the trilogy.

Sage:
I was reading the 2nd Strange Angels novel, Betrayals, but it's feeling a little too familiar (hahaha, I started to type "vampire") in a Vampire Academy sort of way. What's weird is that it doesn't bug me at all that it's a sequel and I haven't read the first (sometimes it does), and I'm not so disinterested that I'm willing to put it down for good (it was one of my less than a dollar books, and I've been very willing to put down these books if I'm not into them fast), but it's not gripping enough for me to want to continue instead of reading other things.

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Weirdly, I've just finished STRANGE ANGELS by Lili St Crow which is the first in the series and it didn't grip me enough to want to read the next one. Basically the whole book is set up and I found it really difficult to follow some of the action scenes. Plus it has the whole 'I'm actually a super dooper speshul person and I had no idea' thing going on, which almost inevitably leads to Mary-Suedom and there's going to be a big love triangle. And for the bulk of one chapter two characters argued about car keys.

I know it's popular and has a lot of fans, but it's not for me.

Not sure what I'm going to read next from my YA pile. I'm currently reading a grown-up crime novel and depending on how I feel I'll go with A MONSTER CALLS by Patrick Ness or LINGER by Maggie Stiefvater.

MM

Cleopatra Confesses by Carolyn Meyer. Anything about Cleopatra can draw me in but I'm not convinced on this one yet. I'm not sure how I'm liking the voice. It has that old-timey setting to it but I think it might be a touch too much. I'll have to see where it goes first. I'm only 26 pages in.

Reading the fifth book in the Blue Bloods series. Still love! All the other books have a lot of slow-brewing family/friend drama and mystery and backstabbing, but this one is pure action novel so far. Also, the extremely spoiled uber-rich teens have taken to roughing it out in the woods a little too easily. I think if I went straight from living in mansions and 5-star hotels with maids, to sleeping rough and bathing in streams, I would have a hard time with it. I would enjoy seeing Jack Force, having chosen to leave society in order to hook up with his half sister instead of his twin sister, have a meltdown when faced with the daunting task of feeding and dressing and cleaning up after himself.

Finished Sloppy Firsts. I had heard an agent say once that she didn't like narrators voices that were sarcastic just because. I didn't really know she meant until i read this. It was much, much too much. Half the time I had to pause to try to figure out what the heck she was saying because the sarcasm killed the sentences. If it weren't for my obsession with finishing books, I probably wouldn't have because I didn't really get into it until about half way through. And the ending drove me nuts. So abrupt. I know there's a sequel so I could see what happens, but I have no desire to torture myself anymore.

As someone who has a hard time getting sarcasm, I dislike reading sarcasm. If it's hard enough for me to tell that someone is being sarcastic when they're talking out loud, it is a billion times harder for me to tell it when it's on the page. I once read a whole essay that only afterwards when my teacher said it was sarcastic did I realize it was sarcastic.

misslissy said:

As someone who has a hard time getting sarcasm, I dislike reading sarcasm. If it's hard enough for me to tell that someone is being sarcastic when they're talking out loud, it is a billion times harder for me to tell it when it's on the page. I once read a whole essay that only afterwards when my teacher said it was sarcastic did I realize it was sarcastic.

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Oh, it wasn't that it was hard to get. It's that the sentences became so long and convoluted sometimes because the sarcasm was making them that way, and so I had to re-read to figure out where she had started from. FWIW, I often don't get jokes (especially satire) and that's not what this was.

bertrigby said:

Finished Monsters of Men and Linger this week.

MoM - great, although for some reason I didn't enjoy it as much as the second book. Overall this trilogy is stunning, though - so dark and gripping.

Linger- YAWN. I really struggled to finish this one, because there wasn't even a proper plotline -just whining. I don't think I'll finish the trilogy.

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Found the same thing. I really LOVED Shiver, but the beginning of Linger didn't hold me the same. I'm going to give it another try and see what happens.

I just finished Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I've never read any of their others like Nick and Norah... or whatever, but the movie made me want to shoot myself in the face so I didn't have high expectations. Uh, it was cute. I liked Lily and it was very easy to read, the overt hipness of it bugged me a little, in the same way that the Nick and Norah film did but...I guess that's their thing. Plus, at least the characters seem to acknowledge it...

Strychnine said:

I just finished Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I've never read any of their others like Nick and Norah... or whatever, but the movie made me want to shoot myself in the face so I didn't have high expectations. Uh, it was cute. I liked Lily and it was very easy to read, the overt hipness of it bugged me a little, in the same way that the Nick and Norah film did but...I guess that's their thing. Plus, at least the characters seem to acknowledge it...

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I think the main reason I loved Dash and Lily is because my best friend is totally Dash (only 15 years older, so whereas Dash desperately wants the OED, my friend owns it...) and I'm kind of like Lily. And we met in a very similar way and used to leave gifts for each other at the city's main library, and have also sent each other on scavenger hunts. So, the book reminded me so much of him and our relationship that I couldn't help but love it.

I read The Realm of Possibility by him and I can't say that I was super impressed by it.

Just finished Intertwined by Gina Showalter. I really didn't expect this book to be a mish-mash of every supernatural creature out there. The only book I've really loved that was that way so far has the TMI series. This one kept my interest, but if I'd known that about it ahead of time I probably would have skipped it.

adktd2bks said:

Just finished Intertwined by Gina Showalter. I really didn't expect this book to be a mish-mash of every supernatural creature out there. The only book I've really loved that was that way so far has the TMI series. This one kept my interest, but if I'd known that about it ahead of time I probably would have skipped it.

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Uh, I really didn't like it because of that too! I think if they would have just kept the "spirits" trapped inside what's his names head then it would have been great. I doubt I will read the second one.

On another note, I picked up Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantasky. I was desperate for a book and it was tossed in the cheap bin at my local store. I'm only three pages in, so far the voice is okay, Jekel seems a little wordy? to me.

Just finished The Hunger Games, and I was highly impressed. Suzanne Collins managed to create a world that wasn't just interesting, but actually influenced the characterization instead of just serving as a backdrop. Very well done.

I read Double Helix by Nancy Werner today. It was for research, as I was toying with a similar idea. It's fairly accurate as far as the science goes - I give her some leeway because at least she tried to make it accurate even if she stretched things a bit. I liked the MC, but at the same time didn't really feel like he had a great voice or that I was emotionally involved. Basically it read like a book that had a message and delivered it, but the characters were sort of secondary to the purpose. Also I was kind of laughing in parts - the MC carries a lab rabbit around, treating it like a pet, and I was just chuckling to myself remembering all the times I almost got bit by the rabbits when I cleaned cages as an undergrad. Rabbits in the laboratory are NOT tame and cuddly.

Just finished two really good ones: Shadow Walkers by Brent Hartinger, contemp fantasy with LGBT characters, huzzah. And The Latte Rebellion--a girl inadvertently starts a movement promoting the recognition of mixed-ethnicity people and then it all goes out of control. Yay!

Now reading a direly depressing one called hidden. I guess it's adult fiction maybe? With a 14 year old MC. Arab-American kid is gay, gets sent to a facility to be turned straight, is tortured and raped, escapes and ends up in a secret safe house, eight LGBT teenagers stuck in one studio apartment. Seems like almost everyone is a predator or a sexual predator. Pretty intense, but I question the notion that so very many horrible things could happen to one person in one year. I may need to read Boy Meets Boy, like, twenty times once I get through this.

I was in NYC for the last few days for Backspace and bought so many books. Seriously, the amount I spent was insane.

One of the books I didn't buy on a previous recommendation, but picked up because I noticed the cover, the title, and then read the front cover was THE MAGNOLIA LEAGUE.

I took it as my airport book and was almost three quarters of the way through by the time I got home (flying from NYC to Dublin). I'm planning to finish it tonight and I'm really enjoying it.

Recently I read the Last on Earth series by Marilyn Kaye. It was published in the 90's and consists of three books. The premise was interesting: 25 NY seniors step out of their basement class to discover the entire population of the world has disappeared. The books explore what the teens do about this, how they cope, what happened and what they can do to fix it.

The writing is so-so. It's a little juvenile, though I remember the few teen books I read in the 90's sounding similar. Maybe that's why I stopped reading age-appropriate books back then. The characers are rather stereotypical and seem to have little depth. She works some in, but it just isn't enough for the reader to give a crap about them. My first issue came at the start of the book, when the 25 seniors of this NY high school for gifted and talented kids emerge from a geomotry class. I realize my experience is limited, but wouldn't kids at a special high school be in calculus or trigonometry? That's what I took as a senior and I was by no means gifted and talented. Beyond that, the story was a bit trite and the ending was anti-climactic, though it was food for thought.

I also started to read Quentel by Deric Budendorf. I should have done my homework before paying $12 for the book. It is self-published, which had I known would have been a red flag. The reviews were scanty so it was hard to get a real grasp on whether the book was any good. The one review that was glowing, I honestly suspect the person never read the book. All they said was what a great guy he was. I further found out he wrote it in high school and pubbed it in 2007 when he was in college. He really did himself a disservice. The story is interesting: all adults have died of a mutant virus and kids must band together forming clans for protection and survival. The writing was terrible, plot development was sporadic and disorganized, characters were undeveloped and he would go from trite, juvenile prose meant for MG to topics more appropriate for YA to attempts at flowery prose one might read in a tawdry romance novel. The dialog was just awful. People, especially kids, don't talk like that. I couldn't get further than 1/4 in before I gave up. It's only the 2nd book ever that I failed to finish and I've read some bad books. The 1st failure for me was Dr. Zhivago when I was 14 and that was just because I couldn't finish (or comprehend) it before the book report was due.

Sage, is that the author who wrote After? If so, I wasn't a fan of After, but probably in large part because it was written in third-present. And I get why the author did that, since the readers are supposed to be a bit distanced from the MC. But it didn't work for me.

So, Battle Dress isn't in third-present, is it?