I should have known better.

City of Bones

By Cassandra Clare

I read this book as part of my 2013 reading challenge.  I will read 24 books from different genre's this year.  This fulfilled the paranormal category.  I've heard good things about Mortal Instruments and they are making a movie that will be released this summer.  I balked at the cover.  Wow.  If it doesn't say ridiculous teenage romance, I don't know what does.  And then there was an endorsement by the one and only Stephanie Meyers.  She happens to be 4th on my nemesis list.  I should have turned and run then.  I know better!  Here is the general idea of the book.  There are demons, there are half demons, there are mundanes (which is  a stupid name for normal humans) and there are shadowhunters.  You guessed it, the shadowhunters kill demons and keep half demons in line.  Jace is one such hunter (we hate him), as are Alec and Isabelle (we don't care either way about them).  In walks Clary (bleh).  Turns out, a demon seemingly kills or abducts her mother.  In an effort to be more positive, I'll start with the good.  I like the idea of shadowhunters.  They keep alluding to the concept that most stories are real.  Cassandra Clare (from here will now be referred to as CC) borrowed mythology and demonology from many different cultures and religions.   That seems really interesting.  The bad:  CC managed to ruin the one interesting aspect of the book.  It was like a 485 page information dump.  Demons, vampires, faeries, werewolves, angels, silent-mind-reading-monks, glamors, angelic touched instruments, steles, ruins.  Most of it isn't explained.  I think that CC would have done better if she would have focused on a couple of those areas for the first book.  And then there are her characters.  I'm reasonably sure they caused me physical pain.  Clary, obviously named after Cassandra Clare (lame) is a ridiculous, insipid girl.  She has an immediately and inexplicable crush on Jace but refuses to admit it to herself.  She has a best friend named Simon that is in love with her.  She doesn't know how beautiful she is.  I sense a love triangle coming in future books.  Jace is your typical YA pretty boy.  He has a troubled past, he has an urge to protect the poor mundane, Clary, with his life if necessary, he has a hard exterior that Clary is trying to soften, blah blah blah.  I've heard this story before.  If you are planning on writing a YA book, please attempt to be original.  And the bickering!  It is so irritating and forced.  Jace and Clary are constantly snapping at each other,which is fine if you can make it sound natural.  CC apparently doesn't have that ability.  It just sounds absurd.  And the writing!!!!  She used the phrase, "he half pushed-half pulled me along" so many times I lost count.  HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT?!?!  And "he turned his finely chiseled nose to the side."  Just his nose, or the whole thing?  And what am I even reading, a dime store bodice ripper?  A friend of mine recently expressed that it seems like YA books are just being written with the hope of a movie deal.  That might be so.  This certainly has the feel of it.  Poor writing, poor characters, poor world building, with a good screen writer, could be a good movie.  We'll see, I suppose, in August.  In the mean time, probably have not learned my lesson.  I'm a sucker to the promise of a good story.

Quack, Quack, Quack

Little Chicken's Big Day by Katie and Jerry Davis

We have a little problem with ducks.  We (meaning Scarlet) love them.  And we think that if it is yellow and has a beak, then chances are, it is a duck.  When we go to the library, we (once again, only Scarlet) pick up everything that looks like it COULD be a duck book.  That is how we ended up with this one.  If wrote about all the books we got from the library, you would be bored, I would get nothing else done.  We max out the card almost every time.  I included this one because this silly little "duck" says "I hear you cluckin' big chicken" to his mama just about every other page.  It amuses me to read this out loud in a children's book.  My kids look at my like I'm crazy when we read it as I sit and giggle.

The dangers of being a red head.

Strands of Bronze and Gold 

by Jane Nickerson

Strands of Bronze and Gold is a new, re-told fairy tale book.  It is based on the French fairy tale of Bluebeard.  I would like to come clean with the fact that I went into this book thinking that I was going to read a swashbuckling tale of pirates.  It turns out that is Blackbeard, not so much Bluebeard.  That did not put a damper on the excitement of this book!   Sofia goes to live with her godfather, Bernard de Cressac (that is partial to redheads) in this castle like estate in pre-civil war Mississippi.  She quickly develops a crush on Bernard, and that is when I start hating her.  Initially, she seems to be a cookie-cutter YA character that is tedious and vapid.  She wants to save Bernard from his tumultuous past, blah, blah , blah.  I've heard it before.  Then suddenly (around page 80), she witnesses his cruelty.  "Each lash was a death blow to the infatuation I had carried for my godfather."  Her illusions of Bernard are shattered and as she discovers more and more of his true character, she begins to search out ways to escape.  That's when I stopped hating her! She blossoms into a courageous and admirable character.  The first part of the book (while I was not a fan Sofia at the time)  was beautifully descriptive and well written.  The second part, was all that as well as exciting and suspenseful.  Any YA author that can quote Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and poetry by Richard Lovelace is superb in my book!  I'm looking forward to more books from Jane Nickerson!  Marvelous.

Absolute Truth

The  Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

By Sherman Alexie

Well, I didn't love it.  I chose this book as part of a book challenge for 2013.  I am to read books chosen from 23 different genres this year.  This fulfilled the young adult requirements.  I was hoping for something similar to John Green and was sorely disappointing.  Alexie's book is about Arnold.  He is a high school student on the Spokane Indian Reservation with a long list of disabilities.  He likes to play basketball and draws comics to deal with his problems. After hurling his geometry book at his teacher, he decides to go to the "white" school outside the Reservation.  We hear some about his trouble fitting in there, his difficulty getting to and from school, his sister, grandma, and uncle all dying.  He cries a bit about some of that and then it is over.  My general feeling of the book was, "what wasted potential."  This COULD have really looked at the struggle to fit in and be an individual at the same time.  It COULD have shown us the differences between the two worlds.  It COULD have described traditions from the reservation.  It didn't do much of anything.  The book just floated vaguely along.  It was unremarkable and unsatisfying and I thought the doodles every few pages were ridiculous.