Kaite's Book Shelf

Review 'em & Weep

2008-05-02T11:32:00.002-05:00

The funniest piece of writing I have seen in a cat's age is right here.

Don't waste any time. It's got a mystery, it's got heart, it's got a snooty secretary-type, a jaded-reviewer, a craggy editor, and a loveable guy dressed as Santa with all the answers.

Dealing them off the arm

2008-04-09T12:18:00.010-05:00

My mother always said have a backup skill in case those dreams of marrying wealthy and divorcing wealthier didn't work out. So I learned to type. Very fast. And typing was good. It paid for a trip to Ireland in my senior year of college. I couldn't believe how lazy all these student were who hadn't learned to type.

If one backup skill was good, two were better. So I became a waitress, which pays much better than typing and you get drinks at the end of the day. I used to regale my friends with "service industry" stories. Like the time I waited on 30 people on Mother's Day, couldn't take any other tables because this party kept dribbling in, growing larger and more demanding and ordering food every five minutes. After two hours, 45 goddam tossed salads with the dressing on the side, constant refills of Dr. Pepper, and a $300 check, one of the wives pressed a $5 dollar bill in my hand and thanked me for a lovely job. Her nephew was in the kitchen, cooking the day's food and she wanted to show her appreciation for his coworkers. For a brief moment I thought about beating her mightily around the head and face. But instead I laughed. I tipped my bartender with that fiver on my first drink of the evening.

The Waiter has felt my pain, joy and incredulity, and written about it in a book to be published this August, Waiter Rant. I harbor a secret obsession with any memoir about the restaurant business. I've spent too many years schlepping food and owe a great deal to the dining room managers who have given me a job at the lowest points of my life. I've read Debra Ginsberg's Waiting: True Confessions of a Waitress and Service Included by Phoebe Damrosch. Those books are good. But The Waiter has perfectly captured what it is like to work the front of the house. The chapter alone on tipping and why the tip is so important to the server is priceless. I knew exactly how The Waiter's friend Allie felt after she'd delivered consummate service and was royally stiffed. It's not about the money. It's never about the money. Two tables from now, someone will over tip and make it all even for Allie. It's the insult. It's knowing that someone else has to assign a dollar value to your work and deemed it lacking when you know you turned in a top notch performance.

The Waiter understands the emotional toll serving the public can take on a human being. No matter how much he dresses it up, he understands that people who work in food service are hired servants.

With humor, wit, a liberal dose of snark and a soupcon of sentimentality, The Waiter brings the dining room into the reading room. Sometime in August, on a Monday night at the Pine Grove Inn or Tony's Villa Capri or the Airport Cafe or Friendly's or Domino's Pizza or New China or Racine's, the staff will share a drink, the tips and stories about their favorite Monday night customers--who are all in the food service industry. They will also share their impressions of Waiter Rant and none of them will find any part of the book to be lacking in verisimilitude

They also serve, who wait.

Calling all Jane-iacs!

2008-01-06T10:49:00.000-06:00

You know who you are. If you're an academic, then you refer to yourself as a "Janeite." Those of us who are hip to Jane's trendster cred refer to ourselves as "Jane-iacs".

Catch a whole month of Jane-inspired programming, events, movies, book discussions and author visits at Kansas City Public Library's month long Jane-uary celebration.

Join the Jane-iac blog, too.

And the Angels try to bar the Gates

2007-11-10T06:59:00.000-06:00

I have to put my grief someplace. We won't have Norman Mailer around anymore to epitomize the idea of a "man's writer." He was a macho, braying scoundrel, but I loved him anyway. A guy's guy. Guybrarian is probably mourning over a beer. Keir is staring blankly out the window of an El car. Bill is trying to compose a fitting Backpage.

Norman was street before all those faux "gangstas" made it a lifestyle.

Bye, Norman. And fug you for leaving us all behind.

The Big Read @ Kansas City Public Library

2007-10-04T14:25:00.000-05:00

Kansas City Public Library, Park University and Liberty Memorial will be celebrating Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, A Farewell to Arms during October and November.The Big Read aims to encourage Kansas Citians to read, enjoy, contemplate, and discuss Hemingway's landmark novel of love and war on the Italian Front during the First World War.

The program period coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Caporetto, a devastating Italian defeat that served as a climactic moment in A Farewell to Arms.

More than 500 free paperback copies of A Farewell to Arms will be distributed to interested participants. In addition, there will be special events, panel discussions, book groups and movie screenings revolving around Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, and Hemingway's influential ties to Kansas City. Register for an event, book group or free copy of the book here.

Contribute comments and insights at the Kansas City Public Library's The Big Read blog.

Beisball's been berry good to SOMEONE!

2007-09-09T09:44:00.000-05:00

To the tune of $2.8 million, the above non-descript cardboard image of an old tyme baseball player who is NOT a household name, has been sold anonymously. Read the greedy story here.

Read the story behind the story in The Card: Collectors, Con Men and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card. Authors Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson trace the history and ownership of one of baseball's most famous, and hard-to-find, cards of a player unfamiliar to most fans except for his face on a collectible.

Now, I expect some sunburnt bleacher bums will cry foul. "The Flying Dutchman" was one of the foremost players of his day. Honus Wagner was an all-star quality player, a contemporay of Ty Cobb and one of the first to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. If his quotes are accurate, it sounds as if Mr. Wagner was one of the most forthright and honorable players of his time, too. There's a lesson to be learned here (I'm talkin' to YOU, MLB All-Stars). It's "How to Be a Gentleman and a Ballplayer instead of a Billionaire Athlete".

Wagner's fame is now tied to a little piece of cardboard he didn't endorse enclosed with a product he didn't condone.

O'Keeffe and Thompson eyeball the hobby of card collecting and aren't sure how to call it. A harmless American hobby that started with little boys and bubblegum (or bigger boys and tobacco) has morphed into a booming and conniving business involving authentication experts, auction house and Wall Street bankers.

Although the history and backstories are fascinating, the writing is a little dry. Some of O'Keeffe's sparkling sports prose would be welcome in this book. Fans and collectors will be entertained and informed and likely a little disenchanted with the moneyfication of the Great American pasttime. But there's no crying in baseball or baseball card collecting, either.

Stop what you're doing and read this book

2007-08-23T22:56:00.001-05:00

At holiday gatherings, Friends of the Ballet cocktail parties and roller derbies, I am often asked what it is like to work in a library. "Huh huh, you must read all day" is the typical inane comment I hear. To which I reply, "Why no, I don't. I answer reference questions and suggest reading material to interested patrons." What I really want to say is, "Yep, right in one, psychic. But it beats chewing tobaccy, changing oil and yanking it to the Miss Quaker State calendar all day."

If you want to know what it's like to work in a library, then read Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangstas in the Public Library. Don Bochert has captured all the most delightful elements of working a public service desk. From reaching into the bookdrop and retrieving a fecal-encrusted dildo to reissuing a library card to a patron who swears the triple 666s will cause him pain to chasing off the drunk wearing a tutu to the patron who tried to mail a letter in the dictionary stand.

Bochert spills the beans about contemporary libraries with generous doses of love, candor and good natured humor. At the end of the checkout period, he still believes in the power of libraries and that patrons truly mean to return their materials on time.

A New Life With Old Demons

2007-08-11T23:48:00.000-05:00

Gail Giles is known for taking on serious, almost controversial subjects, in her popular young adult novels. A loathsome student becomes the most popular kid before he is killed by classmates. When a daughter, thought to be dead, returns to her shattered family, her sister is skeptical. A Goth girl takes an inordinate interest in a quiet student with drastic results. The most popular girl in school is buried alive as revenge for the death of another student.

Giles has perfected the art of young adult heart-stopping page-turners. She does it again in her newest title, Right Behind You.
Kip has just committed a horrible act. He flung gasoline and a lit match on seven-year-old Bobby Clarke. Bobby has died from his burns and Kip has been sequestered in a hospital. Kip is nine years old.

Flash forward almost five years. Wade has just moved to Indiana. He is trying to fit in at his new high school but his anger gets in the way. When Wade is angry he forgets he has a secret that he is longing to reveal. But to tell it means life is over for Wade and his family. So Wade fights to hide--from his friends, his family and himself. Wade is about to lose the fight.

Readers who have enjoyed this character-oriented story told in realistic dialogue and vivid action should turn next to Chris Crutcher.
This book was discussed on The Walt Bodine Show 's Book Doctors program August 13, 2007. KCUR 89.3

A Year in the Death

2007-07-05T09:42:00.000-05:00

Chris Crutcher remains one of my favorite authors of all time. His books are beloved by teens across the nation and astute adult readers looking for a story full of emotion, action, wit and intelligence will never be disappointed in a Crutcher novel. His quartet, Running Loose, Stotan, The Crazy Horse Electric Game, and Chinese Handcuffs, are Crutcher at the top of his game. Every book since then has been great, but none have achieved the completeness of story, mastery of character and depth of emotion and realism as his first four novels. Which is not to criticize. All Chris Crutcher novels are worth the time taken to read them. Even a Crutcher novel not as good as the top four is still better than most of the books out there.

Deadline is good, not great, Crutcher, but still better than the majority of teen novels put to paper. Ben gets a disturbing medical report just before his senior year starts. He has been diagnosed wth a rare blood disease that is too difficult to treat andh e has less than a year to live. Armed with this knowledge, Ben, a 120lb whippet-thin cross country runner turns out for the football team and steps up his efforts to date the elusive and athletic Dallas Suzuki. When Ben isn't cramming every drop of life in his quickly shortening one, he is searching for all the education he can get--these methods include tormenting his right-wing conservative civics teacher, consoling the town drunk (harboring a dark secret of his own) and trading therapeutic quips with his psychologist. How does Ben manage to accomplish all this during his treatment for cancer? He doesn't. Take treatment, that is. Ben, a legal adult at 18, has excersized his doctor-patient privelige and refuses to tel lhis family, friends and teachers about his condition.

The conversational style will immediately hook readers. All the teens in Crutcher's books are articulate and inquisitive. Sometimes everyone, teachers and teens alike, are a bit glib, but the rat-a-tat style will get anyone past those snarky moments. There aren't too many authors, teen or adult, that write like Crutcher, but Gail Giles' most recent book, Right Behind You, has the same high octane pacing and conversation.

Lost Boys of the Jungle Guns

2007-06-28T23:21:00.000-05:00

On the way to a talent show for students, Ishmael Beah, his brother and four other friends find themselves separated from their families forever as war breaks out in Sierra Leone. For the next four years Ishmael travels the jungles of his country, carrying an AK-47 and suffering migraines and jangled nerves from the marijuana and cocaine he ingests instead of food. He has become an emotionless killer, a tiny robot soldier with no memory of childhood, A Long Way Gone from the life had known. A UN team negotiates his release, along with a few others, from the guerrilla army he has called "family" and tries to rehabilitate Ishmael. But the violence of he past four years is too ingrained and Ishmael and his comrades fight with other boys who have been "discharged" from their armies. After a painful drug withdrawal process, Ishmael begins to experience all those emotions and activities that kept him tied to his world. But just as Ishmael is about to join a family and begin again to live with people who love him, the war finds Ishmael again and he must take drastic measures to avoid the harsh and violent life he has escaped and seek out a new life in another country. Readers may be shocked at the level of brutal violence present in Ishmael's story. Yet the author tells his harrowing tale unapologetically and simply. Readers who wish to read further on this subject may enjoy God Grew Tired of Us by John Bul Dau and Measuring Time by Helon Habila.

Puzzle Masters

2007-06-18T22:59:00.000-05:00

Cancel all weekend plans and lock all the windows. The Game is about to begin. Derek Armstrong's debut takes off with double rocket boosters and launches a new high octane publisher onto the radar.
Former FBI Investigator Alban Bane is at San Quentin to witness the execution of the serial killer he has hunted across many years and states. Even though some parents of victims blame Bane for not acting quickly enough to take down the murderer, Bane is satisfied with the outcome and final result of his quest. Upon his lethal injection deathbed, the killer whispers the clue to a decade old murder which infuriates Bane. At the same time, across the country another series of grisly murders is unfolding on the set of a popular reality television show--all the killings bear the trademarks of the now executed murderer. As Bane delves deeper into these new murders with old memories, he starts to wonder if these are crimes of rebellion and ratings or revenge and humiliation.
There are many subplots and backstory which all come together at the end. The misanthropic Scotsman, Bane, is fascinating and gleefully abhorrent in his misanthropy. Reality television is dangerous business in fiction, as fans of 24/7 by Jim Brown will attest. This first novel is as fast-paced as that one.

Youth and Consequences

2007-06-17T22:15:00.000-05:00

After a tragic gun accident in his home, Teddy's life at home and school changes dramatically. He gains a new group of friends, the American Youth, who miscontrue the fatal incident. Teddy struggles to follow his mother's well intentioned orders when discussing the facts with the local police, and carefully observes the changes in former friends following the disastrous event. The book's treatment of a touchy issue that is too frequently handled in a preachy way is respectful and intelligent. There are no conclusions drawn for the readers, the author expects the reader to reach his or her own conclusions. Phil LaMarche's stripped down prose style will encourage teen readers' imaginations to fill in the gaps. Readers of Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes who would like to try a denser literary style should turn to this slim, yet compelling, novel.

Funny like a Crutch

2007-06-16T13:08:00.000-05:00

From the moment young Sarah Thyre gives a fake name to a security guard in a shopping mall while he announces her name ove the loudspeaker to the time she sweet talks a dentist into giving her braces her father will pay for, Sarah's attempts at a better life are not just fraught with peril, but humiliation and laughter. Dark at the Roots is her memoir of a life in pursuit of doing better and getting out. None of the incidents are extraordinary, but they are recognizable for their ordinariness and made unique by Sarah's quirky worldview. Follow the formative years of an alum of "Strangers With Candy" and "Upright Citizen's Brigade." Readers who are looking for their next funny, irreverant and witty read after A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel or works by David Sedaris can continue to tickle their funnybone with Thyre.

Where Are They Now?

2007-06-15T11:03:00.000-05:00

A blonde woman drives away from the scene of a hit and run accident. When she is stopped by a police officer, she is disoriented and panicked. In a daze, she gives the officer her name and he is startled. The disheveled woman claims to be one of a pair of girls who mysteriously went missing from the area almost thirty years ago in a sensational and unsolved kidnapping. Laura Lippman explores standalone territory again with her latest suspense novel, What the Dead Know.
After providing a false name, the woman continues to be adamant about her true identity. She refuses to help the police confirm her story and is reluctant to share her whereabouts for the many years she was gone. The skeptical detective reaches back into the police force's own past to tap a retired colleague who may have made an error in judgment while working on the case. The only proof the detective can muster is to find the woman's mother, who has also been missing since her daughters' disappearance. Suspenseful with a twist ending that astute readers will see coming long before it arrives.

Vision Question

2007-06-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

Mike May isn't stubborn, righteous or a superman. He's just curious. When he is presented with the opportunity to regain the vision he'd lost since he was three, he had to think about how much more different his life would be with vision than without it. Mike had never let a lack of vision keep hi from doing anything he wanted to do, from riding a bike to serving as a school crossing guard, to playing guitar, soccer, tricks on his sister or skiing in the Olympics. Nothing had ever stopped Mike from exploring his world. In Crashing Through, Mike's amazing story told by Robert Kurson, the decision to opt for the surgery to restore his sight wasn't about regaining something lost. It was no different from any other decision he'd ever made about his life. He wanted to try something new and exciting and continue to explore his world in any unique way available to him. Adventures in the sighted world are just as exhilarating as adventures in the blind one, and Mike is making the most of every minute. Mike's determination, resilience and humor will charm readers. His brash, foolhardy, yet fun, experiences are engaging and exuberantly told from an author who takes his omniscience seriously. The scenes describing Mike's first encounters with sight in over 40 years are sheer brilliance.

Leg of Wood, Heart of Steel

2007-06-13T21:18:00.000-05:00

Every surgery, every pain and every hurdle involving Emily Rapp's degenerating bone disease is chronicled in a heartfelt and inspiring memoir. The Poster Child lost her foot when she was four and the rest of her leg when she was nine. By the time she was ten, Emily was the Midwestern spokeskid for the March of Dimes project and spoke enthusiastically at church suppers, rodeos and county fairs about how "normal" she was. Emily has always been aware of how she didn't quite meet the standards of normal, but her indefatigable memoir shows readers a person who had no other choice but to be extraordinary since normal wasn't an option. Readers who enjoyed Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet will be pleased with the lack of sentimentality and the brutal honesty of this life story. They will also appreciate Emily's very human emotions of frustration and anger with herself and her prosthesis.

From the Dough Boys

2007-06-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

From a little known piece of American history, Michael Lowenthal has crafted a heartbreaking, yet inspiring story of love betrayed and courage discovered. Frieda is just another working Jewish girl in New York City during World War I. She is a bundle wrapper at Jordan march in ladies' undergarments and very happy with her job and her life. She and her Friend, Lou visit the weekly dances with soldiers and are popular dance partners. One evening Frieda meets a handsome young dough boy and impulsively spends the evening with him. Weeks later she is visited by a stern woman who accuses Frieda of giving the soldier a venereal disease. Frieda is sent to a medical institution where she is quarantined with other "fallen women" who has passed diseases onto soldiers. She is a Charity Girl, accused of unpatriotic behavior and must be rehabilitated before being let out into society again. The fellow inmates and one sympathetic social worker are the only support system Frieda has as she faces numerous indignities in the detention center. Fans of One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus will appreciate the same strong central female character and the straightforward tone. This little known historical period and the brutally unfair treatment of teenage girls will pique interest among readers of American historical fiction. Readers will also rally around Frieda and her feisty, but not anachronistic, attitude toward the medical sciences and her own future. Very readable and entertaining. Characters are like able and believable; plot is swift; enough historic detail to create a strong sense of time, place and social tone, but not too much to slow down the story. A satisfactory ending should please all readers.

College Follies

2007-06-11T18:43:00.000-05:00

I never did get the concept of the college visit. Why spend a weekend in the spring at a campus that won't bare any resemble to the place you matriculate three months later in the fall? To my thinking, it was enough I wasted a perfectly good Saturday morning taking the SATs and the ACT. Susan Coll might be of the same mind. In Acceptance, three overachieving high school students are applying for college--AP Harry (taker of more Advanced Placement courses than anyone in the senior class) is only interested in Ivy League school and only Harvard at that; Taylor wants her social climbing and overly competitive mother to leave her alone while Taylor pilfers mail from her surrounding neighbors; Maya wishes she could live up to the mile-high standards her family has created and wonders why no one has yet realized she isn't as smart as the rest of her siblings. During the school year, each student will face frustration, disappointment and new insights into themselves as they plot a future they think they want and all inadvertently choose the future they truly need. Teens will appreciate the subject matter of this novel as they go through their own college application processes. They will also identify (some of them) with the stress of selecting a college and the fierce competition that goes into getting into the "best" colleges. They may also find the portion of the story told from the viewpoint of the college admissions counselor eye-opening as she reveals what colleges truly look for in an essay. A fun, breezy read with intriguing insights into the college admissions gauntlet.
This book was discussed on The Walt Bodine Show 's Book Doctors program May 17, 2007. KCUR 89.3

Welcome to the Condemned Monkey House

2007-06-10T21:08:00.000-05:00

Books about animals make me wary. I won't watch/read/listen to anything in which an animal suffers unnecessarily. I'm not fond of those stories where it's necessary, either. Although I recall not minding much when Cujo bit the dust.
I approached Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo with much trepidation. I knew I'd be reading about horrific wartime conditions of the exotic animals trapped in the zoo in the midst of shelling, bombs and looting. I also knew there would be plenty of moments of redemption and salvation. There are equal parts of both in Lawrence Anthony's memoir of his harrowing journey to war-torn Baghdad in order to save and protect the world renowned zoo. Anthony discovers his own survival is in jeopardy as well as that of the animals he attempts to save. With help from steadfast American soldiers and loyal, ingenious Iraqi zookeepers, Anthony begins to create a livable habitat for the animals left behind when the city was evacuated. Each day is fraught with new and life-threatening challenges that Anthony meets with righteous indignation and canny problem-solving skills. Heartfelt, but never treacly, readers who are animal lovers will shed tears; readers who are not will find their souls stirred with the injustice doled out to defenseless creatures. Readers who enjoyed other unusual humanitarian missions such as those recounted in Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson or Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughn, will be intrigued by the animals' stories.

Amituofo

2007-06-09T22:46:00.000-05:00

Matthew Polly had always kept a running list in his head of Things That Are Wrong with Matthew: “Cowardly,” “Spiritually Confused,” “Still a boy/not a man,” “Ignorant.” In 1992, he decided to tackle the list by going to China to train in ancient martial arts and meditation with the monks of the hidden Shaolin Temple. Ten years later, Polly weaves the story of his journey to enlightenment with iron forearms in American Shaolin. With a better than average command of the Chinese language and customs for a laowai, Polly makes his way to the Temple and starts to catalog his unusual adventures and encounters with the Chinese people—chatty cab drivers; giggly hotel key girls; avaricious Temple officials; and coaches who scream for perfection and then . It all culminates in an international kungfu competition and a challenge match with a kungfu master. Polly’s pace is as fast as a whip kick to the head and his descriptions of the amazing skills of his teachers and class mates are jaw dropping. In a friendly, deferential and sometimes smart ass tone, Polly invites the reader along on his astounding journey to check off the items on his list, only to check off the most important entry upon his return to Kansas. Fans of the pacing and story line of Friday Night Lights will enjoy American Shaolin.

Man behind the Vision

2007-06-08T23:54:00.000-05:00

This one goes out to Bruce who let me wax pathetic over a Renoir and a Degas at the Nelson-Atkins Gallery tonight.
Susan Vreeland has made a splash with her historical fiction novels revolving around masterpieces of the art world. She and Tracy Chevalier have almost created a cottage industry. The latest entry in the "story behind the painting" subgenre of literary historical fiction is Luncheon of the Boating Party. In prose as thoughtful as every one of Renoir's brush strokes, Vreeland imagines the lives behind each figure in the artist's most famous work. From conception to completion, readers learn who all the models are, how they came together, their significance to Renoir and how they form a tight bond that cannot last outside the painting's frame. Full of exquisite detail and descriptions, readers will be flipping back to carefully study the small replica of the painting that accompanies the book. Up until the last third, readers will wonder who is the beguiling woman holding the dog in the lower left corner of the painting? All of the painting's figures are real people the author brings to life on the canvas, even the mysterious quatorzieme is identified. Very suitable for a book group or readers who enjoyed Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Lies We Tell to Make Ourselves Feel Better

2007-06-07T19:14:00.000-05:00

In James Scudamore's novel, Anti and Fabian are unlikely friends in Quito, Ecuador who share a love for outlandish yarn-spinning and yearn to "discover" something remarkable. While they will talk about everything, one subject goes unmentioned, the deaths of Fabian's parents. One night, after too much tequila, Fabian tells the story of his parents' demise. Anti, sympathetic, yet disbelieving, crafts a false newspaper story to demonstrate his support for Fabian and the fictions that help him get through this tragedy. However, Fabian reads the clipping and also notes the bogus story next to it, one for an Amnesia Clinic serving victims of accidents or kidnappings with no memories of who they are. Fabian is certain his mother, whose body was never recovered, is staying in the Amnesia Clinic. The boys set off on a journey that will reveal more about their friendship and future than either can imagine. The compelling story, natural and likeable characters and realistic portrayals of adults are the highlights of this novel. Scudamore has captured well the sense of wonder and familiarity the boys experience with their shared world and each other. Readers have compared this book to Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

Capturing Light or Capturing Sin?

2007-06-06T20:48:00.000-05:00

One of the most lyrical debuts of 2005 was Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's The Effects of Light. The realistic and sympathetic characters and the compelling, suspenseful story line will draw readers in while they ponder the author's thoughtful exploration of the classic social question, "What is Art and who gets to decide?"
Thirteen years after she fled the West Coast, Kate Scott is returning to hesitantly pry open painful memories of her sister and her father. A mysterious package from an unknown benefactor shows Kate that someone else knows her turbulent secret history as a child-model for a controversial photographer. Her lover, Samuel, follows Kate and pledges to help her unearth the clues her father has left behind, but when Kate discovers Scott's notebook with surreptitious jottings about herself and her family's notorious past, she rejects him. Readers will be drawn into the mystery surrounding Kate's sister, her father, and Ruth, the photographer, even wondering who Kate truly is. This first novel drew parallels with The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold for the narrative voices of its teen characters, Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier for its art-world frame and Possession by A.S. Byatt for its plot of academics searching ancient documents for contemporary truths.

High School Heartbeat

2007-06-05T19:33:00.000-05:00

Jodi Picoult is another of my favorite authors. Her stories intrigue me. She explores the very real emotions behind the hot button issues that confound our society and there are rarely any winners, losers, heros or villains. There are only real people, with a steadfast sense of self, values and what is right. By the end of most of her novels, the reader cannot choose a side and Picoult doesn't want the reader to take sides. She wants her readers to think and discuss and consider the other person's position.
Nineteen Minutes, Picoult's most recent novel, has an obvious villain who commits an unforgiveable crime, however, it will be a hard-hearted reader who doesn't sympathize a little with this character by the end of the story.
Pete Houghton has just walked into his high school and killed ten clasmates with a handgun and injured nineteen others. One survivor, Josie, was the only person to face down Peter and walk away. But why? Why did Peter shoot the students? Why did Josie live? This is a harrowing tale about the secret lives of high school students and how they can't trust the adults in their lives--even the those adults who love them the most and have sworn to protect them.
Readers who enjoyed Chris Bohjalian's Before You Know Kindness or Cafe of Stars by Jacquelyn Mitchard may also enjoy this novel.

Valedorktorian

2007-06-04T21:20:00.000-05:00

I couldn't wait to share I Love You, Beth Cooper. I laughed everywhere I read this book. On the bus, at home, in the coffee shop, at my desk when I should have been working. Larry Doyle has captured perfectly what it is like to be a brilliant 98 lb weakling among boneheaded 175 lb defensive ends.
The alternate title to this book could be "One Life-Changing Night in the Life of Denis Cooverman." It all starts at graduation. Debate geek/brainiac valedictorian Denis finally says everything he's pent up for four years--he accuses classmates of anorexia, snobbishness, meaningless violence due to low self-esteem and outs his best friend, Rich. Denis saves the best for first and professes his love for Beth Cooper from his academic pulpit. This admission sets in motion the most memorable night in Denis' short life. The girl of his dreams drops in at his house for an impromptu graduation party and then, along with her two best friends, takes Denis and Rich on a wild ride through every teenage degradation, delight and debauchery ever depicted on the silver screen. The humor is spot on and quotes from characters in classic teen movies open every chapter. Fans of Frank Portman's King Dork, last year's hot adult book for teens will enjoy this latest comic effort. Less flip than King Dork and a little less believable, I Love You, Beth Cooper is laugh out loud funny and realistic in its growth of Denis from fearful wimp to fed up hero. Of a sort.