me and earl and the dying girl. jesse andrews. (277)

i picked up me, and earl, and the dying girl, because there will be a panel about the movie based on it at bookcon.  but unlike the other ya novels that i have read for bookcon, i absolutely adored this one.  and if you are going to watch a movie based on a ya novel this summer, make it this one!  screw paper towns!  team me, and earl, and the dying girl!  i have to add that the movie did really well at sundance and nick offerman is in it!

so the novel.  i feel like i have read something with a similar premise or maybe saw a movie (?), but basically this novel is an admission letter by greg gaines (the me in the title) to explain why his grades went south his senior year of high school.  i love that novel ended with greg saying that he would not turn this book into a novel, but maybe that was jesse andrews way of saying that he wanted it to become a movie.  lol

i don't know what to write, other than you need to read it.  its a ya novel, so it shouldn't take you long.  and its sweet without being sappy.  i also loved the realness of the characters.  earl grew up in a troubled home with gangster brothers.  greg is a bit of a dick.  these kids are not goody two shoes but regular teens.  i also admired how it was very realistic with its dealing of leukemia.  i, for one, appreciated "the moron's guide to leukemia", because you always read about it, but never really know what it is.  also i loved that greg didn't know how to comfort rachel (the dying girl) except to make her laugh, because most of the times we don't know what to do in those situation.  it was nice to see greg struggle with that instead of always saying the right thing.  i know i for one am always lost for the right words though my heart is filled with good intentions.  greg struggling to comfort rachel was refreshing, he's a teenage boy, what does he know about death?

though i will add that i was shocked how abruptly rachel died, but i guess that is how it is.  also her death wasn't stretched out but the again, this was greg's story, not hers.  and like novel warned us, this wasn't like other books that deal with cancer and teens.

and of course, i loved their movies!  i did have to look up most of them online. i have to admit that i have no desire to see aguirre, the warth of god that did not look interesting to me, but to each his own.  this part of the novel reminded me of michel gondry's  be kind rewind.  as i read about their remakes, i had visions of mos def and jack black remaking movies. 

i also loved the different forms of writing that andrews used, ie the stage directions and dialogue, the bullet points in that one chapter.

i really enjoyed this book and wish that it was around in high school.  and out of all the ya novels i read for bookcon, i have to say this may have been the best.

paper towns. john green. (276)

i decided to read paper towns, because there is a panel discussion about it at bookcon.  i think it conflicts with a panel i actually want to see, but decided to read it, just in case i catch the panel.  i should also add that i think the panel is for the film based on the book.

so i read, watched, and loved the fault in our stars, however, the same can not be said for paper towns.  to be completely honest, they shouldn't have turned it into a movie.  the storyline is not that interesting and the characters are not as likable.  plus i just watched the trailer and it looks horrible.  maybe its because i know the ending, but it seems like a lot of hype for a lame ending.  

and i need to read the rest of his books, but if the rest of his books are like paper towns, it might be safe to say that green is a one hit wonder.

paper towns is like the poor man's the virgin suicides.  the obsessive neighbor, untoucable free spirited girl, but no interesting chronicles of her life and definitely none of the deep and insightful coming of age knowlege.

the novel is told from the point of view of q .  he has spent his life, all 17 years of it (i think), admiring and loving his neighbor margo roth spiegelman from afar.  they used to be best friend, their defining moment of friendship was when they found a dead body at age 9.  margo became a popular party girl while q became a nerd that hung out with band kids.  i am not hating, q and i would have ran in the same circles, if we went to high school together.  i liked his friend radar especially due to its obsession with updating a wikipedia-esque website, but ben was annoying and i would have hated him in real life.

any hoot, margo discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her and goes on this crazy revenge spree and enlisted the help of q.  margo gave q a talk about paper towns and how people are fake and not as the appear. the next day she disappeared.

q was worried that she committed suicide (i have to admit by the end i wish that she had.) he believed that she left him clues to find her.  it started with a woody guthrie picture (quick sidenote as i was reading about guthrie's poster and his guitar that read "this machine kills facists." i was like where have i read that? and i remember that steve martin's memoir mentioned it as well.) and leads him to developments that were never completed.

q did a lot of bad searching for margo, seriously how did he not realize that those holes in the wall were left by marks on a map?!?! he spent a lot of time overanalyzing leaves of grass, i love whitman but green was trying to hard there.  q discovered he is capable

of being adventurous, realized he put margo on a pedestal.  oh and he missed out on alot of partying before graduation.

in the end, he learned (and i did as well, maybe the only great thing to happen from reading this) that a paper town was a fake town that map makers made up and placed on maps to discover copyright infringement.  and on a paper town near nyc, there was a post about the population being one until some date.  which turned out to be the day after graduation, but since it took 22 hours to drove, q missed his graduation.

q and his friends (btw another big critique is that it lacey and ben as a couple happened really quickly!) go on a road trip.  and though fun, they were really geeky about it, i mean really would teens be that good about planning to the minute?

anyway, they found margo.  she didn't commit suicide but she was a bitch.  she and q resolved life, realizing that they both cared for these ideas of each other but not that actual person.  it was supposed to be deep but i felt like green was trying to hard.

in the end, i was disappointed by the ending, because after all of q's effort, margo was still a beezy.  and i know they talked it out but still it seemed like a big waste of time.  though i guess q did grow as a person.

all in all, this book was lame.

fangirl. rainbow rowell. (275)

i remembering judging fangirl, which i first read as fanggirl, by it's cover. the color and the cute illustration made me think i should read. however, the fan in fangirl reminded me of fan fiction (and it suppose to do just that!), and i was like i'm not going to read fan fiction book.

what changed my mind is that rainbow rowell will be at bookcon and discussing fangirl, so i decided to read it.

i was surprised by how much i actually enjoyed this, even though it was cheesy at times!

cather is the fangirl at the center of this story, and all of the ups and downs of her first year of college.  the first challenge for cather was finding her own identity sans her twin sister, wren.  (yes, their mom took catherine and made it into two names, i have to admit i like cather like willa).  wren was the hotter and more assertive twin and due to this became the party animal.  there was some alcohol issues that arose and the sisters grew apart but wren gets her shit together and they make up in the end.  i have to add that reading about cather's first year and how she judged her sister made me realize what a mess i was my college years but hey i got good grasses and always made it to class.  i found a good balance between my partying and studying!

cather also had to deal with family stuff.  their dad was crazy, i mean i read about his idea for a firemen's pole and was like what the heck is wrong with him.  and of course there was an issue.  but that got resolved.  also the girls' mother left when they were young and had to work through all that.  i understood cather's hatred of her mother, i never hated my dad but i did want nothing to do with him when he started to reach out to me.

of course, there are boys!! i for once knew that nick was going to be a cheat! i mean there was foreshadowing but i still want to feel smart about it.

cather's boyfriend, levi, was so sweet but i mean do college boys like him exist?!?! maybe i just went after the wrong type of guy. lol. i will say the whole roommate's ex things was weird and i would have never done that in college.  it was also funny to read about cather dealing with her sexual desires and just wanting to touch him.  i was not that innocent in college and moved at a way quicker pace then her. god! i was such a floozy in comparison. lol. also their whole getting off on the fan fiction was even too nerdy for me!  but i mean 50 shades of grey is prove that people get off on it!

so the fan fiction!  cather wrote fan fiction based on a wizard named simon snow which is of course based on harry potter.  harry potter is named dropped as to kind of make it seem like it's not based on him but ya know.  simon's archenemy is a vampire, baz, and in her fan fiction, cather makes them gay! cather has a huge fan base, but her fan fiction affects her writing in college, but she gets all of that sort out in the end as well.  people's judgey-ness about fan fiction was addressed, but i still don't see it as a legit form of writing.  i mean people love it, but its not for me.

and before i close loved the idea of emergency kanye dance party!

oh and one last thing!  i had no idea that kansas had such a big mexican population.  i was surprised to read all about cather's hs boyfriend being mexican and his mom making delicious tres leche cake.  also wren's college boyfriend was Mexican, though i have never heard of an alejadrano, going by jandro.  and i was even more surprised by all the taco trucks, cather and her dad ate at! 

okay this is the last thing.  i really need to read outsiders, cather and levi made out after she read it to him.

all in all, a sweet story.  a great book for first years! reminded how roommate meals were a great bonding experience.  a bit cheesy but a good read for young adults!

ms. marvel. wilson alphona. (274)

ms. mavel has been on my radar for a while.  i considered buying it, because i wasn't too sure if the library had it, but they did!  i have to admit that i know nothing about the marvel universe.  i haven't see any of the recent marvel movies (i am a movie snob and only watch things with actors or directors, i love or if like it did really well at sundance.)  so i am confused as to how another superhero shows up when i google ms. marvel.  can someone please explain this to me?

to start, i love love love the premise of ms. marvel.  the real identity of ms. marvel is kamala, a muslim teenager.  she has strict parents and doesn't always agree with some of the more sexist aspects of islam (also the bacon restriction) but her desire to do good, is fueled from the koran, which is nice to see.  and being a girl of color, i of course love seeing a girl of color as a superhero!

however, my love for her kind of stops there.  i didn't enjoy the stories in the comic as much as i thought i would.  i guess i had an issue with who is going to clean up all of the messes that she made?  like at school, who is going to pay for all of that?  and how is the bodega owner going to be cool with his store being damaged.

and i know that this is all kind of getting to know my super powers and stuff, but i didn't get what her power was.  morphing right?  i also kind of felt she shouldn't have rushed into the saving like she did, but glad that she did.  and i mean she is getting better, so hopefully the storylines will get better too.

all in all, i am happy that she is in the marvel universe, but hope she has more interesting stories.

also i think she would make a cute halloween costume!  i should make that happen! but it would be this first attempt at a costume with a fanny pack that i go for!

namedropper. emma forrest. (273)

for 2015, i decided to do book riot's "read harder" challenge.  one of the challenges is to read a book that someone wrote when they were under the age of 25.  lucky for me, flavorpill had a post about authors who published great books before the age of 25.  this is how i discovered emma forrest and namedropper.  the flavorpill blurb nameddropped tavi gevinson and lena dunham and so of course i had to read this.  furthermore, it mentioned that the book came out when forrest was being called "the teenage 'voice of her generation'".

i have to say that if i read this back in 1998, i would have been obsessed with emma forrest and namedropper.  i really wish i would have found it in high school, like i stumbled upon blake nelson's girl.  i mean the cover would have won me over.  oh well.  adult me read it and loved it, but not as much as teenage me would have.

namedropper follows the life of teenager viv cohen.  viv was obsessed with old hollywood, best friends with a druggy hot girl, treena, and an aging pop star, ray, and was raised by her gay uncle.  (i would have loved to have been raised by a gay uncle!)  the heart of the story is one night, she met the opening act for ray, a boy named drew, his band named "kindness of strangers" (which is cute now that i think about it. lol) viv and i have the same taste in men because i would have been all about drew.  scrawny, pale kid, artsy, bookish, into things from the past and depressed.  i imagined conor oberst as i read. lol.  after a lovely evening, in which viv falls in love.  drew winds up missing and she decided to go on a search for him.

  

viv and ray go on a hunt for drew, but the end result was that viv discovered her night with drew was nothing special for the desk girl at the hotel had a similar night as well. 

but life is not sad for too long, because ray invited her and treena to los angeles with him while he promoted his new album in the states. maybe i was smarter than average bear, but i knew that treena and ray were fucking. i knew the second he left viv on the drew hunt.  anyway, i felt bad for viv cos i have been in that awkwardness before.  but it wasn't that bad, because viv had her adventure with the lead singer of ray's rvial band.  i wish there love affair would have lasted, but it had to end.  he had a girlfriend.  also i like uncle many was pissed about tattoos.

so that is a run down of the story, which was enjoyable.  i, of course, loved the bit about hollywood.  i have to add that it made me sad that i never visited the rocky and bullwinkle gift shop that viv mentioned.  i googled the dudley-do right emporium and it closed in 2005 and i was in la during the time.  i used to always take the  bus down sunset to the greyhound so i know i passed it but it didn't strike a cord in me.  i definitely got drunk on sunset too.  i googled and looked at pics, and it looked vaguely familiar, but i could just want the memory.

so as i said, i would have been obsessed with this book, if i was a teen, because i would have loved reading about her fun adventures with bands.  but what made me love this book now was all of the witty writing.  here is some of my favorite:

from their black miss haversham clothes, i guessed the former.  (i love the description of the goth wear!)

my moods are the equivalent to madonna's dancing:  inappropriate but all-out. 

tears sprung in my eyes, like russian ballet stars.

she looked like a quentin blake illustration in a roald dahl book.  (so cute right?)

all in all, a delightful book, which i recommend if you love tavi and lena.  oh and i have to add, it totally made me crave salt and vinegar crisps, which viv ate and so of course after reading, i had to do!

                                                                                                         

the purple coat. amy hest. amy schwartz. (272)

in honor of children's book week, i decided to check out one of my favorite books as a kid, the purple coat. in my memory serves me correct, i saw the purple coat on reading rainbow and had to have it!  i have a copy, which i think i may still own (hopefully it's in storage).

before i start, doesn't that look like tim gunn hosting mini project runway?

the purple coat tells the story of a little girl, gabrielle.  she needed a new coat for the fall and since her grandfather is a tailor in the city, he makes one especially for her.  quick note, love that penn station gets some love in this book (poor neglected station.)

gabby wanted a purple coat, but her mom said no.  every year, a navy coat is made for her.  however, her grandpa came up with the idea to make a reversible coat!  one side purple and the other navy, so that everyone is happy!

and yes, i always wanted a reversible coat after i read this as a kid.