Funny books

Where are all the funny books? What -- people don't like to laugh anymore? And teens, in particular. I mean, have you read any teen fiction lately? It's all about angst, abuse, and anger. I just read Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt. It's a Newbery Honor book and a Printz Honor book, and there are 5 deaths in it, including two father figures and a best friend. Geez, you think maybe we could all just lighten up a little?

So, here is my list of books that are actually fun to read:
First, since I picked on him, is Gary D. Schmidt's newest book, The Wednesday Wars. It's great. It's funny and smart and has a boy protagonist. Eleven-year-olds and up should enjoy this story about how one kid starts to make sense of the world in 1968.

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex is also great fun. Tip and her alien friend J.Lo (he just likes the sound of it so he gave himself the name) take a road trip across America in the wake of an alien invasion. Also for eleven-and-up.

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchit, is brilliant! Tiffany Aching is smart and self-assured, with a good head for cheese and a great vocabulary. She is also overwhelmed by a tribe of 6-inch-tall wild men who want to help her save the world.

For adults, Good Omens, also by Terry Pratchit with Neil Gaiman, is a total hoot. It's time for the Apocalypse, but somehow the Anti-Christ has gotten misplaced. Someone's head's going to roll over that, I can tell you!

And doggone-it -- read Pride and Prejudice! It is the ultimate romantic comedy. Cute young woman meets handsome man; gross misunderstanding at the beginning; tentative friendship derailed by obnoxious friends and relatives; ends in wedding bells. Nora Ephron couldn't have done it better! Jane Austen is the snarkiest!

Well, that gets us started anyway. What are your picks for when you just need a good laugh?

One Ugly Book

Okay, I haven't been tagged by someone and forced to reveal ten things about myself that no one else knows, but here are two things you should know in order to understand this post.

1. I love, love, love post-apocalyptic fiction.

2. I hate, hate, hate sloppy writing and certain grammatical errors. So, although I took home Scott Westerfeld's Uglies with great anticipation, because it portrays a world in which everyone gets an extreme makeover on their sixteenth birthday and goes to live in a special, super-groovy place, my hopes were soon dashed.

My first 'uh-oh' occurred when I read this little inscription: "This novel was shaped by a series of e-mail exchanges between myself and Ted So-and-So ..." AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH! First of all, you never come first, the other person does. Second, it's 'me', not 'myself'. That usage has become almost ubiquitous, but it's wrong. The sentence should read: "This novel was shaped by a series of e-mail exchanges between Ted and me..."

Go ahead, call me petty. Or point out that I used 'their' to modify 'everyone' instead of 'his or her'. And then tell me you couldn't do better than New Pretty Town, the name of the super-groovy place the newly-pretty sixteen-year-olds go to. I managed to get through a few chapters before exercising my option to put down any book that just plain annoys me.

I know this series is hot, hot, hot. Good on ya, Scott Westerfeld. I'll keep buying your books as my students ask for them. But as for me (not myself), I'd rather read The Boxcar Children.

Tamora Pierce

Yay, Mrs. Brown and Lindi for keeping the dream alive. Let's keep on posting.

I'm focusing right now on fiction that features strong girls/women but that aren't romances. I'm not interested in coupledom at the moment. The Tiffany Aching books are great for that. I'm just finishing Wintersmith, and although it's not as laugh-out-loud funny as Wee Free Men, I think it's in many ways more thought-provoking.

I haven't been a big Tamora Pierce fan, but she certainly writes about non-romantic heroines. I just read the mammoth Terrior, the first of the Beka Cooper series (others haven't been published yet, but are planned). I don't care for the violence in this book, but I admired the tough young woman Beka (who is an ancestor of Alanna), persevering in her need to find the perpetrator of a series of child murders.

Teach Me

Teach Me
by R.A. Nelson is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Lately, I've been trying to rekindle my passion for books and find any kind of material that will pull me in and suck me under to the point where reality seems like the story and the book seems like reality. This book did just that. From the moment I picked it up, I was hooked. The story is a little bit riskay but sweet and gripping. Carolina "Nine" decides to take a poetry class her last term of her senior year. In this class she learns about love, obsession and Emily Dickinson from her incredibly handsome teacher, Mr. Mann.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is craving a little romance, forbidden or not. Although this book drags out, it is lengthy in a good way. It leaves one happy that the story continues past the alloted time consumed by the affair.

Tiffany Aching

I just finished Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett and loved it! Funny? Oh yes, this is truly hilarious stuff! This title is the third of his three Discworld novels which feature Tiffany Aching, a young cheesemaker and witch-in-training, in cahoots with the Nac Mac Feegle, a race of 6-inch-tall men who are blue. Now whether that is because their skin is blue or because they are so heavily tattooed is uncertain. (No one really wants to look too closely at a Feegle as they are pretty ugly, nor do you want to ask a Feegle. You would likely be attacked, and believe it or not, a Feegle attack would be fierce and chaotic. The noise alone can stop a grown man. You see, they all use different battle cries and ... oh perhaps I'm getting distracted.) Anyway, the humor catches you and drags you in, and then -- kapowie! Pratchett sneaks in his ideas about what constitutes wisdom and bravery and living a life of integrity.

The Wee Free Men
Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith

All three are highly recommended. I mean HIGHLY!! recommended.

Saving Francesca

I was recently recommended a book by Lisa called "Saving Francesca". I checked it out yesterday and finished it EARLY this morning. It's written by an Australian author and it's about a girl called Francis (frankie) whose just transfered from an all girls school, to a recently converted co-ed high school. Francesca at first may appear dull and act the way I'd be ashamed to act (no opinion or personality), but later the reader realizes that she does have an opinion but she keeps it to herself.
Throughout the book, she developes new opinions, renews old friendships, and as I reader, by the end of the book, I sympathized with her.
I'll return this soon to the library, so try it out if you get around to it.

Summer Reading

Now that i actually have time to post stuff here...

weee, summer is here and passing before my eyes faster than i would like, with less time for reading than one would think...

Anyways i just read this very intersting book called Warriors of Alavna by N.M. Browne about two kids, Dan and Ursula, (who live somewhere in england) getting pulled into the past (or analternate reality of the past), to the time of the Celts and the Romans. The book (surprisingly) does not dwel overly much on their desire to get back to their own time (but obviously this is something the two kids worry about), instead it covers their adventures there in the time they have found themselves in. It is a fun book to read (though it does have some very STRANGE concepts in it, one in particular...).

I have also been reading a lot of Fruits Basket and other manga. (more on the manga) Ultra Maniac was a short series, but it was cute and fun. I still love to read Full Moon o Sagashite over again. the second book in Vampire Knight ( a rather bloody and dark series) has recently come out and the second book in The Gentlemen's Alliance is also out now, Gentlemen's Alliance is a series by the same woman that did Full Moon, not having to do with magic, but focuses on the life of a girl in a school for very wealthy kids (her family is rich also) and her search for and obtaining of the boy she fell in love with some years ago.

Another book i read recently is called The Light-Bearer's Daughter by O.R. Melling. It is the third book in a series of loosly connected books called the Chronicles of Faerie. The books in this series can each usually be read by themselves and not in any particular order, though it may be less confusing if you read them in the order written which is:
The Hunter's Moon
The Summer King
The Light-Bearer's Daughter

The Light-Bearer's Daughter is about a young girl named Dana, she lives in Ireland and her mother dissapeared with no warning when she was small. Her father has now been offered a job in Canada (where he was born, though his family is from Ireland) and Dana really doesn't want to move because if they do, how will her mother find them again. This is where the Faeries come in, a faerie woman comes to Dana asker for her help with something (i wont say what) and in return offers Dana a wish, any wish. And so Dana runs away from home and embarks on her adventures to help the faerie and in return, find her mother. Basically.

Thats all for now.

-Myri Hale