I’ve read more books lately than I can conceivably write comprehensive reviews for – mid-semester exams loom and study is what I should be doing. So I’ll make it quick… Continue reading
Tag Archives: young adult
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
I think I said I wasn’t going to make a habit of literary mix tapes… I don’t think a third book review by way of music clips within a month is a habit…
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt is a wonderful book. There are dozens of reviews on Goodreads, nearly all glowing, and with good reason. There’s a gentleness and a naivety to this story that will stay with me. Add in a ‘New York in the eighties’ setting and beautifully explored themes of sibling relationships, loyalty and grief, and you’ve got yourself a great read. 4/5
Private Eyes by Hall & Oates (a little too literal? Perhaps, but an eighties classic).
“Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can’t let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don’t want you to see.” Continue reading
‘The Whole of My World’ by Nicole Hayes
It’s interesting that I had two books at the top of my reading stack about women and footy. One was Anna Krein’s Night Games and the other, The Whole of My World by Nicole Hayes. I picked up Hayes first, partly because I committed to reading some of the ARCs that I had been kindly given access to but also because I suspected the Krein would be confronting reading (and I wasn’t in the mood for that at the time).
It’s worth noting that although this book is aimed at the young-adult market, the issues that it covers are anything but light. Instead, expect characters dealing with grief; the difficulties of finding your place in a group (regardless of age); the lure of celebrity fame; and that tightrope between being a kid and an adult.
The Whole of My World is the story of Shelley, a teenage girl obsessed with Australian Rules football. Despite being robbed of the opportunity to play, Shelley lives and breathes footy, analysing every part of Glenthorn’s game, watching the replay with her dad, clipping newspaper articles about Glenthorn and going along to local games to watch her childhood friend, Josh, play. Continue reading
Australia’s greatest game… Books for the footy season
This is what’s at my front door this week.
Yes, it’s footy season. That special time when my weekends are planned around junior football. In a new family best, we have six separate footy commitments in the weekly schedule, not including trying to get to see these guys:
I enjoy watching it (preferably Carlton but I have been known to attend any old game) and I particularly love watching my own kids play, whether it be a match or kick-to-kick in the backyard.
I also don’t mind reading about footy. Honestly, I don’t get into the Herald-Sun’s weekly 80-page football lift-out but I don’t mind a football theme in a story. I have four on my winter to-be-read list: Continue reading
My Teenage Dream – to be a Ghost Writer for Sweet Valley High
The covers and titles are so familiar that I can still recite them… How is it that I retained nothing I was taught in Year 12 chemistry but still remember the ins and outs of the lives of the Wakefield twins? Continue reading
‘Eleanor & Park’ by Rainbow Rowell
First loves… The eighties… How could I not just want to read this book straight away? (No, it had nothing to do with a certain boy named Robert who broke my heart in 1987. I’m over it, really. Barely remember his name. Truly.)
Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell is the story of two misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but willing to try.
Eleanor is a red-haired, slightly plump girl who wears ‘alternative’ clothing out of necessity – safety pins and men’s shirts may have been de rigueur for some but Eleanor’s family has little money and are at the mercy of their drunk, abusive step-father. In contrast, Park comes from a hunky-dory-apple-pie-good family. He’s half Korean, half Anglo-American and living in a town where Asian is unusual.
Rowell captures the intensity of first love perfectly – the anticipation, the awkwardness and that particular way that time speeds up and then slows down when your day revolves around moments with another person. Snatched encounters in the corridor, notes in text books and the dissection and analysis of every thing the person says. Continue reading
‘The Fault in Our Stars’ by John Green
Is there any point in me writing a review of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green? It’s a fantastic book and (at last count) 95,620 people on Goodreads also thought it was a fantastic book. Of those 95,620 people, a massive 16,906 of them took the time to write a review! Need I say more? Or write more? Probably not, so I’ll keep it brief.
The Fault in our Stars is the story of teenager Hazel, who was diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at age 13 and then given an experimental ‘miracle’ drug at 14 – not a cure but it shrunk her tumours. Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time, Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.
“Admittedly, my Cancer Miracle had only resulted in a bit of purchased time. (I did not yet know the size of that bit.)”
Enter Augustus Waters. Hazel and ‘Gus’ meet at a cancer kid support group. Gus is gorgeous, in remission and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel – “Flirting was new to me, but I liked it.”
All sounds rather grim, doesn’t it?! But this is not, as Hazel might say, a Cancer Book. The kids are real – including throwing the odd tantrum, acknowledging that their lives suck, using ‘Cancer Perks’ when they can and watching America’s Next Top Model marathons. Continue reading
‘Messy’ by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Hot on the heels of reading Spoiled, I’ve indulged in a little more lighter-than-fairy-floss fluff from the Fuggirls (aka Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan) with their latest release, Messy.
Messy continues with the characters introduced in Spoiled – Brooke Berlin, her half sister, Molly Dix, their movie star father, Brick Berlin, and a supporting cast of friends, frenemies and love interests.
Brooke decides that in order to keep her father’s attention and to further her acting career, writing a blog with the ‘inside word’ on everything from leggings to lunching is a fab idea. Brooke might not be the sharpest knife in drawer but she does recognise that between schoolwork, party-planning committee meetings and spa treatments, she hardly has the time to write it herself. Enter Max McCormack – an aspiring author, ‘weird girl’ at school, in need of cash and up to taking on the task of being Brooke’s ghost-blogger despite not knowing the difference between Converse and Choos.
“‘This is a writing job,” Brooke said. “If it were tweeting, I’d have called it a tweetographer. Brooke Berlin’s essence is bigger than a hundred and forty characters, so I’m going old school.'” Continue reading
‘Spoiled’ by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan
Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Martin (aka Go Fug Yourself) is written for the young adult market but if you’re a grown-up like me (one that understands Chuck and Blair MUST be together, and who knows who KStew and RPatz are) then Spoiled is a lovely bit of reading fluff, perfect for an afternoon in. Continue reading
‘Wonder’ by R. J. Palacio
I always say that if you want an accurate description of a person, ask a child. They don’t hold back on the detail – “He’s got a really, really big pointy nose, eyes that are a bit round but go down at the corners, a huge fat tummy…” But kids can also be mean. At a certain point, innocent descriptions or natural curiosity about people’s physical differences give way to deliberate and hurtful remarks. This is the basis for R. J. Palacio’s book, Wonder. Continue reading