Recommendation Roundup: Winter/Spring 2014-15
Well, I got a bit behind on, like, life, so I thought I'd bundle a few months of our recommended reads for you, rather than trying to catch up month-by-month.
I did a bit of re-reading over the last few months, which has been pretty fun. I think I will continue to revisit my favorites as a matter of course, because there's something enjoyable in revisiting a beloved story. We all read The Carnival at Bray for book club right before it was a Printz honoree and we all loved it so much, so if you haven't snagged that brilliant little book, do so!
As always, click on the cover for more information. If we have a review available, it will be noted.
Recommendation Tuesday: All The Rage by Courtney Summers
You know all the ways you can kill a girl?
God, there are so many.
Courtney Summers' new novel, All The Rage, is out today and it's a difficult, important book that you need to pay attention to.
Al The Rageis an indictment of a culture that shames and silences girls when they need support the most, that tells them that they are not valued; this is the culture that creates the Steubenvilles. (Let's be honest, Steubenville is not one place, it is everywhere.)
Recommendation Tuesday: Edgar Allen Poe's Spirits of the Dead by Richard Corben
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Richard Corben captures the gothic sensibility and the fears that plagued Edgar Allan Poe in his graphic representation of the great master’s work. Poe’s soulful poem Spirits of the Dead is a fitting title for Corben’s work.
Thy soul shall find itself alone
Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone ——
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
Giveaway & Mini Review: The Remedy by Suzanne Young
Suzanne Young's The Program and The Treatment duology is one of the most underrated series I've read. It's just so smart and insightful and just plain fascinating. And while that series closed with a very satisfying ending, I was thrilled when I learned that Suzanne was revisiting the world of the series with a prequel, The Remedy.
(Hint: Read this entire post--there's an awesome giveaway sponsored by Simon & Schuster happening too!)
Stream-It Saturday: Bloodline (Netflix)
In my continuing selfless service to the world (ahem), I'm always looking for the next awesome thing to stream. And, of course, I must share my finds with you fabulous folks. Hence, Stream-It Saturday.
Check out all my previous recommendations over here.
Have you binge-watched Bloodline on Netflix yet? No?! What is wrong with you? Isn't your life missing dysfunctional family fun voiced-over by Kyle Chandler?
Recommendation Tuesday: Trade Me by Courtney Milan
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Have I ever told you guys what prompted me to pick up my first Courtney Milan book?
Obviously I'd heard of her, but I didn't decide to read one of her novels until one date I was screwing around on Tumblr (as one does) and accidentally tapped on the notes link on the bottom of a Tumblr post from one of the many Australian Shepherd Tumblrs I follow and noticed that the person who'd like the post of a cute Aussie puppy was Courtney Milan. Obviously, this was important information! A quite look at Courtney's Twitter feed told me that yes indeed she shares her life with one of these wacky dogs too. So, I picked up one of her books, even though historicals set in England aren't usually my cup of tea and enjoyed it.
And this, my friends, is why book marketing is such a tough nut to crack.
Friendship, Diversity and Adventure in Stacey Lee's Under a Painted Sky
A fantastic historical novel is a special thing--and I sometimes feel like it's a unicorn situation. The last historical novel I loved (that wasn't a verse novel) was Jennifer Donnelly's luminous A Northern Light and that was quite awhile ago.
Fortunately, Stacey Lee's debut young adult historical novel about two girls on the Oregon Trail in the early 1800s, Under a Painted Sky, landed in my mailbox at just the right time, as it was the historical novel I've been looking for for ages and ages.
Father always said, If you cannot be brave, then imagine you are someone else who who is. So I imagine myself as him, my optimistic father, whose steps never wavered, whose face never hid in shadows. Lifting my chin, I march after Andy as if my cares were few and my outlook, golden.
Under a Painted Sky starts off with a bang, with narrator Samantha--a skilled violinist of Chinese descent--being left with no choice but to flee her Missouri town. Dashed are her dreams of moving back to New York and pursuing a music career.
Review: Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose
Caroline Starr Rose brings a historical mystery to life in her beautifully crafted novel in verse, Blue Birds.
It is 1587 and 117 English men, women and children are left on the lush island of Roanoke near the shores of what is now Virginia.They expected fertile soil and friendly people. They were not disappointed in the land. But, the friendly Native people had become understandably jaded. The English who came before them brought disease and death to their island.
Guest Post: Caroline Starr Rose on Young Readers and the Magic of Verse Novels
Today I'm thrilled to welcome to Clear Eyes, Full Shelves novelist Caroline Starr Rose, author of the critically-acclaimed May B and a new novel, Blue Birds, both middle grade historical novels in verse.
I posed this question to her: Some of my favorite verse novels are in the middle grade category--why do you think the verse format works so well for young readers? And she had a great answer for me!
Young readers are still open minded. They haven’t been around long enough to decide they don’t like a certain writing style before trying it. While I’ve heard adults talk about how strange a verse novel looks on the page and feels as reading material, I’ve never heard a kid say this.
Listorama: 11 Books for the Younger YA Crowd
This week, Middle Grade and YA author Lisa Schroeder* made couple of great observations on Twitter about the importance of books that bridge the gap between younger readers and the upper young adult books that have a high crossover appeal to adults.
Adult crossover appeal is huge in the YA market at the moment (though I question this on some level, since the numbers aren't as huge as we're lead to believe), so it makes sense that these are the books that get attention, especially in the online reviewing world. But Lisa's comment got me thinking about that space in 7th, 8th, 9th grade where there's definitely a gap in terms of attention to the appeal of that audience in online reviews. So, I thought it would be useful to put together a list. (Please add your recommendations in the comments, if you're so inclined.)
And thanks to Lisa for helping with some suggestions!
In Which I Attempt to Discuss the Importance of Girl Before a Mirror by Liza Palmer...
We are women. And we can be the person we want to be, not the version you wish we were.
You know how some things--whether they're books, movies, television show or whatever--that just work their way into your heart and don't let go? The things that become a part of you? That's the way I feel about Liza Palmer's books--every single one of them, each in a special way.
I loved Nowhere But Home because it filled that omnipresent FNL-shaped hole in my heart; More Like Her for its perfect final scene; A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents for its clear-eyed depiction of family; Seeing Me Naked is just a damn good book; and Conversations with a Fat Girlis laugh out loud hilarious.
Her latest, Girl Before a Mirror, just might edge out the rest as my favorite.
Listorama: 10 Favorite Fictional Couples
It’s been ages since I’ve posted one of my beloved “List-o-Rama” posts, and I can’t for the life of me recall why I quite creating them. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d revitalize Listorama and bring a few of my favorite fictional couples.
Some of these are from straight up romances, while others are from novels with significant or memorable romantic elements. No worries, though, all of these picks have either a happy ever after or a happy for now ends--no one gets hit by a bus at the end in an attempt to make the novel appear to have more literary significance.
The Official 2014 Clear Eyes, Full Shelves List of Awesome
Each year, we here at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves put together a list of books that stood out to us over the last twelve months as particularly full of awesome.
You can find previous installments linked in our Reading Lists section right over here.
Review: First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
She couldn’t change who she was, and she no longer wanted to, even if she could. She knew that who you are is a stone set deep inside you. You can spend all your life trying to dig that stone out, or you can build around it. Your choice.
In Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells, Sydney Waverley came home to Bascom, North Carolina with her own stone embedded deep inside her. She escaped a dangerous relationship to return to her family and to her roots. She brought her daughter, Bay, to her family home where both relished a newly found security. Syndney Waverely begins building her world around her family’s heritage and the love of her life, Henry. Garden Spells wove this beautiful tale of the Waverley with sheer elegance.
The unexpected sequel, First Frost, picks up the story’s thread with the family settled and waiting for the first frost of fall and what it may bring.
Recommendation Tuesday: The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing by C.K. Kelly Martin
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Quiet books aren't the trend right now, but they're still my favorites.
One of the real masters of quiet YA novels is C.K. Kelly Martin, who's been writing for a long time, but is deserving of far more acclaim and attention than she receives. So, it's no surprise that her latest, The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, is another excellent, subtle novel that fans of contemporary YA shouldn't miss.
Stream It Saturday: Manhattan (TV)
In my continuing selfless service to the world (ahem), I'm always looking for the next awesome thing to stream. And, of course, I must share my finds with you fabulous folks. Hence, Stream-It Saturday.
Check out all my previous recommendations over here.
Manhattan is the little show no one heard of when it debuted last year on WGN. The drama is set in 1940s Los Alamos, New Mexico and focuses on both family life in this weird little outpost and the professional drama among the scientists working on the Manhattan Project.