All tagged Music

Recommendation Tuesday: Open Road Summer by Emery Lord

Recommendation Tuesday: Open Road Summer by Emery Lord

Sarah Moon
Books

Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. 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. 

I want to reach back into my history with a grade-school pink eraser, scrubbing away my decisions like mistakes on a math test. Too bad I drew my mistakes in ink.

This week I'm happy to recommend a debut contemporary YA novel, Open Road Summer by Emery Lord. If you're looking for a a summer-themed read that offers a bit more than you're expected, this is a great choice.

There are oodles of summer road trip stories and I've gotten pretty particular about them, as much as I enjoy road trip narratives as concept. Open Road Summer is a bit different, however. Instead of a quest sort of story, the narrator, Reagan, is tagging along with her best friend, Dee, on a very structured sort of road trip--Dee's first major tour as emerging country artist Lilah Montgomery. 

Reagan is not only grabbing the opportunity to spend time with her close friend who is rocketing to stardom, but to run away from a bad breakup and make changes in her life: No more partying, drinking or boys that are bad for her. She's a bit surly, and definitely not very forgiving of other people--I found Reagan infinitely relatable. 

Quick(ish) Thoughts on Four Recent(ish) YA Novels

Quick(ish) Thoughts on Four Recent(ish) YA Novels

Sarah Moon
Books

I've been disinclined to write extensively about young adult titles lately, despite that I've been reading quite a few recent releases. I do have a few I want to be sure to write about more extensively (particularly the final novel in Gabrielle Zevin's spectacular Birthright series), but I wanted to share my thoughts on a few I've read recently.

Being Sloane Jacobs by Lauren Morrill

Admittedly, I was nervous about reading Lauren Morrill's new novel, Being Sloane Jacobs. Lauren is one of the few authors I follow on my personal Twitter account and I enjoy her thoughts on publishing and tweets about being an extra on The Originals but I haven't read her debut, Meant to Be, and was worried that I wouldn't like her book. (I've had this happen before, enjoyed someone's online persona and their book didn't work for me--and I always fell badly about it.) 

Fortunately, my worries were completely needless, as I enjoyed Being Sloane Jacobs a bunch. The premise is essentially The Cutting Edge meets The Parent Trap, except without twins. Instead, we have two points-of-view, both girls named Sloane Jacobs. One is a stressed former competitive figure skater from a high-powered Washington, DC political family. The other Sloane Jacobs is a tough hockey player from Philadelphia with a bit of an anger problem.

 

Photo Essay: Seattle Field Trip (Maggie Stiefvater at University Bookstore Edition)

Photo Essay: Seattle Field Trip (Maggie Stiefvater at University Bookstore Edition)

Sarah Moon
Photo Essays

On Friday, we all piled into the car for a day trip to Seattle for Maggie Stiefvater's event at University Bookstore. 

Sure, Maggie was going to be in Portland the next day, but it was an appearance at Wordstock, and the organizers of that even couldn't be bothered to announce their schedule in a timely manner (and were not very friendly when asked for details about the schedule back in September), so we drove three hours instead. 

It's all good, though, because a trip to Seattle always means fun things like Backstreet Boys singalongs and the chance to kidnap the lovely Mindi Scott for some adventures. 

Since I don't write recaps as a matter of principle (said principle being that I try not to do things that bore me), I thought I'd share some snapshots from our day. 

Read the rest--> 

The Top Ten Lyrics from Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience

The Top Ten Lyrics from Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience

Sarah Moon
Listorama, Greatest Hits

One of my favorite things about running this blog is that as owner of said blog, I can write about whatever I damn well please.

In that spirit--and as a service to the world--today, I'm counting down the top ten best ​lyrics from Justin Timberlake's new album. ​Someone had to do it, right?

#10

And now it's clear as this promise
That we're making
Two reflections into one
Cause it's like you're my mirror
My mirror staring back at me, staring back at me
--Mirrors

Mirrors is kind of narcissistic if you analyze it literally, now that I think about it, but still... Anyway, I'm going to go with the belief that this is a song about Justin & Jessica and the idea of two halves of the same whole, yada yada. 

Bonus: This is a rare song which is better with the video--and not just because of the crazy dancing at the end.​

#9

C'mon and dance,
C'mon baby dance with me
Take my hand,
Get on the floor
C'mon baby dance with me
Please don't hold the wall
Please don't hold the wall tonight
We're gonna do it all,
So please don't hold the wall tonight
--Don't Hold the Wall

I'm conflicted. What do you do when Justin Timberlake encourages you to dance, dance? I mean, you'll never be able to match JT's moves, so that's a lot of pressure. However, I suspect that Justin also doesn't judge bad dancing, as long as you're feeling the music or what have you. ​

List-O-Rama: Let's Get Musical

List-O-Rama: Let's Get Musical

Sarah Moon
Listorama

This past week, I started and finished reading Jennifer Echols' July release, Dirty Little Secret (which is so, so good). I enjoyed so much about this book, but the stand-out element for me was the way music played such an important role in both the plot and in developing the characters. 

I'm kind of a doofus when it comes to music: I play the ukulele poorly and was a flutist in marching band in high school until I quit band to protest the ill-fitting polyester pants. (That was super-effective.) Because of my musical doofusness, I really admire people for whom music is so ingrained in their lives. I realized that as a result of that, I tend to gravitate to novels featuring music or musical people. Sometimes, much like books featuring sports, the music is just window dressing, but when it's feels real, it's so very good. 

Here are a twelve (!!!) of my recommendations for musically-infused novels you'll want to check out.​

Adios to My Old Life & When the Stars Go Blue by Caridad Ferrer

​Caridad Ferrer is one of my favorite authors you're probably not reading. Both Adios to My Old Life and When the Stars Go Blue are infused with passion for music and the arts in general. (Interestingly, both of these could easily be considered thematically as "new adult.") Adios to My Old Life is focuses on an American Idol-style singing competition, while Stars follows the structure of the opera Carmen and features an incredible touring marching band. 

Amazon | Goodreads

Review: The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding

Review: The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding

Sarah Moon
Books
We walk outside to the parking lot. Sunshine and blue skies. Again. I open my mouth to let her know about the name mistake, except that I really like the thought of being Devan Malcolm. And if I tell her, she’ll call up New City, get it fixed, and I’ll have to go back to being Devan Mitchell. And suddenly she’s the last person I want to be.

When just the right book comes along at just the right time, it's a real treat. Such is the case of Amy Spalding's debut, The Reece Malcolm List, which ticked so very many of my want-to-read boxes. 

Devan Mitchell finds herself suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar world when she's shipped to Los Angeles from a small town near St. Louis to live with the mother she never knew following the death of her father. Devan knew very little about her mother, aside from that she's a best-selling novelist who seemingly never had an interest in a relationship with her daughter.

When she arrives in L.A., Devan's world transforms. Always an accomplished singing and hardcore musical theater fan, she's enrolled in a private performing arts high school where rather than being the weird musical girl, she's kind of, well,normal. 

Devan chronicles the little bits of information she learns about her unusual mother in a notebook, while navigating her new, vibrant world. There's a bit of romance and a lot of unusual and realistic family issues explored in this memorable debut with a knock-out authentic teen voice. 

If I were to make a Devan-style list about The Reece Malcolm List, my review would look something like this...

Things I Love About The Reece Malcolm List

{Review} The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Laura
Books

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCourWhen we are young, we are whimsical dreamers.

Our parents and the adults in our lives encourage this fanciful mindset. They tell us that with hard work, we CAN INDEED be elected President of the USA, possibly even without winning the overall popular vote. We WILL INDEED see our favorite football team win the Super Bowl in our lifetime, since there’s no way they could possibly lose 4 years in a row.

But as we get older, we are encouraged to break up with our dreams in favor of “attainable goals”. Instead of President, what about Mayor’s administrative assistant? Instead of a Super Bowl win, how’s about rooting for a playoff berth? Scratch that. How’s about rooting for a .500 season? And so on.

About the same time we begin to realize that all the smizing practice in the world won’t make us skinny or tall enough to fulfill our dream of competing on America’s Next Top Model, we realize that we have to figure out what to do with ourselves with our limited 5’2” frames, we have no idea what that should be, and the combination scares us shitless, though we are loathe to admit as such.

Hence…

The Stages of Upper Middle Class Adolescence

{Review} Easy by Tammara Webber

{Review} Easy by Tammara Webber

Sarah Moon
Books

Ignore the icky cover—this one’s worth reading.

College was probably the time in my life that most influenced the sort of person I am as a “real adult.” (Note: Adulthood is highly overrated.) It’s where my mind was opened about the world beyond the U.S., where I discovered that Women’s Studies was a legit major and where I met my super-cute husband who also knows how to fix stuff around the house. 

Yet college remains an elusive setting in fiction.

Yes, it appears in high-brow literary fiction on occasion, but that’s not usually my wheelhouse. Young adult fiction is limited to high school settings and most adult fiction ignores this formative and interesting time. The only book I can think of in recent memory set in college is Charmed Thirds/Jessica Darling #3, which I dearly love. Oh, and Jennifer Echols’ Love Story, which was just an okay read for me. So, when Jane at Dear Author recommended Tammara Webber’s Easy as a good read set in college, I clicked “Buy Now” without even downloading a sample. 

Easy is set in a southern state college and follows Jacqueline through the first semester of her sophomore year. She’s at the state school despite being an excellent musician because that’s where her boyfriend of three years, Kennedy, decided to attend as a legacy. At the beginning of the novel, two things happen:

  1. Kennedy breaks up with Jacqueline; and
  2. One of Kennedy’s fraternity brothers, Buck, attacks and attempts to rape her in the parking lot after a frat party.

Jacqueline is saved from Buck by a senior who’s in her economics class (he’s always in the back of class, drawing in his sketchbook), Lucas. However, despite his protests, she doesn’t report the crime. She then starts seeing Lucas all over campus (he holds down several odd jobs to pay his way through school) and her roommate Erin (a character I was quite surprised that I liked so very much) encourages her to pursue Lucas as a bad boy rebound fling. At the same time, she’s assigned an economics tutor, Landon, because she missed two weeks of class and a midterm, with whom she starts a kind of, sort of, maybe flirtation over email.

While this makes it sound like easy is the story of Jacqueline finding a new boy, what Easy is really about is Jacqueline finding her way back to herself.

{I Love} Novels in Verse

Laura
I Love, Verse Week

I accidentally read my first novel-in-verse on February 29th, 2012. 

Sarah and I are book doppelgangers, so when she strongly recommended the book Love and Leftovers by Sarah Tregay, I blindly hit the one-click purchase button on Amazon and downloaded it to my Kindle without bothering to read the description.

By the time I realized that the book lacked any sort of prose, I was already mesmerized by the verse form. I was late to work that day because I sat in my car figuring out how to use the highlighting function on my Kindle for the first time.

Later, I almost forgot to pay for my lunch because I had finally figured out how to use the highlighting function on my Kindle and was frantically trying to highlight the entire book before the end of my lunch hour.

And THEN, I was fiendishly delighted that my SHO had to work late that evening because it allowed me to devour the rest of the book after I got home from work without interruption.

Now, of course you must be thinking (because you all know me so well and all),

But Laura! Of course you love novels-in-verse! You’re a piano player! And a singer! That means you love poetry! And novels-in-Verse are TOTALLY poetry!

Um. No.

Actually, I don’t “get” poetry. The word “poetry” has traditionally evoked a strong negative reaction from me.

{Review} Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony & Rodrigo Corral

Sarah Moon
Books

Chopsticks is probably best described as a graphic novel… sort of… about forbidden teenage love and mental illness.

But that’s not a particularly descriptive description.

Part scrapbook, part narrative, Chopsticks in an innovative approach to storytelling. This contemporary YA tells the story of Glory and Frank, next door neighbors that fall in love and are rapidly split apart by both distance and Glory’s father. Glory is a piano prodigy slowly descending into a dark world, where she’s only able to play Chopsticks on the piano and obsesses over Frank’s drawings. Frank is a gifted artist who’s failing out of his prestigious prep school. Chopsticks takes the reader through the couple’s tale in photo, snippets of IMs, YouTube video links, drawings and mementos from their relationship. 

Beyond the IMs and occasional scraps of paper with notes and lists, there are no words in Chopsticks.