Sick in the Real World

Hey peoples, this is RR reporting from.. well, who are we kidding, I'm not actually going to tell you.
I am sick. Have been since six this morning. Lotsa ickiness. But I have had a lot of spare reading time on m'hands. Since I woke up, I've completed the following list:

SICKY PERSON TO DO LIST
(Special Holiday Edition - oh, yeah. Christmas book review coming up soon.)

1. Watched Bad-but-Good TV show. (CHARMED, what! Power of Three! Prue! Piper! Phoebe!)
2. Brushed teeth. (Oh, the forbidden luxury. Ya gotta be sick to truly understand how delicious clean teeth are.)
3. Eaten candy canes. (Yummmm.... best candy ever. Also, these are stale. Chewy. Freaking awesome...)
4. Read Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork. (I read fast.)


So, moving on from my general ick factor, a review!
Marcelo in the Real World! By Francisco X. Stork!
Marcelo Sandoval is that around seventeen, and he's labeled as autistic, even though he does not technically fit under the Umbrella of Autism (or so the book says). He's fairly high-functioning, enough so that when his father demands he enroll at the regular high school in the fall or work at his law firm's office for the summer, it's not crazy hard for Marcelo to adapt to the routines of the office. At first, he starts off in the mail room, working under (get yer minds outta tha gutter!) Jasmine, an apparently gorgeous girl (Marcelo doesn't get "hot" or "beautiful" or even "remotely good-looking", so we have to rely on hearing how horny Dad's Partner's Jerky Son is for Jazzy). Then one day, Marcelo finds a picture in the trash - his father's firm is defending a company being sued for their windshields injuring people when they break, instead of shattering into millions of tiny, safe pieces as advertised. The picture is of a girl, of Hispanic descent, with half a face. The other half of her face is shrunken, burnt, and deformed. Marcelo connects with the picture, and the girl in it, and starts to investigate, wanting help her.
Jasmine was pretty much what I expected: callous, but reasonable, nice but not in a romantic or touchy-feely way.
Marcelo was okay. Kind of hard to connect with, but it was hard to tell if he was written that way on purpose as a symptom of his personality, or if the writing was just a little off.
I'm glad I read it - it was a nice distraction from Ickiness. But I have to say that I don't actually remember a heck of a lot of the plot, the legal stuff wasn't engaging enough, and several plot pieces felt like they never got picked up again. A one-time read, for sure.

Yours from the front line of the Holiday Ick War,
Radical

I am Le Messenger

Okay. So a couple days ago I was wasting time Googling things WHEN - I saw this link for a list of teen romance novels. Yes, yes it sounds bad. Lots of pimply sexual tension and kissing. But this was some Serious List Action.
And so I naturally reserved everything on it, because it actually looked pretty legit.
So the first book off the list I got from the beautiful, bountiful downtown library was I am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak. It's quite possibly one of the coolest and most frustrating books I have ever read.

COOL THINGS ABOUT I AM THE MESSENGER:
1. It is set in Australia. I challenge you to find Australia uncool.
2. The main character is named Ed Kennedy. Ed. Kennedy. I don't know why his name is neat-sounding, it just it.
3. Ed Kennedy (Zoh My God, I figured it out: His first name is in his last name. Maaaadness!) is an underage cab driver. (I guess you have to be twenty to drive "cabs" in Oz.) He's nineteen.
4. The book starts off when he and his friends are in a bank. And it is being robbed. Bank robberies do, in reality, suck, but in theory they are cool.
5. Ed is sent Mysterious Messages written on playing cards, specifically aces.
6. The messages lead him to find people who need to be helped.
7. There's a party in a church. A legit party, with music and free beer.

FRUSTRATING THINGS ABOUT I AM THE MESSENGER:
1. There is actually only one thing I found really frustrating: The ending.
Throughout the book, Ed et al are all "Who is sending these f*#&ing cards". And they do find out.
KIND OF.

The first time I read the ending, I was literally like: "WHAT THE F@*%, THIS ANSWERS NONE OF MY QUESTIONS THIS BOOK SUCKS SO MUCH ASS!!!"

Then I took a chill pill and read it again.
And again.
And again.

And I have come to the revelation that *even* if the ending is a LITTLE BIT OF A COP OUT (are you  listening to the Mind Messages I am sending you, Mark Zusak? Yeah, I thought so), this is still one of the coolest books I have read in a long, long time.
The characters all actually seemed like normal people, and Ed was/is really just a likeable, normal guy dealing with some really, really crazy stuff.

I am trying *really hard* to not leak any spoilers, so here goes: AFTER THE JUMP THERE ARE SPOILERS AND A RANT. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL, SUCKERS.
So I'll insert my summary here:
I Am The Messenger is by Mark Zusak, a young Aussie who used to drive cabs.
It is definitely worth reading, but be prepared to slow down at the end so you fully process what is going on. The characters and (most of) the plot kick ass.
7/10, ka-ZAM!

I'm saying my adieus here also....

Sayonara,
Radical

Review: How I Live Now

How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff, is a lovely little British novel by a lovely little British lady. Despite all that lovely little Britiness, it's solidly a part of the genre we like to call War Stories.

How I Live Now (HILN) is the story of an anorexic girl named Daisy, who is punted to England to live with her aunt and cousins when her stepmother becomes too awful to bear. While there, she becomes very close with her younger cousin Piper, marvels over the strange abilities of her cousin Isaac, is largely indifferent to Oswald, her oldest cousin, and falls In Love with her cousin Edmond.

That's right.

Cousin Love.

In England.

For some reason, though, it never becomes Truly Creepy. It just hovers at Slightly Disturbing If You Actually Think About It.

Then, in the midst of all this Cousin Bonding and Non-Creepy Cousin Love, a war explodes. Basically, Britain's main army has been lured out of the country for various reasons, and now another country or organization (who is carefully never named or identified, besides as being Not British) is not letting them back in.

!!!

WHO KNEW WAR WAS THAT SIMPLE!

Not me, that's for sure.

After brushing off that stunning tactical achievement, we are presented with the Splitting Up of the cousins: Girls with girls, boys with boys.

After various physically and emotionally harrowing adventures, the book does end fairly happy, but I will warn you:

This is not exactly a feel good read.

There are mass murders. They are gory, and awful, and heartbreaking.

There is a LOT of emotional damage, also, and the book does make a pretty good case for how hard it is for people to heal after wars.

My biggest problem with the book was that it was written very freely, without a lot of grammar. So there are run-on sentences that go on FOREVER. Even when the writing is really gorgeously (or gorily) descriptive, sometimes the odd structure can make your head a little grumbly. If you could relax, it flowed very nicely, but when just reading for a couple of minutes, it was kind of distracting.

In short, it was good. Bit of a hard read, due to Murder and Bad Sentence Structure (oops, meant Free, Loose, Poetic, Blah Blah Blah).

Avoid if even the slightest whiff of incest is really disgusting to you.

Sending kissing cousins your way,

Yours truly,

Radical

Back to Me Roots

I changed my name. Again. Honestly, I doubt that anyone is really reading this regularly, so I think it's kind of fun to just be able to do whatever.

I have no idea why I picked the above title. Being honest again, it started out as some pretentious, pain in the ass idea to write something really witty and profound about some dusty book from when I was little that I laughed, cried, and sighed over.

All of a sudden... I feel a weird pressure to write something Good, or at least made with Quality Ingredients.

But the truth is, that's not really why I'm here. I'm here 'cause I love to read. Books, blogs, magazines, postcards, advertisements, billboards, clothing, cars, busses, sky-writing... I just really like to read.

Odd how I used to dream of this blog as an Urban Movement, that would result in a Devoted Following, and of course an inevitable, highly coveted Book Deal. But when I am faced with a handful of readers, I become fogey. Stuffed up. BORING.

So after the Personal Reflection of this post, we'll be returning to our usual program: Books.

With stuffy affectations,

Yours truly,

Radical