The Macklinator!

It's nice to see all my imaginary friends still waiting for me.
Eeeeenyways, I haven't read a heck of a lot lately, but in the last couple of weeks I've seemed to have gotten my groove back. At least literature-ily. Book-ily? I haven't been reading a lot of what snobs would call "Literature".
One of the books I gathered at a library haul was Guyaholic by Carolyn Mackler, who has written books like Vegan Virgin Valentine and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. She is cool. There is no other way to put it.
The story of the Valentine family is started in Vegan Virgin Valentine, which I haven't read in a while, but was awesome. Mara is a straight-A senior, focussed and straightforward... until V, her pot-smoking, promiscous, sixteen-year-old niece (YES! her NIECE! I love this book) comes to stay.
In Guyaholic, the Valentine saga is continued with V, who has quit the MJ (I sound so hip... so urban... *crickets*) and embraced both school and the drama program. She's graduating high school with pretty good grades, and in a relationship with Sam, who she met during a "demon puck" incident (a hockey puck, guys. Nothing fairy/fantasy here). But when her mom bails on her yet again, V drunkenly makes a mistake that sends Sam running.
V decides, on a spur of the moment, to spend the first part of summer driving cross-country to Texas and visit her mom on her own terms.
The rest of the book is just pure awesomeness. Why? Why, you ask?
Um, it's a roadtrip. Is there truly anything better than a road-trip to give a story plot and purpose? I don't think so.
What I enjoyed about Guyaholic was both the road-trip format and the characters. V's a really fun character, and I enjoyed going cross-country with her. I really enjoyed that she was traveling alone, just messing things up on her own and then sorting them out independently - but getting help when she needed it. She's a fun character, a little wild, but ultimately just looking for what will make her happy. While suffering from a classic case of Denial, it was Palatable Denial, a conscious suppression of things she didn't want to deal with - and conscious decisions to try to deal with them later.

Overall, definitely worth reading. A fun book with a good ending and spunky heroine.
Also, it's a road-trip book.
I mean, seriously.
RR

PS: There may be grammar/writing errors in this, and trust that they will be edited out. But in the meantime, I am just DESPERATE to get something fresh up. -RR

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