With Steven
I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb
It sucks when you’re the head of an international evil conglomerate but you can’t get elected 8th grade class president.
Sons of the Profits by William Spiedel
History of Seattle and the greedy people that built it! Acquired on the road trip, ignored till now.
Fiction
Protector of the Small Series, books 1-4 by Tamora Pierce
Kel, you may have replaced Alanna in my affections, which is no mean feat!
Circle of Magic: Sandry’s Book by Tamora Pierce
Mullet princess planeteers just need to learn to work together.
The Cardturner: A Novel About a King, a Queen, and a Joker by Louis Sachar
A YA novel about bridge! That is good! Believe it! Cantankerous millionaire great uncle, potentially crazy or possessed girl, ghosts, and cards!
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
This book is new, but set in the 90s, which is hilarious. I loved all of the references to Y2K, boy bands, and people not understanding the Internet.
After School Charisma vol. 1 by Kumiko Suekane
Like Clone High, but manga.
Saavy by Ingried Law
Tattoos talk to the main character! I don’t know if I enjoyed this book as much as the hype indicated I would, but I still liked it.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
I love unconventional narrative style!!!! This book was definitely depressing since it dealt with both September 11 and the Dresden bombing, but worth it in the end.
Non-Fiction
The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti
Things I Learned From This Book: Purity Balls! They are like prom, but you go with your dad and recite a pledge to stay a virgin till he finds you a man. He vows to help you keep your virginity sacred. State funded incest-overtones!
Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families by Pamela Paul
This book seemed like an interesting concept, but I think it could have been researched better. I could find a lot of misleading summaries just going off of the citations and information the author gave, which makes me wonder what she left out.
Boy Crazy: Keeping Your Daughter’s Feet on the Ground When Her Head is in the Clouds by Charlene Giannetti
Sometimes I just pick up random things because their covers are really pink. Learned I need to talk to my parents about cellphone rules so I don’t abuse this exciting new technology!
The Girl Who Was On Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games ed. Leah Wilson
Getting pumped for the Hunger Games movie!!!
2010 Banned Books
During National Library Week, the ALA announced the Top 10 Books that had been challenged in 2010. Any time I hear about a banned book, I try to read it if I haven’t already, so here are the ones from the list I was missing:
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Amazon.com reviews are pretty divided about this book, and I was shocked to read some 1 star reviews that quoted from the text and had really perceptive questions about this book’s legitimacy as “research”. The author traveled to three different cities (seemingly chosen at random) and worked minimum wage jobs like waitress, house cleaner, Wal-Mart employee etc to see if she could make ends meet and how people live with such low income. I found it interesting, but definitely not research. I think it would be dangerous to generalize Ehrenreich’s “findings”, and at times she does seem a little condescending towards the people she interacts with. None of these are sufficient reasons to ban it, of course!
What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
This book was adorable! A girl gets dumped by her boyfriend, tries to date someone else, then tries to date someone in a chatroom who quickly turns out to be a pervert. Finally she falls for the class nerd and they go on a series of beautiful dates! I assume it was banned because there’s some discussion of sex, but not nearly enough as, say, Gossip Girl.
Lush by Natasha Friend
Sam’s dad is an alcoholic! She hates it, or possibly him! Then he hurts her little brother, and she goes to a party to drink/be sexually assaulted! Luckily there’s a semi-happy ending.
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous Beatrice Sparks
Oh, Alice. This famous book is supposedly a “real diary”, but was pretty clearly discovered to be anything but. It came out in 1971, so the language is pretty dated. Plus, no one has cellphones and teenage girls randomly hitchhike across America relatively unmolested. Big chunks of it are given over to describing why you shouldn’t do drugs, and it ends with an “editor’s note” about how three weeks after the end of the diary (when the main character has supposedly sworn off drugs forever) she was found dead. DRUG OVERDOSE? WE MAY NEVER KNOW.