Take Me to the Beach: Young Adult Novels

Last summer, I discovered that YA novels are the perfect beach read: quick and compelling, sometimes hauntingly beautiful. So here are my reviews from last summer, along with the list of books I'm looking forward to reading.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. Loved it and have recommended it to nearly everyone I know. A short novel (just over 200 pages) about a 10th grade girl who embodies non-conformity. Whimsical and thought-provoking.

Looking for Alaska by John Green. Liked it and still remember haunting parts. A book that is almost universally recommended for its strong narrative voice about young men at a boarding school. I think I stopped short of loving it only because I'm not a big fan of male boarding school novels. :)

The First Part Last by Angela Johnson. Loved it. Well-written, with a plot that isn't predictable, this is a novel about a teen father who decides to raise his child.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson. Disappointing. Described as blending the science fiction, medical thriller, and teen-relationship genres, the story follows a young woman who wakes from a coma and struggles with issues of memory and identity. I just couldn't come to care about any of the characters, and the story line kind of creeped me out.

The New Policeman by Kate Thompson. Disappointing, and I'm not sure why. This just felt like a young adult novel? A young son sets out to find more time for his mother in the world of Irish faeries and myth. I vastly preferred the adult novel by Charles DeLint The Little Country.

And I can strongly recommend The Book Thief (by Zusack), Speak (by Anderson), Perks of Being a Wallflower (by Chbosky), Life on the Refrigerator Door (by Kuipers), Undercover (by Kephart), and White Darkness (by McCaughrean).

And here are this year's "To Be Read" beach books:

Feed by MT Anderson. The cover just isn't appealing, but repeatedly people have told me this is a great book. Amazon describes it as a "brilliantly ironic satire is set in a future world where television and computers are connected directly into people's brains when they are babies." Hm.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Picked by Gallo as "one of the best of the year," this is loved by amazon reviewers (one teen writes, "If you have the chance to only read one novel this year, THIRTEEN REASONS WHY should be that book"). The story of a young woman who leaves thirteen people with recorded messages telling why she committed suicide.

You Remind Me of You by Eireann Corrigan. Described as "one of the most powerful novels ever written in verse," the book is described by Amazon as a compelling memoir of one young woman's struggle with anorexia. I'm drawn by the chapter titles: "She Tries Out for Varsity Recklessness and Only Makes JV," and "She Never Claimed Reliable Narrator Status."

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I've had this one on my shelf and I'm intrigued by the illustrations that make up well over half of the book. This mystery (described as "sumptuous") tells the story of an orphan living in a Parisian train station and a mysterious automaton. I can't wait!

My other choices include Bud, Not Buddy (Curtis), The Giver (Lowry), Milkweed (Spinelli), and The Stones are Hatching (McCaughrean).

The Peace of Wild Things

I've been reading a book by Philip Yancey and have fallen in love with this poem he quotes:

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Arguing for Essays: I have been guilty of cruelty to vegetables

Essay: to test the value or nature of a thing; to try something for the first time; to make a tentative attempt. I've come to appreciate essays this summer as short morsels, humorous or thought-provoking musings on a subject. At only two or three pages long, what's not to love?

Recently, I've been enjoying the essays of G.K. Chesterton (mentioned often as one of the key influences on C.S. Lewis). Here are some of my favorite bits that make the argument for essays better than I ever could:

"A dream is scarcely ever rounded to express faultlessly some faultless idea. An angel might indeed open a scroll before the dreamer, but it would probably be inscribed with some remark about excursion trains to Brighton; a knight in armour might ride by him, but it would be impossible to deny that the most salient fact about the warrior was the fact that he was wearing three hats....Dreams have a kind of hellish ingenuity and energy in the pursuit of the inappropriate." ("Dreams")

"I have been guilty of cruelty to vegetables." ("Some Policemen and a Moral")

"The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis." ("David Copperfield")

"The primary feeling that this world is strange and yet attractive is best expressed in fairy tales." ("The Flag of the World")

"What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated that he is the cosmic anti-patriot." ("The Flag of the World")

"...keep close to your heart, keep deep in your inner councils, the absurd people....let the laughable people whose faults you see and understand be the only people who are really inside your life, who really come near you or accompany you on your lonely march towards the last impossibility." ("David Copperfield")