The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man by W. Bruce Cameron

What do you get when you mix a former football star turned repo man, a lazy dog, the incredibly literal nephew of the repo man's boss, a best friend who's as naive as he is good looking, a restaurant called the Black Bear Bar, complete with--you guessed it--a bar and a stuffed black bear, a small but quirky Michigan town, and a voice in the repo man's head claiming to be a dead realtor named Alan who needs help finding his murderer? A delightfully entertaining novel not to be missed.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

This morning (just to be clear, morning on a Sunday refers to noon to 2pm), I finally got to catch up on some book reviews I've been wanting to write. My need to do them justice means I've put it off longer than I should (kind of like my blog entries), which means I've probably forgotten the best thoughts I had while reading them, which means everyone else I know has already reviewed the same books, probably better, and tweeted them far and wide, which means...well, you get the picture.

My name is Tracy, and I'm a book addict. I love talking with other people about what we're reading, and I love sharing my thoughts about what I've read with other people. Is that the same thing? In any case, I'm extremely lucky to be have a number of outlets for my addiction. As a librarian, many of my co-workers share this fondness for books, if not always to the obsessive level at which I find myself. I've had opportunities for getting to know publisher representatives at conferences, and I try to repay their kindnesses by sending along my thoughts about the many advance copies of upcoming books they send me. I have an account at Edelweiss, which the uninitiated might think is a Sound of Music Fan Club, but no, is actually an online community of publishers, booksellers, and librarians offering purchasing opportunities for booksellers and digital advance copies for book pushers (I told you it was an addiction). Recent improvements have made it a fantastic spot for sharing reviews with colleagues and publishers, and most recently, for voting for favorite books among librarians nation-wide in, to be shared with patrons via the new LibraryReads program, who love to know what librarians are reading (as well they should). Similarly, while I continue to refuse to get back on Facebook, I haunt Goodreads, which allows me to see what the general public is reading and enjoying as well as friends and family. I finally gave in and got a Twitter account, which is quite busy considering I use it only for keeping up with book, author, publisher, and library-related news. I've said it once, and I'll say it again...authors are my rock stars. And I try to participate in GalleyChat, a monthly chat about the advances my fellow librarians are reading sponsored by the fabulous Earlyword. 

And, you know, it's starting to feel a little like I'm that kid in school who can't manage to keep up with the rest of the class. Or that person in the neighborhood who has the smallest house and not nearly as many bells and whistles as the people next door. Don't get me wrong. I adore being part of all of these stomping grounds. But I'm amazed at how far ahead everyone else seems to be! They're putting out multiple reviews a month and seem to have read everything out there before it's ever published. I do read a few advances a month, but there's plenty out there I haven't read even AFTER it's been published, so I'd like to pull one of those out once in a while as well. And while there's a time and place for every type of book, my taste generally seems to run to less literary books than some of the people on these sites, so even when I've read several advances in time for a GalleyChat or a LibraryReads voting deadline, they're not necessarily the books everyone's talking about. I don't know how these folks manage to read everything they do as far ahead as they do!

So, I keep working at it. I'm nothing if not stubborn. I threw myself into it this morning and wrote several reviews of books that I really feel strongly about and want to share, maybe convincing someone to try one who wouldn't have otherwise. This is why I wanted to be a librarian from the start. It takes time to then post your review to all these places and hit all the people who might be interested, but it can be worth it. Last week, a friend submitted a 4 of 5 rating for a book I'd suggested to her, but which I'm not sure would have come across her radar otherwise. After I posted my reviews to what felt like a million places this morning, the author of one of them squealed "thank you!" back at me. Last time I commented on GalleyChat, the publisher retweated it to its thousands of followers. And I persevere. I may eventually be persevering via fewer venues, but I persist nonetheless.

But at the same time, I'm not going to lose the love I have for books by trying to keep up with all those people out there who seem to be ahead of me in their zeal for commenting on new books ahead of publication. Three of the four books I reviewed this morning have already published. One was published several months ago, but I decided to share my fondness for it anyway. I mostly only review books that I want to recommend, and I'm going to do so whether the book is new or not. If I can fit in some of those same advances everyone else is tweeting about, great. I have an unofficial 50 page rule, the general spirit being that life's too short and there are too many good books out there to keep reading something I'm not enjoying, advance publicity or not. I also really like listening to audio books, which generally don't come out in an advance form ahead of the print release, so if that means everyone's talking about it before I get there, well, then I'll have something to look forward to.

And now I must go get ready for my library's upcoming Book Buzz, at which we'll have not one, not two, but THREE major publisher representatives live and in person to tell us what's going to be hot this Spring and Summer. I'm a lucky girl.
 

The Never List by Koethi Zan

Ten years ago Sarah and her best friend were abducted and imprisoned in a cellar already containing two other victims. Now, Sarah lives with the guilt of having escaped when Jennifer didn’t. News that the convicted abductor may be released prompts Sarah to contact the other survivors and set out on a search she hopes will lead to information about the whereabouts of Jennifer’s body but may lead her right into a trap.

This book scared me straight out of my pants! Fair warning, it turned out to be something of a difficult read, not because it was terribly graphic, but because the author was so good at describing just enough for your imagination to take over and create some very dark places. The first half or so of the book is suspenseful, building relationships and understanding of the Sarah and the other victims. But as the Sarah starts to put the pieces together, surprises fall one right after the other…into a black hole that will make the calmest of readers feel chills.

My one small issue is that, despite the fact that Sarah and Jennifer had always been overly cautious, even creating a “never list” of things they would never do to ensure they stayed safe, Sarah continued to put herself in dangerous situations. I’m not sure someone who’d been through what she had would do that, but then, who knows what anyone would do after having been abducted and tortured.

The Never List is a creepy thriller that will have readers reading all night…and wishing there was daylight.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Love love love. Happy happy happy. 

My blog is not exactly read far and wide, yet I'd bet money that at least half of you have read Fangirl. If you have--great. Spend a moment revisiting why you loved it (and you know you did). For those who haven't--let me explain why you must.

There’s so much to love about this novel that it’s hard to know where to start. Never mind. I know where to start. How much do we love Rainbow Rowell? And why? For multiple reasons really, but let’s start with the one where she isn’t writing the same book over and over again. Fangirl is her third novel, and it’s equally as distinct as each of the others. Don’t put Rainbow in a box.

We meet Cather (known as Cath to her everyone except Levi, the immeasurably irritating and constantly cheerful boyfriend of her roommate) just as she’s entering her freshman year of college. Her twin sister pretty much has said “see ya” and deserted Cath in favor of a new best friend. Cath would just as soon stay in her room and write fan fiction about a magician named Simon with striking resemblances to Harry Potter, but this is not to be. Over the course of the next year, she finds that it’s not possible to isolate herself in Simon’s world but that she must build one of her own. 

I felt a real kinship with Cath, as we share that quality of finding it difficult to create a life, easier to play a part in someone else’s, but ideal to sometimes remain without one. We all have to learn the lesson that this is not realistic, or even desirable, so watching Cath do so is extraordinarily familiar. Her fan fiction is her comfort zone, a place where she’s been extraordinarily successful, but when the people around her begin forcing her to come out and play, she discovers the experience more familiar than she thought. As her writing professor tells her, you don’t have to create a new world from scratch. Start with something real,” Professor Piper tells her. “Start there and see what happens. You can keep it true, or you can let it turn into something else—you can add magic—but give yourself a starting point…Everything starts with a little truth, then I spin my webs around it…I don’t start with nothing.” Levi, fast becoming not just her roommate’s boyfriend but a true friend, agrees. “Tim Burton didn’t come up with Batman. Peter Jackson didn’t write Lord of the Rings.” Cath is reluctant to accept this. “In the right light, you are such a nerd.” (Taking a thoughtful topic and making the reader laugh out loud is another reason we love Rainbow). But she eventually accepts the fact that she does have something of her own to offer and that it might be possible to merge her world into a bigger one.

Cath reminds me of Harriet the Spy, who also had to learn that you cannot get through life without the people around you. I reacted especially strongly to Cath’s relationship with her sister, Wren (here I thought the name Cather was a fabulously literary name honoring the great Willa Cather; turns out, her mother wasn’t expecting twins and took the lazy way out by naming one Cather and the other Wren). Wren and Cather had been close all their lives, yet, Wren uses college, as do many people, to try out her new independence and make new friends, developing interests of her own (and some destructive ones, at that), leaving Cather behind with Simon. This made me really angry, and I thought Cather let her get away with way too much. But the fact that the friendship between the twins prompted me to want to strangle them both only speaks to Rainbow’s ability to put me smack dab in the middle of the story. I was so upset for Cath because she couldn’t seem to be that upset for herself.

No matter where Cath turns, she continues to be faced with relationships that eventually teach her she cannot continue to escape. Her father, a good guy who essentially raised the girls on his own after their mother left them on September 11 (yes, THAT September 11), has his own problems and could use some taking care of. Cath jumps at the opportunity to do this, but as any good parent would, he refuses to let her make his life hers. He gives Wren an ultimatum that helps Cath to see the importance of maintaining a relationship without merging into one life. Cath refuses to explore a relationship with her mother, with whom Wren has begun talking after years of no communication, yet she’s forced to recognize that she will always have some kind of connection to her mother when she unexpectedly finds them in the same room together. A writing partner forces Cath to find a line between her work and that of her partner's, a clever analogy for the line between Cath’s world and that of those around her. Then there’s Reagan, Cath’s roommate, who turns out to be quite different that the impression she made on Cath when they first met. Yeah, my first impressions are never right either. And Levi, oh, Levi. Rainbow has a way of making me just want to reach out and hug her characters. While I think Cath and Wren’s relationship is the one that changes most over the course of the novel, it’s her relationship with Levi that brings out the greatest change in Cath. He continues to reappear, something like a Jack in the Box, no matter how many times she tries to convince him to leave her writing for Simon. Is it possible that he’s inserted himself permanently in her world? How did that happen?

You can’t discuss Fangirl without discussing Simon Snow, the hero of a series of books about a boy attending the Watford School of Magicks. Rainbow sprinkles excerpts from the fictitious Simon Snow series as well as from Cath’s fan fiction about Simon throughout the novel, demonstrating (among other things) that Cath and Simon’s worlds, at least at the beginning of the novel, are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. Here’s the thing…I feel like I need to go back and read all these excerpts again in order to truly understand their impact on Cath and their role in the story Rainbow’s trying to tell about Cath. There are definite parallels between Simon’s story and Cath’s, and I think I’d need to spend more time there to really see them. Accept them for a fun diversion or as a window into Cath’s universe…they’re probably both.

All of this is to say that it’s Rainbow’s characters and her ability to bring out such emotion in my reading of them that has made me such a fan of hers. I can touch them (okay, not really, but it feels like I can). They become friends. Throughout Fangirl, I found myself wanting to stand up to and for Cath, feeling her pain and being excited for the new life she was gaining. And this is why we love Rainbow Rowell.

The Silver Linings Playbook

If I could give this book 10 stars, I would. It's unusual for me to have seen a movie before reading the novel on which it was based, but that's what happened here. The movie, if you haven't seen it, is fantastic and totally deserving of all its Oscar nominations. Yet, as with most books made into movies, the novel is so much more and equally fabulous in an entirely different way. Even more amazing, it's Matthew Quick's (known to his friends as "Q") debut novel.

The premise revolves around Pat Peoples, recently released from some kind of mental health institution in Baltimore into the custody of his parents in his hometown in New Jersey, outside Philadelphia. During his time at "the bad place," Pat became convinced that his life is a movie in which God wants him to see the silver lining in everything and that he needs to practice being kind and not right. He's sure that, if he does so, the "apart time" being imposed on him and his wife will end and they can get back together, despite the restraining orders currently in place. Soon after returning home, he's introduced to Tiffany, his friend's sister-in-law, who turns out to be as emotionally damaged as Pat, and much of the book follows their relationship and their journey from worlds of their own making to accepting reality.

There's so much to love about this novel, and it goes beyond what can be covered in a movie. Easy to overlook but oh-so-important is the setting that Quick evokes. You can hear the autumn leaves crackling, see the tree-lined streets, feel the enthusiasm for Eagles. I love a town that loves its team, even though I'm no sports fan. Pat's family and friends are big Eagles fans, and the ups and downs of season during which this takes place mimics Pat's recovery as he regains his mental health. While he's somewhat confused over what has happened while he was away, he is certain that his perseverance will result in reuniting with his wife. Pat being determined to find the silver lining in everything makes me feel hopeful that all of us can do the same. Pat does not remember a lot of what's happened recently to bring about this alone time from his wife, and a lot of the novel follows his discovery of the kind of person he used to be and the kind of person he is now, giving the impression that we have some control over the person we are. Everyone around Pat wants him to succeed, to get better, even though they all have lives and problems of their own. He doesn't appreciate this early on but learns to do so over the course of the novel.
 

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper  in the movie

Much of joy in the novel comes from watching Pat reluctantly become closer to Tiffany. Pat does not particularly see himself as damaged or emotionally unstable, so he doesn't immediately recognize this as something he and Tiffany have in common. The reader is viewing Pat's world strictly through Pat's first-person eyes--we're all living in Pat's imagination--and he sees Tiffany as pretty much nuts. I loved that even so, he is able to see beyond that to Tiffany's other qualities, beyond her problems to the person she used to be and might be again. It's possible for him to see beyond someone's issues to a person he can love. This is a slow build relationship that almost sneaks up on Pat, and it would be possible to enjoy the book just on the level of watching Pat and Tiffany get together.

Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro in the movie

Each of Pat's other relationships are fascinating on their own, particularly that between him and his father, a complicated man who uses their shared love of the Eagles to find common ground with Pat. Yet I was most intrigued by Pat's therapist, Cliff, who turns out not only to be an unusual counselor at best but a fellow football fan who seems to know just what Pat needs at the right time.  Pat is someone who tends to compartmentalize, so seeing his therapist in other surroundings first puzzles, then inspires him.

Quick wrote this novel from the basement of his in-laws house during a rather dark period of his life. He is a former English teacher, which goes a long way towards explaining Pat's interest in reading the classic novels his wife teaches her high school classes (and his ongoing query as to why classics always seem to have depressing endings when God's promised Pat a silver lining). His wife convinced him to follow his dream of actually being the one to do the writing, so after a lot of soul-searching that included a ride down the Amazon, backpacking around southern Africa, and forming a two-man literary circle, he landed in his in-laws basement. Three years later he emerged with Silver Linings Playbook, and now none of us will be the same.

Silver Linings Playbook reminds me a bit of Quick's later novel, Sorta Like a Rock Star, in that both protagonists have every reason to see the world as a terrible place but choose to see it as a world of opportunities. I wanted Pat to see things as they really are, yet the fact that he was wary to do so is what made me love him.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

For years, Samantha has watched the large family next door with a sense of fascination. All those kids! But they seem to be having a lot of fun, always into something--the exact opposite of her own family. Her mother, a state senator, doesn't look fondly upon the 10 Garretts next door (ironic, since she ran on a platform of "family first.") She thinks Samantha and her sister should associate with the right people in the right places, and the Garretts just aren't right.

But this summer, 17 year-old Samantha gets drawn into the Garretts family life, and she finds that she kind of likes it. Every member of the family is a character, and I especially loved little George and Patsy. It's Jase, however, to whom Samantha becomes drawn. And we love Jase. Confident, smart, and, of course, adorable, Jase falls for Samantha as well. Soon, Samantha is spending all her time with Jase and his family. Until a horrible accident changes everything.

There were so many things to love about this book. The relationship between Samantha and Jase is perhaps the first and most obvious, but certainly not the only one. Their transition from next door neighbors (who don't even know each other) to boyfriend/girlfriend is an appropriately complex journey. I could feel the tension building as I moved through the narrative, wanting things to move faster, but savoring the slow build. Jase's family may not be perfect, but it's not totally dysfunctional either, and I found myself wanting to escape next door with Samantha. The youngest Garretts are bright and funny, and it seems perfectly normal that they're as busy, not to mention smart, as everyone else.

To my great surprise, my favorite character may have been Tim, the brother of Samantha's best friend. Having known Tim since she was little, it was painful for Samantha to watch his descent into addiction. Yet Tim is sharp, even clever, and it turns out that he's the one who's there for Samantha when she needs someone. We watch Tim struggle to get his life together, wanting to hug and slap him at the same time, and I couldn't help but love his directness. In many ways, I rooted for Tim more than anyone.

It's Samantha's relationship with her mother, Grace, that requires the most contemplation. Grace has very definite ideas of what is right for her daughters. They're ramped up considerably when Grace decides to run for re-election and is influenced by a new, assertive, and equally charming campaign manager. Suddenly, nothing Samantha does is right. Grace seems to love her daughters, but she loves her career more. She doesn't know Samantha very well, and she doesn't particularly care to. Throughout the novel, I watched for signs that Grace would put her family first, wanting her character to develop over the course of the book and become a different person by the end.

I want to be part of the family next door!

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

You would think that someone who is not married wouldn't be interested in a book examining marriage, but you would be wrong. I'm fascinated by fictional studies of marriage and what they reveal about people in general.

Wife 22 does not, as fans of TLC's Sister Wives might think, refer to the 22nd wife of a polygamist, but rather the pseudonym that's been given to Alice Buckle as part of her participation in a survey about marriage. Alice, a wife and mom who is a former playwright and current elementary school drama teacher, impulsively answers an email looking for volunteers to fill out surveys about their marriages. Answering the questions proves more complicated than she expected, especially when her correspondence with Researcher 101, her liaison at the sponsoring institute, becomes personal. Her growing relationship with Researcher 101, along with revisiting the high and low points of her marriage, has Alice wondering what she really wants. "I don't know why," Alice's husband, William tells her at one point, "you insist on keeping yourself from the things you love." William's lament, in many ways, sums up the novel for me. I found myself mad at both Alice and William on more than one occasion because they couldn't seem to get together in the same place at the same time. They appeared to be deliberately turning away from one another, almost punishing themselves for some unnamed wrong. Yet this is not uncommon. Why do we restrain ourselves from whole-heartedly enjoying those things that make us happy?

For all the seriousness involved in watching someone figure out if she still wants to be married, there's lots of humor and lighter moments throughout the novel. Alice is surrounded by a wide variety of people. She suspects her twelve year old son may be gay and just can't admit it; her fifteen year old daughter is being stalked, albeit romantically, by an ex-boyfriend; her best friend has a fondness for hosting dysfunctional if festive dinners of food from other cultures; and a friend from her past not only sends her daughter to live with the Buckles but soon arrives, husband in tow, on the Buckles doorstep as well. Alice is far from perfect, even a bit selfish, but that helped me see her as a more three-dimensional character. Gideon's technique of writing not only in prose but also in emails, Facebook posts, and play dialogue successfully offers different perspectives on Alice's dilemma but could be annoying to those who get whiplash easily. I enjoyed getting to know Alice, even if I was slightly disappointed not to get to know William a little better (I felt like I knew more about why Alice was feeling distance in her marriage more than I did William). Recommended for fans of general women's fiction.

One final note: I listened to the audio, which I thought was very well done, but I've since learned that the print edition only has the survey questions that Alice answers at the end of the book, so you'd kind of have to bookmark it and keep turning back there as you read her answers. No idea what the editor thought that was accomplishing.