Waiting for Payday

Waiting for the Payday is a new meme hosted by Bookish Snob that allows bloggers to share books that they are desperate to read even if they have already been out for a while!

 Title: Forget You

Author: Jennifer Echols

Summary: There’s a lot Zoey would like to forget. Like how her father has knocked up his twenty-four-year old girlfriend. Like Zoey’s fear that the whole town will find out about her mom’s nervous breakdown. Like darkly handsome bad boy Doug taunting her at school. With her life about to become a complete mess, Zoey fights back the only way she knows how, using her famous attention to detail to make sure she’s the perfect daughter, the perfect student, and the perfect girlfriend to ultra-popular football player Brandon.

But then Zoey is in a car crash, and the next day there’s one thing she can’t remember at all—the entire night before. Did she go parking with Brandon, like she planned? And if so, why does it seem like Brandon is avoiding her? And why is Doug—of all people—suddenly acting as if something significant happened between the two of them? Zoey dimly remembers Doug pulling her from the wreck, but he keeps referring to what happened that night as if it was more, and it terrifies Zoey to admit how much is a blank to her. Controlled, meticulous Zoey is quickly losing her grip on the all-important details of her life—a life that seems strangely empty of Brandon, and strangely full of Doug.

Waiting on Wednesday

Wainting on Wednesday is a wekly meme hosted at Breaking the Spine.
This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:


Title: Entangled
Author: Cat Clarke
Release date (UK): 6th of January 2011

Summary: The same questions whirl round and round in my head: What does he want from me? How could I have let this happen? AM I GOING TO DIE?
17-year-old Grace wakes up in a white room, with table, pens and paper – and no clue how she got there. As Grace pours her tangled life onto the page, she is forced to remember everything she's tried to forget. There’s falling hopelessly in love with the gorgeous Nat, and the unravelling of her relationship with her best friend Sal. But there’s something missing.
As hard as she’s trying to remember, is there something she just can’t see? Grace must face the most important question of all. Why is she here? A story of dangerous secrets, intense friendships and electrifying attraction. 

Banned Books Week

This week (September 25 - October 2, 2010) , in USA is the banned Books Week.
I'm not American but I like to support every event that is against censorship.
ALA says that this "annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. “… and I agree with them (well I would put every habitant of the world instead of American).
So I ask you to support this noble cause and read during the rest of the week one challenged book.
You can find a list of books challenged this year here, fell free to read challenged books from other years.
I'm proud to say that I've read some challenged books:

• Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
• My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
• Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
• 
  

Moonstone by Marilee Brothers

Summary: A sickly mom. A crummy house trailer. High school bullies and snarky drama queens. Welcome to the sad, funny, sometimes-scary world of the fifteen- year-old Allie Emerson, who's struggling to keep her and her mom's act together in the small-town world of Peacock Flats, Washington. An electrical zap from a TV antenna sets off Allie's weird psychic powers. The next she knows she is being visited by a hippy-dippy guardian angel, and then her mysterious neighbor, the town "witch", gives her an incredible moonstone pendant that has powers only a good-hearted "Star Seeker" is meant to command. "Who, me?" is Allie's first reaction. But as sinister events being unfold, Allie realizes she's got a destiny to live up to. If she can just survive everyday life, in meantime

Title:  Moonstone

Series: Unbidden Magic Series (book 1 )

Author: Marilee Brothers

Realising Date: 01/07/2010

Publisher: Bell Bridge Books

Genre: YA, fantasy, fiction, literature

(The previous information is from Netgalley)

Review:

I enjoyed reading this book though the twists in the plot were predictable! But overall it was a good book, with an interesting plot and curious characters!

.:SPOILLERS:.

I love Allie’s character, she is strong, audacious, smart, tough, and she doesn´t give up easily, but as every well formed character she as flaws: she is a impulsive and sometimes she can be harsh to people that just want to help her!

Well I love Allie but I hate her mother, she’s irresponsible and lazy! One thing that really got me mad is that she just do one part of the parenting job, she only punishes Allie and forbids her to do some things, she doesn’t help her daughter when she need it and makes her do every housekeeping job just to avoid losing the help from Social Security because she decided to retire from life (saying that she had fibromyalgia) just because her boyfriend disappear with her money!

I think that Trilby’s character could be more expanded because she’s important to Allie’s learning of her new powers!

The other characters were fine and well built (especially Kizzy and Carmel) and contribute the plot disenrollment.

The ending was not my favourite part, it could be better with more action and suspense and with less dramatic passages!

.:End of SPOILLERS:.

Nevertheless I think this was a great book with an interesting story and I recommend it to you if you liked Phillip Pullman style!

 Click here and view the book trailer.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson - Censorship and Review

Laurie Halse Anderson (one of my favorite authors) recently (one week ago) commented on her LJ that a guy called  Wesley Scroggins demanded the banishment of three books from schools and libraries shelves from his school district (you can read the article that Scroggins wrote  here). The filthy books, as he called them, were: "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson, "The Twenty Boy Summer" by Sarah Ockler, and "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut.

I never read "Twenty Boy Summer" or "Slaughterhouse Five" (though after reading this article and after consulting a few reviews about this two books I'll definitely read them) but "Speak" is one of my favorite books! After I finished Speak I was so touched by the courage of Melinda that I couldn't stop thinking about the book for a long time (sometimes I still think about it). Also the courage of Melinda inspire me to speak up about some stuff that was happening to me for a very long time and that I never said a word about it, so we can say that Speak changed my life!

 You can imagine that I was really mad when I read what Scroggins said about a book that helped me so much and for sure helped a bunch of other people too and will continue to help people threw the future!

In a rent post on her LJ Laurie Halse Anderson thanks to all the people that help her and enumerates some actions that readers, teachers, bloggers,.... have made for contesting the article without fundament of Scroggins!

I ask you if you can help and do something to stop the banishment of this and other books from schools! As I said in my last  post in my country we don't have the opportunity of studying YA novels inside the classrooms and that is really upsetting to me!

In case you are dealing with censorship in her website Laurie Halse Anderson has an incredible article about censorship with some ideas you can follow to stop it in your school or classroom!

And now here is my review of the incredible book "Speak":

SPOILLER ALLERT

Melinda Sordino (her last name is an Italian word that means mute or deaf) starts her freshman year at high school the worst way possible: she has no friends and most of the school hates her because she call the cops at a party where teenagers were drinking!

While the story continues we start to get some inside of Melinda’s troubled family, and past making us understand her better! We soon discover that Melinda was rape at the party and she never confessed it.

Melinda’s, life  is always getting more complicated: she stops talking and doesn’t tell anyone one about the attack , her only “friend” abandoned her, her rapist  is a senior at her high school, all adults in her life (except her art teacher) are mad with her and grounded her because her marks are low, …

But though Melinda’s life is falling apart her sense of humor (though sometimes a little morbid) never disappears providing the reader with sarcastic comments about her high school life!

But the question that is bugging us since the first pages remains: is Melinda going to speak up?

This book full of courage, emotions and humor is indispensable for any teenager !

READ IT!

10/10

Discussion- YA in classroms

I follow lots of blogs (I will post a list of them here in a few days) most of them are from authors or from incredibly nice people who review the books that they read helping undecided people, like me, to choose the next book to read!
One thing I notice while reading them is that YA books are very present in schools on USA! I think that is fantastic! YA books are very interesting and most of them can reach every student! The writing, the characters, the plot, the places where the scenes take place, are all written in away that every teenager will understand and relate with making him more interested and focus on the book.
 In my country the only books we studied in classes are books (most of them) written in past centuries, that are about realities that we students are unfamiliar with and we can not relate ourselves with the characters. Because of that most lots of teens lost interest in reading and start to face the reading activity as something boring and only school related!
What is your opinion? Do you think that YA should be read and studied in classes or that only classics should be permitted in the classrooms?

The Beginig

I'm a typical teenager that loves to read and write!

I create this blog to share with the world some of my thoughts, day to day life, reviews on books and other stuff, to discuss some subjects of my interest and I hope yours (if someone ever read this)!

Sorry for so short post but before I started to write here I had already thought on a text to post but after I re-read it I thought it was too silly so I'll have to think again!


Bye



PS- I was almost forgetting here are some of other links connecting to other of my pages:

Goodreads

WordPress

And I'm in processes of creating a Live Journal account!