One Day

(Just so y’all know, this review contains spoilers. I’ll warn you before they turn up.)

I just finished One Day by David Nicholls. This is, as you will notice, the time when I usually write a review because if I don’t want to write about the book while I’m reading it and/or immediately upon finishing it, I won’t be writing about it. See: all the books I keep thinking about reviewing and then don’t.

Anyways, One Day is about Emma and Dexter, two college students who meet on graduation and become best friends. The story is told in one day snapshots on the anniversary of their meeting, and over the course of twenty years, the reader watches their relationship evolve as they navigate adulthood.

I’m still processing how I actually feel about this book because there are SO MANY *FEELINGS* involved, but I think I can safely say that it’s great. Really well written. I first heard of it during Epic Vacation when Feller’s BFF’s girlfriend was reading it (and plowed through it in about 24 hours). I picked it up and read the first few pages but didn’t have a chance to get farther along. I sort of forgot about it until I saw it on Overdrive as an audiobook, and y’all know how much I enjoy audiobooks.

I will admit that it took me a bit to really get into the story, I think, partly because I started listening to it right before I went back to Arizona last week, and I just didn’t have the time every day to listen to audiobooks, and partly because it took me … four or five anniversary snapshots to realize it was the same day every year (I’m sort of a visual person, okay?!). Once I got back in town and listening to it everyday though, I couldn’t get enough. I kept thinking about what was going on in the story after I had turned it off, and I kept hoping for Em and Dex to get over their shit enough to be together.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

And then they did, and it was wonderful, but I worried. I didn’t think they would be able to make it last, and I knew I couldn’t stand to watch their relationship fall apart, and so I thought that the solution was simply that one of them had to die. Well, I was JOKING, OKAY, David?! It was A JOKE. I didn’t ACTUALLY mean for you to kill one of them off! And OF COURSE it was Emma because she would have been able to survive without Dexter, but losing her very nearly broke him completely. I think it did totally break my heart.

END SPOILERS

And in the end, this was a story about life and friendship and loss. It was angsty and funny and gut wrenchingly heartbreaking but ultimately optimistic, and in the end, though listening to this was one of those book/movie experiences that is kind of horrible at the time, I think I liked it. I wouldn’t recommend reading it while sitting at home alone when your boyfriend is across the country and not available for post traumatic book snuggles, however. And I’m definitely deleting the movie version from my DVD queue. Probably.

The Happiness Project

Borrowed from http://www.happiness-project.com/

If I’ve seen you in real life in the past week or so, no doubt I’ve babbled about The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. This book is her account of spending one year changing her life by not changing her life. She’s a pretty normal lady with a great family and a job she loves, and she wants to know if she can become happier by making small adjustments to her everyday life, and, oh hey! It works!

She breaks her “Happiness Project” into twelve (one for every month!) different aspects of life in which she would like to create greater happiness, and she has three or four resolutions to accompany each area of focus, building on the resolutions from the previous month. Additionally, the entire book is filled with quotes from the extensive happiness research she’s done, and I have NO IDEA where she found the time to read all the books she cites, because DAMN.

Some of her resolutions, like going to bed earlier and clearing clutter, are (seemingly) simple but really draining when it doesn’t happen. She provides some universal Truths about happiness that are simple and things that most people probably already know, but sometimes, I just need someone to state the obvious. Several of the chapters deal with her relationships with other people and how to get the most happiness flowing in those relationships. She reminded me how important it is to show up and be present in people’s lives and how much my own attitude affects other people’s.

Really, I love the way this book got me to thinking. I have an AWESOME life. I have a wonderful boyfriend who I adore, a job I enjoy and that allows me to focus my energy on school, and I am so blessed. But, of course, there are areas for improvement, and I really appreciated some of Rubin’s suggestions and tips and ideas for making my great life EVEN BETTER. So, as I was reading, and in this past week since I’ve finished the book, I’ve thought about what resolutions I can make that will help me become a happier, More Awesome person. I have a whole list of resolutions and one time goals for my Awesomeness Project. I want to spend the year aiming to create more happiness, and thus, More Awesome, in my life. My resolutions range from silly personal things, like flossing every day, to things that will help me be a better girlfriend and friend. And in the next day or two, I’ll have a fancy chart on which to write out all these resolutions and gold star stickers to reward myself when I do a good job. Because one way to create more happiness is by not relying on other people to give me a pat on the back.

Ascendant

I just finished reading Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund. And I mean JUST, like literally set it aside two minutes ago, opened my laptop and started typing, just. I have that many Thoughts and Feelings about it.

Anyways. Ascendant is about killer unicorns and the superpowered, virginal, female descendents of Alexander the Great who hunt them. It’s the sequel to Rampant, which is also good and necessary for understanding wtf is going on in Ascendant.

I read Rampant a little over two years ago, and I enjoyed it. It was a fun read, but I didn’t LOVE it or anything. It’s entertaining. Peterfreund has this great version of unicorns that we don’t ever see, and the main character Astrid is kind of a badass. Plus there’s an awesome karkadaan (a giant unicorn) who totally saves the day and steals the show. Rampant is, more than anything, I think, an action adventure story. It’s all about Astrid and the other hunters dealing with the Reemergence of unicorns, which were thought to be extinct, so there are lots scenes of hunting training and then actual hunts, and that’s all cool and fun, but Ascendant really takes it to the next level.

Ascendant starts a three months after the events at the end of Rampant and deals with Astrid coming to terms with her distaste for killing unicorns. She tries to find an alternative use for her hunting powers that will help people without requiring her to kill unicorns on a regular basis, not to mention a job that doesn’t end in the possibility of death every time she goes out. She ends up with a cushy gig that she loves and that allows her to becoming familiar with a herd of captive unicorns. And she slowly begins to understand them more and more, realizing that she has to find a way to protect people from unicorns and unicorns from people.

Then tragedy strikes, and her entire world unravels. And this is where the book really REALLY grabbed me. I was enjoying everything up to this, but the ordeals Astrid goes through and the decisions she makes along the way turn this into a poignant story about finding oneself and doing the right thing.

I don’t want to give anything else away, so I’ll just say that while Ascendant is the FIRST book I have finished in 2012, there is a very good chance it will also become one of the BEST books I read in 2012. I loved it, and I just bought it from Amazon, in hardback, so I can have a matched set (also, I sort of feel like awesome, favorite books deserve a spot on my physical book shelf rather than just on my Kindle book shelf; like the physicality of the hardback book makes it more meaningful. Plus, the hard copy was cheaper than the ebook).

(Image borrowed from www.dianapeterfreund.com)

The Night Circus

It all started when I’d been seeing things about Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus on the internet, and I’m not entirely sure I knew anything more about it than it had something to do with a night circus, the cover was awesome, and I lot of people I know were interested in it. Then BookTrib hosted a giveaway for a chance to win The Night Circus, and I entered, not really expecting much because I am not one of Those People who regularly wins contests and giveaways, so imagine my surprise when I received an email from BookTrib telling me that I HAD won! For a book I really wanted! Yay books! For free!

Then began the waiting. And the waiting. And the WAITING. To be fair, I only waited for the book about four or five weeks, which is not really that long of a time to wait for book which you are getting for FREE, but DANG, it felt like FOR-EV-ER. Finally, finally, FINALLY, it came on a UPS truck, in a fairly mangled package, and I immediately reported it’s arrival to the internet. Unfortunately, I still had about six library books sitting on my shelf that I needed to finish before reading anything I owned. So it sat on my dining room table, looking lovely and immensely readable. I will admit, having this book sit staring at me day after day gave me a pretty good incentive for finish all my library books. I read like a person possessed! Until I finished the Pirate Captain’s Daughter on Friday, the last of all my library books, and I allowed myself to pick up The Night Circus. I’m so glad I did.

Wow.

I LOVE this book. Strictly speaking, I do believe this book is considered Adult Fiction, but it has major Young Adult crossover appeal (and I would almost certainly include it in a YA collection were I in charge of such things). It’s magical. Set at the turn of the 20th century-ish, this is a story about a challenge between two magicians in which their proteges try to out do each other in a game of skill, and the setting for the game is Le Cique des Reves, the Circus of Dreams, which arrives unannounced at each destination and is only open from sunset to sunrise. The story is comprised of short second person descriptions of the circus from the perspective of an attendee, chapters about the magician’s challenge and the players, and chapters set several years later which describe a boy named Bailey’s experiences with the circus. By the end of the novel the chapters about the challenge and the chapters about Bailey have come together to create a really rich, full story.

I love the story in this book, for sure, but I also adore the language Morgenstern uses. It’s no secret that books with lovely, descriptive tones really appeal to me, which is the main reason why I enjoyed Atonement and East of Eden so much, despite not much happening in either book, and this book has that same tonal quality in additional to an intriguing plot. Morgenstern really manages to create a dreamlike, magical aura throughout the entire novel, while never veering off into a descriptive wonderland where the reader is left with beautifully worded settings and characteristics but no story, no MEAT, to go along with it. She creates a world in which I truly wish I lived; a circus which I long to visit.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough for anyone interested in magicians or circuses or the late 1800′s or beautiful prose or romance or precocious twins or kittens. I really do think there’s something in this book that will appeal to just about anyone, and I highly encourage everyone to check it out.

Bumped

I just finished Bumped by Megan McCafferty, and OH MY, is it good. I think I first heard about this book from The Fug Girls, but I probably would have picked it up anyways; I’m a sucker for Distopian YA fiction.

In this book, McCafferty creates a world in which only teenagers are fertile, which leads to them selling that fertility to the highest bidder. Teens are encouraged and rewarded for “bumping” with each other to make a baby (for some reason that wasn’t made very clear, using teens’ sperm and egg to implant in an adult isn’t a viable option).

Bumped is written from the perspective of identical twin sisters who were separated at birth and have recently reconnected. The chapters alternate between Melody, a girl who has been groomed for Surrogacy since before she hit puberty, and Harmony, a girl raised in an uber “churchy” farming community that shuns the outside world and modern technology. Harmony has shown up on Melody’s doorstep unannounced, ostensibly to bring God into her new found sister’s life, and, as one might expect, mistaken identity hijinks ensue.

The thing that I really loved about this book is how UNIQUE each girl’s voice is. As I was reading, I could distinctly “hear” the difference in their personalities, and I think I would have been able to tell the difference between each girl’s sections even if they weren’t labeled. I know that sounds like such a little thing to appreciate so much, but the way McCafferty was able to distinguish the sisters through their manner of speaking alone was really masterful.

Also, while I do consider this to be a Distopia, the society is not as grim as we often see in Distopian YA novels. In fact, if it weren’t for 75% world having a virus that kills adult fertility, this book would read like regular YA chick lit (which isn’t to say that boys won’t/cant like this book), and you know? I think it’s great. I really like that McCafferty created this really awful problem, and, instead of making the setting and plot horrible and desperate to match, she put the problem in a light hearted, bubblegum, bright story.

The characters are all just regular teenagers learning to navigate life and love. They’ve got problems and issues just like any other teenager. They’re making decisions about drugs and college and the opposite sex, and even though they live in a society in which teens are encouraged (and paid) to “bump” each other for procreation, having sex and making babies isn’t as black and white for our main characters.

I LOVED Bumped, and I’m super looking forward to the sequel, and if I get the time, I’m totally checking out McCafferty’s other books.