Spotlight: The Sky Is Everywhere

This is the first post in my Spotlight series. I'll be reviewing five of my favorite books that I think more people should know about. The first on the list is THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE.

But then all of a sudden the breath is kicked out of me and I’m shoved onto the cold hard concrete floor of my life now, because I remember I can’t run home after school and tell Bails about a new boy in band.

My sister dies over and over again, all day long.

I first read this book shortly after its release a year ago but was struck with the desire to reread it last weekend. The skin-and-bones version of the plot seems to be one we’ve all heard before: talented, gorgeous older sister dies, leaving the younger, quiet, less confident one to find her way in the world. But THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE is so much more than that.

Self proclaimed bookworm and band geek Lennie Walker is just returning to school after the death of her older sister, Bailey. During her absence, the school band gained a new member, Joe Fontaine, who is not only talented (he plays the trumpet, guitar, as well as clarinet, subbing for Lennie while she was out) but more genuinely cheerful than anyone Lennie has ever met. Juxtaposing his happiness is Toby, Bailey’s boyfriend, who is the only person Lennie believes misses Bailey as fiercely as she does. She finds comfort in him, though she knows Toby is the one person she should stay away from. Lennie soon finds herself torn between two boys—and two different approaches to the world. Can she allow herself to be happy with Joe? Or will being around Toby, who grieves with her, keep Bailey’s memory alive?

This is so much more than a love triangle book. This is about grief, all the different ways to deal with it and slowly move on. This is the story of a sister’s love and the legacy another sister left behind. This is the story of a broken family—Lennie lives with her grandmother and uncle after her mother abandoned her and Bailey years before—and how they survive loss. It’s about a girl wanting to find happiness again, but feeling guilty when she does. This story forces Lennie to select a path, and the options are not as clear cut as Toby vs. Joe.

Every single character is alive with his or her own personality, from Lennie’s slightly crazy, garden-obsessed Grams to her Uncle Big, the town lothario. Joe is my personal favorite, with his sunny—and slightly dorky—personality and his clear adoration of Lennie.

The prose in this book is absolutely stunning, aided by Lennie’s own poems at the beginning of each chapter. Nelson’s vivid descriptions put grief into plain terms, making even someone who hasn’t lost a love one feel the pain. So much that even when Lennie’s simplest thought—wishing Bailey were here so she could tell her about Joe—sends her into tears, the reader’s heart twists as well. After you put the book down, you feel like you have suffered a terrible loss and found your way back from it yourself. THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE is just that vivid.

Friday Five: Spotlight

I decided this Friday Five is going to be my top five books that, when I gush about them to people, they go, "Hmm...I haven't heard of that one." Which is ridiculous, because these five books are AMAZING and give me writer's butterflies. So check out this list, and then check out the books. Over the next week or so, I'll be doing more in-depth reviews of them.

1. The Sky is Everywhere (Jandy Nelson): After the death of her older sister, Bailey, Lennie is torn between two boys. Joe is lighthearted and endlessly optimistic, helping Lennie remember how to be happy. Toby, Bailey’s boyfriend, seems to be the only one who understands her grief. Lennie struggles to choose her path: let her sister’s memory rest and move on, or refuse to pack away any of Bailey’s belongings and feel like she’s—almost—still here.
   
   
2. Like Mandarin (Kirsten Hubbard): Fourteen year old Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin Ramey, the town wild child. When Grace is assigned to assist Mandarin with a school project, they develop a dangerous friendship, complete with skinny-dipping in the canal, stealing the town’s animal head trophies, plotting to run away to California. At first, Grace believes their friendship is magic, but she slowly realizes that Mandarin has an alternate agenda. And Grace just may fall victim to a betrayal.
   
   
3. Jellicoe Road (Melina Marchetta): For as long as anyone can remember, the students at the Jellicoe boarding school have engaged in a territory war with the Townies and the Cadets (city boys in a summer exercise training program). Taylor Greer is the reluctant leader of the Jellicoe school. She’s erratic, with minimal people skills and little desire for friends. She’s more preoccupied with the mysterious dreams she’s having about a boy in a tree, and the not-so-fictional story her guardian, Hannah, wrote about five kids in Jellicoe. The last thing she needs is to negotiate with the leaders of the other territory war factions, especially since the Cadet leader is Jonah Griggs, the boy she ran away with at age fourteen in search of the mother who abandoned her at a 7-11 years earlier. The boy who betrayed her trust. And on top of everything else, Hannah has disappeared, leaving Taylor to unravel her past alone. 
4. Fall For Anything (Courtney Summers): Eddie Reeves wants to know why her photographer father committed suicide. No one wants to talk about it—her mother is borderline catatonic; her mother’s annoying friend, Beth, has moved in to take care of her; and her best friend Milo refuses to tell her what he remembers about the night her father died. Then she meets Culler Evans, one of her father’s photography students who seems to have the answers she seeks. She and Culler embark on a wild scavenger hunt, searching for the scenes in her father’s photographs, hoping to learn the truth.
   
   
5. Shine (Lauren Myracle): Cat comes out of her self-imposed exile after her former best friend, Patrick, is the victim of a vicious hate crime. She takes it upon herself to fill in the holes that the police don’t seem to care about and begins interrogating townsfolk. She winds up discovering more than she bargains for, from crystal meth labs to secrets about her own brother and his friends. The town—intolerant and gossipy—is a character in itself, almost working against Cat as she tries to unravel the truth.
   *I already reviewed Shine, so click here if you want to learn more.

The Friday Five!

Top Five Favorite YA Girls

1.   Alaska Young (Looking for Alaska): The girl down the hall who makes Pudge fall in love. She’s vibrant, free-spirited, hilarious and self-destructive. She breaks stereotypes, a party girl who loves books and deep conversations. Mood swingy, raw, edgy, and real. I’m pretty sure everyone who reads this book has a crush on her and/or wants to be her.
   
   
2. Taylor Markham (Jellicoe Road): The reluctant leader of her boarding school in the territory wars, Taylor has battled all sorts of demons since her mother abandoned her at a 7-11 at age eleven. She puts up walls and a tough exterior, when inside, all she wants is to piece together the novel—which may turn out to be more reality than fiction—that Hannah, her guardian, wrote before disappearing.
   
   
3. Hannah Baker (Thirteen Reasons Why): She commits suicide before the beginning of the novel, but she leaves cassette tapes behind, each side designated to one person—one reason why she was driven to suicide. These tapes make their way to each of the thirteen people. Hannah’s narration, while sad, is witty, sarcastic, and blunt, as real as it gets.
   
   
4. Auden West (Along for the Ride): She quit sleeping because her parents wouldn’t fight if they knew she was awaken. Now, even after their divorce, she can’t shake the insomnia. So she launches herself into this quest to do all the things she missed out on during her childhood and teen  years—grocery shopping at night, going to a club, learning to ride a bike. She’s book smart and practical, and throughout her quest she learns to have fun and be a teenager.
   
   
5. Mandarin Ramey (Like Mandarin): The “town slut” that fourteen-year-old Grace desperately wants to be like. Carefree and wild, Mandarin wants to escape Washokey, Wyoming, and passes the time by tossing animal-head trophies into the river and skinny dipping in the canal. Though she does poorly in school, she is street smart and manipulative, convincing Grace to accompany her on all her crazy schemes.

A Year in Books: UnSweetined

At that wedding, with the alcohol, I wasn’t a kid in high school who struggled to fit in. I wasn’t Stephanie Tanner. I wasn’t the actor who played Stephanie Tanner. I was Jodie Sweetin and I was an alcoholic.

This is not the story of the Tanner family. There is no talk of Elvis or Laundry Mondays (though there are several “How rude!”s). This is the story of how Jodie Sweetin—also known as Stephanie Tanner from Full House—became addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Jodie holds very little back in this memoir, taking the readers through her life on the Tanner family set, how she struggled to find her place in high school, and her first experimentations with alcohol and drugs. Not to mention the years of drug abuse that followed. This book is a whirlwind of marijuana, cocaine, and even crystal meth. It made my head spin just to read, and I can only imagine the mess of emotions going on in Jodie’s head during that time.

Actually, I can imagine it, because Jodie explains it all. She tells the readers how she drank alcohol for the first time at Candace Cameron’s (D.J. Tanner) wedding to find her self-confidence, hosted wild afterparties in Vegas and Hollywood for attention and control, and never let herself come down from a high long enough to realize that without the drugs, she had nothing.

Though this book centers around Jodie’s life post-Stephanie, there are several chapters dedicated to the time she spent on Full House, including some cool behind-the-scenes moments with the cast. One of my favorite parts was when she mentioned the entire cast coming to her high school graduation party. The rest of the Tanners are mentioned in some of the other chapters, particularly Bob Saget, John Stamos and the Olsen twins.

The entire book is a real eye-opener, and I learned what happened after the final episode of Full House. It’s sort of sad to watch the episodes now, to see her and know what happens down the road, but according to Jodie, she’s in a better place in her life now. The last few pages of the memoir are a letter to her daughter, Zoie, and it really shows how far she has come. I recommend UNSWEETINED to Full House fans who aren’t afraid to learn the truth, or to anybody who wants to see a real life picture of someone hitting rock bottom and slowly working her way back to the surface.

The Friday Five!

It's Friday! To celebrate, I'm starting a new series on this blog: The Friday Five (a la Sarah Dessen). Every Friday, I'll post a fun list of top fives relating to books/writing/random things if I can't think of anything better.

So here's the kickoff post: Top Five Fictional Characters I'd Love To Live Next Door To

1. Alaska Young (Looking for Alaska): Truthfully, I’d probably be a little terrified of her, since she’s impulsive and self-destructive and a full-time smoker (aka everything I’m not). But she’d drag me out of my dorm to find some mischief, which I need more of. Plus we could swap books since we both have massive collections. I would insist on driving everywhere, though; her “breaks optional” mentality would send me into heart failure.
   
   
2. Magnus Bane (The Mortal Instruments): A sarcastic warlock with the most ostentatious wardrobe choices ever. He’s been throwing the greatest parties for the past few hundred years, which would probably keep me up all night since I’d be living next door. So of course I’d have to attend them! Although I’m not sure what I’d wear. Maybe he’d let me borrow his glitter…
   
   
3. Wes Baker (The Truth About Forever): Because I’m convinced he’s perfect.
   
   
4. Mia Thermopolis (The Princess Diaries series): She’s funny and slightly awkward (my type of friend). Plus she’s a princess and could give me rides to the mall in a limo and invite me to VIP functions like the next Royal Wedding. And no one would ever mess with us because her bodyguard would break their faces.
   
   
5. The Weasleys (Harry Potter series): Okay, so this is technically more than one person, but I don’t care. The Weasleys just give off this cozy vibe (maybe it’s the red hair and homemade sweaters), and I just want to eat dinner at the Burrow every night. And to have my own Weasley sweater.

A Year in Books: Looking for Alaska

"Jesus, I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. ... You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."

Booze and mischief. That’s what Pudge thinks he’s getting into when he joins up with Culver Creek’s band of miscreants. He decided to attend the Alabama boarding school to seek a Great Perhaps, François Rabelais’s last words (Pudge is a connoisseur of famous last words), instead of just going through the motions of his life at home. He finds more than he bargained for when his roommate, Chip “The Colonel”, introduces him to Alaska Young, the girl down the hall. She is wild, full of life, impulsive, self-destructive, and Pudge falls for her instantly. She introduces Pudge to a new life of breaking rules, smoking on campus, and the prank war that exists between the full time Culver Creek students and the Weekday Warriors (rich local Culver students who go home for the weekends).  

When tragedy strikes Culver Creek, Pudge and his friends are forced to evaluate their relationships, their actions, and learn how to deal with guilt and grief.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA is beautiful. Messed up and funny and gut-wrenching and beautiful. Alaska Young is now one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. She’s a wild child, sure, and is rarely seen without a cigarette in her hand, but she’s much more complex than that. She’s both book and street smart; her room is filled with hundreds of books; and she plans brilliant pranks. She’s an emotional carousel; one moment she’s spunky and cheerful, and the next minute she’s sulking. Essentially, she runs the book. Though Pudge is the narrator, this is Alaska’s story.

The story’s theme I most enjoyed is the labyrinth. Alaska’s favorite last words are those of Simon Bolivar: “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!” She and Pudge spend a great deal of time discussing what the labyrinth is (Life? Death?) and how to escape it. Much of the book is thought-provoking, particularly the scenes in Pudge’s religion class.

It’s hard to say much without giving away the major twists, so READ THIS BOOK. It took me a while to finally pick it up, but once I did, I sat on the couch for five hours and read it. John Green’s writing is raw emotion, and it literally reaches inside you and twists your heart (in a good way). His dialogue is spot on and hilarious at points, completely heartbreaking at others.

Everyone needs to read this book. Girls who don’t like male narrators, guys who think reading YA is stupid, adults who only have time to read one book a year…this is your book. Read it, and then go after your own Great Perhaps. 

A Year in Books: The Book Thief

“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”

I received multiple recommendations for this book before I finally picked it up off the shelf. The title intrigued me right away, but I was a little nervous about the setting: Nazi Germany, 1939. All other books I’ve read about the Holocaust have been downers, but I decided to give this one a shot anyway. And I absolutely do not regret it.

Liesel is nine years old when she steals her first book. She discovers The Grave Digger’s Handbook in the snow after her younger brother’s burial and takes it with her to her new foster family’s home. Her foster father begins teaching her to read, and she falls in love with words. Over the next few years she steals books from the mayor’s wife’s library and Nazi book burnings. Liesel’s life becomes even more dangerous when her foster family hides a Jew in their basement. She must keep the secret from everyone, including Rudy, her best friend who loves to accompany her on stealing missions. All the while, war rages around them, and Liesel sees how ugly—and yet how beautiful—the world can be.

First of all, this book is completely different than anything I’ve ever read. It is written in postmodern style, which means eclectic, nonlinear, and (for lack of a better term) unique storytelling. There are no chapters; instead, the book is broken up into sections labeled with the title of each book Liesel steals/receives/is reading at the time the events occur. Within those sections, there are subdivisions (more like chapters) that last anywhere from half a page to eight or nine pages. When Max, the Jew hiding in Liesel’s basement, writes a small book for Liesel, the artwork and stories are pasted right into the book. Small footnote-style pieces of information interrupt the narration, providing the reader with more background. They look something like this:

* * * HERE IS A SMALL FACT * * *

You are going to die.

This is the first of many thoughts inserted into Liesel’s story by the narrator. The synopsis on the back of the book doesn’t clarify this, but the narrator of the story is Death. Once you realize this, the story becomes a lot easier to navigate. Because of its postmodern style, I was a little disoriented in the beginning; Death does not clearly lay out the characters, plot arch, and conflicts as many other (and sometimes inferior) stories do. But that’s what kept me reading. I wanted to find my bearings and learn about Liesel and her accordion-playing foster father and her aggravating foster mother and how they wound up with a Jew in their basement and their strange viewpoints of the world.

THE BOOK THIEF is a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, an award that recognizes a book that “…exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature” according to the official website. I’ve read several other Printz winners and honor books, and I believe THE BOOK THIEF belongs in this category. It is unique, both in its plot and presentation, and Zusak’s prose is to die for. This is one of those books everyone needs to read, so go snatch it off a bookstore shelf right now! Or maybe if you’re very lucky, I’ll lend you my copy.