death: the high cost of living

death: the high cost of living
neil gaiman/chris bachalo/mark buckingham/dave mckean
graphic novels/supernatural
dc comics vertigo
published 1994

From the pages of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN comes the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every century, Death walks the Earth to better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor. Today is that day. As a young mortal girl named Didi, Death befriends a teenager and helps a 250-year old homeless woman find her missing heart. What follows is a sincere musing on love, life and (of course) death.

I have always loved Neil Gaiman's Death character.  She is so opposite of what you think Death should be (the cloaked bony figure playing Chess with Bill & Ted).  She's bubbly, fun, honest and beautiful.  I used to have a t-shirt with her picture on it and it said 'You get what anybody gets - a lifetime'.  So it goes without saying that this compilation of the 3 issues of Death: The High Cost of Living and Death Talks About Life is one of my favorites.

The story sort of revolves around 3 characters, some more than others.  Sexton, Didi & Mad Hettie.  Mad Hettie is a 250 year old woman who is looking for her heart.  She knows Didi (Death) can find it.  Sexton is a boy on the brink of suicide when he meets Didi.  Death gets one day a century to walk as a mortal.  To eat, to breathe, to laugh and to ride taxis.  Everything is wonderful and it doesn't matter much what she does as long as she does something.  

The art is creepy and sad with Didi Death a shining beacon in the pages.  Gaiman's story is simple and concise.  The only thing I wish I got to read more about was the Eremite, but I guess that's another story.  The Tori Amos as Death PSA thing at the end was a little spooky too.

It definitely makes me want to go back and read Sandman again....

fray

fray
joss whedon/karl moline/andy owens
graphic novel/supernatural
dark horse comics
published 2003

Hundreds of years in the future, Manhattan has become a deadly slum, run by mutant crime lords and disinterested cops.  Stuck in the middle is a young girl who thought she had no future until she learns she has a great destiny.  In a world so poisoned that it doesn't notice the monsters on its streets, how can a street kid like Fray unite a fallen city against a demonic plot to consume mankind?

ohmygodjosswhedonneverceasestoamazemeheisthebestwriterintheworlduniverse

I picked this up just because it was written by Joss Whedon.  My standard m.o.  Got a couple of pages into it and realized this was the most amazing thing ever!  He followed up the Slayer story a hundred years after Buffy!  With flying cars!  And crime bosses who live in fishtanks!  Brilliant!

Melaka Fray is what I imagine Faith could have been.  She's daring, reckless, grumpy and good.  But it's not your standard slayer story.  She doesn't have the memories, the dreams of all the slayers before her.  She doesn't have the drive because she doesn't have her history.  She's just a girl who can fight pretty good.  But there's a reason and it was surprising, but it made perfect sense.

Of course, I wish this was a series.  At the same time, I'm glad it's not.  It was a good complete story with a bit of mystery at the end that leaves you alone with your own imagination to fill in the blanks. 

Loved it.

speed of light

speed of light
amber kizer
fiction/ya/fantasy
random house
published 2012

Meridian Sozu and Juliet Ambrose are Fenestra: half angel, half human.  Their job is to transition the dead to the next world.  But that's all they have in common.

Meridian is close to mastering her destiny, but she doesn't know how to embrace her future with Tens Valdez, her soul mate and Protector.  Can they build a life together?  Or will the coming storm sweep away their love?

Juliet has been molded by a childhood filled with abuse and neglect.  Unable to trust others, she's never formed lasting friendships, and the select few she's loved haven't been able to stay.  Trapped in her loneliness, she finds it all too easy to fall back into the familiar patterns of fear and rage.  Can she uncover her past without betraying her new family?  Or will she be faced with an impossible choice?

When Meridian, Juliet, and Tens uncover an Aternocti plot to kill innocent spectators at the Indianapolis 500, every relationship will be tested.  Time is running out for the hundreds of thousands of people gathering for the huge race.  In a climactic battle, Light and Dark will fight for control - and not all will survive.

I agree with a lot of readers who said that this book was unnecessarily long.  It really is.  I wasn't really bored, but I was comfortable reading it.  There wasn't any excitement.  Seriously, none at all.  And the Indy 500 being the focal point for the Nocti?  Lame.  Seriously, lame.  And you spend about 375 pages slowly trodding to this complete clusterfuck of a Light vs. Dark ending.  It was so dang confusing at that point that sometimes I had to re-read paragraphs and was still completely lost at exactly what was happening.

Meridian continuously talks about widening the rings of their influence.  Opening their circle to more people, trusting more people and that's wonderful, but near the end there were just too many characters to keep track of.  Not only that but I swear that at one point Meridian asked Nelli if Bales was her boyfriend and then in the next chapter they were EdwardandBella in love and insane out it.  I'm pretty sure that happened in a day.

Kizer does such a great job of setting scenes and Meridian & Tens character development, but then she kind of flubs everything else.  It kind of felt like this was the last book in the series and I hope that's true.  I know there's another book called Counting Tens that's in development.  I hope that it's just Tens story and not a continuation of the main story.  I don't think I can take another book!

liesl & po

liesl & po
lauren oliver
fiction/children/fantasy
harper collins
published 2011

Liesl lives in a tiny attic bedroom, locked away by her cruel stepmother.  Her only friends are the shadows and the mice - until one night a ghost appears from the darkness.  It is Po, who comes from the Other Side.  Both Liesl and Po are lonely, but together they are less alone.

That same night, an alchemist's apprentice, Will, bungles an important delivery.  He accidentally switches a box containing the most powerful magic in the world with one containing something decidedly less remarkable.

Will's mistake has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey.

A sweet, sad story.  The first book I read by Lauren Oliver was Before I Fall.  It was excellent and surprising so I picked up Delirium when that one came out and found it to be good, but so very different than Before I Fall.  And now this book.  Quite different from them all!

Liesl is sweet and brave.  Po is grumpy, but sweet nonetheless.  Will is a bumbling goof, but somehow manages to be a hero.  The story reminded me of Roald Dahl's Mathilda (which I love) and a touch of Cinderella.  Kei Acedera's illustrations were few and far between, but when you turned the page to find one it was magical.

Though I got this one from the library, I'm tempted to buy it and read a chapter a night to Emma.  With ghosts and evil stepmothers, alchemists and an adventure it's the perfect bedtime story!

the fault in our stars

the fault in our stars
john green
fiction/ya
dutton
published 2012

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis.  But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

Let's face it, when you pick up a book with that sort of description, a book about kids with cancer you know what's going to happen.  You're picking up a book of grief.  Someone's going to fall in love and someone's going to die.  But you still pick it up.  You still read it because (for me) it's written by John Green and sometimes you just want to read a book you know is going to make you cry.

You don't think about all the thinking it's going to make you do.  Despite the mostly predictable story I worried.  I worried the book would end like An Imperial Affliction did.  I worried something would happen to either Augustus or Hazel while I was reading the book.  I just worried.  And then I thought about their parents who are ever present in the book.  Again, John Green writes parents who are flawed, but normal.  Loving, protective and people their children do not hate.  It's refreshing in a YA novel.  I thought about how devastating it would be to live that life.  How would I function with my child in that situation.  How do these thousands, if not millions of parents deal with having a child they know is going to die before they do.

And it clearly defined the term 'terminal' to me.  I had always just thought that to have terminal cancer meant that you would die from it soon.  You had a few months, maybe a year, but the idea that you could live in this suspended sort of state....I never knew that was possible. 

To be a teenager and be confined.  Knowing that you cannot do the things that your friends are doing and just being resigned to it because let's face it, what else can you do?  But Hazel gets this incredible opportunity to do what most people who live their entire lives into adulthood never get the chance to do.  She falls in love.  Truly and deeply.  She gets a magical event.  She gets happiness.

And that's why you read books like this.  Because the writing is beautiful.  Because in the midst of tragedy and horror there can be humor.  Because you want to experience these gorgeous moments.

Because you have to.

looking for alaska

looking for alaska
john green
fiction/ya
dutton
published 2005

before.  Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (Francois Rabelais, poet) even more.  He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe.  Because down the hall is Alaska Young.  The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself.  She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

after.  Nothing is ever the same.

I fell so hard and far into this book that I would look up every now and then and for a brief moment felt like I was living that experience.  That those events happened to my friend and I was living in that grief.  It doesn't happen very often to me, but it's both wonderful and painful when it does.

I think that I connected with this book so much because Alaska reminded me of a very good friend of mine.  I seriously considered that John Green knew this friend of mine, but logically that doesn't work out.  *sigh*

I loved Alaska, Colonel & Takumi and I even loved Pudge most of the time.  Like others before him, Pudge was another self-absorbed sort of boy, but then when you experience what he does how do you not make it all about you?

John Green writes so clearly that I could picture every scene in my head as if I had been there.  I felt the oppressive heat and the frigid January cold.  I knew what everyone looked like without really needing to think about.  They were just there, already in my head.  I could see the Smoking Hole, hear Satan the Swan at the lake and smell the wet hay in the barn.  He has a way, I think, of describing everything so perfectly, but without going into so much detail that you have to stop to think about.  It flows seamlessly and you're reading without realizing that you're reading.  You're just there.  You're present.

an abundance of katherines

an abundance of katherines
john green
fiction/ya
dutton juvenille
published 2006

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type is girls named Katherine.  And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped.  Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judy Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.  Colin is on a mission to probe the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself...

As it stands I've read two and a half John Green novels.  Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  I can easily say this was my least favorite of the two and a half.  Had I read this book first instead of Paper Towns I probably wouldn't be so in love with John Green's work. 

Currently, I'm two thirds of the way done with The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska so I feel I can compare them all pretty fairly.  I read an quick review on Goodreads after I read WG, WG about how all of John Green's characters are the same and I've discovered that is mostly correct.  They generally all center around a slightly nerdy, friendless and awkward boy who somehow manages to attract beautiful, quirky, if not altogether nutty girls.

Colin Singleton is no different.  When he was three years old her was able to read the newspaper and that turned his life upside down.  The typical gifted child he is forever chasing the idea that he is meant to do something bigger than everyone else.  Held up to these standards by his slightly bullying father he lives his life in a constant state of defeat for not being able to reach the goal of genius.

However, amidst all this studying and working and trying Colin manages to meet and 'date' 18 different girls named Katherine.  And then also get dumped by them which creates an obsessive compulsion to be with a Katherine and not get dumped.

It is after the 19th dumping that Colin's best friend Hassan says he needs to go on an adventure and drags Colin on a road trip to nowhere that lands them in Gutshot, TN, population 864 and things begin to change.  Not just for him, but for Hassan as well.

The story in itself is good.  And maybe it was the act of reading this one, The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska at the same time that did it, but I just didn't love this one.  I hardly liked it.  I found Colin to be annoyingly self centered and self absorbed and Hassan was just kind of funny, but more desperate.  I also just couldn't get past the idea that someone dated 18 different Katherines.  I don't think I've known 18 different anyone named the same.

But the main reason I don't think I liked this book?  Math.  There was math in it and that my friends, is a downer.