Book Crossing!

Well, I finally took the plunge. I've known about Book Crossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/) for a while, and I sort of half-assed did it when I had a book that I was through with. But I finally signed up yesterday and made it official.



Here's the scoop. From their website, this is what they have to say on how they got the idea for their website: "We've always liked sites like Where's George? (which tracks U.S. currency by serial number) and PhotoTag.org (which releases disposable cameras then tracks their whereabouts and displays the pictures taken along the way) and GeoCaching.com (where you can stash and search for items with GPS technology), and so we thought to ourselves, "okay, what's something else that people would have fun releasing and then tracking?" And we thought of books, which made perfect sense, since everyone (well, almost everyone) loves books. Twenty-eight mostly sleepless nights later, on April 17, 2001, BookCrossing.com was launched."

Essentially, you register a book (which means you get a unique number for it). Then you log it into the bookcrossing database and tell where you have released it. Then you wait for someone to find it and go to www.bookcrossing.com and register that they have found it. Pretty cool!

My summer plan was to go through all my bookshelves and get rid of all the books I have read and no longer have room for. Those books that I can part with and those books that I feel would get picked up and read by someone else. I did it all in ONE AFTERNOON! Yea me! So I have plenty to start releasing into the wild.

Join me on this bookcrossing journey. If you do, please say that I referred you. My bookcrossing name is CDMCLEAN. I would like to follow you and see what you are releasing as well.

Happy summer!

Philip K. Dick Award Winner Announced!

My favorite award was announced in April: the Philip K. Dick award. Last year's winner was one of the best books I read for the whole year! They pick awesome books. I highly recommend you go out and get the winners. I'm on my way to pick up this year's winner:

The winner for this year is Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson.

A description of the book from Amazon.com:

An Imploding Star System.
A Murdered Galactic Spy.
A Woman Seeking the Truth—and Finding the Unbelievable…

The Erasmus System is a sprawling realm of slavery, smugglers, spies—and constant, creeping decrepitude. Here everyone who is not part of the ruling Four Families is a slave of one kind or another. But the Guardians, a special-forces branch inside the United World Government for Earth, have deemed Erasmus a “hot spot.” Somehow, it is believed, this failing colony intends to launch a war upon the solar system.

Ex-Field Commander Terese Drajeske, now a mother of three, has been called back to active duty and sent to Erasmus, ostensibly to investigate the murder of her colleague—and friend—Bianca Fayette. At first blush, the death defies explanation: Bianca was immortal. But beneath that single murder lies a twisted foundation of deceptions. Suddenly Terese is plunged into a vortex of shattered lives, endemic deceit, and one dreadful secret. In this society without hope, someone has put into motion a plan that will cast humanity into chaos. And Terese, who has given up her family and her sanity to prevent war, may be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice….

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jasper Fforde has done it again! He has created a totally new series that is startling in its strangeness and while it is lacking in the hilarity of his previous works, it is compelling and thoughtful.

Eddie Russett lives in a world far in the future where lives are defined by the color you see or don't see. There is a power struggle going on, a cruel struggle of those who see color against those who don't see any. It is a world of social order where rules are followed without being questioned and technology is abandoned by order of the government.

But Eddie is a questioner. And there the trouble begins.

This book is quite a departure for Fforde as it is much darker than his other works, but it is an excellent read.

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David Schickler - Great High School Author Visit

Last week we had author David Schickler come and visit our school to talk about fiction writing. He spoke to our AP Lang, AP Lit, Sophomore English and Creative Writing classes and he was wonderful. He was wonderfully interactive with the students and gave them great tips on how to make the writing pop.

While he wouldn't be a good author for younger audiences as he material is definitely upper school material, he was wonderful with the high school students. The AP teachers really liked him, which was quite a coup!

If you haven't read Kissing in Manhattan, here's my review of it. I really enjoy it.

Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
At first, I was unsure whether I would like this book as I tend to enjoy novels more than short stories. But this book is a bit of odd duck. It is a collection of short stories, but they all intertwine; characters from one story show up in the next and they are tied together by the Preemption Apartment building where the main characters live.

You get a real Sex in the City feel for the first story, but there is a character mentioned, James Branch, who is dining alone and repeating the name of his entree outloud to himself. Something about that one small mention made James stand out for me and so when he popped up again in a charming magical realism story about a pair of opal earrings, I was hooked. James, for me, is the overriding reason to read the book. He is kind and compassionate, although at the end his compassion is a bit hard to comprehend. He is the one you root for, one of those very sweet men that you know if they will just come out of their shell a bit, and if some woman would just give them a moment of their time, magic would happen, love would happen.

Some of the stories stand on their own, and others definitely need to lean on their fellow chapters. Regardless, this is a lovely and well-written book that is a delight to read. And while the negative comments of some of my book club members were that the women are weak and the men are too demanding, I think James Branch silences those quibbles. James and the woman he ends up with (name not given so as not to spoil the book) redeem that dark quality in other stories and bring it all to a hopeful end.

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How to Seduce a Ghost by Hope McIntyre


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a fairly intricate mystery, but there was one annoying thing that the author kept doing: telling me what just happened. One character would say something and then the author would explain EXACTLY what that just meant. There was the problem of infidility. The heroine has a long term boyfriend, but has a brief affair and instant attraction with what ends up being the husband of her client. Her guilt and remorse is something that she has to deal with, but she really doesn't feel all that guilty and her feelings for her boyfriend are not clear cut either making the affair a huge albatross around her neck. Giving a heroine whom the reader has not decided she likes yet such a fault is definitely risky. If you keep reading the plot eventually evens out and the mystery takes over and becomes more engrossing. However, Lee doesn't ever become someone who grows on you enough to make you buy into the series.

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Beat the Reaper: A Novel by Josh Bazell


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I bought this book on impulse at the buy one get one half off Border's table before we left on a flight. It said it was a mix of Tarantino and the Coen brothers, which intrigued me. The storyline has Dr. Peter Brown interning at Manhattan's worst hospital where he meets someone from his very bad past: his hit man past. Then the book takes a quirky turn.

Yep, this book is a mix of Tarantino and the Coen brothers. It was so awesome that I finished it in one day, read it nonstop on the plane. It is a page turner and so wild that it defies description.

So if you like Carl Hiaasen, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers and you don't mind a little blood and gore, pick up this crazy, wonderful read.

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Skim by Mariko Tamaki


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazing graphic novel. Beautiful story about a high school girl named Kimerly Keiko (Skim) Cameron, a would be Wiccan goth and how she is trying to make it through the day, the month, the year. Her best friend is really not so good, she thinks she has found love, but it breaks her heart. There is a suicide at school, drama in the hallway, drama at home and through it all Skim is trying to figure out who she is. This story is beautifully drawn. I highly recommend it.

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The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Great urban fantasy book! Made me want to run out and find her other books and read them. She has a marvelous way of setting up characters, creating relationships, setting a plot into motion and telling a tale. If the details can get a bit murky, I can live with it. The exact nature of the Aunties and the relationship with the Gale men and wizards is left a bit vague and a bit distrubing, but nonetheless, this is a great read. It has liberal amounts of humor, great characters, awesome dialogue and action.


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A Kindle in Every Backpack?

Recently I did some research for my headmaster on the feasability of using the Kindle instead of textbooks for our students. I came across a nice white paper that Thomas Freedman on the idea calling it A Kindle in Every Backpack. Freedman, a former Clinton policy wonk and a wonk for a short time in 2008 for Obama/Biden on technology issues, isn't particularly advocating the Kindle, but is saying the eTextbook idea is one that has merit.

Back when the Kindle first came out, I was very excited about it and bought one for my school library. Then I realized that I would be breaking all kinds of laws and contracts if I were to use it in a library setting as a library ebook delivery system. I wrote a column for YALS castigating Jeff Bezos for his shortsightedness in ignoring the school and library market.

Amazon seems to finally be making some strides in that direction with their new Kindle DX. This larger, more expensive version was created specifically for the eTextbook market. Amazon is working on a pilot program with the Kindle in conjunction with the following six colleges and universities: Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, University of Texas at Austin and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

I have several teachers who swear by the Kindle for all their reading. I do have to confess, that for traveling, it seem like a guilty pleasure, a toy a librarian should have on her Santa list. But, as for eTextbooks, I'm not sure the Kindle is the device.

From what I read, Stanza for Iphone is making great leaps, but it still is leaps and bounds behind the Kindle feature-wise. The major drawback seems to be that laptops are still the better delivery system for eTexbooks. However, for Freedman's argument, they don't make economic sense, therefore, something like a Kindle is more fitting in his economic model. Also, given the whispernet technology of the Kindle, the device doesn't depend on Internet access, which a laptop does. In a poor neighborhood, some parents couldn't afford to have Internet access, so what does it matter if you have a laptop? You won't get connected!

It's a puzzler. There does need to be something done. We can't continue to load down our 60 pound students with 70 pounds of books. We do need to consider the environmental impact.

And if you want to read a charming account of one man's descent into a reading hell (the Kindle) and how he came to understand its appeal, read Nicholoson Baker's Can the Kindle Really Improve on the Book?

Young adult doesn't mean stupid.

I was a really looking forward to reading Kim Harrison's first YA (young adult) novel Once Dead, Twice Shy as she is one of my favorite authors of all times. She writes the Hollows series and it is fabulous. But I think that sometimes authors have this idea that YA books are somehow easier than adult books. They aren't. Of course, the review on Booklist did warn me. It did say that the world's architecture is confusing even after several explanations, but that the story is engrossing. It is an exciting story. The characters are interesting. But it really irritates me that she doesn't do them justice. I've read what she can do. I know how she can take a minor character like the guardian angel Grace and turn her into someone you cry over over. I know that her villians in this book are not only paper cutouts, but of paper so fine you can almost see through them. Madison barely even has dialogue with them. How can the reader create an emotional connection and fear for Madison's safety when she doesn't understand the villian? Doesn't understand what drives the villian?

Teens are scary smart. They will smell out the little nods to Twilight on this book (the divorced parents, girl shipped off to dad, girl trying to fit in at school). They will see that the world's construction doesn't make sense, but that with thought and time it could have. That it could have been amazing!

There are some great characters here. Don't get me wrong. I still read it in a day. I still plan on reading the next in the series in hopes that Kim wises up and gets smart and writes for her YAs like she does for everyone else: fully and completely.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a book that everyone should read. It is the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and it quite simply is unbelievable, especially to an American who has had a very gentle life and upbringing. I could only read a little at a time because it is so heartbreaking and sad. In spite of the anguish one has at reading about her childhood in Somalia, Kenya and Saudia Arabia, where she endured genital mutilation and was beaten by her mother, grandmother, religious teacher and others, one comes to admire her for her stubborness in achieving great things. For her indomitable will and desire to learn and educate herself, to open her eyes and see what is in front of her and question what appears wrong and false. She was raised Muslim, but ends up renouncing it. The renounciation is not easy, quick or simple. It comes about over time, after abuses in the name of her former religion, at the hands of people who should be protecting her. Her life in the Netherlands shows her a different way to live. While she ends up as a member of the Dutch Parliament, the controversy over her renunciation is such that she must give up her post and flee to the US, where she is today.



If you know nothing of the situation in Africa or of how madrassas indoctrinate muslim youth, this book will give you one person's personal story of those things. It will inform you so that you do not just shake your head at genetial mutilation or at angry immigrants, but hopefully it will give you a small understanding of the confusion that exists in their countries and in their minds so that it clouds their thoughts and actions.



This is a tough book to read, but I challenge everyone to read it.


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Silent On The Moor by Deanna Raybourn

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is the third in the Lady Julia Grey series. I read the first two books as audiobooks and they were very good, even if it was annoying for them to change narrators. the reviews for the new narrator for the third book were so universally bad that I bought it hardcopy instead. Great decision! Raybourn brings this third book in at 465 pages and I loved every one of them. Lady Julia has determined to go visit Brisbane, uninvited (oh horrors!8-), in the deeps of Yorkshire only to find another mystery centered in the estate he now owns: Grimsgrave.



Raybourn is a master of the gothic romance mystery. This book oozes atmosphere and you can almost feel the cloying moist fog as you try to cipher out the whodunnit. The chemistry between Lady Julia and Brisbane is electric, my only complaint being he has a very small role for the book taking place in his estate. There are some interesting developments between Lady Julia's siblings, but I don't want to give anything away. Suffice it to say, everyone grows and learns from this experience, even Mr. Pugglesworth.



This series is excellent for high school libraries because of the very Austen-esque romance (still to be consumated) and the high vocabulary level. I hope it hasn't ended with this book. While the book came to a satisfactory conclusion, I am still waiting for more.


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Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure by Michael Chabon

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is a slim, charming read coming in at 196 pages. Chabon is probably better known for his extremely long and dense Pulitzer Prize winning The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. This book is a twist off of what he usually writes. It's an adventure novel, what he calls a Jews with swords book. And it is delightful. Set in the far past, circa A.D. 950, Amram and Zelikman are adventurers who step into a controversy and decide to see it through to the end.



Each chapter begins with a fairly long witty title, the first chapter is called On Discord Arising from the Excessive Love of a Hat. From the titles you get the sense that this is an adventure book with a sense of whimsy. It is also a romantic tale, one filled with black humor and, surprisingly, elephants. There is a tortured hero. His partner is not just a sidekick, but a real partner and friend for life. They truly are Gentlemen of the Road. I recommend this for anyone who enjoys a good adventure novel, but most certainly for those snobs who like that adventure novels can't be good literature. This book proves them wrong.


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It's about the story, sister.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch is the first book in a wild, swashbuckling fantasy series from the fertile imagination of Scott Lynch. He is so darn creative and so fabulous, that you just can't stop reading. And the books are bloody, action packed and have a hint of romance. Just the thing for boys and girls, or men and women, rather, as the language is salty and the hero is a bad boy.

Recently at the book store, I realized that I had missed the sequel (Red Seas under Red Skies). I bought it knowing that a ripping good yarn was soon to be had. Man, was it ever. I tell you, Lynch is a consumate storyteller. He is crafty and wily. And he doesn't explain everything. There are loose threads and you itch to know what is going to be done with them.

Fear not! On Feb. 24, 2009, the Republic of Thieves comes out. Book three and one I hope that will lead to a bit more than just making it through the caper. Jean and Locke deserve some really good things to happen and my fingers are crossed and my toes are tapping with impatience!