but..but...

I always seem to be on the cusp of giving up on Mia. I didn't even want to read this one that much. Whatever character development (please don't hate me Meg Cabot if for some bizarro reason you ever read this, I love you, really I do) that Mia was heading for in the first three-ish books has been abandoned. I actually find Mia and most of her cohorts far less interesting and individual the further we go along in this series. Mia has devolved into angsty whining. Now, perhaps she did this in the books that I actually liked as well, and I might have been less annoyed because the series was fresh or she was angsty about something worthwhile or something. I don't actually remember. I just feel that she's now just a hollow caricature of herself. And that makes me sad. And bored. What makes me keep reading these books is that I know, between the parts that make me hate Mia, both for her annoying whining and for her ability to do horrible, embarrassing, cringe-inducing acts, there is some genuine funny in everything Cabot writes. And, I do have to remember that while in reality 6 years have gone by, and in Mia-land a mere year and a half (?) has passed. Oh, and that Mia is 15. And fifteen-year-olds whine and do stupid things. Hell, even 25-year-olds do. But seriously, if I were Michael, I SO would have broken up with her by now. Please, Meg Cabot, please give Michael a better reason to stay with her -or at least help me understand why he does...

So Behind

There is something futile in having a blog covering something like literature - whatever the genre. No matter who you are, there is no way to read everything or really even most of it. If you are lucky you'll have chosen to read the books that either everyone else has read or the titles that get nominated for whatever award, thus achieving the allusion, or at least convincing yourself that you are on top of it all. In Reality (Like I Ever Need That), good stuff is constantly slipping through, and suddenly 2 years have gone by and wait? Who's Scott Westerfeld? A bad librarian, I hadn't even heard of Scott Westerfeld until Peeps came out, which I loved. And now I'm playing catch up.

Having been shipped out to a library that easily tripled my drive time, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to listen to an audio book - something I hadn't done since my cross-country adventure. Enter So Yesterday. Hunter is a 'cool-hunter'. He gets paid to wander around Manhattan finding trends before they are trends - and reporting back to the 'client' who will then make money off of Hunter's discoveries by marketing the life out of them. His life is pretty good - but then Hunter's boss disappears under mysterious circumstances, and Hunter and his girlfriend stumble onto something so cutting edge that they are now running for their lives while still working to rescue Hunter's boss. 12+

What do I think? Not as good as Peeps, a little predictable, but still edge of seat. I do really love the way that Westerfeld throws in factoids, both here and in Peeps. I love factoids.

It's so pretty...

This was seriously AWESOME. Recommended by the same kid as Stetson, I had to request its purchase and wait for it to arrive. It's like Buffy meets Toy Story, minus the funny, and where the toys swear up a storm. It was beautiful and creepy and I think that I might just read it again. Dubbed an illustrated novel, the pictures are luscious and the text melds the concise qualities of the graphic novel with the depth of something much longer. Jack (from in-the-box) is called upon to fight off the demon that endangers his owner's life. Normally the idea of toys coming to life totally creeps me out, but this is Classic. (Do fight any visual comparisons of Jack to Bowie's Goblin King in Labyrinth). 13+

Best line: "Look...the only place you find fairness or evil is amongst humankind, and there you'll find only the pretense of the former and a plentitude of the latter" (p 89), said by the truly evil Plucker.