So Nice So Smart

Do you ever read the second book of a set and convince yourself that maybe you’ve forgotten to read a book? Like maybe you’re really reading the third one in the series? I just finished Crossed, the second book in Allie Condor’s Matched trilogy, and I was sure that I had skipped something. It hasn’t been that long since I read the first one, and I usually hold the details of a book for a very long time, but she would talk about something that had happened and I had no memory of what she was talking about. A piece of the book is about taking a pill to forget what has happened in the past and I sort of got paranoid that Condor had implanted one into the book. That way her characters could say, “Oh, yeah, remember how I already told you about this pivotal plot point?” I should have known that anything billing itself from the first moment as a trilogy wasn’t going to solve any giant questions in the second book, but it was a nice fast read. These are the books I’m overjoyed to get from the library for free – You read them in a day and (apparently) forget about them just as fast.

I did the opposite with MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead and Undermined. It’s the latest of the Queen Betsy books, which I love. (Very funny vampire series.) So Davidson starts off the prologue talking about her fans thinking she was crazy after the last book and time travel (Jazz Hands!), but I can’t remember anything too odd about the last book. So I start reading and I have no idea what they are referencing in the book. I decided it was a long whatever you call the prologue thing where the end of the book is at the front and then the rest of the book is how they reached that point. (There’s probably a word for that, huh?) I got about 50 pages in before I gave up and checked on Amazon to find that I had missed a book. I’m the reading genius this week!

Happy New Year! Get ready for the 100 book challenge!

Words Can’t Bring Me Down

I meant to write at least two posts every single week, but the holidays have knocked me back to one. I could blame it all on the work obligations (true) and social whirl (maybe a little less than advertised), but the real culprit is obvious. It’s stupid Words with Friends. I’m not an addict or anything. I don’t play in church or at the dinner table and that only has a medium amount to do with the fact that I can’t ever remember to turn off the popping bubble sound effects and my preacher and/or mother would take away my phone. I do have a lot of games going at once, though. I’m convinced that I’ll learn something new about people by playing them, so I mostly choose opponents I’d like to know better. So far, I’ve only learned who’ll apologize for playing ‘tooters’ and who’ll admit that they have no idea what a word means, but the computer accepted it, so it’s their new favorite ‘q’ word. No one ever trash talks, though, so I either have extra nice friends or we’re secretly Canadian. 

I have been reading, though. I’ve recently finished Entwined, a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Apparently. This wasn’t a fairy tale I knew, so I just looked it up and it’s got some parts that link up, certainly. In any case, the 12 princesses are thrown into mourning at the death of their mother and not allowed to dance for one year. They are angry at their father, who is distant in grief, and determined to keep their spirits high during the year of mourning. A secret passage leads to a magic ballroom where the girls can dance all night. A man named “Keeper” controls the ballroom and would like to have the princesses under his control, as well. The parts of the book that aren’t full of fairy-tale darkness and danger are mostly concerned with the girls’ love lives. No one is in love with whom they should be, but all will be well. All will be exceedingly well.

I read The Julian Game, too. The cover with the blue-wigged girl and the freaky gloves. Popular girl uses nerd girl to help punish a hot boy they both like. The hot boy likes the nerd girl for a whole week or two before he goes back to his default boy-tramp mode. Popular girl punishes nerd girl with cyber bullying during her week of bliss. Nerd girl overcomes all with the knowledge that popular girl isn’t really that happy after all. Blurg. I know I shouldn’t be encouraging impressionable young people to take revenge, (It’s only for adults, like Kahlua), but COME ON. Nerd girl has popular girl’s computer password and can smack popular girl into civility, even if she can’t force her to be sorry, but it’s enough to know that popular girl is only mean because she’s unhappy? Like fun it is. Loser.

Add It Up

A few years ago, I kept track of every book I read for an entire year. In pure book-nerd fashion, I noted how many pages, start and finish dates, and whether I had read the book before. Goodreads gets some of that out of my system, but even with that tracker I’m constantly updating the title list after I’ve already finished the books. I came to blogging too late last year to join in any of the awesome book tracker programs last year (and I know you don’t think I could participate for partial credit and let someone think that my half-year tally was the total I read this year). Anyway, this year I’m getting in on January 1.

I’m planning to participate in the 100 books in 2012, YA of the 80s and 90s, (Could that one be more up my alley? I have a valid reason to re-buy all the Wildfire Teen books of my youth. Actually, a commitment.), and the 2012 eBook Challenge. I’m still trying to figure out how to add the buttons to my site, because I’m the wrong kind of nerd, but you can watch for them in the sidebar and play along. You can also treat the challenge like a game of Donkey Kong and throw distractions in my way, like vacations and party invitations, to keep me from reaching my goal.

If you can’t beat me, join me. 

100 Books in 2012 is hosted by Book Chick City, Sarah at Workaday Reads is hosting the 2012 eBook Challenge and the Book Vixen hosted YA of the 80s and 90s last year, so I’m hoping she’ll do it again this year. You don’t have to have a blog to participate and you can sign up well into next year. I’m all excited about those little tracker things to mark my progress, but I might wind up having to add little hash marks to the bottom of my posts, instead.