ooh-err!

there's been a bit of discussion about and around the topic of sex in YA books. an inside a dog discussion forum a few weeks ago got me really thinking. i discovered that a lot of the people who would prefer to read books without sex were embarrassed. natural; this is something that is private, sometimes scary, that makes you nervous. but it isn't as though YA books are pulsing with pornography. at least, i hope not.

i think it is lovely when a book can explore the fumbling, awkward moments that occur between two characters - letting the reader experience, or be introduced, to sex and sexuality in a safe and gentle way. you've got the more explicit (and here i don't mean porn, but sex scenes without metaphor) scenes in john marsden's the dead of the night, judy blume's forever and maureen mccarthy's cross my heart - and i can't help but think of poor sophie from joanne horniman's my candlelight novel just waiting to get away from the boys and back to her books.

then there are the more metaphoric or poetic depictions. for example, here's a really beautiful sex scene from steven herrick's the simple gift:

Making love

It was like falling headlong
into the clear waters
of the Bendarat River
and opening my eyes
to the beautiful
phospherescent bubbles of light
and trying to catch those bubbles
iin the new world of quiet and calm
that carried me along, breathless,
and too late, or too early,
I surfaced
and broke the gentle tide,
and I gasped and rolled
and wished Caitlin and I
could return to the hush
of that special world
and we could float
safe for a lifetime
lost
and hoping never
to be found.

but now i am hopping off my soapbox and back to reviewing. that's what i'm here to do.

interesting/creepy

so being new to the finer points of the interwebs i sometimes head over to the place where they tally up the people who have visited my wee corner of the worldwideweb. i particularly like to see how they got here. the last few people have searched for

1. alphabet city westgarth blog

2. the opposite of coffee

3. surfache gerry bobsien, was it a hit?

and i am scratching my head and laffing a lot because someone got here by googling:

4. travelling with internet boyfriend

hilarity!! i have never travelled with an internet boyfriend, never had an internet boyfriend, never read a book about travelling/having an internet boyfriend. perhaps this is a new niche book market? author-people - get writing!

mmmmm i like your craft

beautiful future - m. craft

we spent so long in secondhand stores we forgot there was anything new
we wrote our lives-on dog eared pages they're aged and yellowed through
just today in the amazon jungle, a helicopter spotted a tribe
all painted red and shooting arrows at the sun they didn't know about the world outside

but what's that?
i see out on the horizon
a glimmering, shimmering light
it's calling everything onward
is that the beautiful future?

this is something i just cannot stop listening to. i saw martin craft live for my friend's bday recently and fell in love with him. errr...i mean his music. but the thing is, writing the lyrics down here doesn't do them justice, it kinda highlights the pollyanna-emo (is this possible?) tinge to his stuff. but listen to it - his timing and melodies and phrasing are fantastic. so is his beard. and lankiness.

this song is the first one on his new cd arrows at the sun, which also has some other top songs - my faves being mexico and young and in love.

oh! and i've just transcribed from what i heard on the cd, so forgive me if lyrics are slightly wrong. i'm the girl who honestly thought that the travelling wilburys were singing 'and a mi mi aware' (rather than 'handle me with care') for a good ten years.

new places to find coffee and books

i've recently come into contact with a lot of people who read a lot of different books, and we all gather in somewhat sterile rooms to talk about it, and to create our own words and stories. we often talk until lateish in the evening so i need fortification...

i bought coffee yesterday from soul soup cafe on cardigan street. since it was tight arse tuesday it only cost me $2. i almost fell over in shock. the guy who served me was charming and friendly and my coffee was delicious. i have to admit that i wasn't sure it would be when he just slopped the milk into the cup - but there i go, confusing fancy pouring with ...err...good coffee??

anyway, i had made myself the somewhat ridiculous promise not to buy books this year but instead read all those on my shelf that have been left unopened (among these: mrs dalloway by virginia woolf, sons and lovers by d h lawrence, war and peace AND anna karenina by leo tolstoy and countless more) but already i am itching to read everything that has been suggested to me. maybe this year i will have to get over my dislike of libraries. it's really not so bad, i guess, not having the book to own for one's self.

reading madness!

i'm doing it again - have so many books on the go that i just can't put down:

the returners by gemma malley

i loved the declaration and the resistance and i'm roughly a quarter of the way into this, her third gripping offering. not part of the other series (which will come to its conclusion in september of this year, hopefully in australia at the same time as the UK) it is just as fascinating and i can't wait to see what she is on about. where i am up to is the moment where the shit is about to hit the proverbial fan and i'm going to become privvy to the secret - what is going on with the weird people, why will is having excruciating pain and frightening visions.

sugar sugar by carole wilkinson

the ubiquitous wilkinson (mother of the excellent lili) has written this book about a young australian girl who is travelling to paris to show her designs to a major fashion designer. the blurb tells us that her plans are sent "spinning off-course." perfect! i've read ooh roughly one chapter and already i am gripped and enthralled. unsurprisingly, given that i love travel, i love paris and i love girl-travelling-to-paris-stories and recently i have decided that fashion is pretty damn interesting. something to do with a girl i know who has just designed shoes for dior while living in paris, perhaps (hate her hate her!).

franny and zooey, j d salinger

just in memorium, i decided to read through salinger's stuff that i've missed thus far. in a letter that franny writes to her boyfriend about a page into the book i felt such a strong connection with her - identified with her voice and expression. this has sent me in a spiral of wonderment. franny says:
"it's too bad about not being able to get me in croft house and i don't actually care where i stay as long as it's warm and no bugs and i see you occasionally , i.e. every single minute. i've been going i.e. crazy lately."
doesn't she sound swell?

a bookshop job

i love my job, love working with books and getting to meet customers and talk about books - especially working in the children's shop because kids are always REALLY EXCITED when there's a new book in their favourite series and aren't afraid to show it.

however, i'm not the most patient person in the world and working in retail really really grates sometimes. for example, it's taken A LOT of self-restraint today when i've offered to gift wrap a book for a customer to not scream in their face when they ask: "can you take the price off?" and i know...i know...on principle it's a totally fair question, but when it happens thirty or forty times a day i want to yell WHY WOULD I LEAVE THE PRICE ON, YOU A-HOLE or at the very least respond with a resounding DERRR!!!

and don't get me started on parents with prams (particularly GIANT PRAMS)
or unattended children
or sticky fingers
or coffee spills
or stinky nappies
or twilight fans
or stupid questions (though my friend m takes the cake on this: someone came into her bookshop, looked around then asked "do you sell trumpets?" derr!)

but then sometimes it only five minutes i remember why i love being here: i get a reading copy of the new john green/joanne horniman/patrick ness (can't wait til may!) ; the girls from teen bookclub make my sides ache with laughing as they talk w/o breath about talking pigs, hamish and andy, you tube and occasionally the book itself ; a customer comes in especially to tell me that the book i recommended was a big hit ; jenny comes in and says "where the hell have you been?" like i'm an important bit o' furniture here.

...aaaaand...cut. enough. mi scusi.

spotlight on my favourites: john green

he's an author, a nerdfighter, the most hilarious video-blogger (i believe vlog is an expression...whatevs) and just a little bit hunky. and he's written some of the best YA books around.

looking for alaska

this was an instant hit with me when i first read it, and re-reading it recently just confirmed my original reaction: smart, funny, moving and (dare i say it?) necessary. here's a book with a loveable hipster doofus main character in miles (aka pudge) who has a pretty serious interest in knowing people's last words. and a cast of characters i wish i had invented (or i wish had been my friends in high school), including the beautiful and fiesty alaska. these kids are awkward (well, miles is) but they are also intelligent, philosophical and wickedly mischievious. split into two sections "before" and "after" you know that something horrible is going to happen, and the "after" section is impeccable and heart-wrenching.

looking for alaska won the 2006 michael l printz award from the american library association and there was the whole hooha about a tiny blow job scene that apparently is going to damage young minds.

an abundance of katherines

i bought this when i was in new york, as at the time it wasn't available in australia. i read it on the flight to san francisco, and it was everything i had hoped. honestly, i thought it would be hard to follow up a book like alaska, but i was happily mistaken.
the main character is colin, a washed-up child prodigy. soon after the book starts, we find colin lying face down in the carpet after vomiting his guts up, just graduated from high school, just been dumped by his girlfriend katherine. remarkable particularly because this is the nineteenth time he has been dumped by a girl called katherine. determined not to let colin be pathetic all summer, his best friend hassan decides that it is road trip time. (i love a book about road trips) a sign promising to show the boys the final resting place of the archduke ferdinand (?!? i know!) leads them to gutshot, tennessee: they meet lindsay (of the beautiful smile), her mother hollis (rich and eccentric) and her friends (colin does not take kindly to lindsay's boyfriend TOC - the other colin). roped into working for hollis, colin spends his spare time drafting his eureka moment! mathematical theorem to predict how every relationship will go.
again, brilliant character and incredible dialogue, including one scene between colin and lindsay that genuinely upset me, in a really amazing way.

paper towns

margo roth speigleman lives across the road from our main character quentin (Q) and since they were kids he has always been just a little bit in love with her. now seniors in high school, the two are hardly what you would call friends. but one night margo comes through Q's bedroom window dressed like a ninja and coaxes Q into a long, crazy night of revenge, adventure of hi-jinks (which may or may not include breaking into sea world, shoving dead fish under an enemy's car seat and removing the eyebrow of a jerk jock). the next day margo has disappeared. Q is determined to solve the clues she's left behind, to find her. again, a brilliant support cast, including a shitload of black santas.

paper towns won the 2009 edgar award for best young adult novel.

will grayson, will grayson

two guys, same name. this novel was written in tandem with david levithan (editorial director at scholastic books in the usa and author of nick and norah's infinite playlist, among many others) and each author created a persona for each will grayson. john's will is unwillingly thrust into the public eye at school by his best friend tiny: a larger-than-life, musical-loving, football-playing gay guy. a nerd-chic girl called jane just might have her sights on will, but he is really really not sure. one night, abandoned by his friends after a fake ID debacle will finds himself in a porn shop where he meets the other will grayson, who was there hoping to meet an internet boyfriend. their stories and lives thus intertwined the book continues: funny, endearing, romantic with great friendships and a brilliant big gay musical. fab.

john lives here : http://www.sparksflyup.com/