vivalibrarian's reviews
519 reviews

"When I was a child. When I was unborn. I felt destined for solitude, very certain that one day it would find me, so when it did I was not surprised & even welcomed it."

Told in alternating narratives, Heft is about Arthur, an agoraphobic ex-professor who weighs 500-600 pounds and has not left his Brooklyn home in 10 years and Kel, an 18 going on 40 year old kid who is struggling to take care of his sick and alcoholic mother and make it to the major leagues.

They don't know it but Arthur and Kel are connected by Kel's mother, Charlene, who was once Arthur's student and long time friend through letters and phone calls. When Charlene proposes a visit with her son no one will be the same again.

I...This is one of those books that grows and builds in your mind as you read it and when you are finished it lingers. The themes are universal-loneliness, misfits, making your own family and path in a most unforgiving world but the way they are expressed is simply beautiful. Moderate pace; character driven.

Kahoko Hino is a gen ed student with no musical talent at the Seiso Academy. To her surprise, after meeting a fairy no one else can see, she is added to the contestants for the prestigious Seiso music competition and given a magical violin that provides the talent if she provides the emotion.

Ahem. I understand what the message is with this manga-that emotions and the connection to music the musician has is what makes the talent come to life. However, as a musician, the fact that the talent is provided rubs me the wrong way. In my opinion, talent is just as rare as building the connection/emotion with the music so to have it just poof! be there? Grrr. The characters are engaging and the story line and drawing easy to follow.

"I'm like. Like. I'm like a grenade, Mom. I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?"

A John Green novel:

1. Geeky dude falls for impossibly gorgeous girl.
2. Girl is so far out of his league you shake your head in amazement.
3. Bad things happen.
4. Much growth, angst and wisdom occurs in such profound ways it takes your breath away.

The twist with this one is the main character is a girl, Hazel, who is living with a terminal diagnosis of cancer. Hazel falls for an impossibly gorgeous guy (ha, you thought I was gonna go...nah. not this time)who also knows what it is like to have cancer as a teenager. I love that his name is Gus.

While this may be the most random book review you've ever read, it doesn't matter. If you haven't read John Green, GO, RIGHT NOW, READ and then come back and tell me how right I am. The beauty is not in the story itself but in the intelligent, snarky, laugh-out-loud while you are sobbing way he writes fiction for teens. This is life.

I’m not sure if I’m more excited about the challenging questions or depressed at how many make me scratch my head in confusion. My favorite one so far: “You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in sixty seconds. What do you do?”

My second favorite, which hits home for many librarians: “Explain what a database is to your eight-year-old nephew, using three sentences.” HA!

Their answer is brilliant: A database is an iPod for information. With an iPod, you can store thousands of songs and still find any track you want quickly. A database does the same thing with information that people have stored on a computer or the Internet.

"When you fall from grace once, you're a screw-up forever."

Maria Kawai is beautiful, blunt and doesn't pretend to be anything she isn't. Imagine Spock in female form. Having been expelled from her previous school (for unknown reasons) she quickly alienates most of the population except for Yusuke-the popular, overly enthusiastic guy who tries to teach her how to put a "lovely spin" on her words and Shin, the sullen bad boy that likes to skip class and eventually finds himself falling for Maria.

A quick read from the popular Miyashi Tomori will hook readers for future installments wondering if Maria will be able to fix her broken heart. Timely topics of school bullying, growing up and self-acceptance run deep.

True story-In an attempt to check out a kindle book from the library, the only items I could find available to check out were romance...and this one.

A collection of short stories gathered by the popular urban erotica author Noire-there are some hard hitting authors in this group-K'wan, Joy & Andrea Blackstone to name a few.

The stories are brutal and there is lots and lots of sex. I just wasn't able to find the redemption/lesson learned you usually find in urban lit. Instead, each author seemed to go for the shock factor more than anything. The one redeeming factor was the presence of women who were determined to make it in whatever way necessary to get what they want out of this world. It is true that the stories are told without apology or restraint but there is little sexual pleasure here.

I have a habit of not counting the picture books I read but that doesn't seem fair to the picture books now does it?

Perhaps I shouldn't write reviews with no sleep...

This is a follow-up to the book There Are Cats in This Book. Blue cat, yellow cat and red cat are stuck in the book and implore the reader to help them escape so they see the world. All you have to do is wish really, really hard and see what happens.

This is exactly the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. The characters in the book are talking to ME and they are looking at ME and hold all the power in the world to make their dreams come true. Kids faces light up reading this fun and interactive style. There is much giggling...you know, from the kids.