German Translations of English Books in the Wild (2)

Since my post about English books in German translation was so popular last week, I went back to my local bookstore and took some more pictures.

So here we go!

First up, a lot of creepy eyes!

Michelle Zink's PROPHESY OF THE SISTERS (same title in German)
Suzanne Collins' HUNGER GAMES (German title THE TRIBUTES FROM PANEM - DEADLY GAMES)
Stephanie Meyer's THE HOST (German title SOULS)

Some lighter fare:

David Levithan and Rachel Cohn's NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST (German title NICK & NORAH - SOUNDTRACK OF ONE NIGHT)
E. Lockhart's THE BOYFRIEND LIST (German title 15 BOYS, 4 FROGS + 1 KISS)
Catherine Gilbert Murdock's DAIRY QUEEN (German title WE COWS)

And some heavier fare (I love how the flash came out in the shape of a fairy on the LAMENT cover):

Maggie Stiefvater's LAMENT (German title LAMENT - UNDER THE SPELL OF THE FAIRY QUEEN)
Mary E. Pearson's THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX (German title TWO AND THE SAME - HOW MUCH OF ME AM I?)
Suzanne's LaFleur's LOVE AUBREY (German title I'M STILL HERE)

Next Wednesday I will post some adult titles. Any requests?

Library Thing Tuesday (73) + Picture of Emmy

Today's question from Wendi is in honor of Banned Books Week: Do you have any banned books in your Library? If so, how many? Do you remember having any strong reactions or feelings when reading these books? Were any of the books on the list particularly surprising to you?

I have 20 books in my LT library that correspond with the books listed in the BannedBooks LibraryThing account. Since I haven't listed ALL books that I've ever read in there, I'm sure there are a great deal more.

Here are 4 of the 20 and my reactions:

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I read this while on vacation in Burma and I remember it taking a while for me to get into it. I can understand that the violence would turn a lot of people off. My memory of it now is so intermingled with Stanley Kubrick's movie version that I can't really separate them. What strikes me about the book version is the 21 chapter, which was omitted both from the movie and American versions of the book prior to 1986. In it, Alex has finally reached the age of adulthood (21) and renouces his former love of violence - obviously a radically different ending.

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. This is one of my least favorite books of all time. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen but it was all this drug induced stream of consciousness nonsense that I strongly disliked. I can't believe I even finished it, though I guess I read this at a time when I finished all books I started no matter what.

Native Son by Richard Wright. This was assigned reading in my high school American Lit class. I know some of the parents complained about this one (not mine). I don't remember too much about it now, but the disturbing scene where he stuffs the girl he accidently killed in the furnace is one that is burned in my memory.

Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes. I read this last year and I'm very puzzled as to why someone would want to ban this. I don't recall there being any objectionable content. It was just a sweet book about a pre-teen girl being confronted with death for the first time.

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Whenever we bring a new box into the house, the kittehs must try it out. Usually one at a time, but we recently caught them sharing nicely.

Book Reviews: Skinned and Crashed by Robin Wasserman (spoiler-free)

Lia is pretty, rich, and popular. Then her body dies, and her brain is downloaded into a new body. She’s still pretty, still rich – just not popular anymore. Her friends ditch her, her family feels uncomfortable around her, and the only ones who talk to her are other “skinners” and a nerd from her school named Auden.

And that pretty much sums up the whole novel – a potentially interesting premise that doesn’t really go anywhere. I think it’s probably because Lia is the least interesting part of the book – just another snobby girl robbed of her reason to be snobby who then has to find a way to deal with her new life as a social outcast/curiosity.

There is so much though bubbling under the surface of this future world where nuclear war has made most of the earth uninhabitable. The majority have-nots do without so that the minority can live on like nothing happened, still eating their free-range beef and chocolate while the less fortunate live on soy burgers in privacy-free corp towns and the even less fortunate forage for anything edible in the crumbling cities.

I wanted to see more of this world and how people were affected by it and less of Lia’s constant existential blather. Just read Decartes already – I think, therefore I am.

And then book 2, CRASHED, came along and gave me just that. We get to go to a corp town, to a city, and to see how the majority lives. Lia grows a bit more of a social conscience, and there is more action, less sitting around feeling sorry for herself. We learn more about the not-so great histories of Lia’s skinner buddies, and we finally get a feel for the direction the series might be taking, as more pieces of the puzzle become clear, lines are drawn, and sides are chosen.

Although this is not the most exciting dystopia series I’ve read, CRASHED gives me hope that the third book in the series will rock and be the big payoff for the set-up of the first two books.

SKINNED is now available in paperback and CRASHED in hardcover. Find out more about the series at the author’s website.

Book Review: Swimming by Nicola Keegan

Philomena, nicknamed Pip by her competitive swimming teammates, shows talent in the pool but at little else. Beset by family tragedy, she throws herself into improving her times and catches the attention of legendary coach Ernest K. Mankovitz who trains her for Olympic gold. But what happens after the glory when she finally has to face her demons?

As someone who got my Red Cross advanced swimmer certification at 11 and who watches every swimming world championships and Olympics without fail, I thought I would love this story about a Kansas girl made good. I didn’t. In fact, I found myself getting very impatient and annoyed with the stream of consciousness first person narration and the heavily stylized, fragmented prose. Author Keegan never made me care about any of the characters besides Pip and dwelt way too long on Pip’s tragic childhood – there’s nearly 100 pages of irreverent but often incoherent musings on death, religion and not getting her period before Pip starts taking swimming seriously (although I did like the first chapter where Pip swims confidently at 9 months old).

And then Pip’s actual rise to greatness feels very muted. We do get a lot of training details and Pip’s struggle with sugar addiction (hey – I can relate), but the championships go by in haze. We don’t even know what races she competes in – a strange omission indeed. And I know this is fiction set in a fictional swimming universe, but the novel makes a big deal about the East German swimmers being gone by the 88 Seoul Olympics when in fact they dominated, getting 10 of the 15 available gold medals.

And don’t get me started on the downer of an ending. This one just wasn’t for me after all.

SWIMMING is now available in hardcover.

More Contest Winners

Just a quick note to congratulate Bonnie for winning TIME OF MY LIFE by Allison Winn Scotch and to jpetroroy and Rhiannon Hart for winning signed copies of THINGS ARE GONNA GET UGLY by Hillary Homzie.

To claim your prize, just send me an e-mail with your mailing addresses (lenoreva at hotmail dot com). Thanks!

To those who didn't win, there are still two open contests (see my sidebar) for a copy of ASH by Malinda Lo and a signed hardcover of FIRE by Kristin Cashore.

Book Review: Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Henry recalls the Labor Day weekend in 1987 when he was 13 and escaped convict Frank stayed for awhile at his house with him and his agoraphobic mother Adele.

Though Frank is considered dangerous by the authorities and the general public, Henry sees him differently:

“The feeling I had, when I thought of Frank, contained no fear. More like anticipation and excitement. It was if I’d been in the middle of a book that I had put down when I got too tired to keep reading, or a video put on pause. I wanted to pick back up with the story and find out what happened to the characters, except that the characters were us.” (p 50 ARC, may vary from final published version)

Overall this is a moving story about the experiences and people that have a part in shaping your identity. Although Henry was certainly a capable narrator, he was rather detached from the emotional core of the story – the tender relationship that develops between the two broken adults. I would have loved to get inside Adele’s head and see at least some of the story from her point of view.

This gem of a novel is out in hardcover now. Find out more about it at the author’s website.

Friday Fabulous! (16) The mostly Tori Amos edition

What am I excited about this week?

1. Lauren Mechling is having a contest at her blog for a boxed set of 6 books from Betsy-Tacy's high school years. Lauren describes this classic series by Maud Hart Lovelace as Little House on the Prairie meets Gossip Girl. Ooooh!


2. The Bad Boy Bonanza is still going on...and there are so far only 9 entrants and 8 guaranteed winners. That makes your odds of winning fab prizes VERY good, and all you have to do is preorder Becca Fitzpatrick's HUSH HUSH which is going to be amazing anyway. What are you waiting for?!


3. Laina of Laina has too much spare time, really does have too much spare time because she was nice enough to offer to program a three column layout for my blog, which I've wanted for a very long time. However, once I uploaded it, Daniel noticed that he'd have to adjust my header, so it is back to the 2 column layout for now. Thank you Laina! You're the best!!


4. My first Tori Amos concert of this tour was in Basel. I had a 6th row ticket and got an amazing setlist including Girl (the first performance in 6 years - my jaw dropped), Josephine, Pandora's Aquarium, Siren and Curtain Call. 6 of the songs were debuts for me which is amazing considering this was my 11th show overall since 1996. I have now heard every song from Little Earthquakes live!


5. And then it was on to Zurich. This wasn't my favorite setlist, despite 4 debuts (for me). Still, lovely performances and a FRONT ROW seat (thanks to an upgrade) made this an amazing show. I never get tired of Hotel, Tear in Your Hand, Mother and Space Dog. And I loved hanging out with Rachel and Steve who are following the entire European leg of the tour.


6. Last minute, I decided to drive to Luxembourg (3 hrs away) to see my first general admission Tori show. Because I got there 5 hours early (just missing out on meeting Tori herself), I was able to get front row and was thisclose to Tori the whole set. Highlights were Juarez, Smells Like Teen Spirit, and a rocking Raspberry Swirl. No debuts for me this show (the first time that's happened in 13 shows), but I did hear her soundcheck Northern Lad and Cars and Guitars while I was outside waiting...does that count?! Rahib did a very thorough run-down of the whole show experience on his blog if you are interested.


Here's a pic from the lovely Shireen to show just how close we were to the tiny stage. I could almost reach out and touch her hooker heels ;)



How about you? What are you excited about this week?

Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

I am going to do a full review closer to the March 2010 publication date, but I just have to say now I am stunned by how amazing this novel is. Definitely one for my all time favorites list.

In case you don't know the premise, it's a doozy: Popular high school senior Sam dies but then keeps coming back to relive the day of her death until she realizes she may hold more power than she ever imagined. Small changes in her routine shuffle the cards and produce different outcomes while bigger changes give her fresh insight on her family, her friends, her classmates, and which boy she should have been kissing all along.

At the beginning, Sam was so unlikeable, I was terrified I wouldn't like the book, but I need not have worried. Sam probably experiences the most growth of any character I've ever encountered, and I love how chaos theory was so seamlessly integrated, giving the story an impressive depth and enough unpredictability to make it edge-of-your-seat, stay-up-all-night perfect.

This is one of those novels that you hold close to your chest after you're done and are just thankful that you had the chance to read it. Not only is it amazingly creative, but it also makes you want to be a better person.

I'm in love.

Guest Post about YA in Germany at Persnickety Snark

Today Adele of Persnickety Snark is hosting me at her blog as part of her international blogger celebration. Head on over to check out what I had to say about the state of YA in Germany and also to read about bloggers from all over the world.


I thought I'd also take this chance to show you a few German versions of US books that are on the loose here in Germany.

Jay Asher's 13 REASONS WHY (German title DEAD GIRLS DON'T LIE)
Carrie Ryan's FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH (German title FOREST OF 1000 EYES)
Markus Zusak's THE BOOK THIEF (same title in German)


John Green's LOOKING FOR ALASKA (German title - SOMEONE LIKE ALASKA)
Scott Westerfeld's UGLIES (German title - UGLY: DON'T LOSE YOUR FACE)
Kristin Cashore's GRACELING (German title - THE GIFTED)
Stephanie Meyer's TWILIGHT (German title - UNTIL MORNING COMES)

What do you think? Should I track down more German versions and post them on my blog?

Library Thing Tuesday (72) + Video of Emmy (giving Finn a bath)

Today's question from Wendi based on an idea from Caite: Have you explored/used the Wishlist collection on Library Thing yet? If so, have you found it helpful? Do you have any other tips or uses for the Wishlist collection?

This is the first I'm hearing about it, and I have so say, I am VERY excited about it. I love the fact that you can keep your wishlist separate from your main library and that you can make private comments about who recommended the book to you. I am definitely going to be using this feature in the future. The last book I wanted to add to my wishlist was Lucy Christopher's STOLEN, and I have to admit, I've already forgotten whose review it was that sold me. BAD!

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And now for the Emmy and Finn show... Check out how Emmy holds Finn down while she bathes him. Hilar!