Booklist: the Revenge
25. Princess in the Spotlight, Meg Cabbot, 8/7/06 [B+]
Although I can't tell you one single thing about the plot four months on, I can tell you that this book is just as giddy and fun as the original Princess Diaries. That Mia is a charmer, and her light, breezy story goes down easy and leaves a pleasant, minty aftertaste.
26. Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin, 8/12/06 [C-]
Although built around a great premise, this YA novel is a sadly hollow Lovely Bones rip-off that lacks anything resembling spirit or power. Its recently deceased 14-year-old narrator finds herself on a cruise ship heading to the afterlife, where the dead live in homes, cities, and communities much like our own. They work day jobs and live regular old lives, all while aging backward toward babyhood, when they'll be sent back to Earth on the river Nile to be reincarnated into new bodies. And that is all you need to know about this book, because the rest is boring padding that revolves around unsympathetic characters doing frustratingly dull things. Pity.
27. How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff, 8/13/06 [A+]
Welcome to the bleeding edge of YA fiction, a modern day The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe twisted just for today's teenagers. American anorexic Daisy is sent away by divorced daddy to live with family in the English countryside. The cousins she's never met turn out to have subtly supernatural powers, which come in handy when England is invaded and occupied by unnamed soldiers from an unnamed country. Excellent, stream-of-consciousness storytelling makes this far-out concept seem completely believable and completely real.
28. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery, 8/19/06 [A-]
A childhood classic worth revisiting as an adult, when you'll notice things like Marilla using the "N" word and how its construction as a series of short stories, rather than a novel with a progressively building plot, belies its roots as a magazine serial. Anne Shirley is clearly Mia Thermopolis's great grandmother, and her story is full of pleasantly wacky pratfalls from a kinder, gentler era.
29. Anne of Avonlea, L.M. Montgomery, 8/21/06 [A-]
This slow, homey little novel deserves to be savored. Anne takes a step toward adulthood as she spends a year teaching school near Green Gables, keeping Marilla company after a sad thing happens that I won't specify, in case you haven't read the book.
30. Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery, 9/2/06 [A-]
It's hard for me to judge this as a book, as it's very, very different from my beloved Anne of Green Gables mini-series. Anne, away at college, makes friends and very nearly marries a boy who isn't Gilbert. That's so not cool, Lucy. So not cool at all.
31. Anne of Windy Poplars, L.M. Montgomery, 9/10/06 [D]
Although chronologically the fourth book in the series, this dismal addition to Anne's history was the last written. In it, Anne is completely perfect in every way, makes a bosom friend out of every arch-enemy, and sums it all up for her fiancee, Gilbert, in letter format, from which Montgomery edits out all the lovely bits. Misguided and so reverent as to be deadly boring, Anne of Windy Poplars is for completists only.
32. Anne's House of Dreams, L.M. Montgomery, 9/20/06 [A-]
Anne is now a full-fledged grownup, taking her place as Gilbert's wife in a faraway town. With its heroine once again a fallible, human character, this book's most memorable moment is when Anne loses her first child. Somehow, her suffering manages to be deeply affecting, even though a fair amount of reading between the lines is required as Montgomery never once uses the word "pregnant."
33. Anne of Ingleside, L.M. Montgomery, 9/30/06 [B]
The torch is officially passed to Anne's children in this book; she herself appears mostly as loving mother to a brood of precious kiddies. Fine reading, if you like plotless novels from another era. I don't, as it turns out.
34. Put Downs: A Collection of Acid Wit, Laura Ward, 10/2/06 [B]
A welcome change of pace from all the niceness of Anne's world, this collection of nasty things is most entertaining when it focuses on snappy one-liners. (My favorite? A review of John Grisham's The Pelican Brief that was titled The Turkey Long.) Including all the old standbys from Shakespeare to Wiilde to Mark Twain to Dorothy Parker, this little gem will make you feel deliciously witty and evil just for reading it.
35. Rainbow Valley, L.M. Montgomery, 10/6/06 [B]
The further escapades of Anne's children, this book is a blatant setup for the one to follow, the last of the Anne of Green Gables series.
36. Rilla of Ingleside, L.M. Montgomery, 10/13/06 [A]
At last, Montgomery's writing finds a uniting thread as Anne's children and their friends experience World War I. Told in the most modern voice of the series, it will both make you cry and make you feel as if it was worth wading through the first seven books to get here. Anne's daughter Rilla goes from frivolous little girl to mature woman, all thanks to something she carries home in a soup tureen in the middle of the war.
37. World War Z, Max Brooks, 10/16/06 [A]
Although not for the faint of heart or stomach, this excellent imagined history of "the zombie war" is told through a series of interviews with people of all walks of life from all around the world. If you can stand some blood and lost sleep, this is the book for you: Smart, funny, moving, and every bit as imaginative as the Harry Potter series, it's the gruesome last world in end-of-the-world (almost!) zombie fiction.
38. Necklace of Kisses, Francesca Lia Block, 10/19/06 [B-]
Was Weetzie Bat always this shallow? This book finds the star of Block's first big YA hits all grown up, the mother of two college students and the wife of her Secret Agent Lover Man, who stopped appreciating life after 9/11 and has simply became "Max." About 20 pages of meaningful text padded with lavish descriptions of food and clothes that make you wonder if you should try to stage some sort of eating-disorder-intervention for the author. An enjoyable read, if only you can slog through the pretentious fluff to find the meaning.
39. The Boy Detective Fails, Joe Meno, 10/22/06 [B]
Although a little stylized for my taste, this tale of an Encyclopedia Brown-esque boy detective grown up all wrong is a fast, rewarding read. In this topsy-turvy world of supergood and superbad, the boy detective searches for the reasons behind his sister's suicide and realizes that the most important part of growing up might just be coming to grips with our own limitations. (Also, it's full of puzzles and word jumbles, which ups the fun factor by a power of ten.)
40. Catherine, Called Birdy, Karen Kushman, 10/26/06 [A]
A delicious slice of YA historical fiction featuring a breezy, wise-ass narrator and a boatload of historical detail. Told in diary format and full of fleas, arranged marriages, and general bad behavior, there's nothing not to love about this book. Except for it not being 2,000 pages long, anyway.
41. Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks, 11/5/06 [C+]
Forrest Gump gets the Black Plague in this story of a simple maid who just happens to witness every pivotal moment in her village's self-imposed quarantine. Although well-researched and nicely written, this book's something of a bore: in making her characters deeply realistic, Brooks also made them deeply frustrating. As one terrible thing happens after another, you'll long for the empty-headed fun of #38.
42. Beware, Princess Elizabeth, Carolyn Meyer, 11/8/06 [A]
Although the daughter of a queen, Elizabeth's journey to the throne wasn't exactly a walk in the park. (But then again, her mom's stay there wasn't one, either--she was the first of Henry VIII's wives to loose her head. Literally.) Focusing on the follow-the-bouncing-crown that lead up to Elizabeth's reign, this book will will keep you on the edge of your seat, even knowing how it's going to end. The world was a dangerous place for a royal back then--if your enemies didn't kill you, your friends just might. (Pair this one up with Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Ewles, for even more delicious royalty in peril.)
43. Witch Child, Celia Rees, 11/13/06 [A-]
After disliking several books by this author, I'm glad I gave her one last shot with this tale of an English teenager forced to start a new life alone in America after her grandmother was hung as a witch. A modern, grittier take on The Witch of Blackbird Pond, the story is presented as the narrator's diary, found sewed into a quilt and published hundreds of years after her death. Full of everything you could ever hope for from a historical novel--witch trials and noble Indians and a healthy smattering of love.
44. As Simple as Snow, Gregory Gallaway, 11/18/06 [B]
After meandering on for 150 pages disguised as an earnest midwestern coming-of-age story, this book turns into a creepy meditation on how little we actually know about the ones we love. A direct descendant of both The Virgin Suicides and Stargirl, As Simple as Snow isn't for you if you don't like to be left hanging: it asks approximately ten thousand questions more than it answers. Although this book's publishers are apparently unable to decide if it's literary fiction for grownups or a YA novel, it's a pretty good read wherever you shelve it.
45. Wizard's Holiday, Diane Duane, 11/25/06 [A-]
A sci-fi sibling to Harry Potter's fantasy world, this 7th book in the Young Wizards series is one of its best. For Nita and Kit, middle school partners in magic, there are no easy answers, no Flick and Swishes. Their magic is constructed from science and math and equations, and their enemy isn't a single human(-ish) being, but the god of atrophy. A nicely imagined multiverse where teenagers are always around to save the day.
46. Gossip Girl, Cecily von Ziegesar, 11/26/06 [D-]
I was looking for another Princess Diaries in this book, but instead found Cruel Intentions without the charm or Sarah Michelle Geller. Shallow, over-privileged teens drink and screw their way through a high school that will make you wonder why there aren't more school shootings these days.
47. The Forest Lover, Susan Vreeland, 11/30/06 [A-]
Another one of Vreeland's wonderful novels about art, this little gem explores the life of Emily Carr, a cantankerous, old-maid Canadian who made her mark on the world of art by painting first nations villages in the cutting-edge Parisian style of fauvism. You'll ache for both Emily and the last dying vestiges of Native American civilization that she commits to canvas. A depressing but ultimately fabulous study of a painterly version of writers' block and our relationship with what we create.
48. Of Love and Shadows, Isabel Allende, 12/11/06 [A-]
The best of Allende's early work, as far as I'm concerned, this book follows one couple through friendship and love against the backdrop of the brutal military dictatorship that draws them together. The grand scope of many of Allende's books is happily dispensed here, allowing you to really come to understand the characters, not just watch them parade by in the form of eccentric, one-off biographies.
49. Sorceress, Celia Rees, 12/16/06 [B+]
A sequel slightly less satisfying than the original, Sorceress explains what happens after the publication of Witch Child's diary. A modern college student who grew up on a reservation explores similarities between the stories of her ancestors and the one in the diary. The best part of the book picks up where its predecessor left off, giving the reader a grand tour of colonial New England through the eyes of the native people. I was blown away to discover that the author is a native Brit--reading this book gave me a weird sense of New-Englander pride that I was sure she must share.
50. A Deadly Game of Magic, Joan Lowry Nixon, 12/17/06 [B]
It's what isn't revealed that's truly scary in this Goosebumps-grown-up creepfest. The Breakfast Club meets Scooby Doo, it strands four disparate high schoolers in a southern mansion, only to reveal that they may not be alone there after all.
::massages hand cramp::
I did it! Fifty books, and fifty capsule reviews. Go me ;)