Shine by Lauren Myracle

16 year old Cat has set out to find out what happened to her former best friend Patrick.  Patrick was attacked one night and brutally beaten.  Most people in town are sympathetic, but none too quick to actually look for the culprit because Patrick is gay, and many in his and Cat's Southern home don't look too kindly on that "lifestyle".  Cat has to take on the entire town, and search through secrets she might not want to know, all in hopes of finding justice for her friend.

The setting in this book is amazingly well done.  The only problem I had is that originally I thought it was a historical fiction novel, but then as I read I realized it was set in present day.  The decay of Cat's small town is portrayed straight forward, but also very touchingly.

The mystery of who attacked Patrick isn't too hard to figure out.  And it is kind of painful to go through Cat dealing with her own issues of a sexual assault that happened to her years ago.  The fact that she starts to open up, and realize that while many of the people around her aren't perfect, they are still good and worth working to keep in her life, is something that I liked.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and found it hard to put down.  Also, I have to say that the cover is just amazingly beautiful.

Can someone just explain to me, why?

I am looking through the Feb 20 Publisher's Weekly which includes the very long list of Children's Books for Spring.  This breaks down books from tons of publishers, gives a little blurb, and the ISBN number.  While going through this list I've released that there are just some things in the publishing industry that make me ask, wtf??

1.  Severely outdated covers on BRAND NEW books.  Yes, I am looking at you The Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend.  Although you are not the only one that is guilty of this, but honestly, admit to yourself...you are stuck in the late 80's.  I would never buy this book to put in my Teen collection.  NEVER.  My teens would laugh at this book, and think my obsession with the 80's has gone way too far.








2.  Books with generic names.  Dead Reckoning is the name of a book due out this summer from Mercedes Lackey.  It is also the name of about a dozen other books by various authors.  No, not every book can be The Hunger Games, or Shattering Glass, or any book with a catchy name, and honestly some unusual names are just too weird.  But some of these names are so generic, and so lame, that I just get confused and then don't care one way or another about the book.

3.  Angels, nuff said.

4.  Books where the cover picture looks like it was taken with a cell phone in a room with only one tiny light bulb lighting the way.  Now I love dark images, and shadowy-ness, and brown.  But, some covers are just too murky and dark for me.
In Too Deep is one of those covers.  I almost, ALMOST, love it, but there is just to much darkness going on, and it makes everything seem blob-like.  Plus, it does look a bit dated.  Now, in person, this cover might look awesome.  But, my monitor isn't that amazing, so I can't tell if it would still look flat, blobby, and murky in person or not.

5.  Using the same stock pictures on multiple book covers and not giving a rat's ass that it is obviously the same.damn.picture!  Oh look, someone decided that the same picture of John Winchester was so awesome that it needed to be used twice!  I mean it isn't obvious or anything.  Taking off the raven, and putting in a blue background totally changed the entire picture....yeah not so much.









There are more things that drive me nuts.  Like teen books where the cover model looks older than Nancy Drew of either of the Wakefield twins ever looked.  Books where the cover model looks constipated, or where it looks like the cover is just made up of random clip art.

Lord help me, I am only to the N publishers in this magazine.  Who knows what I might come across in the second half of the alphabet.

Wedding dresses

Today I am going to try on wedding dresses for the first time.  The wedding isn't for a year and a half, but I figure I might as well start with something I can kind of understand.  Plus, I am 5'2" and let's just say curvy, so finding a dress is going to be a challenge.

This is something girls are supposed to like right?  So why am I nervous as all hell?  I'm kind of scared that the people in the store are going to tell me I don't belong there, and that I am just going to end up looking like a big white marshmallow puff.  Hoping I'll get some decent pictures, and get a better idea of what I am looking for in a dress by the end of the day.

Doctor Who

It's Friday....which means that yesterday was Thursday.  And Thursday at our house means two things:  brinner and Doctor Who.  Now I am not sure when this tradition got started, and I have no idea what we are going to do once we watch through all the episodes of Doctor Who on Netflix (unless we go back and watch the old Doctor Who episodes...and I am not sure if I am that brave).

Doctor Who is a British Sci-Fi show about a man (or well a Time Lord) who travels throughout time and space in his blue police box called the Tardis.  Throughout the seasons he has different companions with him, and encounters many different enemies including the Daleks and Cybermen.  We seriously love this show.  Last year for Halloween my fiance dressed up as the 10th doctor.  Oh yeah, the doctor doesn't die, he regenerates.  So far we are on our third doctor, although in chronology he is the 11th doctor.  Even though this is a sci-fi show, it has a ton of heart.  We love the show so much that we have painted our bathroom door to look like the Tardis, have multiple props from the show in our living room, and we have a beautiful Dalek poster above our DVD display case.

If you haven't watched it, give it a chance.  And if you don't cry at the end of series 4, then you have no soul.

Thursday

Blog a day is going strong...for two whole days!

And, for granted anyone reading this blog probably already knows this cause I bet only my friends (if that) ever read it...but I'm getting married!!!!!

Last week, on our one year anniversary, my very awesome boyfriend (now fiance!) and I got engaged.  I'm excited, in love, elated, happy, and SCARED TO DEATH!  Why?  Because I have NO clue how to put together a wedding.  Now, I have a year and a half.  We haven't set an official date, but we are thinking Fall 2013.  But, that doesn't make me feel more relaxed at all.  I am not sure where to start exactly, other than looking at dresses and color schemes because those are fun to Google.  I signed up at The Knot website, but they are kind of fancy and complicated.  Anyone out there want to help a girl?

Do I start figuring out a rough guest list?  Do I just go try on pretty dresses?  How do I figure out a budget?  The only thing I know for sure is that I need to hunt down a gluten free bakery so I can have a wedding cake that I can actually eat.

Blog a day

Ok, well, I've decided I am going to try doing this more of a blog a day thing.  Because honestly, I suck at blogging....which is pretty darn obvious.  So, I figure maybe I can challenge myself to blog almost every day (I might take weekends off).  Even if it is small, I can post.  Maybe I will get followers, maybe I will connect with people, or maybe I will just feed my own ego.

So, today I will start with a picture, because everyone loves pictures right?  Here's my "hopefully this works...is this a good idea??  What is the cat doing over there?????" face.

The National Book Award controversy

Everyone in the book world is going to be talking about this, so I am jumping right up on the bandwagon.

The National Book Award chooses 5 finalists every year to compete in the category for Young People's Literature.  Due to a snafu, this year there were 6 finalists.  My Name is Not Easy, Inside Out and Back Again, Okay for Now, Flesh and Blood so Cheap, Chime, and Shine were the 6 finalists.  Apparently Shine was never supposed to be on that list.  So, instead of allowing all 6 to compete (which was the original plan), Lauren Myracle (the author of Shine) had to withdraw her book (before they withdrew it for her) from consideration.

Now, mistakes happen, people read off the wrong name, hell there is still a rumor that Marisa Tomei was not supposed to get the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress because the wrong name was called blah blah blah.  That said, there is a way to handle the mistakes, and that would be with class.  I get that there is some tradition and that the sanctity of the award needed to be kept intact, or whatever.  But, seriously, did they need to do this?  How does this make the award better?  They embarrassed and hurt an author just to keep their award intact?  I don't see how this makes the award better, or is in the spirit of the award at all.

I have my issues with book awards already, *cough*The Printz*cough*, that I think are given out more for librarians and other people on book committees to feel all important and award books that are great for adults to read, but aren't so much great for teens to read.  But, this goes beyond my normal problems with book awards and goes more to the core of a new issue.  Awards are meant to lift people up, to give special notice to someone who has gone above and beyond.  Yes, people who don't win an award often feel bad, but they aren't being specifically singled out to feel bad.  This situation singled Myracle out and told her she was inferior.  That goes against the very reason to give an award.