The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home

The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home Margaret Atwood & Naomi Alderman 3.5 / 5	Published 2012 First Sentences "Sometimes it's difficult to do the right thing. But Okie and I tried; we did everything humanly possible."
Publisher's Description: Okie's fifteen. She lives in New York. She's got a few problems: she's failing geography, her dad's a wimp, and her mother, Sumatra, is a stone cold bitch. But things get a lot worse when Sumatra turns into a zombie and eats Okie's dad. Clio, Okie's grandmother, lives in Toronto; but since the zombie apocalypse, Toronto's a lot further away than it used to be. Clio suggests that Okie transport Sumatra across the border, because family is family. But coaching Okie by cellphone isn't easy, and Clio has some zombies of her own to contend with. Luckily she has some garden tools. Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood team up for this unusual two-hander. Encompassing love, death, sex, and the meaning of family, The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home will surprise, delight, and convince you of the vital importance of keeping ready supplies of rhubarb and mini-wieners in your freezer at all times. (Description from Wattpad)
Dear Reader, This was a super quick read (although let's ignore that I read it in such little chunks that it took me a couple of weeks to get through! haha). It is available ONLY on Wattpad, so don't look for it in any other format (believe me, I tried!). It must be read either in a browser or using the Wattpad app (which is available for Android or iOS). NB: All reading options are free! In any case, this was a lighthearted and interesting take on the whole zombie apocalypse. I know, I know, it's been done 2,000 times already. But this story takes a different tack, and I really liked its ideas. For one thing, it posits the possibility of somewhere (NYC, in this instance) being able to build back up post apocalypse. This means that there are "safe zones" which are relatively "back to normal" (albeit with a bit more awareness & caution - mostly) and then the kind of no-mans-lands which exist outside of the city's gates. Life still goes on relatively normally within the safe zones: people go to school, "normal life" has returned. However, many choose to remain outside of the walls, but they know that they do so at their own risk. Clio, a fairly cool grandmother who resides in her marital home in Toronto, is one of those. She knows how to be safe with the wild creatures outside her garden walls. And she is an especially interesting character, because her late husband is perhaps the cause of the zombie plague! (Another thing I love: how the authors imply that it could be overconsumption of a fictitious energy drink which could have caused humans to turn into zombies.) So when her granddaughter calls with the news that "mom ate dad" (with the grandmother initially misunderstanding in a hilarious way), Clio tells Okie that she ought to hire a "Z-Liner" to transport both the kid & zombie mom to her place in Canada. The book isn't long so I don't want to give too much away, but I will restate how I enjoyed the light (but not silly) take on the zombie situation in this book. It was sweet and would be easy to gobble up in an afternoon (no pun intended!). I certainly recommend this for any zombie fans out there, particularly if you are of the belief that zombie behavior can be interpreted in various ways. This being just one humorous take. Yours, Arianna

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer 3.5 / 5	Published 2005 First Sentences "What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me?"
Publisher's Description: Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is a precocious Francophile who idolizes Stephen Hawking and plays the tambourine extremely well. He's also a boy struggling to come to terms with his father's death in the World Trade Center attacks. As he searches New York City for the lock that fits a mysterious key he left behind, Oskar discovers much more than he could have imagined.
Dear Reader, Hmmm.  I'm not sure what I thought of this book, really.  It hovers between a 3.5 and a 4 for me.  In some ways it was such a beautiful piece, and in other ways, well - I kind of wanted to shake Oskar Schell until he stopped being so rude and annoying!  He was a fantastic character, in the sense of a "character": one who has quite a bit of dimension to him.  He was a seriously precocious kid who you sometimes forgot was just nine.  But he could be so incredibly annoying, too!  He didn't seem to have a filter and he offended others easily by his nosiness.  If I had encountered him in real life, I probably would not have wanted to interact with him. However, the book had a beautiful generational aspect to it, which echoed Everything Is Illuminated, Foer's first book.  Both spanned from WWII to the present, which leads me to assume is a time period which really intrigues Foer.  Both included stories of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren and how they arrived where they currently find themselves.  I was particularly interested in the aspects of the story which pertained to 9/11: Oskar's father died in the attack, and I think this might be the first book I've read since Julia Glass' The Whole World Over which truly dove unabashedly into the tragic event.  Perhaps I've read others; I'm sure there have been more.  But because that was such a momentous day that we lived through, and I recall well how touchy people were about the attacks for years later (they had to postpone TV shows and movies which featured the World Trade Center towers, in order to edit them out, didn't they?).  So it's interesting to see the tide finally turn, and people want to really touch on the anguish of that time. In any case, the premise of the book is neat, with Oskar wanting to discover the origins of a key that he found in his father's room after his death.  I found that also a bit frustrating, though, because his father didn't know he was going to die on September 11, 2001!  And he certainly wasn't sick or anything; this was a totally unexpected death.  So why would he have left clues to a posthumous puzzle?!  It bothered me that the kid didn't think about that, that he just figured his father had left him a clue and that was that, he had to move forward in solving it.  Ultimately, I guess one could say it was just his way of coping with his dad's untimely death.  But still.  At least the book had a good mystery to it, although even that wasn't quite solved to my satisfaction.  I guess I'm just more critical of this book than I want to be, which is why I keep wavering on every assertion I make!  I'm sorry.  I'll leave it at this: it was definitely an enjoyable enough book to read, and if you like Foer, then you'll definitely not hate this one.  It was an interesting take on the whole 9/11 thing.  I just didn't love it, that's all - and I had hoped to.  Ah, well.  Live & learn! Yours, Arianna P.S. I was totally unaware in 2011 that this was made into a movie, too!  I'll definitely have to watch it. P.P.S. I have to admit, I was totally enchanted by the grandparents' story: particularly of the silence, and the writing, and the way the two danced around each other, withholding when they should have been sharing.  Those were my favorite parts of the book, because they were so real.  I should have written that in my above review, but I just thought of it now!

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Three Bird Summer

Three Bird Summer Sarah St. Antoine 3.5 / 5	To Be Published May 13, 2014 First Sentences "Here's what I know about girls.  They like talking and combing their hair with their fingers, and they move in careful packs, like wolves."
Publisher's Description: For as long as he can remember, Adam and his parents have spent their summers at his grandmother’s rustic cabin on Three Bird Lake. But this year will be different. There will be no rowdy cousins running around tormenting Adam. There will be no Uncle John or Aunt Jean. And there'll be no Dad to fight with Mom. This year, the lake will belong just to Adam. But then Adam meets Alice, the girl next door, who seems to want to become friends. Alice looks just like the aloof, popular girls back home—what could he and she possibly have in common? Turns out, Alice isn't like the girls back home. She's frank, funny, and eager for adventure. And when Adam's grandma starts to leave strange notes in his room—notes that hint at a hidden treasure somewhere at the lake and a love from long ago—Alice is the one person he can rely on to help solve the mysteries of Three Bird Lake.
Dear Reader, This was a Netgalley offering which I selected because I thought it looked like it had promise as a good, relatable YA novel.  And it was!  Ultimately a very cute story about coming of age.  It was a quick, summery sort of read.  I think I would have enjoyed it more were I a pre-teen, but it definitely had its merits, and brought me back to those idyllic, endless summer days of my adolescence. The book's title is very apt: while it ostensibly refers to eponymous Three Bird Lake, where twelve-year-old Adam spends the summer before eighth grade, it also of course speaks of the three females with whom Adam interacts during this life-changing summer.  Used to a cabin filled with relatives and particularly rambunctious teenage boy cousins, this quiet summer is entirely new to Adam.  His parents have recently separated, which means that he is to spend his vacation with only his mother and his grandmother.  The third female doesn't come along right away, but she is perhaps the most life-altering: Alice, who becomes Adam's best friend and begrudged love interest as the season runs its course. At first, I had a difficult time liking the main character, largely because he felt very distant and emotionless.  He lumped all girls his age into one enigmatic group that he would never figure out, and left it at that.  Meanwhile, while he didn't exactly sound lonely, he didn't seem to have many friends to speak of, either.  So I was a little lost from the start.  However, I got the feeling over the book, as the reader became more and more familiar with Adam, that he was in fact a bit autistic.  I think he had to categorize people in order to deal with them, and I could see him begin to discern people from groups as he got to know his new friend, and even his mother and grandmother, better. There were some cute touches in the book; the friendship that develops between Adam and Alice is endearing.  While it's sometimes difficult to understand Alice's point of view, as the book focuses solely on Adam, you can begin to see why their relationship works as well as it does.  It's not just because they were thrown together as the only kids their own age in a remote lake setting. I also enjoyed the way Adam began to know and understand his grandmother throughout the summer.  It seems he begins to see her as a separate and whole person, which is a true milestone of maturation.  At the same time, as he starts to recognize her personality and her frailties, he also learns more about who he is and what he is capable of.  While I thought it a bit weird that the kid couldn't paddle a canoe by himself at first, I think maybe that was more a prejudice of my own than poor writing: I grew up going canoeing with my family, and therefore feel like I always knew how to paddle.  But it was another metaphor for Adam's developing independence and his growth into an adult.  I think there were many things in this book which were well-written.  I enjoyed all of the subtle metaphors and the rather odd but strong personalities.  One of my favorite touches was the carved animals on the mantelpiece in the cabin, which perhaps made me relate to Adam even more: it was also his favorite! I think this is a good YA novel.  It deals with some issues and gives a great example of growing up.  While it was a bit on the light side for me, I can understand that is because I lean much more towards "adult" fiction.  Like I said before -- if I were twelve, I think I really would have gotten something out of this book. Yours, Arianna

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