Active Voice

Book Two
Time Started: 11:30 pm
Time Finished: 12:40 am

Title: California Diaries: Dawn, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama.
Pages: 180
Summary: As Dawn moves from the middle school to the high school, she finds her world changing as her circle of friends shift to include some and exclude others.
Thoughts: The CA Diaries series was a Baby-sitters Club spinoff that featured Dawn and her California friends in a somewhat more adult setting, with eating disorders and drinking and words like “breast” and “gynecologist.” Shocking! I’ve been reading through all the BSC books, including spinoffs, here, but I’d never read a CA Diaries book before. It didn’t charm me. Dawn is pretty much horrible (and seems to have lost all of her interests and convictions from the BSC proper), all the girls treat each other like crap, and the scene where a 17-year-old ogles a 13-year-old’s bra-less breast through her wet t-shirt is way gross. The brightest spot was Dawn’s brother Jeff being a hilariously sullen little brat. I love that kid.

Two cupcakes.

ETA: I am heading to bed now, because I have to be up for MoCCA Fest tomorrow, but when I return tomorrow afternoon, the reading and blogging shall recommence!

Book One
Time Started: 8:30 pm
Time Finished: 11:20 pm

Title: Magic or Madness
Author: Justine Larbalestier
Genre: Contemporary/urban fantasy.
Pages: 290
Summary: Reason has spent her whole life on the run from her grandmother Esmerelda, but when Reason’s mother goes crazy, Reason finds herself trapped in Esmerelda’s world, with two new friends and the terrifying knowledge that magic is real – and dangerous.
Thoughts: Really, really excellent. Very exciting and creepy, and the characters are great. The world-building is also phenomenal. I want to know more, but alas, I will have to wait until this weekend is over to get my hands on the other two books in the trilogy.

Four cupcakes.

Book One
Time starting: 8 PM
Time finished: 9:45 PM

Title: The Invasion (Animorphs #1)
Author: K. A. Applegate
Genre: Aliens Among Us
Pages: 184

Summary: Evil, mind-controlling slug-aliens are trying to take over Earth. A good alien dies trying to stop them — but not before giving five ordinary kids the power to morph into animals. And now those five kids are all that stand between the rest of the human race and total enslavement.

Thoughts: Apparently, all my friends grew up on this series, but I totally missed it somehow. It was definitely the shortest of the books in my TBR pile, and the one aimed at the youngest crowd. The prose was very clean, and the change in narration styles when the POV character became an animal was really well done. The cast is multiracial, with girls kicking as much butt as the boys, so it gets a thumbs-up on both of those counts. A fun, fast read. I’d give it to my younger relatives for sure.

Four cupcakes.

NOW! Well, for Jess at least. 8:30 EST. Let the games begin!

Because I have no digital camera, and am not terribly organized, here is a web-cam captured image of my TBR pile! (And here is me making a stupid face at my pile.) My list isn’t nearly as extensive as Jess’s, but here goes, in no real order:

• Lust by Robin Wasserman
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress
• Monster Hunter: Nightmare Academy by Dean Lorey
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore
• Te Ear, the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
• Drift House by Dale Peck
• The Invasion (Animorphs #1) by K.A. Applegate

How many of these will I complete? I have no idea! But it will be fun to find out. Thanks again to everyone who’s agreed to sponsor us (and feel free to keep offers rollin’ in! It’s for a good cause, after all.). The fun on my end will begin in half an hour or so…

Are you ready for the 48 Hour Book Challenge? I am ready for the 48 Hour Book Challenge! I’ve pulled out all the books I’ve had lying around waiting to be read, purchased a couple more, and added in all the eligible swag from last weekend’s Book Expo America (which was amazing).

Here is the Pile Corner of my room:

Fuchsia: Books for the 48 Hour Book Challenge. This stack has grown since I took that picture, but between a lack of batteries, an ancient camera, and a persnickety printer/scanner/whosit, it’s too much of a hassle to take another one. You will just have to imagine the new and even more precarious pile!

Green: Books I deemed either too old or too young for the challenge, even though adult books are technically eligible. I have since transferred some of these to the 48 Hour pile.

Blue: Comics that need to be read and filed, and Bloom County collections and naval history books that need to be read and returned to friends. Also a huge book on Greek mythology because I like reading redundant Greek mythology books, and my NYCC badge from four months ago.

Orangey yellow: Other random BEA swag. Yes, that is the Catching Fire logo. (A formal review of that book will be going up next week.)

White: A light-up Wonder Woman tiara, and a My Little Pony. Irrelevant, but awesome!

Also pictured: a bin and two bags full of yarn, my super awesome turtle bag, keys.

And here is the list of books in the 48 Hour Pile:

The 13th Reality by James Dashner
Alphas by Lisi Harrison
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson
The Brain Finds a Leg by Martin Chatterton
California Diaries by Ann M. Martin
- Dawn, Diary 1
- Sunny, Diary 1
- Maggie, Diary 1
- Amalia, Diary 1
- Ducky, Diary 1
- Sunny, Diary 2
Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech
Dragon Flight by Jessica Day George
The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima
The Devil’s Kiss by Sarwat Chadda
Exposure by Mal Peet
Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
Ophelia by Lisa Klein
Over Sea, Over Stone by Susan Cooper
Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Peter and the Sword of Mercy by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
The Pharoah’s Secret by Marissa Moss
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George
Tombstone Tea by Joanne Dahme

Sponsors or potential sponsors who are moaning and clutching their wallets right now, never fear! I will not read all of these books! I will probably not even read most of them. This is just to give me some choices. The California Diaries books will serve as a sort of refreshing sorbet between courses of longer books. (If I run out of those, I’ll be digging into my roommate’s Sweet Valley Junior High collection.) See, I have strategy.

I will probably be starting around 7 or 8 pm tomorrow night, which means you still have plenty of time to sponsor one of us!

This coming weekend is the Fourth Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge, in which bloggers read – and blog about – as many YA books as possible within a 48-hour period. For charity! Since we Active Voicers are strongly in favor of reading as much as possible and then yammering about it, and actually benefiting the world for once by doing so, we have decided to participate.

What does that mean? Basically, from Friday through Sunday we’ll be reading all the YA we can get our hands on, sci-fi/fantasy or otherwise, and liveblogging about it here.

Where does the charity angle come in? Well, if you so choose, you can sponsor one or both of us for a certain amount per books read. Comment on this post telling us whether you’d like to sponsor Jess, Becky, or the entire Active Voice team, and how much you’d like to sponsor per book. At the end of the weekend, we’ll multiply the amount you offered by books read by whoever you chose to sponsor, and you’ll send us that amount. So if you decide to, say, sponsor Becky for $1 per book and she reads 15 books, you’ll send us $15 through PayPal. (Contact details for that will come in a later post.)

We in turn will send all donations to Room to Read, a very excellent non-profit organization that operates in rural communities in Asia and Africa, building schools and libraries, publishing local language literature, and providing scholarships for girls’ education. These are all things that the Active Voice team feels pretty seriously down with!

We’ll be posting more in this coming week with lists of books we plan to tackle over the weekend. Please feel free to recommend anything you think we should read and haven’t seen reviewed here. We can’t promise that we’ll be able to find/buy/read it, but we’ll do our best!

Spread the word! And if you have any questions, or are participating in the 48 Hour Book Challenge yourself, let us know!