Waiting on Wednesday — Erin

Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter
Pub date: June 21, 2011



Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life. Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners.

There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long, and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous and that is simply… the emerald is cursed.

Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all she has her best friend—the gorgeous Hale—and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses, realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time.

Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

When I saw the cover reveal last week for Ally Carter's second Heist Society book I immediately knew what my WoW pick would be.  I adored Heist Society.  I mean, come on, Ocean's 11 for teens?  Yes please!  While I am a fan of her Gallagher Girls series, I'm completely in love with the characters she's created in this series.  The dialogue is so snappy and witty and has such great energy.  It really feels like a heist film come to life.  I absolutely can't wait to get my hands on this one.


What are you waiting on this week?


*Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine

Review — A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Synopsis (via Goodreads): Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding new work circles Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, but the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other people whose paths intersect with theirs in the San Francisco 1970s music scene, the demimonde of Naples, New York at many points along the way from the pre-Internet nineties to a postwar future, and on a catastrophic safari into the heart of Africa. We meet Lou, Bennie’s charismatic, careless mentor; Scotty, the young musician who slipped off the grid; the uncle facing a failed marriage who goes in search of seventeen-year-old Sasha when she disappears into Italy; and the therapist on whose couch she dissects darker compulsions.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about time, survival, and the electrifying sparks ignited at the seams of our lives by colliding destinies. Sly, surprising, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.

Review:  “Time is a goon.”  That’s the saying, isn’t it?  Maybe not, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true however you interpret it.  Egan’s novel is more a narrative web than any kind of linear story.  The web extends from Bennie Salazar and through him we meet a whole host of other characters, some directly related to him, some that aren’t.  Each chapter jumps in time in what I want to call “past, present, and future” but, really, they are all the present. 

At first A Visit From the Good Squad reminded me of Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, but where I found Rachman’s book to be a little depressing, I was strangely inspired by Egan’s use of multiple points of view and non-linear storytelling. We have a wide array of narrators, but I never felt pulled in different directions or confused. I realize now that while it’s not linear storytelling, it is an emotionally linear story.

Each chapter feels like it could be an entirely different book, but they all work together incredibly well.  There’s a chapter that’s told entirely in graphs and charts and I think that might have been the most emotionally affecting chapter in the entire book.

Not every chapter works perfectly.  The chapter staring “LaDoll” felt a bit out of place in the greater picture, though it was engrossing in it’s own right.  Ted’s chapter wasn’t my favorite, though I did like the chance to see Sasha as a teenager.  Egan uses a variety of devices throughout the book, from the charts, like I mentioned, to an omniscient narrator who sees characters future’s while we’re in their present, and she even uses the dreaded second person.  And it actually works.  That kind of literary device could take you out of the narrative, but I didn’t even realize I was reading in the second person until a few pages into the chapter.

As I finished Goon Squad, I felt the need to sit back and have a few minutes of reflection, something that doesn’t happen often, sadly. I feel like I’m still trying to work this one out, sort out all my thoughts and feelings. Egan makes you think about time, family, friends, music, regrets, and so much more in such an emotional, visceral way.  A Visit From the Goon Squad is one I know I will definitely visit again and again, each time taking away something different.  There’s something sad, hopeful, and beautiful about this novel and I really can’t recommend it enough. 

Lit Snit Verdict: A

Review - Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

Synopsis (from book cover): Imagine you and your best friend head out West on a cross-country bike trek. Imagine that the two of you get into a fight—and stop riding together. Imagine you reach Seattle, go back home, start college. Imagine you think your former best friend does too. Imagine he doesn’t. Imagine your world shifting… Shift is a tour de force—a literary debut that’ll knock the wind out of you as it explores the depths of loyalty, the depths of friendship, and the unknowable depths of another person.

Review: Two friends go on a cross-country bike trek together after high school graduation. They get separated. Only one of them goes back home. Now, an FBI agent is asking questions.

We know this much in the first chapter, meeting Chris, who is starting his first year of college without having heard from his supposed friend, Win, in weeks. Win’s powerful and disapproving father wants to know what happened to Win, if Chris has heard from Win, if maybe Chris had something to do with his disappearance. Chris starts to wonder how much Win was hiding from him.

Then, we're taken back to the beginning, before graduation, when the bike trip was first conceived. The story splits into two time-lines, flip-flopping between Chris’s first year of college and the summer before, fleshing out the story of Chris and Win’s journey from West Virginia to the west coast.

We get to know Chris and Win, best friends since sixth grade, so close they practically shared a brain. The cross-country trip is a life-changing one, and not just because of the way it ended. More important are the people they meet along the way, the stories they share, the things they learn about themselves and each other.

With simple but elegant prose, this is one of those stories where the characters and the relationships between them can outshine even the best plots. It felt real, and had a lot of heart.

Lit Snit Verdict: A

Waiting on Wednesday - Abandon

Waiting On Wednesday: Abandon by Meg Cabot
Scholastic Inc.
Release date: April 26, 2011

Synopsis: New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, a dark, fantastical story about this world . . . and the underworld.

When Pierce first sees him, she thinks he is a murderer. She's right about one thing -- he does take lives. But not in the way she ever imagined. Pierce is drawn to the dark stranger even as she tries to uncover the mystery surrounding the tragic death of someone close to her. As she gets closer to the truth -- and the stranger -- unexpected secrets are revealed, even in her own heart.

This book has a few things going for it: first, it's by Meg Cabot. This fact alone is enough to get me to pick it up. It's also, according to her website, a retelling of the myth of Persephone. Yay!!!

I know the Persephone myth is a tad anti-feminist and creepy, especially the closer you get to the original story (an innocent maiden, dark and brooding god of the underworld, abduction and rape and a grieving mother), but it still makes for good source material for retellings. (Did anyone else read L J Smith's Forbidden Games trilogy? This was also a Persephone retelling)

And check out the full jacket cover!



April seems sooo far away!

**Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine

Books at the Oscars

I ran across an interesting Oscar edition book meme over at Book Memes and Quizzes, which tried to bring the Academy Awards to books by asking readers and bloggers some interesting book-movie/movie-book questions:

Q: What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

A: We here at LitSnit love the idea of books being turned into movies, just check our numerous Friday Casing Call session (a blog feature currently on hiatus.) I made a bunch of picks in 2010. In 2011, the book I would love to see hit the big screen would be A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Without getting too deep into CCF mode, here are my picks for the actors who I’d like featured in the movie version of this great novel:

Mariam - Shohreh Aghdashloo

Leila - Indira Verma

Rasheed - Anil Kapoor

Tariq - Naveen Andrews

Note: Here is a list of 5 popular books, whose movie versions are set to hit movie theaters in 2011:

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (US version starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara)

One for the Money (starring Katherine Heigl and Daniel Sunjata)

One Day (starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess)

The Help (starring Emma Stone and Viola Davis)

Water for Elephants (starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon)

Q: What movie would you most like to get a book version of?

 

 A: Blue Valentine. Derek Cianfrance worked on Blue Valentine’s movie script for 12 years. It is his baby, and what a marvelous baby it is. I’d liken this story of a relationship falling apart to Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road. What I saw on the big screen was mesmerizing, but I’m a book person and I would love to get my hands on a novelization of this story.

Q: What's your favorite movie adaptation of a book?

A: I have to go to a three way tie for this one:

Apocalypse Now (based on the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad)

Let The Right One In (based on the book Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist)

Breakfast at Tiffany's (based on the book Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote)

If you haven’t read these books, go get them!

If you haven’t seen these movies, you don’t know what you’re missing!

What's your favorite book adaptation of a movie (or tv show)?

 

 I’m not a big fan of the movie novelization genre. It seem that the majority of successful movie-to-book transitions come from science fiction plotlines, and sci/fi is just not my thing...yet. The one movie-to-book adaptation I've read and liked was the Natural Born Killers novelization by John August. The movie is a grisly, crazy ride. The book version (also entitled Natural Born Killers), supplements the on-screen action, describing some of Mickey and Mallory’s murders which were omitted in the movie.