Teaser Tuesdays (11/1)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“I could never let that happen to Prim. Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who still polished my father’s shaving mirror each night because he hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam.”

The Hunger Games (p. 33), Suzanne Collins

His Dark Materials, Book 1

The Golden Compass Philip Pullman
351 pages; published 1995

"We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair...death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life..."

The roofs and roads of Oxford are Lyra's home; she has scaled their heights in adventurous play, and mapped their length in bitter warfare against the town’s children. It is a life both endearingly simple and unendingly complex, but it is Lyra's own, and she loves it.

But, just as Lyra cannot stay a child forever, her days of raucous freedom must too come to an end. Forced to leave behind her days of dodging the educating attempts of scholars, Lyra is thrown headfirst into a world he barely recognises. A world where no one can be trusted and nothing is safe - not even a child's soul.

Lyra travels with the Gyptians over land and sea in her attempt to rescue her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel, but is stopped at every turn by Gobblers, clockwork beetles and armoured bears.

The Golden Compass (originally/also titled Northern Lights) is a book that doesn't diminish, but rather improves with each reading. Lyra's world is such a richly detailed one that each read surfaces something new and delightful.

It is a wonderful blend of fantasy and science fiction (a good example of steampunk for those so inclined - something the film visually represents remarkably well), using a good balance of both to establish the series.

Intended as a children's book (middle grade/YA), it is, nevertheless, one that should appeal to all ages, child and adult alike. Followed by The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy is a must read. (5/5)

I want a fairy!

How to Ditch Your Fairy
Justine Larbelestier
298 pages; published 2008

Rochelle gets a clothes-shopping fairy and is always well attired; I get a parking fairy and always smell faintly of petrol. How fair is that? […] why couldn’t I have, I don’t know, a good-hair fairy? Or, not even that doos, a loose-change-finding fairy. Lots of people have that fairy. Rochelle’s dad, Sandra’s cousin, Mum’s best friend’s sister. I’ll wholly settle for a loose-change fairy. (14)

Okay, I’ll fess up, I’m not so much a sucker for book covers but for quirky titles. So when I saw this one reviewed on a blog a while ago it immediately caught my attention. And when it was offered up for review, I quickly put my name down.

Fourteen year old Charlie lives in New Avalon, the best place in the entire world (at least according to its inhabitants). New Avaloners are just more interesting that everyone else… mostly due to their possession of fairies.

There are fairies for every one and every thing. Charlie’s friend Rochelle has a ‘clothes-finding fairy’, star of the water-polo team Danders Anders has a ‘grip fairy’, and Fiorenze, the most hated girl in school (at least by the other girls) has a fairy which makes every boy her age fall in love with her.

And what kind of fairy does Charlie have? A parking fairy. How ‘undoos’ (uncool) is that? For Charlie, it’s the worst thing imaginable. She’s constantly being begged, borrowed, or outright kidnapped by so-called friends and family to find good parking spots. So Charlie decides to save her sanity, and in the process gain a better fairy, by boycotting all transport. Surely lack of use will bore her fairy into leaving. She soon starts to learn, however, that it isn’t quite as easy as all that.

I really liked the idea behind this book, with people’s inherent talents and fortunes – both good and bad – translated into fairies. However, I’ve got to say that I had some issues with the book. I feel it had the potential to go a lot further than it did. Author Justine Larbelestier started to touch on several themes only to leave them hanging or gloss them over.

What was written was reasonably well done – with one exception. Larbelestier seems to have gone to great lengths to incorporate the slang and phrases of her teenage characters but, rather than using current vernacular, has made up a language unique to New Avalon. While I can appreciate the attempt, I found it very jarring, and having to refer to the glossary simply to translate words for ‘cool’, ‘hideous’, and ‘beautiful’ was intrusive to the novel.

Overall, it was a nice light read, but not necessarily one I’d go out of my way to recommend. 3/5

Other Reviews
Have you written a review for this book? I would love to include it, comment below and I'll add your link!

How I Live Now

Meg Rosoff

186 pages, published 2004

Dad was one of those Never Mention Her Name Again type of fathers which if you ask me was extremely unpsychologially correct of him. [...]

I sometimes wished someone would just fill me in on the simple boring things like did she have big feet or wear make-up and what was her favourite song and did she like dogs or have a nice voice and what books did she read etc. I made up my mind to ask Aunt Penn some of these questions when she came back from Oslo but I guess what you really want to know are the things you can't ask like Did she have eyes like yours and When you pushed my hair back was that what it feels like to have your mother do it and Did her hands look serious and quiet like yours and Did she ever have a chance to look at me with a complicated expression like the one on your face, and by the way Was she scared to die. (p20)

How I Live Now
was certainly a unexpected novel, with a very unique voice. I didn't really know what it was about when I started reading it (assigned reading, again) and I was very suprised by what I found.

Daisy (much to "plain" to be 'Elizabeth') is fifteen and suffering from both an eating disorder (somewhat glossed over) and a new stepmother. "Shipped off" to London to live with her Aunt Penn and her four odd cousins she is actually quite pleased to be away from the noise of the city and her evil stepmother, even if it does mean giving him her cell phone reception. Daisy settles in quite easily with her cousins and, when her Aunt is called to give a peace talk, the kids take to enjoying their parent-free life.

Their fun parent-free weekend, however, turns indefinate when her Aunt is unable to return home, blockades obstructing her way home. It seems that the war (completely undefined) has finally broken out. Still, as the war has yet to truly touh their lives, the kids find enjoyment in the preparation and hustle of the town war efforts.

But when their house is taken as a base of operations and the children are separated this all changes. They are torn apart and want nothing more to be together and help protect each other, but can Daisy and her youngest cousin, Piper, make their way back to the others and survive the war at the same time?

Staying alive was what we did to pass the time. (149)

I really enjoyed How I Live Now. It was unusual to read a war-time book where the war is almost entirely skimmed over - all the side effects, but none of the causes. Rosoff's characters were fascinating, almost fantastical, and added an almost indescribable element to the book - it's definately not fantasy, but it's not a straight realist novel either. I did have some issues with the book though - namely that the romantic interest (a fully-fledged sexual affair, at that) was between Daisy and her fourteen year old cousin Edmond. Aside from a small acknowledgement that this was an odd or unusual relationship it was completely accepted - even by the others as they learn of it. 3/5

Holes
Louis Sachar

233 pages, published 1998

Talk about cruel and unusual punishment! Charged and convicted for the theft of a famous baseballer’s sneakers, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a boys juvenile detention centre in the middle of a huge, dried-up lake bed. Forced to spend each day out in the blazing sun digging a hole both as wide and deep as the shovel he’s issued, Stanley makes friends - and enemies - amongst the fellow boys and the workers in charge. Coupled with the interlaying story of the notorious bandit ‘Kissing Kate’, Stanley can’t help but feel that there is more going on to their detention than the boys are being led to believe.

An undemanding but enjoyable read, one can’t help but sympathise with poor Stanley, whose only crime is the possession of extremely bad luck. 3.5/5