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Tag: for young people

Better than Running at Night, Hilary Frank (not properly reviewed because I have news!)

Published 13 Apr 2010 by Gin Jenny

This YA novel, which the lovely trapunto recommended me, is all about going off and doing a new thing (art school), and meeting new people (art people), and growing up.  It explores that opening-up of choices that happens when you leave home, when your world gets bigger in good ways and in bad, and because it is bigger it is hard to navigate.  Growing up into adulthood has turned out to be way more difficult than I anticipated as a kid.  Because I remember when I was little, and grown-ups would go on and on about how I didn’t know…

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Review: Remembrance, Theresa Breslin

Published 11 Apr 2010 by Gin Jenny

Once again I am extremely behind on reviews.  I can tell that I am because when I finish a book before going to sleep at night, I chuck it over the side of my bed (carefully, so it lands flat), and right now there are four books piled up next to my bed, and it would be five if I hadn’t returned Remembrance to the library yesterday.  Eek.  But can I just say before I say anything about Remembrance that y’all are awesome and have given me many lovely ideas for fantasy books to read.  And now onward. This book…

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Review: Gunnerkrigg Court, Tom Siddell

Published 20 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

Can this count as part of the mini-challenge where we read graphic novels with animals in?  Animals are not main characters exactly, but they are around, and rather important.  And I didn’t like the other graphic novel I read for the mini-challenge, so I hereby decree Gunnerkrigg Court counts.  So let it be written; so let it be done. Gunnerkrigg Court is about a girl called Antimony Carver, who goes to live at a boarding school called Gunnerkrigg Court, following the death of her mother.  (Her father is off somewhere doing some sort of we don’t know what he’s doing.) …

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Review: The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Published 31 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

What do you know?  Life sends such unexpected blessings (and this review contains lots of spoilers).  I reread The Hobbit for the first time since I was small, and didn’t want to stab anybody in the eyes. Except for the dwarves in the beginning; and then Gandalf throughout because, frankly, who made him the king of the world?  He just gets to decide that Bilbo would be good on an adventure and risk his whole life to get a couple of bags of gold?  When it all works out, Gandalf nods and winks and makes wry comments about how good…

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Reviews: Heaven and The First Part Last, Angela Johnson

Published 30 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

I am having an absolute orgy of reading today.  So far today I have read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, the book of this website, Peter and Max (well, I finished Peter and Max, I didn’t start it today), The First Part Last, and The Pinhoe Egg.  IT IS AMAZING.  I started around nine-forty this morning, and I just cannot believe how quickly these books are zipping by me.  I am taking a break now because I can’t decide which of my books to read next. When I went to the library for The First Part Last, which I’ve wanted to read…

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Chrestomanci Chrestomanci Chrestomanci

Published 28 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

I can’t get any posting done for heaven’s sake!  I have finished and not reviewed five books I was planning to review.  There are two more books sitting atop the bookshelf by my bed, nearly finished but I don’t want to actually finish them because then I’d have seven books that I was planning to review that I haven’t reviewed yet.  Peter and Max and The Book of Secrets will just have to wait.  I AM ONLY HUMAN. In a frenzy of love for Diana Wynne Jones, I fetched out Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, and Conrad’s Fate…

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Review: Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 22 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

I am selectively craving Diana Wynne Jones right now.  Diana Wynne Jones is so great that I’ve devoted nearly half of the spinning bookshelf my father made me to her books alone.  (The spinning bookshelf denotes great favoritism and also contains Martin Millar, J.K. Rowling, and Rumer Godden.)  (Er, just so we’re clear, it doesn’t spin perpetually, like those spinny restaurants.  It’s more like spinning earring racks at gift shops, except bigger and wooden and it has books on it rather than accessories.) Does anyone else take great notice of words whose letters are all standards, which is to say,…

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Two more short reviews

Published 17 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

Sheesh, I just can’t get it together to write proper reviews this month.  So here are two unproper ones. One Perfect Day, Rebecca Mead I love the title of this book, but it wasn’t as SHOCKING as I had hoped.  I was anticipating lots of SHOCKING anecdotes about the SHOCKING American tendency towards excess in weddings.  And there was a bit of that, sure, but the book is properly called One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, and it is indeed mainly focused on the selling and marketing of weddings.  Mead talks about many aspects of the marketing…

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Review: Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 16 Nov 2009 by Gin Jenny

There are only a very few books by Diana Wynne Jones that I don’t own, and here they are and this is why: 1. The Time of the Ghost.  Written in 1981, right before Diana Wynne Jones went on her crazy winning streak made out of amazing brilliance and win, between 1981 and 1986, this is my very least by a lot favorite of Diana Wynne Jones’s books.  I have read it over and over, and I have never managed to like it. 2. A Tale of Time City.  Because I have only started liking it recently, and I have…

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Some books I have read before

Published 27 Oct 2009 by Gin Jenny

REREADING IS AMAZING.  Sometimes I forget how many amazing books I have already read, because I am busy reading new books, which are also (sometimes) amazing.  But this is what I’ve been reading lately. Magician’s Ward, Patricia C. Wrede Much like Mairelon the Magician.  Too many names of people, but I don’t care because I am more interested in Kim’s learning magic and having a Season and Coming Out at a ball and having Offers of Marriage to turn down.  In pretty dresses.  Can there be more pretty dresses?  And God, pretty shoes?  I need new shoes so much.  My…

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