Quotetastic Friday

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

I fell in love with this cover, and then I fell in love with the title.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
by Jennifer E. Smith
Poppy/Little Brown
Purchased on my Nook
[#39 in my 75 book challenge]

If you’re looking for a cute, romantic book, this is it.

Hadley Sullivan misses her flight to London for her father’s wedding. Little did she know that missed flight would change her life. Oliver is also on that flight, British native returning home from his studies at Yale, and his ticket is for the seat two down from hers. The story takes place over twenty-four hours and Hadley and Oliver meet and Hadley comes to terms with her father’s remarriage. She learns a thing or two from Oliver, and he changes her life.

This book is classic romantic comedy. Hadley is putting up walls all over the place because she doesn’t believe in love — not after her father left her mother for another woman in another country. Oliver is cute, smart, British, and funny…the right combination for knocking down Hadley’s walls. There’s some depth to the story, and it wasn’t full of cliches, but the basic idea was pretty standard romcom.

There were no math equations or real nerdy moments (beyond some English teacher-y stuff). I was expecting some John Green-esque nerdiness, since he loved the book and all. It was minimal. More heavy on the family drama.

What I liked most about the book: Hadley gets things quickly. Sometimes you want to shake lead characters because they miss details or miss hints, but Hadley’s on it. That’s how this story avoided cliches. I do want to shake her for the whole grumpy, “I’m so pissed at my dad and I hate this wedding” bit, but the way she realistically and logically changes at the end makes up for it.

What I liked least about the book: I’m too jaded to really appreciate a book about eighteen-year-olds falling in love. We always see the FALLING but never the STAYING in love. Romantic Comedies are just as terrible about this as YA romance is. There’s always a dramatic build up, a romantic climax, and then the story ends with the declaration of feelings. What? That’s where the story begins! We romanticize the falling in love part. This book does exactly that.

FINAL GRADE:   C   Overall, good. But probably not overly memorable. It would make a great romantic comedy. It would also be a great addition to my middle school media center — good message, no sex or violence. Just nice, PG-level kissing, very pre-teen appropriate. The kids would like it. Fans of YA contemporary romance will enjoy it, and I have a few friends I’ll recommend it to.

How do you feel about romantic comedy romance? Does it affect how you think of real-life romance or is it just for fun?

Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the bloggers over at the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers from all around create lists based on the chosen topics, and post links to the host blog to share our love of books. This week we’re looking at our favorite quotes from books.

If you are a regular here at my blog, you know this topic is perfect for me! Every week I have a feature called Quotetastic Friday, where I combine my favorite personal photos (sometimes public domain/antique photos) with my favorite quotes from books I love. I’m using this Top Ten Tuesday to show case my favorite Quotetastic Friday pieces in an easy-to-digest slideshow for your viewing pleasure! Here they are in, random order:

[Quotetastic Friday Style!]

[note: the back/stop/forward buttons will go away
if you take your mouse out of the slideshow box]

The slideshow goes a little fast (I couldn’t edit it), so press the stop button for more time on each picture.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

You can see all of my Quotetastic Friday posts here!

Quotetastic Friday

Bunheads

Is this not a gorgeous, beautiful cover?

Bunheads
by Sophie Flack
Little, Brown
Purchase on my Nook
[#35 in my 75 Book Challenge]

Finally, I have purchased, read, and finished this book.

Bunheads is the story of Hannah Ward, a nineteen-year-old ballet dancer in the Manhattan Ballet Company. Though she a member of the Corps de Ballet, she dreams of being a soloist and advancing her career — and she has been told that she has the talent to do so. Dedicated ballerinas focus 100% on their craft, working long hours and watching what they eat. Hannah has never questioned this lifestyle, until she meets a boy. Two boys, in fact: handsome musician Jacob and the suave balletomane Matt. Hannah must make difficult choices about what she really wants in life.

The ballet scenes made me really want to watch Center Stage, but I couldn’t find it, so I watched a documentary about ballerinas in the Mariinsky Theater in Russia instead (it’s called Ballerina, I watched it on Netflix). I also watched some YouTube videos of the dances Hannah talk about performing in the book. I was most interested in Rubies, from George Balanchine’s ballet Jewels. I’ve included the video here to get you in the mood for the rest of this review:

This is a book about ballet. And love. And choices. But it is mostly a book about ballet. Hannah’s entire life is ballet, and most of the action takes place in the studio or on stage. Flack obviously knows and understands the ballet world very well, so the passages are steeped in ballet terms and situations. I only took about seven or eight years of very casual ballet class, but I loved the ballet focus and thought it was perfect. I was worried that the love story business would take over, but I found the balance to be exactly what I was seeking: about 75% ballet story and 25% romance. It was refreshing to see a main character who was driven, focused, and had a lot going for her in life beyond just a teenage romance. It was also nice to see a teenage protagonist make choices for herself and not purely for a boy.

I think this book works so well because the theme and the message are universal. You don’t have to be a ballerina to understand Hannah’s situation. For teens, the story of Hannah’s realization of a world outside of the ballet world is a metaphor for the moment in all of our lives when we realize the world is bigger than we know. Jacob may be a catalyst for this, but it’s a realization that Hannah would have had to come to terms with at some point either way. Teens can also identify with the decision between choosing to hone a specific skill to perfection or experience many different things in the world.

FINAL GRADE:   B+   I debated for a long time whether to give this book a B or an A. Then I realize that the very fact that I was undecided was my answer: it’s a B. If it were an A, I wouldn’t have questioned it. I really wanted to give it an A because I felt it was well-written, featuring strong characters and an excellent message, but in the end it lacked the “wow” factor necessary to earn an A. This is definitely an excellent book with no major flaws, and I highly recommend it to adults and students alike. The sexual references are minimal, so I would feel comfortable recommending it to students in my media center and I will be purchasing it for my library’s collection.

Did you ever take ballet class? Want to be a ballerina? Do you love watching ballet and dance like I do?

Just call me Dr. Anderson…in 3-5 years.

How could I not love this place?

I had a major life event occur over the weekend, which you might have caught if you follow me on Twitter: I got accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill for their Ph.D program in Education! My concentration will be in Culture, Curriculum, and Change, and I will start in the fall of 2012.

I picked this program because it will offer me incredible flexibility in my coursework and my research. Looking at the course list made me giddy! I wanted to take them all! Though I did my undergraduate degree in education at UNC, I will have completely different professors and totally different experience this time around. But I am terribly excited to be going back to my alma mater for another four years(-ish) of being a student!

This news sets me on a new career path! I will be leaving the library and K-12 education to pursue a career in academia as an education professor. Though I love my job, I recognize that our public education system is going through some tough times. I feel the best way for me to contribute to changing public education for the better is through thoughtful research, teaching our future teachers, and utilizing the resources of universities.

I’m still narrowing down my research interests (I want to study everything!!), but I think I will be focusing on either teacher preparation, student transitions to middle school from elementary school, professional development, social media in personal learning networks, or middle grades literacy.

So this blog will still have a librarian focus for the next four months, but eventually my focus will shift. I still plan to primarily read and review young adult literature, but I will likely change the name of the blog and talk about my experiences in academia starting in mid-August. Stay tuned!

The Chosen One

Beautiful cover. I love that her braid is coming undone.

The Chosen One
by Carol Lynch Williams
St. Martin’s Griffin
Purchased from Amazon
[#19 in my 75 Book Challenge]

Oooooooo I loved this book. REVIEW SPOILER: I give it an A. That’s why you should read this review. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give any real spoilers. Because I want you to read it for yourself.

So it’s a book about Kyra, a thirteen-year-old girl living on a polygamist compound. She has three mothers and nineteen siblings. Kyra finds out that she has been chosen as the seventh wife of her own uncle, a man she finds extremely unpleasant. One thing is certain: Kyra is not going to marry that man, no matter what.

I am fascinated by polygamy, and my purchase of this book came from a little obsession I had with the topic last year. I watched Big Love and Sister Wives like it was my JOB. And while those shows are trying to promote a more progressive image of the culture, The Chosen One represents tradition polygamy…the almost cult-like groups that live on dusty compounds. We do see Kyra living in a loving family, but the power given to the religious leaders is huge and oppressive. They rule with force and fear. No one can leave.

Anger. That was the emotion I felt throughout this book. Anger at the injustice and hypocrisy. Anger at the treatment of women. Anger at the abuse of religion for personal gain. The climax of the story left me with my jaw hanging open in disbelief, and the ending was perfect. I’m not necessarily against polygamy, but I am against polygamy as practiced in this way. Child brides, forced marriages, domestic violence, child abuse, forced poverty, and abuse of power are terrible in any situation, but it does seem difficult to separate polygomist groups from this type of behavior.

Final Grade:   A   I’m a sucker for a good book that pulls real emotions out of me, and this one delivered. It’s beautifully written, I read it almost in one sitting, and it made my heart pound. It made me angry and it made me cry.Though the topic might seem mature, is done in a very MG/YA appropriate way. There is graphic violence, but no graphic sexual scenes. I would recommend it to my more mature students and any adult.

Mindfire

Metaphorically on fire, of course.

Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds

by Scott Berkun

[#58 in my 52 60 book challenge]

I might be slightly ridiculous at times. I dance around my media center, make stupid jokes, have Justin Bieber posters in my office, buy everything in pink, and watch waaaaaay too much reality television. However, at my heart I am a very logical, driven person. Everything I do is purposeful, even if I try to make life fun. Scott Berkun’s book speaks to that side of my personality. I’d like to give one big Jersey Shore-style fist pump to Scott Berkun for being logical, objective, driven, intelligent, humble, and awesome.

Mindfire is a collection of thirty essays organized into three categories: Gasoline, Sparks, and Fire.The essays were all previously published on his website, but he has handpicked from his many other essays to create this thematic collection. I’ve read short stories and non-fiction before, but this is my first experience reading an essay collection. Based on Berkun’s praise of essay collections at the end of the book, I may read more in the future.

He won me over with the first essay, “The Cult of Busy.” It’s like this man is in my head! Busy people like to say and believe that they must be more important because they are so busy, but sometimes it actually means they are not very efficient. I see this all the time in the education field! We’ve got these martyr teachers who stay at work until seven every evening and work on stuff all weekend and all break and all summer and never have enough time and are sooooo busy. I leave every day at 4:00 because I either A.) use my time wisely while I’m at school or B.) determine that some tasks are not important enough to spend my time on. Less busy people are not necessarily doing less and we certainly are not less important. I wish I had a copy of “The Cult of Busy” to hand to every person who ever snidely told me, “I wish I could leave every day at 4:00. Must be nice.”

It is nice. You should try it.

Other great essays included:

• “There are two kinds of people: complexifiers and simplifiers”
• “How to give and receive criticism”
• “On God and integrity”

Logic and objectivity run through each of the essays, but those three really stood out in terms of personal value. Some of the essays, though good, didn’t really hit close to home for me because they were about worlds that I don’t really live in. I guess they are applicable to education, but not as much is they would be applicable in the business world.

Final Grade:   A-

It would be hard for a non-fiction book to reach a full A, but this one got bumped up from a B+ because of the sheer number of times I chanted, “AMEN! For real!” to myself while reading it.

Another book that made me cry

The girl's expression sums up the book perfectly.

Before I Die

by Jenny Downham

[#55 in my 52 60 book challenge]

It’s no secret from the title of the book that 1.) the girl dies and 2.) I knew I was going to cry like a baby. But I like books that make me cry.

I didn’t realize this one would make me cry quite so much.

Picture me, laying in bed at 11:45pm turning the last pages of the novel (because I just couldn’t put it down) and making awful weeping noises. I had to change my pillowcase. Yeah. It was like that.

The first 3/4 of the story was average. The main character, Tessa, has been fighting leukemia for four years and has finally been told that she’s losing the battle. The doctors stop the chemo and she has just a few months left to live. At first, Tessa is depressed and miserable. But she creates a list of all the things she wants to do in her last months to experience life before she goes and she sets out to do them. She has sex, says yes to everything for a day, does drugs, drives a car, breaks the law…and falls in love.

The idea was great, but I found the writing a bit hard to read at times. I had to force myself to pick it up and read each night. Understanding Tessa was hard for me. Sometimes things just  happened out of the blue, and not in a good way. I really didn’t appreciate the continued disrespect she had for her obviously mentally and emotionally exhausted father, a man who generally supported the idea of Tessa’s list. She’d disappear and lie to him constantly without realizing why he worried about her. I also didn’t quite get the romance. Tessa’s love interest is so unrealistically perfect up until the very end. Is that how real teenage boys are? Because that’s not my memory, but they seem to be that way in many YA novels (the girls, however, can be as hot and cold as they want).

After forcing myself to read the middle section of the book, the ending rewarded me greatly. The last 40 pages make this book absolutely worth it and they will stay with me for a long time. The chapters get shorter. The spaces between the paragraphs get longer. The thoughts are shorter. Tessa gives the reader a first-hand account of dying from cancer. I don’t care who you are, you would have to have a tiny black pebble of a heart not to get emotional over that. It forced me to think about my own mortality and what it’s like to know that you’re dying and not being able to anything about it.

I think part of what I didn’t like was Tessa’s list. I’ve never had much of a rebellious streak, so rebellious activities would not have made up my list (even at 16). I can understand the falling in love and having sex. Even the driving. But my list would have included more simple things, travel experiences, and time spent with people that I love. To each her own, I guess. I have certainly been inspired me to make better use of the time I have today in my young, healthy life.

If you like terribly, terribly sad books or the like, this book is for you. Just make sure you have tissues so you don’t get snot all over your pillowcase…not that I did that or anything…

Me and John Green in the same YouTube video

I promised this a few weeks ago, but the video only posted last Wednesday…which means I’m only a week late in posting. To my friends who also know me in real life, you may have already seen this on Facebook. For everyone else, you must watch the video. At 0:06, if you look in the top right corner you can see some people with a cardboard cutout of their friend. Just behind them you see an arm or two flailing about.

THAT’S ME!

I know it just barely counts, but I’m still very excited that John Green filmed us for his Vlogbrothers intro. If you’re feeling really snazzy, click the video to view it in YouTube and watch the video called “Reading Chapter One of The Fault in Our Stars,” where John gives a sneak peak of his new book. Our intro was supposed to play that day, but I guess I’ll forgive John Green because I am sooooooo excited about The Fault in Our Stars. I will be pre-ordering the signed copy from Amazon.

Watch this video, or as least the first 7 seconds, and enjoy.