Review: Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

This is my first review and I feel like to mark the occasion I need to tell you a little bit about me, The Book Lover.

Actually, The Book Lover in me is similar to the Movie Watcher, the TV Lover, and the Music Listener in me: we’re all pretty chill. I read, watch, listen to what I want, am overall okay with it and move on. Does that mean I’m not in some fandoms and listen to some albums over and over again and discussed all types of theories and opinions with friends over the Divergent Trilogy ending? Heavens, no. I’m in fandom, I write fan fiction, I put albums on repeat (current: Lana Del Ray and Beyoncé), and I will CAPS LOCK ABOUT BOOK FEELINGS until the cows come home. So what do I mean, I’m “pretty chill” and “move on”?

What it means is, I give almost anything I finish a four or five star rating. If I don’t like it, I stop reading it (Uglies comes to mind). When I watch TV shows, I hardly speculate on what will happen next or go into spoiler threads or hate new story lines. I trust the writers and see what happens. This sometimes doesn’t work out to my favor (The Office) but for the most part it makes me a happy participant.

Do I have opinions? Yes. Do I have high and low feelings about art that make me feel things and want to explore themes and style and characters more? Yes! I just think I take a step back at these things when it is just me and my thoughts. Can I have a crazy conversation about a character’s arc through an entire trilogy? Yes, I did it for almost two weeks when Allegiant came out.

This may be confusing, but I just needed you to know that about me before you see how I view the wonderment of books. In no way do I consider myself a great reviewer of books or a beacon of knowledge of structure and narratives that make me some kind of be all of book reviewing. I just like books, and if I like one, I want more people to know about it. Today’s book:

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Two Book Hauls || January

Well, we can moan and groan about my absence and blatant silence on this blog but why when we can just look at my most recent book hauls?

These are from the past couple weeks and include mostly gifts. I have already read one of them and hope to get  review out soon. A prized gift is from my friend Abby, Exclamation Point by Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld. It meant a lot to receive it in many ways (thoughtfulness and spunky, self esteem messages), but my husband and I wanted to buy this book for our future children’s library. So, thank you, Abby!

Also, can you believe I borrowed The Hunger Games trilogy and never bought the books until now? Ridiculous.

And everyone, enjoy the photos and list now!

Goals for 2014

Happy New Year!

I’m not one for resolutions because they always fail, but I just wanted to dust the surface of my literary goals for 2014.

My 2013 in Books

The year is ending and that means a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, it means the end to the year that I finished my first draft of my first novel and finally put my foot down and called myself a writer. With becoming a writer came the responsibility to not only write but to read.

I read a lot this year. I have three hours a day of commuting that I can devote to reading so there is no lapse in the need for books and there is no lapse in the continual stream of amazing books that I stumble upon and must read. Thus, I have read 45 books this year and it is definitely my most read year in my life and I’m very proud. I know other readers would laugh at the length of this list but I think now is a good time as any to stop comparing myself to others. I have a whole published author life I haven’t lived yet where I can do that.

Anyway, I present my year in books!

The Great JD Salinger Reread

Since I started writing my novel, I have been reading within the genre I’m writing for. As if it is hard to tell from my book hauls, I’ve been reading a lot of YA literature, especially dystopian, post apocalyptic, and romance. This December I’ve been participating in pulseit.com’s #31daysofreading whenever something strikes my fancy. 

However, I miss my favorite author JD Salinger. It’s been years since I read any of his work, probably. So I am doing a reread of all his published works in chronological order, starting with Catcher in the Rye. I’m almost halfway into it now and have decided to live tweet my reread. I’m just posting some of my favorite lines (unfortunately I can’t do all of them because some are too long and I refuse to butcher them). Social media really is the new dog ear.

See my tweets by following me on twitter or you can click on this link to see only the Salinger tweets, you goddamn phonies.

 

Bothering the Book Lover

Today, I stepped off my train from a day at work, clutching my book and hurrying across the platform like the mad commuter that I have come to be, when someone tapped my shoulder.

“I really liked that book,” he said.

Something and Everything

In one corner, weighing in at well-I-have-to-hydrate pounds was the dreaded Water Bottle.

In the other corner, a whopping I-love-to-read-and-also-do-not-want-to-die-of-boredom pound Book.

A Night of Poetry with Garrison Keillor

A long time ago, back when Lindsay Lohan was a girl I looked up to (freckles! curves! hilarity!), I watched all of her movies. This meant I saw Mean Girls in theaters, relished in the fun of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, and saw a movie I knew nothing about, and that movie was called A Prairie Home Companion.