AL CAPONE SHINES MY SHOES, by Gennifer Choldenko

AL CAPONE SHINES MY SHOES
by Gennifer Choldenko

(Dial Books)

Sequel-lovers, rejoice. You want more of Moose, Annie, Jimmy, and the Alcatraz gang? More of Piper's conniving, Natalie's button-counting, and Trixle's...infuriating Trixle-ness? Secret passageways and plots? Maybe even an in-the-flesh brush with "Scarface" Capone himself? Baby, you got it. It's all there and more, driven by Moose's voice and Choldenko's impeccable research.

As for the plot...

Imagine reaching into your shirt pocket and finding a new note, in all-too-familiar handwriting: Your turn. Makes the back of your neck ripple, doesn't it?

Now here's the part where I throw you for a loop. In spite of all that praise, I was probably halfway through the book when I began to suspect I didn't really need a follow-up to Al Capone Does My Shirts after all. When it comes to sequels, I have a strong preference for companion novels over continuations. For me, the desire to know what happens next rarely trumps my satisfaction with a skillfully open-ended conclusion. If you're the same, consider that before pouncing on the shoe-shining edition of Moose's adventures. Everybody else, bear in mind this reaction is coming from someone who still hasn't read the final installment of Harry Potter(!)

(Available in September)

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Currently reading:

Nobody's Family is Going to Change
by Louise Fitzhugh

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

Al Capone Shines My Shoes, by Gennifer Choldenko

Days of Little Texas, by R.A. Nelson

Love, Aubrey, by Suzanne LaFleur

Procured from the library, in case the ARC-fairy is visiting elsewhere this week:

Poe: A Life Cut Short, by Peter Ackroyd

Nobody's Family is Going to Change, by Louise Fitzhugh

Alis, by Naomi Rich

Jerk, California, by Jonathan Friesen

Three suggestions for bloggers and publishers

Reflecting on the recent online ado (check out Chasing Ray and Read Roger) about how publishers and bloggers should best interact with one another, I offer three suggestions from my own experience:

Bloggers -- Consider the cost

I've heard it said that ARCs are expensive to print. Trouble is, "expensive" is such a relative term. But now, somewhere in this kerfuffle, I believe somebody mentioned/suggested/estimated that ARCs cost $8.50. Each. I'm a former bookseller and a published author, and I had no idea they cost that much to print. None. I come from a world where the average paperback is in the $6-7 range -- and I'm talking retail, not wholesale. $8.50? Yowzers. If that figure is accurate, and if it were common knowledge, I'm thinking a lot more bloggers would be a lot more judicious about which titles they request.

Publishers -- Pay attention to bloggers' submission guidelines (so to speak)

Publisher X: Your blog is great! Can we put you on our blogger mailing list and send you free books and ARCs we're excited about?

Me: Hell yes.

This conversation will never go any other way. I will never, ever turn down an offer from a publisher that will make free books appear in my mailbox. Ever the optimist, I always let a publisher know what genres and age levels I favor. And yet about 50% of the time I open an unsolicited envelope from a publisher, I find titles that make me wonder whether the folks at the online marketing helm really have read my blog: picture books, commercial fiction, series, etc. It's accumulating into a mini-slush pile, and the thought of the wasted postage alone makes me feel guilty every time I look at it.

I'm all in favor of being open-minded and trying new books, but bloggers, like editors and imprints, have their own tastes and interests, and very few are truly omnivorous. If the tables were turned, these generic blog mailings would be akin to an author simultaneously cold-querying a heap of publishers, and we all know how successful that approach is for all parties concerned...

(Incidentally, I've found that for the most part sales reps do a better job of gauging my tastes and supplementing my requests with appealing extras than the folks in online marketing. Marketing departments seem more prone to arbitrarily tossing in whatever books they're currently pushing. And at $8.50 a toss -- ouch.)

Bloggers -- Pass it on!

Why not offer to forward ARCs you're not planning to review? Seeing as we've got the gumption to request freebies, it seems like we bloggers could dish out $1.50 in media mail postage now and then to give a book a second chance with another reader.

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Currently reading:

Love, Aubrey
by Suzanne LaFleur

Poetry Friday

A Passing Hail

Let us rest ourselves a bit!
Worry?-- wave your hand to it --
Kiss your finger-tips and smile
It farewell a little while.

Weary of the weary way
We have come from Yesterday,
Let us fret not, instead,
Of the wary way ahead.

Let us pause and catch our breath
On the hither side of death,
While we see the tender shoots
Of the grasses -- not the roots,--

While we yet look down -- not up --
To seek out the buttercup
And the daisy where they wave
O'er the green home of the grave.

Let us launch us smoothly on
The soft billows of the lawn,
And drift out across the main
Of our childish dreams again:

Voyage off, beneath the trees,
O'er the field's enchanted seas,
Where the lilies are our sails,
And our sea-gulls, nightingales:

Where no wilder storm shall beat
Than the wind that waves the wheat,
And no tempest-burst above
The old laughs we used to love:

Lose all troubles -- gain release,
Languor, and exceeding peace,
Cruising idly o'er the vast,
Calm mid-ocean of the Past.

Let us rest ourselves a bit!
Worry? -- Wave your hand to it --
Kiss your finger-tips and smile
It fare well a little while.

~ James Whitcomb Riley

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Currently reading:

The Doom Machine
by Mark Teague

If you're in the market for a good deed...

...my grandpa, Harold Gass, could use some encouragement. After having two strokes, his therapists are impressed with his physical progress, but I suspect it feels like baby steps to Grandpa, and that the month-long hospital stay is wearing on him. If you can take a minute to send him a message, it might help perk him up. We've set up an email account in his name to make it cheap and easy:

HaroldDGass@gmail.com

or, if you want to go the old fashioned route:

Harold Gass

c/o Marlette Regional Hospital

2770 Main St, PO Box 307

Room #1003

Marlette, MI 48453

Let him know where you're from -- he's traveled all across the USA and made 11 trips overseas. If you wrote a book, tell him that, too. He's awful proud of Miss Spitfire and likely to get a kick out of literary connections.

Pretty please and thank you!

(Yep, that's me)

Handselling days gone by

Digging into Al Capone Shines My Shoes* has suddenly ressurected one of my better handselling memories...

One afternoon a baldish, 50-something fellow wandered into the shop, probably taging along with his wife. He happened to be wearing a t-shirt very like this one:

Of course, I couldn't help myself. "Look," I said, leading him over to the middle school section, and handing him a copy of Al Capone Does My Shirts, "I don't expect you to buy this, but if you come in here wearing that shirt, you have to at least know about this book."

He kinda grinned, and within minutes he was back at the counter -- with his wallet open.

*See how casually I slipped that in there, without even a Nyah-nyah? I'm not always an insufferable galley-tease. Oh wait -- there I go again...

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Currently reading:

Days of Little Texas
by R. A. Nelson

A SEASON OF GIFTS, by Richard Peck

A SEASON OF GIFTS
by Richard Peck

(Dial Books)

Reading this book is like returning to a beloved front porch and finding there's still one glass of cold lemonade waiting in the pitcher.

The town has changed around her in the last couple decades, but Grandma Dowdel is still Grandma Dowdel: scheming, trigger-happy, and one step ahead of the law. And as belligerently good-natured as ever underneath it all. It's 1958 now and the Dowdel grandkids are all grown up, so this last installment comes down to us through Bobby, the preacher's kid next door.

That distance is a big part of what makes this book work, I think. Seeing Mrs. Dowdel through fresh eyes means we don't have to be made aware of how much she's aged since the days of A Year Down Yonder. And watching her from across the canna lilies instead of across the kitchen table lets even seasoned readers be surprised at the stunts the old lady cooks up. Passing references to people and places will conjure up past adventures, but they're never hammered into full view. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Richard Peck never overplays his hand. As far as I'm concerned the man is the crown prince of children's literature.

(Available in September)

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Currently reading:

Al Capone Shines My Shoes
by Gennifer Choldenko

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

A Season of Gifts, by Richard Peck

Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters, by Lenore Look

Magic Elizabeth, by Norma Kassirer

Next week's options:

The Doom Machine, by Mark Teague

Days of Little Texas, by R.A. Nelson

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Love, Aubrey, by Suzanne LeFleur

Poetry Friday

God Got Cable

And for a week

watched nothing but.

Didn't see the comet.

Didn't see the hurricane.

Missed that baby

being born entirely.

Just watched cable.

Funny thing is,

He liked it.

He knew He wasn't

supposed to.

All those girls

crying about their

boyfriends.

All those track meets.

All that

soap and toothpaste.

He liked it.

Couldn't help it.

Then Gabriel came

over with a deck of cards

and next thing you know,

they've played poker

four weeks straight.

Gabriel's beard nearly

as long as God's

and corn chips all over the place.

And what God decided was that

he liked not cable.

not poker,

but a break.

Every now and then,

even God needs a break.

~Cynthia Rylant

from God Went to Beauty School

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Currently reading:

Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters
by Lenore Look

ONCE WAS LOST, by Sara Zarr

ONCE WAS LOST
by Sara Zarr

(Little, Brown)

From the publisher:

Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. She used to believe in a lot of things. As a pastor's kid, it's hard not to buy in to the idea of the perfect family, a loving God, and amazing grace. But lately, Sam has a lot of reason to doubt. Her mother lands in rehab after a DUI and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. When a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, the local tragedy overlaps with Sam's personal one, and the already-worn thread of faith holding her together begins to unravel.

Sometimes a book HITS THE SPOT, and boy howdy, this was one of those times. Plain and simple: Sara Zarr knows what it's like on the inside when things suck. Regardless of the circumstances, just about anyone who's ever felt their world disintegrating under their feet will bond with Samara by page three. However, this is not one long vicarious wallow in self-pity -- that's where the kidnapping comes in. Once that community tragedy strikes, the mystery takes over, because Sara Zarr also knows how to toy with suspense and suspicion until her readers squirm. (Even though I was sure I knew who'd done it, I managed to fall for more than one red herring.) And all the while, the emotional stakes keep rising...

Bottom line: This book is true right down in its gut, and I'm not alone in saying it's Sara Zarr's best yet.

(Available in October)

psst: Chat with Sara Zarr live tonight on the readergirlz blog! I'll sure be there to gush.

It's only Monday...

...and the mailbox has indeed been fruitful already:

Also, this little shiny thingie, a silver medal of the imperial family:

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Currently reading:

A Season of Gifts
by Richard Peck

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

Kaleidoscope Eyes, by Jen Bryant

Anything But Typical, by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Shadowed Summer, by Saundra Mitchell

Hate List, by Jennifer Brown

(Next week's contenders for the TBR list are to be determined. I'm mostly hoping the mailbox will be fruitful...)

CROSSING STONES, by Helen Frost

CROSSING STONES
by Helen Frost

(Frances Foster Books/FSG)

Eighteen-year-old Muriel Jorgensen lives on one side of Crabapple Creek. Her family’s closest friends, the Normans, live on the other. For as long as Muriel can remember, the families’ lives have been intertwined, connected by the crossing stones that span the water...

So there I am, enjoying a sensitive multi-voice story in verse set in Michigan during World War One. A taste of the women's suffrage movement here, a dash of Spanish Influenza there -- just the kind of historical novel I like. Helen Frost's walloped me with her poetic prowess twice before, but this time I'm grooving on the story, thinking I've got her bag of tricks all figured out. You see, some of the chapter-poems in Crossing Stones are laid out in a zig-zaggy creek-like pattern, while others are shaped like stones:

Nifty visual metaphor going on there, right?

And then I read the Notes on the Form at the end and by God if Helen hasn't done it to me all over again. Remember The Braid? Turns out there's a similar heap of stealth poetry going on right in front of my nose in Crossing Stones: those rounded poems scattered among the free verse zig-zags are in fact "cupped-hand sonnets" with fourteen lines apiece and perfectly steadfast rhyme schemes. As if that's not enough, shared rhymes from those individual poems interlace one sonnet with the next in a way I am far too lazy to describe. Besides, part of me thinks I shouldn't even be crowing about all these wonderments, seeing as so much of the wonder comes from the fact that none of Helen's structural acrobatics interferes in the least with the story itself. She's subtle, that Helen Frost. And crazy-brilliant. Seriously, who else even thinks of this kind of thing, much less pulls it off?

(Available in September)

Poetry Friday

The Lake

IN spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less --
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that tower'd around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody --
Then -- ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight --
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define --
Nor Love -- although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining --
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

~Edgar Allan Poe

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Currently reading:

Shadowed Summer
by Saundra Mitchell

Temporary custody

Until my Canadian Romanov-buddy comes visiting, this uber-rare little honey is in my care:

Les Dernieres Annees de la Cour De Tzarskoie-Selo

[Last Days of the Court at Tsarskoye Selo]

by Alexandre Spiridovitch

It's volume one of a memoir by Nicholas II's personal chief of security, and it looks, feels, and smells exactly the way an 81-year-old book should. I can't read French, but who cares -- it's got pictures. Pictures I've never seen. Keep your fingers crossed that the University of Michigan will be willing to lend volume two. If that request comes through in time for me to have both volumes under the same roof at once, I'll be bookswooning all over the place.

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Currently reading:

The Tenderness of Wolves

by Stef Penney

ps: News on the Grandpa front is improving. All those prayers, thoughts, and vibes are getting the job done, thank you very much.

State of the TBR pile

Finished(!)

Destroy All Cars, by Blake Nelson

Crossing Stones, by Helen Frost

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Currently reading:

Kaleidoscope Eyes
by Jen Bryant

Poetry Friday

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~Emily Dickinson

Hoping you can spare a moment or two for prayers for my grandpa, Harold Gass, to whom I dedicated Miss Spitfire. He had a stroke this morning -- his second in under three weeks -- and prognosis is undetermined so far.

THE INDIGO NOTEBOOK, by Laura Resau

THE INDIGO NOTEBOOK

by Laura Resau

(Delacorte)

Setting in an under-represented culture? Check.

Multi-textured characters? Check.

(Specifically: Appealing male companion/love interest, and captivating earth mother? Check.)

A dash of the mystical/metaphysical? Check.

Unique plot? Check.

That's pretty much everything I look for in a Laura Resau book.

(Available in October)

How sorry will I be...

...if I give up on Jellicoe Road? (Or at least put it off until I can get hold of the audio edition.)

To avoid embarrassment, I'm not even going to tell you how few pages I've read since last night at 11:00. Accounts vary, but rumor has it this befuddling story suddenly becomes compelling, addictive, and brilliant after 100-200 pages. Tempting, but just now I don't think I have a couple hundred pages of confusion-tolerance in me.

So actually, I AM putting this down for now, no matter what you all say. If you're appalled, do your worst -- with enough badgering I'll give it another shot. Someday.

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Currently reading:

Destroy All Cars
by Blake Nelson