If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium

The movie shows my age.  And admittedly, my age shows in my 4 of 5 stars instead of my typical 5 of 5 for anything written by Sarah Mlynowski, whom I love, love, love!  I See London, I See France is not for everyone.  Yes, yes we all behaved this way when were in college, I know that, but maybe that is why it made me so uncomfortable, I was embarrassed!  To be young and wild again!  Ah!  Of course, I wouldn't want to be free, I love being taken.  :)  But I could use a little more wild and young!  And Sydney and Leela are college students, and there are really good messages here.  Really good ones.  And I am most certainly going to read the next one, so glad it is a series.  For me this was a 4.9, just because it reminded me a little too much of my wild and reckless younger days.

The Thing about Real Characters

When someone writes a book with realistic characters, it can be very hard to like them.  Everyone can be a jerk, right?  But for some reason many books have characters who are never jerks.  Or else we don't get to see that jerky part of them in the book.  Say What You Will has a main character, Amy, who is real.  And man, can she be a jerk.  So she is really unlikable.  Amy has CP and so I think a lot of authors would make her this perfect person, apart from her CP.  So super nice and understanding and a hero.  But Amy is human and real and I would say more on the "jerk side" than the "non-jerk side" as a human. Matthew is the other main character, he has OCD and is human, and doesn't really engage in any jerk behaviors, but he seems real, too.
This book took a lot of unexpected directions and was all very believable.  This was Cammie McGovern's first YA book and I really, really liked it.  Her other books, one for YA and one for middle grade are available on CD but not download so I probably won't read them, just because I find the CDs to be way too slow.  I like to listen to audiobooks on 2 or 3 times the speed, so I am out of luck until one of the downloadable sites get them!  Boo!  Because this book was very good (even with a jerky main character).

Marathon

Am I too old to run a marathon?  Probably.  But man, Resolve made me want to try.  Resolve is told from the POV of a professor at a fictitious college in Pittsburgh.  It was near to hear the city described as Dr. Keller runs the Pittsburgh Marathon and tells of his plan to murder someone on the course and the events that led up to that decision.  Like successfully run marathon, this book is paced very well.  I hope to read more from J. J. Hensley.

Life is Hard, for everyone!

Through to You was a good, good book.  I gave it five of five stars on goodreads because I thought Lauren Barholdt did a great job of offering insight into why some people act the way they act.  We're all so quick to judge people, especially guys who seem like "jerks" and worse words when they jump from girl to girl or close themselves off from real feelings.  Penn is one of those guys.  But we find out why Penn acts the way he does.  That doesn't excuse his behavior, but it really helps the reader to get a better understanding.  Maybe we all need to just take a chance on people, find out about people, who they are, what they are, and why they are.  No one gets through this world without feeling any pain, pain influences our behavior.  This was a very good relationship study, told from the POV of Penn and Harper, as they try to figure out how to be together, despite their baggage.

Ah the College Months...

My dad used to say that all of the time.  He always started college but never finished.  He started many times.  Many, many times!  We went to Missouri Valley College, Point Park, CCAC and the University of Pittsburgh.  As for me I never lived away at college or seminary or graduate school, so I missed out on the whole college roommate experience, which I think I am just not brave enough to have handled.  I really don't.  I admire those who have done this.  Roomies comes out at the end of year.  I had to twist the arm of the guy at the Penguin Young Readers booth to get a copy of this.  Sara Zarr has written some awesome stuff.  Tara Altebrando wrote The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life and I really liked that, too, so it was great to see a book written by both!  Elizabeth, or EB as she is called, lives in New Jersey near the beach with her mom.  Her dad is a deadbeat.  He hasn't contacted EB since she was six or seven.  He is gay and has an art gallery in San Francisco.  Lauren lives in San Francisco and is one of six kids who are much younger than she.  EB and Lauren are pretty different.  When EB gets her email from UC Berkeley that tells her that Lauren will be her roomie, she sends Lauren and email and the two of them start to get to know each other.  Both girls have a lot in common though, both concerned about leaving their past behind, starting in a new place, both with many questions about relationships and the guys they start seeing that summer.  I really loved how the book didn't fall into any stereotypes.  Having the gay dad be a deadbeat jerk was really different.  Usually gay dads are super great.  So this was a different twist!  He was such a serious jerk.  I felt like that made the book more real.  It made gay guys more real, not every one is the same!  I really loved this book and I guess that it is good that comes out in January, more folks can get their hands on it and read it before they go off to school in the fall.  Great book!