Angela's Church

I really loved Release.  Adam's part of the story.  I really, really loved it.  I love books that show that there are, indeed churches that actually follow Christ when it comes to homosexuality.  Angela, Adam's friend, attends a church in which an 80 year old lesbian couple were married.  I remember officiating my first same body part wedding.  The couple had been together for thirty years.  They were in love with Christ as their Savior and with one another.  There was much rejoicing.  While Adam's family holds non-Christian beliefs regarding homosexuality like Marley's in A Very Bad Thing, I love that Patrick Ness recognizes that those who are really trying hard to follow Christ on the issue don't have this problem. (We all have lots of problems, this just happens to be one we don't have!)  I loved Adam's brother, too.  I didn't understand the other story, the magical realism-y/fantasty one involving the gal who was murdered.  I also never read Mrs. Dalloway, so I can't say I saw its influence here, but I did get the sense of the Forever influence, even though I am not a Judy Blume fan!  Very good book.  I would not be upset if it received a Printz Honor.  I would not be upset at all.  But I really, really didn't get the other part of the story.  My fault.  I am going to dig around online and see if I can find an explanation. 

The Walk

The Walk was a book that I never, ever would have read had not my dear, dear friend Beth recommended it to me.  Since I started reading it, I can't get this old song about of my head.
My friend lost her husband last spring, but she read this book years before her love passed away.  But that is how the book begins, with a young man losing his wife and job and house and deciding to walk from Seattle to the Florida Keys.
This is one of the best, best books I have ever read.

Rising Out of the Ashes

I guess I deserved a good streak of good books after suffering through those Ashes books and lately I've been pretty lucky.  Under the Bridge helps me out with Washington, too!  It's also the first Skateboarding-Fiction book I've ever read, so I learned a bit!
Under the Bridge takes place in Spokane, one the poor side of town.  It is told from the POV of high school student, Tate who is a pretty awesome skateboard dude, with a pretty tough life.  Life isn't totally bad.  You get the sense that his parents are good folks, even if his dad is pretty rough and tough on Tate's younger brother, Indy.  Indy is a skateboarder too, and rebel big-time.  He is always fighting with his dad and is finally kicked out of the house, ends up quitting school and dealing drugs.  The book revolves around Tate trying to save his brother.  It's fast-paced and good read, I read it in one day, which is rare for me.  Opps!  Guess I already had Washington!  Oh well, it was worth reading anyway!

Never Tire of this Book

I have a feeling that the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian will be one of those books that I will want to read every year.  I have a few of those, The Outsiders is one and Ramona the Pest is another, and the other is  Tex.  Not too many and so, obviously, it isn't often that I add a book to this short list.  True Diary is an amazing book.  If it were a place it would be a place where you experience all of the seasons.  If it were a restaurant it would be an all-encompassing buffet filled with the best of the best delicacies.  The themes in this book are at the same time personal and broad.  It is hilarious and heartbreaking.  Arnold "Junior" Spirit is a young man torn between his reservation and heritage and the "white world" and hope for a future different from his family.  The first story in which Arnold talks about the worst thing about being poor is just breaks my heart every time I read it or hear it, even though I know it's coming.  The last tragedy just takes my breath away with pain.  But it isn't all a sob story.  It is full of hope and promise and good, no, great humor.  Arnold's coming of age story is unique, as it is told from the perspective a young Spokane, but yet universal, as he falls in love and worries about being beaten up and accepted.  Everyone should read this book, for sure.