I finished Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee on Sunday morning while waiting for customers to show up (none did until late afternoon). It was another fun read for a long weekend of sitting around, but I read it right on the heels of Dairy Queen, so it seemed pretty fluffy in comparison. That’s OK, though. Some books are meant to be light, and some aren’t.
School Library Journal again:
From birth, when his father named him for his alma mater, great things have been expected from Stanford Wong. When his lack of interest in academics causes him to fail sixth-grade English and lands him in summer school, his star status on his school's basketball team is endangered. It is a summer of turmoil and family tension. Stanford's father is working longer and longer hours to try for a promotion, and a host of other changes are occurring. Stanford must come to grips with missing out on basketball camp, grit his teeth through tutoring sessions with Millicent the genius, see his beloved grandmother moved to an assisted-living facility, and try to hide his summer-school attendance from his buddies. His observations on his overachieving father and sister can be hilarious, and the loving close-up of his grandmother's dementia is wonderfully drawn.
The funny story about this book is that I acquired it through Bookmooch. No, that’s not the funny part. It’s that I requested the book sometime in early March, and the kind bookmoocher who was offering it put it in the mail right away. Media Mail.
If anyone is familiar with Media Mail, it is the cheapest way to send books. Before last week’s postage hike, you could send a book for about two dollars, and you could send an entire box of books for about five. However, you can never really be sure how long it will take to reach its destination, or that it will reach it at all. But sometimes, it takes only a few days to get across the country. You just never know.
Four weeks after she sent Stanford Wong, the bookmoocher emailed me to see if I had received it. Nope. Four weeks is not a good sign for Media Mail. I was pretty sure the book was lost in the mail. And then one day, my friend EJ called me to ask whether I wanted to meet up before Lisa Yee’s appearance in Walnut Creek that evening. I had totally forgotten about that, and I had no book.
I was not about to buy another copy of the book at Barnes and Noble, because, dammit, I had one coming to me. Maybe.
So I don’t know if Lisa Yee noticed, but when I introduced myself that evening, I did not ask her to sign a book for me. I felt sort of bad about that.
Three weeks later, Stanford appeared in my mailbox. Sometimes I just hate the post office.
I think it’s been about fifteen years since I read an entire book in a single day. And it’s hard to believe with everything going on right now, but today I read Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdock. I started around 11:00 this morning, and just finished it. Of course, I haven’t been reading it continuously for nine hours. I was, in fact, at work.
Today was the first day of our three-day moving sale extravaganza. We are opening the doors to our office and hoping that people will come to buy every thing that is left—from books (at only $5 per hardcover and $2.50 per paperback) to bookcases (ranging from $5 to $50), to desks and chairs. To couches and refrigerators. To stuffed Eeyores and Paddingtons.
I was initially afraid no one would show up, but at 10:00 on the dot, two librarians were already waiting to come in. And then there was a pretty steady stream of shoppers all morning. Everyone seemed to enjoy browsing the books so much that I didn’t have much to do at the cash register until someone wanted to check out. So I read.
It’s a testament to how good a book Dairy Queen was that I was able to just read and read, stop to ring up a customer, then continue reading without wandering off to do something else. Every single moment of the book held my interest, and so many different strands of D.J.’s life and her thoughts became entangled with my own that I was caught.
From School Library Journal:
After her father is injured, 15-year-old D.J. Schwenk takes over the lion's share of work on her family's small Wisconsin dairy farm. Between milking cows, mucking out the barn, and mowing clover, this erstwhile jock takes on training Brian, the rival high school's quarterback. A monster crush and a tryout for her own school's football team ensue. D.J., a charming if slightly unreliable narrator, does a good deal of soul-searching while juggling her grinding work schedule, an uncommunicative family, and a best friend who turns out to be gay.
Dairy Queen reminds me of an old, old book I first read when I was in high school by Ann Rinaldi called Term Paper. I have since looked for it, but I think it’s out of print now. However, I still have my original copy, which is so tattered that it’s almost falling apart. While the specifics of each girl’s situation is different, and the issues they are dealing with are different, the two main characters have so much in common that it’s spooky. I love it. Term Paper was one of my favorite YA novels of my own youth, and now Dairy Queen takes its place as one of my favorite in adulthood.
The moving sale will last through the weekend, so if you live in the Bay Area stop by and say hello. The address is 40951 Fremont Blvd. in Fremont, and I’ll be there between 10:00 and 5:00 Saturday and Sunday. I can’t wait to pick the book I’ll bring to work tomorrow. I still can’t believe it—I finally get a chance to read all day, and it’s at work! Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdock
In all this craziness, I forgot that L was driving up to Northern California last weekend with her mom and sister, who are visiting from the east coast. On Saturday morning, E said, “Hey, aren’t we supposed to have dinner with L tonight?” Oh yeah!
The three of them arrived at our house that evening, and it was such a treat. I haven’t seen L’s mom or her sister since we graduated from high school, fifteen years ago. L’s sister was only twelve then, and look at her now! So poised and mature at 27, and so much like L too. I showed them around our house. L spotted a copy of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold lying on my desk.
“I L-oooved this book,” she breathed. I made a bit of a face. “What? You didn’t like it?”
“I’m only halfway through, but, I don’t know… it’s really depressing.”
“Yeah, it is depressing.”
“I mean, it’s really depressing.”
I finished The Lovely Bones yesterday, and while it does get more uplifting in the second half, I don’t think I liked it that much. I liked the writing; it certainly kept my attention throughout the book, and was a quick read while still being beautiful. But I didn’t care much for the subject or the way Sebold let out bits of information that never led anywhere or were oddly disconnected to the fabric of the story.
I don’t mean that the plot was disjointed—well, it was, but that’s what I liked about it. I mean that there were many instances where small events and clues were never followed up on. I understand that things in real life do not always fall so neatly into the resolutions that we expect of novels, but why write about them if they don’t go anywhere?
The Lovely Bones also reminded me very much of Peace Like a River. There was something lovely about the spiritual nature of the characters in both novels, but both of them, I felt, crossed the thin shimmering line between the beauty of a mysterious spirituality and hokey-ness. No, I didn’t like the ending of either.
Sometimes I think L and I have the opposite taste in books (she loved Cold Mountain too). But I keep recommending books to her, and I keep reading books that she recommends. Sometimes we get a good one, so we keep trying.
Sorry for the spotty posting, but it's all coming to a head this week. We move our office on Thursday, and I'm completely overwhelmed. For the time being. It feels like an endurance marathon and once I finished, I will feel so triumphant it will all be worth it.
I was just going to slap up The Berenstain Bears' Moving Day by Stan and Jan Berenstain and be done with it, but then I remembered that I do have a memory attached to this: when I graduated from high school, one of my friends gave this book to me. You know, moving out, moving up. I'm glad I thought of it. It makes me smile.
The LA Times Book Festival is exciting because so many authors attend. No matter what time it is or where you’re standing, there is always some booth within twenty paces that is featuring an author signing. I don’t recognize most of the names, and the famous writers tend to group near the Barnes & Noble tent or the Target tent, but I was passing the Simon & Schuster booth when I saw a small sign on a table that read, “Susan Patron: The Higher Power of Lucky.” Sitting next to the sign was a woman who I could only assume was Susan Patron.
“Oh my God!” I elbowed L. “It’s Susan Patron! She won the Newbery Award this year!” L nodded blankly.
“Do you want to get a book signed?” E asked.
“No, no, that’s OK.” I didn’t want to spend any money (and totally regret that now, in retrospect). I started to walk away.
That’s when I noticed the long line of people leading up to that little table. And then I noticed that there were other authors sitting at it. One was David Shannon, and sure enough, everyone in the line was waiting for him. Susan Patron was sitting there, right next to the hubbub, twiddling her thumbs, looking very unlike a famous Newbery-Award winner ought to look at a signing. No one getting The Higher Power of Lucky signed? That’s outrageous!
L said, “Look, she’s sitting there all by herself. Even if you didn’t get a book signed, you could still say hello, tell her you loved her book. She’d like that.”
I lowered my voice to a loud whisper. “But I didn’t read her book yet!”
“Oh.” L was nonplussed, but only for a moment. “You could still say hello and tell her you didn’t read her book yet, but you will. She’d like that.” And she pushed me toward Susan Patron. That’s what friends are for.
And there I was, face to face with Susan Patron (with no book in hand). “Hi,” I smiled. “I haven’t read your book yet, but I wanted to stop and say congratulations.” She made some nicety-nice remarks back, thanking me. I went on: “Also, I hope you’re doing well in the midst of all this controversy.” She said she was holding up, yes. “I mean, I really hope this controversy gets more people to buy your book.”
I think I stopped listening at that point because I was trying to figure out if I had just said something really stupid, and then next thing I remember, Susan Patron was saying, “Well, I hope you enjoy the book.”
“Oh, I definitely will,” I replied. And we said our goodbyes and that was it.
I’d like to think that even if a person has won the Newbery Award, they still like to have total strangers express interest in their book when they’re sitting at a signing next to a long line of kids who want to learn how to become a pirate. I’m going to think that L was right. That’s what friends are for.
I finished Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee on Sunday morning while waiting for customers to show up (none did until late afternoon). It was another fun read for a long weekend of sitting around, but I read it right on the heels of Dairy Queen, so it seemed pretty fluffy in comparison. That’s OK, though. Some books are meant to be light, and some aren’t.
feed me