Once Upon a Bookshelf

For a long time, high schools in Ontario (Canada) had the equivalent of grade thirteen - also known to those who took it as OAC. Basically, a lot of the courses that we took when we were in OAC were around the same level as first year university or college courses outside of Canada. One of the things I really liked about OAC was that our English class that year focused solely on (apart from Shakespeare) Canadian authors.

Looking back, it was a great way to introduce us to Canadian writers and poets. Other than L.M. Montgomery and various children’s authors, I had never read any before that point. We studied Robertson Davies and Mordecai Richler among others - that’s when I discovered one of my all-time favourite novels (Davies’ Fifth Business) and one of my most loathed books (Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz).

So the fact that high schools in British Columbia are now requiring English classes to study at least one book by a Canadian author every year thrills me. I think it’s a great first step in introducing Canadian teens to the variety of great Canadian literature out there, and I really hope that B.C. is soon joined by the other provinces and territories in requiring this in all the high schools.

I would definitely be interested to see what Canadian books that teachers will be asking their students to read.

Bindy Mackenzie is the smartest girl at Ashbury High. While she may not have many friends, she goes out of her way to help the other students at the school through advisory sessions, she has had many plans in order to make money from her students, and she is highly devoted to school work, piano lessons, the debating team, and her part time job. Year Eleven introduces a new class to the school curriculum - Friendship and Development - and Bindy is stuck with a group of classmates that she doesn’t get along with too well after the first session. From there, her year continues to fall apart with her forgetting assignments, failing exams, getting fired from a part time job… And then when she finally opens up to her Friendship and Development group, they have the theory that Bindy is being poisoned, and are determined to find out who is behind all of this.

Oh, I enjoyed this so much more than The Year of Secret Assignments. While it isn’t a sequel, it does take place at the same high school with some of the same characters in it (though the main characters in The Year of Secret Assignments have much smaller parts this time around). It was positively brilliant! So funny, and so moving. I will admit that I had tears in my eyes at more than one part in the book.

Bindy, oh what can I say about Bindy… she was an intellectually brilliant person, and yet such a socially dumb person. She tries so hard to get along with people, and to make friends with her schoolmates, but oh! She has a habit of saying the worst possible things that she can. And she is so awkward around them. Plus, she is different, and you know how teens can act towards someone who is so very different from themselves. But she is a gem of a character, there was so much depth to her and her character grew so much throughout the book.

I love the way Moriarty told this story - it is all throughout a series of transcripts, journal entries, philosophical musings, corespondences and quotes from old books that Bindy has read. (Are all of her books told in manners somewhat like this? I remember The Year of Secret Assignments was mostly done through letters and the such…) It worked quite well for a character like Bindy. I also thoroughly it for the fact that it didn’t completely explain everything all at one time, but rather alludes to it until it comes up in a conversation - for example, Bindy is living with her aunt and uncle currently, and her brother is living with a friend going to an acting school. All we know is that there is something going on with Bindy’s brother that their father doesn’t know about until the fact that he’s going to acting school is brought up in a conversation. It gave you much to wonder about as you were reading the book.

I’m definitely going to have to keep my eyes peeled for Feeling Sorry for Celia, another one of Moriarty’s book that also takes place at Ashbury High.

Think Godzilla meets Battlestar Galactica. Or Cloverfield meets Terminator. It’s monster vs machine, and the world is totally depending on the monster to save the earth from total annihilation.

Tim, Defender of the Earth is not your average monster story. Action-packed from the beginning, Tim is the story of a top-secret military experiment - Tyrannosaurus: Improved Model. When government funding on this particular military experiment gets cut and the British Prime Minister orders Tim’s death, Tim escapes from the top secret military facility. Once escaped, he learns exactly how much this tiny little world needs saving.

Professor Mallahide, the head scientist of another top-secret military experiment, specializes in nanobots. When he experiments on himself, and becomes nothing more than part of the swarm of nanobots, he is determined to bring the human race to their next step in the evolutionary process (or so he believes) by turning everyone into a mass of nanobots with him.

Fifteen-year-old Chris is more concerned with being cool than he is with the state of the world, but when he is chosen as the one person who can help Tim defeat what has become of Professor Mallahide, he has to decide whether to join the world or to turn his back on Tim and the rest of humanity.

I loved every second of this book! It was so much fun. There wasn’t a boring moment - not even at the very beginning when things are just getting started. It puts a totally different spin on the classic monster story, showing through the monster’s eyes what it must be like to be that big and to be considered a terror to people.

Tim is one of the most adorable dinosaurs I’ve ever watched or read, and I totally want to keep him as a pet. Totally. His loyalty towards the earth, and his determination to protect it at all costs was so touching. I do wish that Enthoven had written more interaction between Chris and Tim, as those were some of my favourite parts to read. There is VERY little of that in the book, sadly. It would have been nice to see that developed a little bit more.

I didn’t particularly care as much for Professor Mallahide as I would have liked to. He seemed more like a little kid looking for approval than he did a villain trying to force his perceived “better world” on the rest of humanity, but it gave an interesting spin to things when you saw him talking to his daughter. He just didn’t come across as very … villainous. (Let’s just say that he did NOT get a PhD in horribleness.)

Overall, though, fabulous book! I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves monster movies.

Written as a mixture of personal experiences, science, philosophy and pop culture references, this book explores what time is. While the personal experiences ranged from coming across as somewhat cheesy and contrived at times, at others they gave a real sense of personality to the book. The science aspect definitely was interesting to read as well - to read theories about time, theories about what’s going to happen to the universe in the future, and all sorts of fun stuff like that. I’m not normally one for philosophy, but it worked in this book when mixed with all the other elements. And as for the pop culture refereces… well, can you ever go wrong with a mention of the DeLorean from Back to the Future?

At times the book was a little dry, but when it wasn’t it made up for it. My favourite chapter in the book was by far the chapter on time travel. In the description of the book, this was definitely the part that sparked my interest. Talk of how time travel might really be possible? Another part that was really interesting was the talk of how wormholes might really help us to travel through space faster. Ooooh, the scifi geek in me quite loved it.

Biggest annoyance, though, was the author’s referencing of mythology. At first it was cool, but then the lack of consistency got to me. He spoke on Roman and Greek mythology for pages on end, about their relationship to each other and their relationship to time, and for some of the gods used their Roman name, and for some of them used their Greek name. It was slightly irksome to read that Jupiter is Chronos’ son.

The sequel to Cheating at Solitaire, this book starts up a few months after the previous one finished. Lance had promised to teach Julia how to be in a relationship (what with Julia being the single woman’s guru for years on end) before his acting career really took off. Now, they rarely get to see each other as he’s off filming or touring or doing whatever it is that famous actors do. And to top all matters off, she had to hear that he bought a house in LA in a television interview! But, when he asks her to come visit him out in LA, her best friend convinces her that the two of them have to go. Living in your famous boyfriend’s mansion aren’t as wonderful as you would expect, though. First of all, Lance is rarely around. Secondly, Julia no longer knows what to do with her time - she used to be a best-selling non-fiction author, devoted to writing books about the single life, but now that she has a boyfriend, she’s not sure who she really is anymore.

One of the reasons I love Ally Carter’s books so much is that, even though her characters are in situations and circumstances that most people would never have the opportunity to be in, they are so relatable and more real-life than characters you could find in so many other books. Especially in the chicklit genre. I mean, I’ll never be a best selling author who is dating the most famous hottie in Hollywood, but the situations feel real to me, the emotions feel real, and the people definitely feel real. Plus! No ditzes! No flakes! No female lead characters I want to shake until they stop being so silly! It’s wonderful! There should totally be more chick lit like this.

This book got bonus points, of course, with the mention of Gone with the Wind, Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable. (Anything that mentions Gone with the Wind or Clark Gable gets bonus points, though. What can I say? Major soft spot for both of those.)

So yes, fabulous book! Only wish that she had sold more of this series, as she has only written the two card books, so now I will not be able to get any new Ally Carter stuff until 2009 when the next Gallagher Girl’s book comes out.