Sorry.  Just needed to vent.  Maybe someday soon – like in a couple of years – I’ll post some of the reviews I’ve got waiting in the wings.  I just have to wait and see if my brain is planning on showing up to work again.

That said, here’s my quick review of Magic Under Glass itself.  I imagine this one will really appeal to a lot of teen fans of the historical fantasy and even steampunk genres.  I liked the twist on Jane Eyre and gothic romances, and Nimira is a great and well-depicted character.  I do think that this book was too short, and a lot was left underdeveloped. Specifically, the romance between Nimira and Ennis, the clockwork man. Everything happened far too quickly for me to really get a feel for the connection between these two characters.  I was also left wanting to know a lot more about the world that the story is set in than we got.  That said, it was an enjoyable read, and as it looks like the story’s been set up for a sequel, I’m looking forward to reading it.

“I definitely need to sign my husband up for that!” she yelled.  “He reads at least an hour on the toilet every day!”

The poor girl just turned bright red and couldn’t look me in the eye.  “Yep, those are my parents,” she mumbled, before practically pushing them out of the library before they could say anything else to mortify her.

As school quickly becomes a torment for her, Regina finds herself leaning on the most unlikely person imaginable – Michael, the outcast of the school.  The one she herself has helped to bully, over and over again.  And now, the only one who seems willing to listen to the truth and support Regina as the whole school turns against her.  But as Anna and the gang plan their most horrifying abuse yet, will Michael help her, or will he too abandon her once he discovers who she really is?

Okay, first things first, I have to say as someone who’s been there that Summers really nails the dynamics of a small-town high school.  Nothing can be more vicious.  The combination of everyone knowing each other and having nothing else to do can make it a living hell for those who don’t fit in.  And at that age, it’s so hard to look ahead to life after graduation – everything that happens to you is so vastly Important and so mutilating that surely nothing can be worse.

In a lot of ways, Some Girls Are took me back a decade to my own high school years.  Back then I was quite the goody-two-shoes, so I never participated in any of the partying or drugs or alcohol abuse that Summers describes, but I certainly experienced being on the receiving end of my school’s clique of Mean Girls (and boys), and although eventually I learned to fly under the radar and avoid the worst of it, it certainly wasn’t pretty.  It’s easy to think that Some Girls Are paints everything in an exaggerated fashion, that surely this must be extreme for high school harassment.  For example, at one point Summers describes Regina’s school books and possessions being ruined when her locker is stuffed full of rotting meat.  Sounds over the top, right?  Uh…yeah.  At my high school it was pig and sheep carcasses (thankfully, never in MY locker), but the concept’s generally the same.

I guess my flashbacks to my own high school experience made me wonder whether Summers could get me to sympathize with and understand the point of view of one of the “bad girls”.  And at first, it’s hard. Even after she’s tossed out of the Fearsome Fivesome, Regina’s still stuck in the Mean Girl mindset of revenge at any cost, and for most of the book her own actions don’t bear up under much scrutiny, as she fights back both physically and psychologically against her former friends.  But even when she’s at her worst, we see glimpses of the toll it’s taking on her, as she struggles to make herself eat, pops antacids like candy, and, most of all, deals with the aftereffects of what really happened the night she supposedly slept with Donnie.

Of course, throughout the book, the Responsible Adult in me felt like screaming at Regina and the other characters to get the adults involved, that they shouldn’t be trying to fight this battle alone, that they should have felt free to go for help.  But really?  I don’t think it would have helped much.  In this book the adults – teachers, parents – are spectacularly oblivious, even unwittingly colluding in the harassment.  Regina’s parents are barely there, and even when they do turn up, they have no idea what’s going on in their daughter’s life.  And sadly, this too is an accurate picture of a lot of teens’ situations, I think.  Sometimes we adults just aren’t there, or aren’t trustworthy.  Behind a lot of school harassment and bullied teens are adults who have fallen down on the job, big time.

I should point out, the one element of the story that rang slightly false for me was Michael’s character.  He’s just too nice.  I have trouble believing that anyone could be willing or capable of overcoming their hatred and befriending their former bully that quickly.  And I definitely felt Regina and Michael’s relationship segued too quickly into romance.  Still, that’s one small sour note in a book that otherwise paints a grim but all too realistic picture of just how cruel high school life can be.

At this point I’ve written much more than I usually do for a review.  Actually, I’m not sure I can even call this a review so much as me working out my feelings towards my own high school experience and how little things seem to have changed for many teens.  This book certainly affected me more than I thought it would!  I’d recommend this one to older teens who might be facing (or even causing) similar situations at school, but I especially think I’d recommend it to parents and teachers who want to be more aware of some of the relentless cruelty that’s often happening right under their noses.

To go with my quintessential English snack, I’m watching the most recent episode of QI.  If you’re the kind of person who likes stashing away interesting factoids to use on people later, then you’ll love this show.  It’s a British panel TV show hosted by Stephen Fry and featuring various British comedians and celebrities ostensibly testing their knowledge of facts on various subjects but mostly just trying to be as funny as possible.  It’s one of the cleverest, wittiest TV shows I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, it’s never been aired in the States, so it’s hard to get my fix.  Luckily some wonderful people on YouTube are great about posting the most recent episodes so those of us outside of the UK can enjoy them.  Here’s the first part of episode one from the season that’s currently running (featuring one of my favorite British comedians, David Mitchell):
 
 

 

If you want to keep up on the latest news on Haiti’s situation, the New York Times’ The Lede blog has been running a great compilation of information.  They’ve also got a link to some of the best sources of disaster relief right now, if you’d like to donate – and please, PLEASE consider donating anything you can.  I’ve chosen to donate through the international poverty relief organization Oxfam America, who have set up a special fund going entirely towards Haiti disaster relief.   But there are lots of other wonderful organizations who are doing good work in Haiti right now.  One good resource to find out whether a charity is healthy and using its funds the way it should be is Charity Navigator (which gives Oxfam America its highest possible rating).  It doesn’t matter to me which charity you use, as long as the money is going to provide aid and resources to those who very badly need our help right now.  Please donate if you can!

Total amount of books read: 160.  Quite a few of these were fairly short YA or middle-grade books read for my job, but I’m still sort of boggled by the amount of books I read – that amounts to over 13 books a month, or a book read every 2.25 days.  And that’s not including the graphic novels and comics, which I kept in a separate category.

Total amount of graphic novels, comics, and manga read: 41.  I’m actually a little disappointed by this number.  My resolve at the beginning of the year was to read a lot more.  I buy all of the graphic novels and manga for my library, and while my teens are always ready to give me suggestions, that’s no excuse for not being familiar with what’s out there myself.  So again, I resolve to do better in 2010 at keeping up in this area.

Total number of YA and middle-grade books read: 97.  I felt like I had a pretty good balance this year of reading some of the most important YA novels (many of which I loved, don’t get me wrong), and letting myself enjoy some adult books as well.  There are still SO many older YA books out there that I haven’t gotten to yet, though, and so many books coming out this year that I’m eagerly anticipating.  So it’ll be interesting to see what my numbers look like on this one for 2010.

Total number of nonfiction books read: 14.  And only a couple of those are YA nonfiction.  Ouch.  I could’ve sworn I read a lot more than that.  And I like nonfiction, quite a bit, so I’m not sure why I read so few this year.  There’s another resolve for 2010.

Favorite YA books read: This one is hard to narrow down!  I read so many great ones this year.  Here are a few I’d single out as some of the most enjoyable – a couple of them weren’t published in 2009, but they were all new to me this year:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

The Knife of Never Letting Go and its sequel, The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

The Treasure Map of Boys by E. Lockhart

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

The Diamond of Drury Lane by Julia Golding

Liar by Justine Larbalestier

The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

The President’s Daughter and sequels by Ellen Emerson White

Favorite comic/manga read: This year I found several new series that I love, including Hikaru no Go by Yumi Hotta and Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma.  I wouldn’t have thought I’d pick a series about the game of Go and one about a strange five-year-old girl as my favorites, but I really fell in love with both of these.  Incidentally, they were both recommended to me as must-reads by one of my students!

Favorite rereads: Yes, even with all of the great books out there I haven’t read yet, I find myself rereading old favorites all the time.  I have a lot of comfort reads, and especially when I’m reading something dark or heavy, I like to turn to one of these old reliables when I just need a quick, soothing read before bed.  This fall, after getting the news that Megan Whalen Turner’s next book in the Attolia series is coming out in April (!!!), I decided to reread the first three books.  And oh, I’m so glad I did.  I LOVE these books.  Love, love, love ‘em.  The deliciously convoluted plots!  The whiplash-inducing twists and turns!  And above all, the hilariously infuriating unreliable narrator that is Eugenides. Eugenides is my book boyfriend, guys (although actually in real life he would probably fill me with frustration and rage).  The best part is that I’ve now turned a couple of my teens on to them, too, and now we  squeal over them together.  Can’t wait for A Conspiracy of Kings in April!

So that’s my year in review.  I suppose I could include a few of my least favorites, but I’m in a happy and forgiving mood right now, so maybe that’s a post for later.  Now I’ve got back to reading if I’m going to beat this year’s record!