Since You Left Me by Allen Zadoff

If God were here, there would be no need for religion.  We wouldn’t have to remember him for honor him.  We’d come out of our houses in the morning, and God would be sitting on a cloud with a lightning bolt in one hand and a Starbucks in the other.

You’d say, “Good morning, God. How did I do yesterday?”

If you were good, you’d get the Starbucks. If you were bad—

Sanskrit Aaron Zuckerman.

Some name, eh?  Particularly for the least Jewish kid at Brentwood Jewish Academy (even below the school’s one-student diversity initiative, Tyler, who’s only Jewish on his mother’s side).  Named after “a dead, goyish language” by his new-ager yoga-teacher mother (his younger sister was named Sweet Caroline by their father—at least Neil Diamond is Jewish!), Sanskrit sits at the bottom of his school’s pecking order, dreaming of graduation and The Initials.  The former is his ticket away from his feuding, divorced parents; the latter is Judi Jacobs, the girl of his dreams, whom he went out with for one ill-fated week in second grade, when they were still at public school.

The Expiring Bookstore

Not far from my house, though not ideally close either, is a bookstore tucked into a neighborhood rich with galleries, antique shops and old-school, diner-style cafes. Open the doors and you're greeted with that rich, somewhat musty smell of used books. Besides the tall walls lined with books and the rolling ladders for reaching the uppermost stacks, it looks like a living room that hasn't been updated since the '40s. There are a number of large lazy cats draped over coffee tables and end tables. You wander about, intrigued by quirky titles everywhere you look, and every time you think you've exhausted the place you find another room, another nook, another stack of un-shelved books with just the thing you didn't know you were looking for. It's the perfect place to get lost. Or found. Or something.

Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss

There's a weird and uneasy aura that hangs over Lucas Klauss's Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse. There's parts where it seems to actually cohere together into what it wants to be (a novel about losing and regaining faith in something), and it's at its best when it does. But these moments are sandwiched so awkwardly between typical Male Coming of Age Novel tropes—some bland, some annoyingly stereotypical—that it's difficult to actually notice them. Which is a shame, because there's good potential here to explore faith in the space between the polarized opposites of hard-line atheism and hard-line evangelism, but it never commits. It doesn't even commit to letting the reader draw their own conclusions; instead it feels as though it evades drawing conclusions, forcing readers to do so, rather than it being a natural outgrowth of the story.

The Boolean Gate by Walter Jon Williams

Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla fans take note: Walter Jon Williams has a novella due out on Halloween about the friendship between the two and how Samuel Clemens came to believe that Tesla presented a threat of science fiction proportions to planet earth. At 120 pages The Boolean Gate is a smooth, very enjoyable read that allows Clemens to meander in and out of thoughts on writing under a powerful (and world renowned) pseudonym and Tesla to be presented in all his wicked cool inventive best. Of course there is also the matter of a potential alien invasion and some body snatcher type activity but that is just icing on the cake. Williams has written the neatest of literary love letters - he brings Clemens alive as he struggled with the decisions he has made both personally and professionally and their impact on the death of his adult daughter Suzy and the desperate illness of his dear wife. He also gives us a manic Tesla, desperate to invent absolutely everything he can imagine and yet plagued with the business difficulties that would bring about the end of his career. This is Clemens and Tesla, talking about the future, pondering the possibilities and dreaming about futures that you and I still long for.

And it's also Tesla kind of falling into occasional stupors wherein he speaks bizarre and random things and sounds like he's possessed. (This would be the alien invasion bits.)

With all the recent excitement about Tesla's old factory maybe, finally, hopefully, on the way to museum status, The Boolean Gate (which showcases the building of that factory and Wardenclyffe tower), is a perfect treat. It's subtle undercurrents about genius and madness and the creation of powerful, uncontrollable, alter egos also makes it a great choice for October reading. Consider it a Halloween gift for those seeking a unique blend of high literature and spookiness. It's a gift that would most certainly be well received in any reader's hands.

More on Tesla here.

Rock On by Denise Vega

Rock On: A Story of Guitars, Gigs, Girls, and a Brother (Not Necessarily in That Order) by Denise Vega lives up to its title. Here's why.

Ori has a band. A band without a name.

Ori has an older brother named Del. The boys were very close until Del went away to college, only to return home unexpectedly, with a chip on his shoulder.

Ori has a guitar. It's a loaner. He's working at a music store and saving up for a sweet Les Paul.

Ori has friends. Good ones. And together, they make good music.

What Ori doesn't have - yet - is the confidence that he needs to lead the group, and to walk out of his brother's shadow and forge his own path. But maybe, if he lets out the music that's in his head, his heart, and his fingertips, he'll get there.

You've got to love a lead vocalist and songwriter who is searching for the right things to say and the right notes to play. Ori's just that. I think he'd get along well with Nick from Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

I really enjoyed the scenes with Ori's friends. The group's dynamics are great. When they get together, whether it's to make music or just to hang out, they are comfortable with one another. They are solid friends, and their dialogue sounds authentic. None of the main characters are profane or inane, and every person in the group is important to that group. No one in the band tries to be the star or upstage anyone else; each member is good at what they do, and they just want to play music. They are getting their feet wet by performing at local venues and preparing for a Battle of the Bands competition for high school groups. All the while, Ori has to deal with his unpredictable older brother.

Ori used to look up to Del, but now Del seems to be looking down on him. Though Del was popular and cool, he always looked out for his kid brother and included him in things. During the short time he was away at college, something changed. Now, Ori sometimes sees a flicker of the brother he used to know, but most of the time, it's like Del's a complete stranger. He used to be supportive of Ori's efforts; he's now critical. He used to smile and joke around with Ori; now he's cold, if not rude. He's also messing up Ori's potential relationship with a girl. The brothers' feud builds throughout the book and boils over realistically.

The band is in need of a bass guitarist for the first quarter of the book. If you want to know more about the newest member of the band, if you'd like to find out what RSB stands for, and if you want to know other reasons why this book rocks, click here to read my full-length review at my blog, Bildungsroman.

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March by Cynthia Y. Levinson

As Cynthia Levinson notes in We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March,

Segregation in Birmingham wasn't just a way of life. It was the law. The city's Racial Segregation Ordinances, adopted in 1951, demanded almost total separation of blacks and whites.

Many southern cities mandated separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, scools, and seats on buses for blacks and whites. But Birmingham's ordinances went even further... (p. 7)

Even after other Southern cities desegrated, Birmingham resolutely refused to do so. When segregation finally came to an end in Birmingham, it was due to the courage and strength of thousands of children and teens who would not give up despite a faltering plan to fill city jails and, therefore, impede the enforcement of segregation laws. Dwindling numbers of adults marched and were arrested in April. But in early May, thousands of young people protested, marched, and went to jail, bringing the nation's attention to Birmingham.

Outlaw by Stephen Davies

Jake Knight seems to have it all. He's a fifteen-year-old technology whiz who can jump a ten-foot wall with his parkour skills. He's enrolled in a nice British school, and his dad is an ambassador to the small West African country of Burkina Faso. To Jake, Africa is a land of excitement and adventure...and he will soon learn that it is also the land of the Outlaw.

Jake thinks his boarding school life is pretty lame and spends his time playing Geothimble, a scavenger hunt that uses GPS technology.  When Jake's extracurricular activity gets him suspended, he is sent to his father's embassy. Jake could not be happier, but little does he know that he's about to get enough excitement to last a lifetime.

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour (2012)

Don't be fooled by the Urban Outfitters-esque cover, the giant sunglasses or the rainbow t-shirt (which I want, desperately), and say these two words to yourself. Road. Trip.

Colby and Bev have plans. While most of their friends are heading to college in the fall, Colby and Bev will be knocking around Europe, forging their own path. But first, road trip, a tour of the Pacific Northwest with Bev's band The Disenchantments (Bev and their friends Alexa and Meg). Colby and Bev have been planning this trip since the 8th grade, working hard and saving all their money for this trip. Except Bev tells Colby, a day into their tour, that she's not going to Europe but instead is going to college in the fall. And for the rest of the book, Colby is left to figure out what he's going to do -- what he really wants to do.

This book is a great contemporary read. No zombies. No aliens. No dystopia. The characters are cool, normal kids. I could have been friends with these kids (if I'd gone to a cool art high school, also a favorite fiction element for me). Their problems are big and real but not insurmountable and not hyper-dramatic. No one's dying, no one's been horribly abused or has a drug problem (although every time Bev lit a cigarette, I wanted to shake her and scold her). I admired Colby's dedication to his dream. When I was in 8th grade, I wanted to be a pop singer, like a bad Disney starlet in the years before that was a viable option. I wouldn't have dared to travel anywhere, especially on my own. So I admire dreamers with enough practical sense to work towards those dreams, especially teenagers. As for the choice Colby must make, well, I'll let you read the story to find out what he does.

Oh, one other favorite fiction trope? Playlists. Back in the day, we had mix tapes, and my friend and colleague Jen, who recommended this book to me, was so enamored of this book that she made a Spotify playlist of the music mentioned in the book.

Cross posted at my blog (Library Lass) Adventures in Reading.

You Want Brains with that?

Calling a book "gimmicky" is usually an insult, but criticizing Sean Beaudoin's books for using gimmicks would be like going to see a magician and complaining that he used sleight-of-hand. The gimmicks are the point. And Beaudoin takes them right over the top

His first book, Fade to Blue, takes place, partly, in a comic book insert. His next book, You Killed Wesley Payne is a noir detective novel set in a high school and centers on a baroque diagram showing the relationships between high school cliques. His new book, The Infects, is a zombie novel which layers one odd gimmick onto another, all of it somehow fusing together to create a, more or less, coherent narrative.

Rogue Angel: Destiny - by Alex Archer

Rogue Angel: Destiny by Alex Archer, intrigued me when I first saw it on an end-cap at a bookstore. What's not to like? A hot chick with a sword! The back cover made it sound even more interesting.

The main character, Annja Creed (pronounced "Anya"), is one of those characters that can, and has, done it all. She's a young, somewhat experienced archaeologist, has studied martial arts and can hold her own in a brawl, can free-climb a rock face, knows how to use guns, etc. Oh, and she hosts a not-quite-respectable TV show called "Chasing History's Monsters." Her producer on the show, Doug Morell, is a recurring character, usually phoning her at inopportune moments during her chase scenes.