The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

[torachan]

Title: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Author: Sherman Alexie
Number of Pages: 230 pages
Book Number/Goal: 42/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5

Junior may only be fourteen, but he knows living on the rez is a ticket to nowhere, so when one of his teachers tells him to get off the reservation, he enrolls in high school in a nearby white town the very next day, even though it feels like a betrayal of his family and friends and everyone he knows.

I had heard a lot of good things about this book and had it on my wishlist for ages. When I finally got it in the mail today, I ended up reading it right away. It's young adult, has a lot of illustrations, and a very conversational tone, so I zipped right through it. There's so much to it, though. It's a quick read, but it's not light reading. And it's just as awesome as everyone said it was.

On a less awesome note, I got a UK version of this and uh, I know that not all Native Americans are dark-skinned, but they could have given him some pigment. It says Indian on the cover, after all. They're not fooling anyone into thinking it's about white people, so wtf?

Mooch from BookMooch.

So Yesterday, by Scott Westerfeld

[bobafeis]

Title: So Yesterday
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Number of Pages: 256
Genre: YA
Book Number/Goal: 2/50
Quick Review: It's like PopCo or one of Max Barry's novels*, only for teens. And really watered-down and dated. Yeah, a book about deconstructing pop culture and consumerism seems like a great idea, but it's been done before and it rarely ages well.

*Alienated protagonist, who is surprisingly knowledgeable about minute historical details, and the rather esoteric reaches of sociology, epidemiology or some other not-often-studied ology, meets a charismatic and chaotic love interest who shows our hero just how flawed the system, really is. The two then spend the rest of the book showing how the author's ideas for a perfect society would make things better, if we'd just try them out, dammit. Usually better than they sound, only not in this case.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (Spider Robinson)

[helens78]

Title: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
Author: Spider Robinson
Genre: Science Fiction ('70s era)
Book Number/Goal: 2 of 10 for August 2009

Review: I've been meaning to read the Callahan's books since I was a kid -- my father first noticed them because Robinson was famous for being an inveterate punster, and my father loves puns. Up until the last few years, the 1970s-style science fiction voice didn't really grab me (there's something very dry about it that I've never found interesting before), but lately it's appealed to me more -- it may be dry, but it can be full of character and it definitely doesn't waste time with page after page of description.

The first Callahan's book is a collection of short stories, near as I can figure; it's nine stories, each with the same narrator (a non-main-character who hangs out in Callahan's bar and plays guitar), each with a different story that was very relevant to the '70s. The world of Callahan's hasn't fully developed as of this book, but it's definitely getting clearer. I think the Callahan's books started as short stories Robinson submitted to different sci-fi magazines back in the day, so the format makes sense and definitely kept my interest. :)