Saturday, June 5, 2010

A book is man's best friend

So, I recently had a large quantity of money to spend on books. I had been using gift certificates to Chapters to encourage participation in a pilot study I'm running for my dissertation work. Usually I try not to buy too many books in Canada as they are ridiculously priced here! Seriously look at the back of a book once! It drives me crazy as the currency is about the same right now . . .

Anyway I've recently purchased a bunch of books. Squee! I focused on beloved series I had been holding off on due to the high cost of reading.

I have not been disappointed. I was particularly pleased with The Conspiracy of King by Megan Whalen Turner. This entire series starting with The Thief is exceptional. The series has some of the best written an arguably some of my favorite characters ever. The plots are also very complex, particularly for books marketed as teen fiction. (If you want to read my review you can at my favorite book site LibraryThing)

I've often found this an annoying designation though I often love books in this category. I never read what were considered Teen books when I was a teen as my school library and bookstore only stocked insipid love stories and angsty prose. It seems to me that more and more Teen books are talking up to teens rather than down to them. To my mind a Teen book should not be tremendously different from and Adult book. I appreciate intelligent literature for all ages. Which is what you'll get if you read Megan Whalen Turner's work. The Percy Jackson series is also quite good for this. It does have a bit of angst in in, but I for give the books for it as they have battles fought with bronze swords and Greek armor.

I find I have a lot to say about teen books . . . more later I suppose

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