Bellows and Shrieks

The End Games by T. Michael Martin
New York, NY : Balzer + Bray, [2013]
369 p. ; 22 cm.

If you have any doubts that The End Games has been well-received, check out the praise on T. Michael Martin's website - wow!  I wish I could say I loved this book. I guess I'm just not enough of a zombie fan to completely enjoy the book - though I did appreciate the quality of the writing.  That is a positive trend that I've noticed with many YA books - really top-notch writing across many subjects and genres.

I would agree with critics that the book is very imaginative.  I like how it draws on video-gaming language and knowledge in a way that is thoroughly integrated into the plot.  I also liked the unusual pairing of an older brother with a very young brother who has autism.  The plot device of two characters bound up in a survival/journey ordeal is well traveled (think Huck and Jim in Twain's masterpiece, the father and son of McCarthy's The Road, or the Alex and Darla in Mullin's Ashfall) and is well done here.   But for me, I found several key actions of the plot confusing and overwrought, certain characters almost cartoonish, and just too many actions where I had to suspend disbelief and just accept the improbability. I really found the deranged Capt. Jopek a bit much - his abilities with weapons makes him seem more superhuman than real.  I also just never felt the emotional pull I was supposed to feel with the main character's memories of his troubled homelife that existed before the zombie apocalypse.

But problems aside, the book is fast, exciting, dramatic, action packed, and written with striking and fresh language. It has some gory scenes, but rarely seems written for shock effect. The language is also amazingly free of obscenities, and there is a nice romance woven into the plot with a soft touch.  Not bad for a first novel.  So, if I have a student asking about a good zombie novel - I'll definitely send them looking for The End Games.

Oh, and "Bellow and Shrieks"? Bellows is the name that the main character, Michael, gives to the zombies.  Shrieks?  Well, you'll have to read the novel to figure out that reference.

Heartwarming, Sort Of

Back cover illus. by Bosma

Winger by Andrew Smith
New York : Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2013
438 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Winger is a readable, entertaining book.  Smith is great with dialogue and humor and the plotting moves along well.  It's a coming of age novel told in the voice of Ryan Dean West, aka "Winger" who is starting his junior year at a boarding school for wealthy kids in the Pacific NW.  He's smart, scrappy, a hard-playing, talented rugby player with heart, apparently cute, but...he's only 14 - two years younger than his peers (and especially Annie, his friend who he desperately loves and hopes will feel the same).  Winger is also immature, crude, completely obsessed with sex and rating the attractiveness of girls and women, and prone to fighting.  The Booklist reviewer nailed it: "In short, Ryan Dean is a slightly pervy but likable teen."

I would have said "somewhat likable" - I found at least one his pranks creepy and repulsive, his constant ranking of females tiresome, and his jealous possessiveness both hypocritical and annoying.  These would not have bothered me so much - except that Smith has written essentially a male fantasy tale.  Winger, in spite of his immaturity, and insistence on what a loser he is, ends up with the two most attractive and interesting girls in the school in love with him. As the School Library Journal reviewer noted about one of the girls: "One wonders what she sees in Ryan Dean."

The novel ends with a shocking act of violence that doesn't seem believable (at least not in the context of the novel) and raises a lot of questionable issues about the supposed motives and behaviors of closeted gay guys. 

In spite of my criticisms, the novel is funny, fun to read, and likely to appeal to both boys and girls.

Kurlansky's Tasty History

The Big Oyster: history on the half-shell by Mark Kurlansky
New York : Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007, c2006.
xx, 307 p. : ill., maps ; 21 cm. 

What a fun way to learn about the history of New York City!  Kurlansky again finds a way to entertain and inform while presenting his discoveries about another item that humans put in their mouths.  He has tackled salt, and cod (which I reviewed here about a year ago).

Like his other books, this one is well-written, fascinating, and very informative.  In it you'll learn that for many years in the 1800s, New York City was the oyster capital of the world - but that in a short time ballooning population and industrialization led to the demise of the rich oyster beds of the New York harbor - due to pollution and and over-harvesting. Kurlansky does a great

There is a lot to The Big Oyster - it is a practical history of the early years of New York City, with a lot about the earliest European settlement of the area to the bustle of the 19th and 20th centuries.  But it is also a social history and a foodways history - including recipes from various eras.  Finally, it is both an environmental history and cautionary tale about the squandering of precious natural resources.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone curious about the history and culture of America's most dynamic city, New York.