This is both the title of a book I recently reviewed and a summary of how I feel right now. Ugh – pregnancy. This time around, it’s really an uncomfortable experience. Hence I’m awake at 3:30 in the morning, dealing with a bout of insomnia and Resltess Leg Syndrome. Ack.

Anyhoo, here is a link to my review of this book about teenage zombies. I think I may turn into a zombie pretty soon …

Last night, I stayed up an extra 30 minutes to finish reading Unwind, by Neil Shusterman. This is a big deal, people. I get up at 4:30 in the morning, so that extra 30 minutes is precious time I could have spent sleeping. However, I regretted doing it, because I had a hard time getting to sleep after reading the ending of this book.

The plot and characters of this book have stuck with me, but so have the ideas it raises. I wonder how many people, aside from Shusterman, have stopped to think about what might happen if the abortion debate escalates any further. In my lifetime, I have found myself on both sides of the debate, and I can see that there are too many gray areas all the way around. But I never envisioned a future like Shusterman has seen; now that he has shown it to me, I’m completely freaked out.

In Unwind, abortion of fetuses is illegal. However, parents can choose to retroactively abort their children between the ages of 13 and 18. Yep, you read that correctly. No typos here. The plot revolves around a group of “unwinds” whose parents have signed the orders for their abortions for various reasons, such as:

• Connor – he’s a bit of a troublemaker, kind of a delinquent. Mom and Dad are fed up, so they decide to just eliminate him from their lives. Whatever happened to military school, huh?
• Risa – she’s a ward of the state. Unfortunately for her, her classical piano playing is only really good, not superb. They just don’t have room for less-than-spectacular kids at the state home any more, so out she goes.
• Hayden – his parents got into such a bitter custody battle that they decided they’d rather have him unwound than see him wind up with only one of them. Calling King Solomon!
• Lev – perhaps the most disturbing of all, Lev’s parents are going to tithe him. Yep, that’s right – he was their 10th child, and they’re giving him back to God by donating all of his body parts to other people. While he’s still alive.

You may think that such a future would never happen. Sure, it’s the stuff of interesting science fiction, but that’s all it is, right? I’m not so sure. The thing is, the government did some creative marketing when they came up with this unwinding brainstorm. First, they used it as a means to end the war between the Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers (quite literally war here, people). Second, they convinced the public that an unwind isn’t really dying – their body parts live on in the people who get them. Since a doctor in the novel has perfected the art of body part harvesting so the WHOLE body can be used, they feel justified in not wasting human life. They’re just redistributing it. Creepy. Yet, if you’re sufficiently cynical about human nature, it’s not too far of a stretch.

I won’t tell you what happens to the unwinds in the story, because I think you should read it for yourself. But suffice it to say you will hold your breath for them the whole way, and find yourself delving into the depths of this plot the same way you can’t tear yourself away from staring at an accident on the side of the road. And the mental images will haunt you in exactly the same way.

Once upon a time (7 years ago to be exact), I was a senior in college and also the president of my school’s chapter of the English honorary society, Sigma Tau Delta. You would think that English majors would pay attention to words and how they can be skewed, but apparently not in this case – the shortened name for the English honorary society is STD. Lovely, huh?

So anyway, as the president of my local STD chapter, I had to attend a conference in Boise, Idaho. What better way is there to spend Saint Patrick’s Day weekend, I ask you? As fate would have it, I met DH Mike at this conference, and the rest (as they say) is history. However, my BFF Ann likes to tell people that I met my husband at an STD conference. It does make for an amusing story, I suppose.

Anyway, the reason I’m sharing this story today is because something else happened at that conference that is actually relevant to this post. Among the many guest speakers at the conference, the highlight was Sherman Alexie. Since I’m participating in the 2009 YA Book Challenge, I just finished reading Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian this weekend. What follows is my review of the book.

Cover art stolen from amazon.com.

To be honest, when I first chose this book for my list of YA books for 2009, I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to read it. I had been hearing about it for a few months, and kind of waffling in my thoughts about it. But when it showed up on the 2009-10 Florida Teens Read list, I figured I’d give it a shot. And I’m really glad I did.

The narrator/hero of this story is Arthur Spirit, Jr., a Spokane Indian with a defective brain. He has a condition where he has excessive water on the brain, and this makes him physically different than other kids, which we all know is a bad thing to be in a coming-of-age novel. Junior suffers through the taunts of the kids on the reservation, and most of the adults, too. Despite his physical limitations, Junior is incredibly bright, and one day he comes to the realization that his reservation education sucks majorly. So he tells his parents he wants to go to school in the nearby white neighborhood of Reardon.

Going to Reardon means a lot of things for Junior: his fellow Indians hate him for selling out to the white folks, the white folks think he’s weird for being the only Indian (besides the mascot) in the school, and he’s going to get a much better education than he would have had otherwise. During his freshman year at Reardon, Junior suffers – and learns – a lot. This book had me alternately laughing out loud and crying with the ups and downs of Junior’s young life. His narrative voice is full of wit and candor, and I couldn’t help but be sucked into his story.

I highly recommend this one for anyone who was ever a teenager. It’s a really great read.

I got Cassandra Clare’s City of Glass at the library yesterday, and finished it last night (yes, folks, that’s 560 pages in one afternoon/evening). I had already read the first two books in this trilogy, City of Bones and City of Ashes, earlier in this school year. I could not WAIT to get my hands on this third installment.

Photo from amazon.com

I was not disappointed by the final installment of this fantastic series, except perhaps in the fact that it’s over now. I have followed Clary Fray, the heroine, on her fantastic journey from the world of the mundane (everyday people things) to the world of the Shadowhunters (demon-slayers) for three volumes now, and I was glad to accompany her. This third volume was full of twists and turns as Clary ventured to Idris, the homeland of the Shadowhunters, to hunt down the cure for her mother’s comatose condition and defeat her evil father, Valentine. She was, of course, accompanied once again by her fearless friends Jace, Simon, Alec, Isabelle, and Luke. I found myself frantically turning pages, wondering if evil would overtake Idris or if Clary and Jace would ever solve their romantic problems. I will not answer either of those questions here, for the sake of suspense for those of you who haven’t read it yet. Suffice it to say that I was extremely satisfied with the ending, and Clare didn’t leave me with too many loose ends untied, which is always nice at the end of a series.

I highly recommend the Mortal Instruments trilogy to anyone who likes sci-fi YA Lit, or just a good adventure story.  It’s a great escape, either way.

Since I’m participating in the YA Book Challenge (see post below this one), I thought I’d review the books on my list as I get through them.  I’m on my way to the library later on this morning to pick up a few more, but for now I’ll start with one I read earlier this year:  The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

Picture from amazon.com

The setting of this book is a futuristic dystopia where the area formerly known as North America has been divided into districts.  District 1, containing the capital, is in the Rocky Mountain region.  In order to keep the other districts from revolting against them, they use several means of maintaining dictatorship.  They regulate food allowances, take percentages of earnings from industries, and every year they hold the Hunger Games. 

The Hunger Games are like Survivor on acid.  Each district holds a lottery every year, supervised by the capital.  During this process, the names of one boy and one girl from each district are drawn at random.  The youth who are chosen then have to travel to the capital to compete in a game of survival … to the death … on t.v.  In this way, the capital reminds the other districts how powerless they are against District 1, and enforces rules and policies. 

Our heroine, Katniss, volunteers for the Games when her little sister’s name is drawn in the lottery.  Taking her sister’s place, Katniss travels to the capital to train for a few days and then compete in the games.  The story that follows is one of extreme suspense.  I could barely put the book down, desperate as I was to know what would happen next and if Katniss would prevail.  Though I normally hate reality tv, and have never watched a season of Survivor in my life, this book sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go.

Katniss is a heroine who embodies strength, cunning, and compassion.  Though she must plot and kill the other kids in the games, she never turns Lord of the Flies on us.  Throughout her life, she has suffered greatly to make sure that her family would prosper, and she continues to do that throughout the games (the prizes for her family will be great if she wins).  I won’t tell you what happens in the end of the book, but I will tell you that I anxiously await the survival of the sequel, Catching Fire, this September.