A box filled up with peas.

The afore-promised book review clearing house. Now with more self-centeredness!

Nailed by Patrick Jones
OK, I was just checking Patrick's website, and why the hell didn't I know about the R.E.M. playlist!? I totally have all the songs, and I would have completely made a copy to listen along while I read.
Hell, I probably listened to at least a quarter of these songs while I was reading the book anyway.
And I'm now loving that one of the songs is "Crush With Eyeliner". That was, like, my theme song for awhile in high school, at about the age the main character of the book is. I loved the video, with the wacky Japanese kids and that furry hat. And Thurston played on it, and what teenage girl who hasn't been exposed to too many record nerds yet doesn't love Thurston Moore?
But I wasn't the "funky" (Please, please, PLEASE take that out of the book description. Please.) heartbreaker, nor was I the kinda popular smart girl. But I think a book about my high school career wouldn't have nearly enough supporting characters to be at all interesting.
(so very very emo...)
This book felt really true: the desperate desire to get out of high school, especially. I think I actually had that conversation with the author, about what made the Columbine kids different wasn't so much that they hated, but that they couldn't see anything after that.
Plus, you know, the mental instability and fondness for guns.
You can tell this is a book about boys b/c Bret doesn't talk about clothes as much as, say, our old friend Andrea Marr.

Monster Blood Tattoo: Book One: Foundling by D.M. Cornish
This book came with red temporary tattoos, which I feel is a hint other books should take. I mean, why can't I have, say, a temp tattoo advertising Nora Roberts latest?
I read this awhile ago. It mysteriously came in the mail one day, along with a letter explaining that another YA librarian had told the publisher people I would be a good pusher for it.
Well, they said it more fancy than that, but you get the idea. My parents were quite impressed.
It's a good, adventuresome fantasy that started a bit slow and ended on a dime. Actually, it ended before the dime. You know, I barely have the patience to wait for sequels when I read things a year after their publication date; it's totally ridiculous to expect me to handle reading a galley copy and waiting for its sequel AND publication date.
(Also, you might have noticed that I can't spell "seque/al". But hey, at least I don't say things are "addicting" when they're really addictive.)
There's also an extensive glossary, all sorts of other appendices, illustrations, and maps. I do love a good appendix. And I like when fantasies have maps, as long as they're not all, You have to memorize every little bit about my imagined world to make heads or tails of my story.
I'm looking at your ass, Tolkein.

It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
YA doesn't have memoirs; it has thinly veiled autobiography.
The summer after I graduated from college, I had NO clue what I was doing. I took a temp job at--let's call 'em Vespucci Behavioral Care. Other HMO-type places contracted their mental and addiction care management to VBC.
Now, when you're dealing with mental and addiction care, not everyone's care's gonna get paid for. And they need to be told somehow.
The form of telling VBC used that summer was to have a temp plug names, criteria, etc. into form letters to send to people who weren't going to get coverage. Or, as I liked to call it, "Dear so-and-so, You may be crazy, but you're just not crazy enough. Better luck next time. Love, Jessy the Temp."
(Of course, they were later under investigation for denying too many people and had inadvertantly become a joke around the local psych hospital.)
This was the summer of 2000.
Ned Vizzini is roughly the same age as me. I knew that IKOAFS was based on his experiences, but I wasn't sure exactly when he had those experiences.
So I'm reading, and it hits me: what if he was in the hospital in 2000? What if he was "covered" by VBC? What if he had been denied? By a letter I wrote?
I am nothing if not completely and utterly selfless.
Anyway, the timing was totally off; you find out when Ned was hospitalized at the end of the book. But it made me wonder about all those letters I sent out, especially the ones whose birthyears were close to mine, or less than mine. Did they ever get care? What happened to them?
So, if for some reason you got one of those letters May-August 2000 and are reading this?
Sorry for that.