Reviews this week: not just Palin and Agassi

This week, there were some small books competing for attention against some blockbusters. Andre Agassi's memoir, "Open," is charming everyone, including our reviewer David Davis:

This literate and absorbing book is, as the title baldly states, Agassi's confessional, a wrenching chronicle of his lifelong search for identity and serenity, on and off the court.

Peter Mayle, best known for "A Year in Provence," begins in Malibu but swiftly heads back to France, in a wine-and-food fiction this time around. Reviewer Bernadette Murphy writes:

"The Vintage Caper" is just that -- a caper -- a lighthearted romp through Bordeaux and Marseille, in which picking the right restaurant, choosing the best dish on the menu and, of course, finding the perfect wine (and female companion) to accompany the feast is every bit as important as catching the thief.

Well-known French children's author Jean-Claude Mourlevat has tried his hand at young adult fiction, and the results are not good. George Ducker writes:

For the characters in "Winter's End" -- and this should go for the readers as well -- the book's end just can't come soon enough.

And don't forget Sarah Palin. The former vice presidential candidate visited with Oprah, hit the road in a decorated tour bus and remained at the top of Amazon's bestseller list. As for the book itself, Tim Rutten says:

"Going Rogue" is so obviously a campaign biography that a reader comes away trying to figure out what he thinks of Palin's presidential chances rather than what he thinks of her.

So far, Palin isn't running for anything. Officially, that is.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Andre Agassi, honored at the U.S. Open in 2009. Credit: Charles Krupa / Associated Press

Stephenie Meyer emerges to appear on 'Oprah' today

Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular "Twilight" series, will appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" this afternoon (the show broadcasts at 4 p.m. in many markets). The television appearance is a rare one for the author, who apologizes to fans on her website for "doing the hermit thing this last year."

Meyer is being lured out by the shine of "New Moon." The second film to feature Robert Pattinson as vampire Edward Cullen and Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan opens wide on Nov. 20. Meyer writes on her website, "I am so pleased and amazed and thrilled with what [director] Chris Weitz has done with 'New Moon' that I want to talk about it, and to show my support for him."

Earlier this week, serious "Twilight" fans submitted their too-specific-for-Oprah's-show questions to Meyer through the Twilight Saga website, which will be posting her answers on Monday.

Oprah will be the only talk show host to get time with Meyer, apparently; she writes that she's doing only this one interview. After that, she'll slip back into the dark.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos: Stephenie Meyer, credit: Vince Bucci/Getty Images. Oprah Winfrey, credit: Warren Toda/ EPA

Happy Teen Read Week

This is Teen Read Week, in which teenagers are encouraged to dive into books with a panoply of lures, including posters, colored pencils, bookmarks and even video games. A project of the national Young Adult Library Services Assn., which is a division of the American Library Assn., Teen Read Week faces a challenge: how to recommend works that sit well with parents that teenagers might embrace.

That tension can be seen on YALSA's ultimate teen bookshelf, a list of 50 essential reads (PDF download). It includes new books and classics: "Feed" by M.T. Anderson, "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank, "Weetzie Bat" by Francesca Lia Block, "Fat Kid Rules the World" by K.L. Going and the audiobook of "To Kill a Mockingbird." And it also includes the  "His Dark Materials" series by Philip Pullman; some find the books controversial -- the series ranked No. 2 on the 2008 banned books list.

Being somewhat transgressive will entice some teen readers -- but that's not the message the library association is trying to send. This year's Teen Read Week's theme is the nice and Halloween-y "Read for the fun of it -- read beyond reality." To draw teens in, some Los Angeles Public Library branches are giving away copies of the video game Guitar Hero for XBOX 360 -- (with controller guitar but without the game console). On Tuesday, authors will appear at nine different branches, from Pacific Palisades to the Central Library downtown, for readings and giveaways. At the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Branch Library in South L.A. on Friday, a makeup artist will demonstrate professional monster makeup. Check your local branch for more Teen Read activities.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: From the 2007 movie "The Golden Compass," based on a book from Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series. Credit: Laurie Sparham / New Line Cinema

Laurie Halse Anderson's 'Speak' almost too much for Temecula

Laurie Halse Anderson's 1999 young adult novel, "Speak," which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and the National Book Award, was selected as School Library Journal's Best Book of the Year and received numerous other honors, was the focus of controversy in Temecula this week. The school board's trustees were deciding whether or not to add "Speak" to the list of books that may be taught in high school English classes, and were concerned that it deals with the topic of rape and its aftermath.

Our blog LA Now reports that the board voted 4-1 in favor of the book's inclusion. But:

Trustee Kristi Rutz-Robbins cast the opposing vote, saying she feared that the book would become mandatory reading and that rape victims and others would be forced to read it. The district needs policies that alert parents to such assignments and ways to opt out of them, “so that rape victims, children who are emotionally and developmentally immature and those seriously interested in being prepared for college can stick to classics and other works without graphic rape scenes,” she wrote in an e-mail today.

Educators in the district have pointed out that other classic works commonly read in the community’s high schools, including Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” deal with sensitive subjects such as rape.

It's a bit surprising that there is an issue over whether or not high school students can or should be able to read about a difficult subject like rape in school while that topic is certainly present in other media, including television. In fact, "Speak" was made into a Showtime movie in 2004 and is available on DVD. Since it stars actress Kristen Stewart of "Twilight," I'd guess some teen girls might be curious enough to have already sought it out.

The Temecula school district, which has procedures in place for parents who want to opt their children out from certain lessons, has plans to reevaluate the policy this year.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Young adult books that rock: a beginner's list

A rock and roll soundtrack gets teenagers through their ups, their downs and their angsts. It may evolve from classic rock to grunge to emo to pop to punk and beyond, but it's a lasting, rebellious fixture. So it should come as no surprise that novels for young adults are as steeped in rock 'n' roll as teenagers themselves.

Cecil Castellucci, author of five books including the rock novel "Beige," picks eight novels with characters whose lives are changed by (turn that down!) music. In alpha order:

1. "Audrey, Wait!" by Robin Benway

When Audrey breaks up with her musician boyfriend, he ends up writing a song about her that becomes an instant hit.  Suddenly Audrey is notorious and everyone has an opinion about her.  But do they want to know the real story behind the song?

2. "Born to Rock" by Gordon Korman

Leo is a straight-laced honor student and Young Republican. Everything goes topsy turvy when he finds out that the guy he thought was his dad, isn't; his real father is the lead singer for Purge, the most famous punk band ever. Leo gets a summer job working as a roadie and gets to know his dad, and learns something about himself (and punk) along the way.

3. "Fat Kid Rules the World" by K.L. Going

Troy is a fat kid who doesn't have any friends, just can't take it anymore and decides to end it all. But high school music legend Curt McCrae steps in and saves him, and everything changes. Curt sees something in Troy that no one else sees; even though Troy can’t drum, Curt thinks that Troy should be the drummer for his new band Rage/Tectonic. It’s a funny thing how when someone starts seeing something special in you, you start seeing yourself in a different way, too. 

4. "Heavy Metal and You" by Christopher Krovatin

Sam loves heavy metal music. He’s smarty-pants enough to attend an exclusive, all-boy prep school in New York City, and he loves to hang out with his friends and smoke up, cut class and drink. But when Sam starts to date straightedge Melissa, he tries to change himself for her. Nothing stays the same forever, though; thank goodness music is always there to get you through.

5. "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" by Stephanie Kuehnert

Emily is punk rock. She was born punk rock. Her mother split when she was little to follow a band, and her dad gave up music to raise her on his own. Now she has her own band that’s hitting it big. But everything is messy, and things rise high and swing low. And Emily’s looking for the song that’s going to bring all back together, with love.

6. "King Dork" by Frank Portman

When Tom Henderson (a.k.a. King Dork) discovers a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" that belonged to his dead father, his whole world changes. Clues and conspiracies seem to be leading to answer the puzzle of his father’s death while helping to figure out the secret to attracting hot girls. Being in a band definitely helps, but that’s not as simple as it seems.

7. "Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist" by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

When Norah borrows Nick to be her boyfriend for five minutes at a rock show, it sets off an all-night adventure in New York City. They chase down the venue of the secret show of their favorite band and discover they have a lot more in common than Nick’s awesome music mixes. (This was a book before it became a movie.)

8. "Rock Star Superstar" by Blake Nelson

Pete’s life is all about music. He practically sleeps with his bass. And he vows to never be a sellout.  When he meets the Carlisle brothers, with no talent but lots of charm, he joins up as their bass player.  Suddenly The Tiny Masters of Today is poised for superstardom and Pete wonders what he'll have to compromise for a chance at success. 

-- Cecil Castellucci

Images: Simon & Schuster, left, and Penguin Group, center and right

Where the wild things are furry

In June, I heard about a version of "Wild Things" by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze with a fur cover, but I didn't quite believe it. As you can see: believe it.

"Wild Things" is a 300-page book for 9- to 12-year-old readers, an expanded version of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" picture book. It's coming out in October, timed, of course, to coincide with the release of the "Where the Wild Things Are" movie, directed by Jonze and scripted by Jonze and Eggers.

"I've never seen a movie that looked or felt like this," Sendak said at Comic-Con, "and it's his personal 'this.' And he's not afraid of himself. He's a real artist that lets it come through the work. So he's touched me very much. He has touched me very much."

Who knows if that also applies to the tactile book above. I don't know -- it looks, um, matted. And kind of creepy. But maybe that's the point.

And because I can't help but look forward to the movie, the latest trailer is after the jump.

Lizzie Skurnick's ode to Judy Blume, et al.

In our pages, Susan Carpenter reviews "Shelf Discovery" by Lizzie Skurnick, a look back at 73 favorite young adult books -- mostly for girls -- that were written in the 1960s and '70s.

"Twilight," shmilight. Any self-respecting Gen-Xer will tell you, with a certain nostalgic twinge: The books we read as kids were better. Of course, we're showing our age, but it's impossible to think of our childhoods without giving a major nod to Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle, Robert Cormier and other young-adult novelists of the 1960s and 1970s whose writings brought the world into focus and helped to shape our souls. ...

For Skurnick, these books marked a turning point in YA lit for girls, a genre that, in earlier decades, may have featured young women but didn't really deal with their "issues." Messy topics like menstruation, self-esteem, sibling rivalry, bullying and divorce were taboo until titles such as "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" and "I Am the Cheese" came along. What was different about YA books from those of the early '60s until the late '80s is that they allowed young women to see themselves "in the actual girl," Skurnick writes. These books "challenged us, like the best of friends ... not only to be ourselves, but to be more interesting, inspired versions of ourselves."

The project was born of a series of posts Skurnick wrote for the blog Jezebel. "When I started the column I thought I might just be doing a nostalgia trip, and if that had wound up being all I had to say or all I was capable of doing, I know I wouldn’t have been able to do the column for very long," she told Bitch magazine. In the interview, she explains what makes it more than nostalgia:

It is what the women around me that I talk to about these books are feeling -- that you look up and someone says, “Jacob Have I Loved” or whatever your particular book is, and the reaction is really to scream,“Oh, my god! I love it!” It’s odd to experience that, because then you’re suddenly like, “Wait, what was it about those books? Why don’t we read those books anymore? Those books were so important to us. What was happening in those books?”

Skurnick's blogging goes back a few years -- her litblog Old Hag was one of the smartest, funniest takes on books on the Internet. I was such a fan that I saw her at a conference and tried to tell her how awesome the blog was, doing all but screaming "Oh, my God! I love it!" It took years before she believed I wasn't a straitjacket-ready stalker.

Yet with all my fandom, I do wonder whether it's hard to transition from blog to book. The Daily Beast thinks the book's style is too casual in places but concludes, "This is a book whose worst problem is that it makes you want to reread every book it covers."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Author Judy Blume, left, signs a book for Elizabeth Lender, an adult fan. Credit: Carl Lender via Flickr

Exposing Hancock Park: Can a 19-year-old touch James Ellroy?

Isabel Kaplan, who's just finished her freshman year at Harvard, wrote the new young adult novel "Hancock Park" while she was in the 11th and 12th grades at the private Marlborough School. She explains in the Daily Beast today:

For the young and glittery in L.A., party-promotion companies would rent out dance spaces and throw under-21 parties with names like “Seduction,” where tickets were at the very least $20, a bottle of water cost $5, and everyone was drunk upon arrival because alcohol wouldn’t be served inside. Think Gossip Girl with less preppiness, more blondes, and more sunscreen. It was because of these outrageous experiences that I decided to base my first novel in the private-school world of Los Angeles.

The protagonist of Hancock Park, Becky Miller, struggles to find her place in the City of Angels. I wanted to write a book that would explore adolescence through the lens of a girl in the Hollywood bubble.

The book, the Daily Beast writes, "exposes the excesses of L.A.’s wealthy high-school elite" -- particularly those who reside in Hancock Park. But for Hancock Park excesses, can anyone really rival James Ellroy?

"The genesis, in many ways, is this pervert peeper pad of mine," Ellroy says of "The Hilliker Curse," his four-part memoir-of-women serial for Playboy magazine. He points, in a video on the magazine's website, to an upstairs apartment on the outskirts of Hancock Park (he's also taken bus tours there).

In the video, Ellroy explains that after his mother's murder, when he was 10, he would walk his dog late at night, looking in the windows of the mansions of Hancock Park, with "freedom to peep, brood, read, skulk, stalk, and fantasize."

He later broke into those homes, looking to touch the fabric of the lives of people who lived there -- as well as the lingerie of some of his female classmates. Which may be a little more excessive than a well-bred Hancock Park teen would care to imagine.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo (left): James Ellroy. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Photo (right): Isabel Kaplan with her new novel. Credit: Kristian Dowling / Getty Images

Oh, lordy: will Michael Bay film James Frey's unpublished sci-fi novel?

According to a stories in the Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times, on Friday Michael Bay bought the film rights to "I Am Number Four," the first book in a sci-fi young adult series purportedly co-written by James Frey. That you haven't yet heard of a book called "I Am Number Four" is no surprise -- it's only a manuscript, and an unbought one at that.

The NY Times writes that the manuscript has been shown to publishers as being written by two anonymous authors, "a collaboration between an unnamed New York Times best-selling author and a young up-and-coming writer." It does not currently have a publisher.

No one is confirming that it's Frey, best known for his non-entirely-true bestselling memoir "A Million Little Pieces." When contacted by the website Gawker -- Frey interned there for a day -- Frey said that he could neither confirm nor deny any involvement with the book.

"I Am Number Four" is said to be the first of a planned six-book series; Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg forked over a high six figures for the film rights. Bay may direct; he may not. After the massive box office of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," he can kind of do whatever he wants.

Anyway, what's the story? The NY Times describes it this way:

The story of “I Am Number Four” is about a group of nine alien teenagers on a planet called Lorien, which is attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine and their guardians evacuate to Earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, disguised as a human, trying to evade his predators and knowing he is next on their list.

Which doesn't sound like it's trying to be particularly funny, but the aliens-masquerading-on-Earth-as-guys-named-John gag was hysterical in the film "Buckaroo Bonzai."  

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Left: Michael Bay Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times. Right: James Frey. Credit: George Ducker for The Times 

Are you Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

Authors Holly Black ("The Spiderwick Chronicles") and Justine Larbalestier ("Magic or Madness" trilogy) announced yesterday, with no small degree of glee, that they will be editing a zombies versus unicorns anthology for young adults. Simon & Schuster is publishing, and it should hit shelves in 2010. On her blog, Larbalestier makes clear that she's on TEAM ZOMBIE:

Yes, there will be lots of different kinds of zombies. Not just your regular Romero types.

I have no idea about the uni***n side of things. I doubt there’s more than one kind. And if there is, who cares?

Oh, them's fighting words. Black tries to take the high road — almost.

Through the power of storytelling, it will soon be obvious which makes for better fiction. Unicorns will finally have their day of victory.

Or zombies.  I guess.

Science fiction website io9 has doubts about the narrative possibilities of both genres. I think the real difference is that unicorn fans take their ethereal creature quite seriously, while zombie fans hold very little holy, which makes them seem like more fun.

For example, the above Zombie Pope was photographed at Calgary's Third Annual Zombie Walk last year, attended by hundreds who lurched about in ripped and bloodied clothing, mouths agape, startling passersby (fun!). On the other hand, the elusive unicorn — here, in a Second Life sim — is rarely depicted without mystic mist or a glowing rainbow (serious).

But maybe the myth of the unicorn, because it's been so narrowly defined, will have more room to grow. In the end, it'll be how well the stories are told that make all the difference. For now, that's still a mystery — the (closed) contributor list is under wraps — oh shoot, that's a mummy reference.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Zombie photo by Robert Thivierge and unicorn picture by lacie babenco via Flickr.