Waiting on Wednesday (33)

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that I'm eagerly awaiting. This week I can't wait for Real Live Boyfriends which is the fourth book in the Ruby books by E. Lockhart! I loved all the Ruby Oliver books, so I can not wait to see what other hysterical drama Ruby will get into. I'm very excited to read it when it comes out this winter on December 28, 2010!

Real Live Boyfriends: Ruby Oliver Book 4

By: E. Lockhart

Description from Goodreads:

Ruby Oliver, the neurotic, hyperverbal heroine of the The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, and The Treasure Map of Boys, is back!

Ruby Oliver is in love. Or it would be love, if Noel, her real live boyfriend, would call her back. But Noel seems to have turned into a pod-robot lobotomy patient, and Ruby can’t figure out why.

Not only is her romantic life a shambles:
Her dad is eating nothing but Cheetos,
Her mother’s got a piglet head in the refrigerator,
Hutch has gone to Paris to play baguette air guitar,
Gideon shows up shirtless,
And the pygmy goat Robespierre is no help whatsoever.

Will Ruby ever control her panic attacks?
Will she ever understand boys?
Will she ever stop making lists?
(No to that last one.)

Roo has lost most of her friends. She’s lost her true love, more than once. She’s lost her grandmother, her job, her reputation, and possibly her mind. But she’s never lost her sense of humor. The Ruby Oliver books are the record of her survival.

The Treasure Map of Boys: Ruby Oliver Book 3 Review

Title: The Treasure Map of Boys (Ruby Oliver Book 3) 
Author: E. Lockhart

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: July 28, 2009

Pages: 256

My Edition: Hardback 
Reading Level: Young Adult 
Where I got it: the Library

Summary from E. Lockhart's website:

In this third book in the Ruby Oliver series. Roo  is back at Tate Prep, and it’s her thirty-seventh week in the state of Noboyfriend. Her panic attacks are bad, her love life is even worse, and what’s more:
• Noel is writing her notes,
• Jackson is giving her frogs,
• Gideon is helping her cook,
• and Finn is making her brownies.
• Rumors are flying, and Ruby’s already sucky reputation is heading downhill.

Not only that, she’s also:
• Running a bake sale,
• learning the secrets of heavy metal therapy,
• encountering some seriously smelly feet,
• defending the rights of pygmy goats,
• and bodyguarding Noel from unwanted advances.

In this companion novel to The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book, Ruby struggles to secure some sort of mental health, to understand what constitutes a real friendship, and — if such a thing exists — to find true love. 

Review: 
Yay, E. Lockhart delivered another hilarious, cute, and fantastic Ruby Oliver story. Compared to the first two, The Treasure Map of Boys is probably my favorite because Ruby has grown up a little more but still has so much to learn about herself, her friends, and the others around her...especially all the boys! Ruby had some trouble during Freshman year by losing all her friends and being named the school "whore." Finally in Junior year she has kind of moved on, gained two friends, but is still seeing her shrink.  

I love the footnotes at the bottom of some of the pages because they are always so hilarious. I loved this one, but it took me awhile to read only because I've been a little busy and too tired to read. Other than that, whenever I got a chance, I couldn't stop reading. If you haven't read this series, I recommend it if you are looking for a funny, girly story to read. If you have read any of them and liked them, you won't be disappointed at all with this third companion novel. I'm pretty sure there will be at least another one for Ruby's senior year, so I can't wait for some new info on that!
 

Rating:

Friday Firsts (6)

The first line can make or break a reader’s interest. Just how well did the author pull you in to the story with their first sentence? To participate in this weekly book meme is extremely easy.

• Grab the book you are currently reading and open to the first page.
• Write down the first sentence in the first paragraph.
• Create a blog post with this information. (Make sure to include the title and the author of the book you are using. Even an ISBN helps!)
• Did this first sentence help draw you into the story? Why or why not?

The book I'm currently reading is the The Treasure Map of Boys by E. Lockhart. I'm not very far into it yet, but I love the two other books. They are just so hilarious to read! This is the first sentence, but really it's a poem:

"Ruby,
In laboratories dim
We bend to Feischman's whim
And suffer twice a week
Horrors terrible to speak..."

 

Haha this is a kind of weird way to start a book; since the other two are like this too, I expect that kind of thing. The poem is pretty funny and weird. It is about a boy asking Ruby (the main character) to be his laboratory partner, so he writes a poem to her. I can't wait to read this to see what other crazy things will happen!

What's your current book's first sentence?

The Best and Worst of Covers (3)

Every Saturday, I will post one book cover I love and one I hate from books that I have read. I've seen other bloggers do cover memes, so I put a different spin on mine. For each cover, I will post information on the edition of the book, the summary, and my thoughts of the cover.

The Cover that I LOVE:

Title: The Truth About Forever
Author: Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Speak
Publication Date: April 6, 2006
Pages: 400
Edition: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult

Summary from Sarah Dessen's website:
Macy's summer stretches before her, carefully planned and outlined. She will spend her days sitting at the library information desk. She will spend her evenings studying for the SATs. Spare time will be used to help her obsessive mother prepare for the big opening of the townhouse section of her luxury development. But Macy's plans don't anticipate a surprising and chaotic job with Wish Catering, a motley crew of new friends, or ... Wes. Tattooed, artistic, anything-but-expected Wes. He doesn't fit Macy's life at all--so why does she feel so comfortable with him? So ... happy? What is it about him that makes her let down her guard and finally talk about how much she misses her father, who died before her eyes the year before? Sarah Dessen delivers a page-turning novel that carries readers on a roller coaster of denial, grief, comfort, and love as we watch a broken but resilient girl pick up the pieces of her life and fit them back together.

Thoughts of the Cover:
I really love all the newer covers of Sarah Dessen's paperback books. This one especially is my favorite because the flower is so pretty and the colors are really nice. I also love the story, so the cover really wraps everything together nicely. If you haven't read any of her books, I would strongly recommend it because most of them are really good.

The Cover that I HATE:

Title: Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything
Author: E. Lockhart
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: November 13, 2007
Pages: 192
Edition: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
 
Summary from E. Lockhart's website:
Enter Gretchen Kaufman Yee.
Collector of plastic Chinese food.
Art student.
Spider-man fanatic.
Gretchen’s in search of a big life. A superhero life.
Enter the Art Rats, a group of guys at her NYC art school.
They’re loud. Sweet. Annoying. Confusing.
Gretchen can barely look at them, goes mute whenever they’re near.
Especially, Titus.
Delicious and smart. Absolutely on the radar.
Gretchen wishes she could be a fly on the wall of the boys’ locker room, just to see what these guys are like when they think no one’s watching.
And then… there she is.
A fly.
 On the wall of the locker room.
She sees…EVERYTHING.
And nothing is what she thought.

Thoughts of the Cover:
Fly on the Wall's cover is just plain weird and not very pleasing to look at. The book isn't the greatest either but it's much better than the cover. Fortunately I have the hardback, so I don't have this ugly cover on mine. The book is pretty fascinating because she turns into a fly and then lives in the boy's locker room, so she sees all that happens in there. This book is definitely not as good as E. Lockhart's other books.

What are your thoughts on these two covers?