Friday Finds--Quickie Style

I truly don't have that many Friday Finds this week. Only four. Can you believe that?

Here they are:

After by Amy Efaw – This YA novel (to be released in August 2009) tells how a girl who has it all (grades, sports, etc.) could get pregnant and dump her baby in a dumpster, and what life like “After the Day” was like. Found this from the Friday Finds post at Popin’s Lair.

Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield – I’d seen this memoir featured at B&N, but the write up on my Book Lover’s Page-a-Day calendar put me over the edge. “Rock music critic Rob Sheffield transforms his grief and encyclopedic knowledge of music into an unusual and moving tribute to his late wife, Renee, and the music they loved. When Renee died suddenly of an embolis, Sheffield had to process it the only way he knew how: through music. Building his chapters around 15 mix tapes they made love to, danced to, and did the dishes to, his portrait of love is also a cultural map of the 1990s and the sound tracks of our lives.” Sixty-five percent of reviewers on GoodReads.com put this at 4 or 5 stars with another 30% at 3 stars.

Admission by Jeann Hanff Korelitz – 5 Minutes for Books reviewed this literary/nuanced tale of a Princeton Admissions Officer who has a “mysterious” life that’s revealed throughout the tale. The reviews on GoodReads.com were more good than bad (most neutral reviews were because the tale took to long to get into the plot, so I’ll be prepped for that going in; and the low reviews were because the protagonist isn’t likeable, but I don’t necessarily require likeable characters in my books). I was still roughly on the fence and went to put it on my wish list at the library and there were 44 holds, so I went ahead and took the plunge to put it on hold… hoping that the masses are right about this one.

Undercover by Beth Kephart – I recently finished reading a YA twist on Hamlet (Something Rotten by Alan Grantz... review coming later), and I love this kind of thing… authors re-telling classics in an easy-to-understand contemporary format to get teens interested in great works of literature… this inspires my writing. SO, I definitely wanted to read this book, a YA version of Cyrano de Bergerac with a gender twist. I’ve put it on hold at the library thanks to the tease by Staci at Life in the Thumb.

How about you? What great finds did you find this week?