I've read all of Grisham, Deaver, Brown, Turow, Connelly, Buffa. If you like that attorney/murder/suspense get ready for a gem. I recently found Harlan Coben. The Woods and Tell No One are outstanding.

Cranked by Ellen Hopkins

Cranked is a 2009 Illinois Abraham Lincoln Award nominee (award goes to a premiere adolescent novel of the last five years—like 8th-12th grades sort of, Twilight won last year). Being that I think I want to start focusing on YA lit, I figured I better get cracking on reading some of the 20 nominees (this is my third completed).

As for the book, wow, it’s pretty amazing. I have nothing but respect for books of this structure. I’m told that it’s similar to Go Ask Alice and I can equate it with the recent Sonya Sones’ novels. The style is this poetic journal where our hero (in this case a meth addicted teenager) unfolds their life to the reader in a beautiful way. It’s a 500+ page quick read, but the most fascinating aspect of it for me structurally is the duality that the pages offer. So many pages have four sentences, but they’re formatted in such a way that certain words are pulled from each sentence to create alternate meanings. I have no idea how authors accomplish this and my mind is far too linear to even try to recreate one page of this, let alone the fifty or so on which they manage to do it.

Beyond the amazingly beautiful structure, Cranked has a pretty fascinating, if not formulaic, story in its own right. Kristina is a 16 year old who goes to visit her loser father who she hasn’t seen since she was a child. While there, she is exposed to some less than lovely experiences including her first experience with Crank, which is meth, for anyone as ignorant to drugs as myself.

The story follows her experiences there and when she arrives back to her “normal” family of mother, stepfather, lesbian sister, and younger brother. Somehow, Hopkins manages to create a relatively engrossing world that falls in on Kristina (considering it’s a YA novel). I suppose this shouldn’t be terribly shocking since the book is reportedly pretty autobiographical with her daughter as the unfortunate narrator.

This is a somewhat lengthy review for a YA novel, but I think it warrants it. The story really had me fascinating and wanting to read the next page and the next scene. The structure, as I said, is insanely brilliant creatively, for someone like me who has trouble thinking in anything but a linear logical fashion.

Obligatory Bad Line: I cranked it out in under two hours.

4*/5


Excerpt image. This isn't the best example of some of the 'dual meaning' that these pages can offer, but it showcases the structure.

Next up, I'm reading the short story, "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison. It's only forty pages, so hopefully I'll have it finished up tonight or tomorrow night. All I know about it is that it's a post-apocalyptic story that was made into a movie starring Don Johnson.

HOW COULD THIS GO WRONG?

Read 'The Road' on a cross-country flight last week. Made the four hour delay on the last leg seem inconsequential. Wonder what the upcoming film will be like.

~ Rick

That's a great story that I read probably thirty years ago. Depressing and twisted but very interesting -- one of Ellison's better works. Ever read "Deathbird Stories"?

I think I'll see the movie but will prepare to be hugely depressed.

I got his collected short stories a little while ago but haven't had the time to crack it for more than a few of his early stories yet.

As far as more major stories, I have read I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream and The Whimpering of Whipped Dogs. I absolutely loved both of them.

I used to read his raging newspaper columns in the L.A. Reader back in the day. It was like holding a live wire in your hand.

Was The Whimper of Whipped Dogs about the gargoyles that come alive, or was it the one about the Kitty Genovese murder? Images from both of those remain with me to this day, although I'm now fuzzy on the titles. So too with the image of Prometheus on the rock with the vulture ripping out his liver every day.

I remember driving by his house, which was just east of the 405 on the north side of the Sepulveda pass. I saw it when I was trying to find a house I'd lived in as a kid (on Wyandotte, I think) and saw this really odd house full of gargoyles and sharp pointed objects in the front yard, with some biggish sign that said Ellison. It looked so much like it was his that I simply assumed that fact (and that I knew he lived somewhere in LA). I now wonder if in truth it was his.

Whimper was about the spirit of city life/the Genovese murder. Haven't read the gargoyle one yet.

He's an interesting character to read about and he's certainly been productive.

awesome story....Ellison is perhaps one of the greatest short story writers of the 20th century. You'll love it.

wow.....do i miss the LA Reader.

I'm not one for fancy reviews like SoloAJ so I'll keep it short: Clockers by Richard Price is excellent and the first half of Homicide by David Simon is very good.

I have not. If I enjoy this story, and I'm anticipating that I will, I'll be sure to check it out.

I have no idea how I haven't heard of him. Once I looked this story up, I was reading all of this stuff about Ellison being amazing. I think I HAD heard of him, but only in passing.

Hah. I'm hardly one for fancy reviews, but I figured I'd try something new.

So is the second half of Homicide terrible, or are you just not through it yet?

I ain't no fancy lawyer ...

Sorry, to say Shaw was boring. I was actually reading Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, who I was looking forward to reading, but that book needs to eat fire.

Tess of the D'eurbervilles is pretty good, daveT.

Anyone heard anything about Just After Sunset? It's Stephen King's new short story collection, I guess. I'm not a huge King fan, but I figure we have some here so maybe someone can enlighten me on something about it.

Well, I finished "A Boy and His Dog" last night. As everyone said, I loved it. The story somehow manages to put the reader into the desolate world in such few pages. The atmosphere combined with the odd spare time activities makes this a pretty engaging world, and I wish there would have been more to read!

I am not sure how much I'll like other Ellison works, because the big appeal for me here was the post apocalyptic theme. I'm definitely going to check out more of his stuff, though.

Either way, glad to have read this quick one and enjoyed it. I can't decide if I want to watch the Don Johnson movie or not. I read some stuff about it so I know some of the changes and they don't sound like th best changes, but that makes sense since movies never get it right.

The movie is kind of cheap and cheerful. The voice of the dog is pretty good, and Johnson is fine, but the rest of the cast are kind of sucky, iirr.

Halfway through "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War". John Boyd is my new favorite person.

Boy and his dog is a cult classic. Pretty interesting movie if you like those sort of things. Definitely a movie you will never forget.

Not through it yet. I have a couple long train rides coming up in the next week so I should have it done by then.

This is what I hear. I kind of wish I hadn't read something that outlined the differences between book and movie, because it feels like watching it I'd be knowing too much. I probably should watch it if I can get my hands on it, though.

I'm really excited about this, his short story collections are always great.

I'm 115 pages into Confederacy of Dunces right now and really like it. Almost every character in the book makes me at least smile.

Ken

I absolutely suggest it. I doubt the book was able to illustrate the style of the movie. I can't think of anything like it before it's time. An interesting thing to try out is to read "2001" and also watch the movie. They were both written along with each other, and have the same story, but the visuals are so different than the writing.