August 16, 2009

On My Chair


This is where I post the books that I borrow from the library, buy, or I receive via mail in the last week.

"Hurry Down Sunshine"
by: Michael Greenberg

Hurry Down Sunshine
tells the story of the extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg’s daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally’s visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city’s most sweltering months. "I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to," Sally says in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place her father could not dream of or imagine. Hurry Down Sunshine is the chronicle of that journey, and its effect on Sally and those closest to her–her brother and grandmother, her mother and stepmother, and, not least of all, the author himself. Among Greenberg’s unforgettable gallery of characters are an unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary dreams. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane, Hurry Down Sunshine holds the reader in a mesmerizing state of suspension between the mundane and the transcendent.

Undiscovered Gyrl
by: Allison Burnett

Only on the internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely.

Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor.

Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.

Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit.

I picked up these ARCs at work which was pretty exciting. I know that they aren't actually teen books, but they both deal with teen characters. I'll be sure to add information about content once I finish the books. They both sound really interesting!

This meme (In My Mailbox) is brought to you by Kristi's (The Story Siren)

4 comments:

  1. Undiscovered Gyrl sounds like a great read, although it'll probably be intense. Hope you enjoy your books!

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  2. Interested in reading your thoughts on Undiscovered Gyrl. Reminds me of Lolita.

    Enjoy!

    http://booknerdextraordinaire.blogspot.com/2009/08/in-my-mailbox-4.html

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  3. Great books you got this week. Hope you enjoy reading them all.

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  4. Great book week! Undiscovered Gyrl sounds really different.. hope you enjoy! happy reading!

    ReplyDelete