Entertainment

December 2009 - Posts

  • RED Hearts: Entertainment: Best YA Debut Books of 2009

    By Jordyn Turney, 19, reporting from Alpine, CA, on the year's most riveting reads from first-time authors
    Hold

    It's been a tough year in too many other areas, but 2009 has been a great one for young adult books. This is the year that brought us Sarah Dessen's latest, Along for the Ride, as well as the sad and startling If I Stay by Gayle Forman. Along with these new novels by established favorites, 2009 also delivered some completely remarkable debut novels from first-time authors:

    Twenty Boy Summer, by Sarah Ockler
    This is a book about friendship, about loss, and about love. It's the story of Anna, a girl who had a secret romance with her best friend's older brother. A guy she liked for years, a guy who was amazing. A guy who died tragically before either of them told Anna's best friend. This is the story of what happens after. It's is a book chock full of emotion and incredibly written characters who will stay after you've turned the last page of the book.

    Break, by Hannah Moskowitz
    Break is the rare YA novel that focuses strongly on family. The story centers around Jonah, a boy with the unusual goal of breaking every bone in his body. The reasons for his unorthodox journey are shrouded at first but become clearer as we get to know his family—the younger brother with deadly allergies to just about everything, the parents who are hanging on by a string, and the baby who just seems to complicate things. This is an insanely well-done, gritty, and intense drama that, at its heart, is about connection and the people we love. Definitely a must-read. (Oh, and the author? She was only 16 when she wrote the book.)

    Hold Still, by Nina LaCour
    No book I've come across has taken on the issue of teen suicide so fully and with such wonderful results. The story revolves around a girl, Caitlin, whose best friend has killed herself. The only part of her friend that Caitlin has left is Ingrid's journal, which allows Caitlin to get to know a sharp, hurt, sad side of her best friend Ingrid that she never knew before. The story is both heartbreaking and hopeful, as it explores both Ingrid's life before committing suicide, and the journey Caitlin takes to put her life back together afterwards.

    Posted Dec 31 2009, 08:54 AM by admin with no comments
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  • RED Hearts: Entertainment: Album of the Decade

    By Alison Smith, 19, reporting from Brooklyn, NY, on the record that rocked 2001—and still does today
    Strokes

    So the first ten years of life in the 2000s come to an end, and the UK music magazine NME has voted the Strokes' Is This It the Album of the Decade. Eight years after its release pulled the music world out of a Nu-Metal funk, the 11-song album still holds some serious influence. The distortedly restrained vocals, chugging bass, and layered guitars—drawing upon music of decades past, Blondie to Nirvana to the Velvet Underground—have also no doubt opened innumerable doors for the Kings of Leons and Arctic Monkeys of today.

    I was just eleven when the album came out in 2001 and paid little attention to the band who were quickly becoming the musical heroes of New York. But finally, for my fourteenth birthday, my friend gave me Is This It as well as 2003's Room On Fire. And that night in my bedroom, indifference gave way to obsession. I couldn't agree more with NME's number-one pick, or their description of the band's first full-length release as containing "a sense of life, vitality and spontaneity that [seemed] gone from rock n' roll forever."

    If you weren't into the Strokes at the time—or even if you were—then the window between now and 2010 is your chance. Is This It should be a staple of any modern rock fan's collection. Rediscover it and check out NME's other 99 Albums of the Decade.

    Posted Dec 17 2009, 08:01 AM by admin with no comments
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