Since I skipped a few weeks:

The Patterns of Paper Monsters by Emma Rathbone (Reagan Arthur, out now). I was really surprised by this book. Picked it up on a whim because the plot sounded interesting: it’s the story of an older teen who has to go to a juvenile detention center, and it’s from his point of view. I’m always interested in books from the perspective of teens that are written for adults, especially this year, as I continue to be irritated with all the YA I’ve read.

So, anyway, this book is fantastic. Rathbone is an incredible writer. I mean just stunning prose. The sort of sentences that you need a second away from the book to digest. Her writing is imaginative in a way that makes you wonder how it is no one ever saw things that way before. But what’s best about it is that even though it’s really good, it’s really good in a way that it’s still believable that an adolescent criminal is telling you the story. The voice is consistent and wrenching. At no point does Rathbone allow you to forget that this is a book about severely troubled boys with emotional and psychological issues that our society doesn’t know what to do with. It’s scary being this close to them. But Rathbone holds you there.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t crazy about the main plot or the way it resolved, but that’s really I minor point in this book. I can’t believe I haven’t been hearing more about this book. Am I just reading the wrong reviews? It should be reviewed everywhere. Is this an example of the trade paperback original curse that publishers talk about? Well, no more. Everyone should go read it. It’s definitely one of the better novels I’ve read this year and it deserves an underground movement.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books, out now). I chose this for our book club this month never having read it, which was a bit of a gamble—-normally I like the books to be vetted a bit. But this has been one of those strange titles in the store this year that keeps bobbing up. I wasn’t surprised when a number of sci-fi readers told me they liked it, but over the past few months a number of regular customers who don’t read sci-fi, or for that matter, much fiction at all, came in to gush about it. So we went for it.

Thank the gods, it’s a good book! Though I’m very curious to see what the book club regulars think, as this is an unusual choice for us. It took me a few chapters to gt into it, and there are a couple of sections that drag a bit, but Bacigalupi is a worldbuilder of nearly unlimited talents. As I’ve been reading this book, the piles of fresh fruit outside every produce store in Greenpoint have taken on a new and slightly sinister cast. And it’s a rare book that can reach beyond the page to affect the minutiae of daily life.

Often, it feels to me that when writers reach into the future for a story, they only look one or two steps ahead, and as a result, the future they create feels thin and two-dimensional (cough*Super Sad True Love Story*cough). That is not the case with this book in the slightest. Every detail has significance, though Bacigalupi doesn’t feel the need to shove that in the reader’s face constantly. It left me with the odd feeling of being completely confident in a fictional world that could collapse at any moment. The whole book feels that way, actually: a story balanced in a world balanced on a tray being balanced by a dude standing on one foot. The tension that results is the kink-spring that keeps the book in orbit, and what makes it, ultimately, satisfying.