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#BookMoods Day 1: I anticipate lots of #Lies from a YA novel.

I gobbled this up in a few days and it was delicious 😋 I didn't find the 'love interest' to be very likeable and even though the main character was kind of a dick sometimes, I found their interactions to be incredibly entertaining. I love how diverse the characters were and how many pop culture references were packed into each page. Lots of laugh out loud lines and an ending that wasn't quite a cliffhanger but left me wanting more.

Ones I‘ve gotten over the last few months from little free libraries around me. I was super excited to find some of these.
#littlefreelibrary #littlefreelibraries #ya #youngadult #nonfic #nonfiction #memoir #fiction #bookhaul #usedbooks

Cover of Permanent Record without the dust jacket #2021 #booklover #booknerd

What a trip I had with this book! Filled with laughter, tears, and full-blown recognition of how adulthood does not have a written manual on life. Choi expresses how digital and abstract entities, like social media, non-verbal communication, societal pressures, glamour and fame and mentally living in the past, can over take us. What's more important is who we truly want to be and live our life, and that the people we trust we should confide in.

Pablo and Rain have a ❤ to ❤ talk:
“You lie about the stupidest things without any agenda. If you don't trust your brother who are you going to trust? Or do you think I'm so stupid that I won't know that your being a sus? Someone texts you and you run out, and then you're ghost for three days when I need you the most? I know you got held up. Knowing you, you got held up doing something dumb. I do dumb shit all the time, but I tell you about it.“

My peripheral vision blurs, and I swear to god it may as well be a scene from The Matrix where everything's white and Morpheus is telling Neo that reality is fallacy.

I wish I were more like her [my mom]. That I had the mind to organize and account no matter how frightening and overwhelming it is. I don't know that I know what depression feels like, but most days if I'm honest I wake up with a hammering in my heart and unless I'm talking to Lee I don't see the point in being conscious.

This fake-sneeze erupts from the back of my throat. The tracheal equivalent of an eyeroll. I don't know where the hostility is coming from. Just that there's so much of it.

“Your mother and I,“ says dad, as if he's giving a white-guy lecture on substance abuse.
I lean back in my chair. Seriously, where the f- does this absentee-ass, sorry excuse for a patriarch get off telling me anything?

“I'm a cog in the machinery too. People are so startled when I voice an opinion. It hasn't occurred to them that I read books or watch movies or have allergies and get heartburn.“

Under her coat, Lee's wearing a Big Bird-yellow sweater.
“So Pab,“ she says. “What've you been up to?“
“I have stood right here since you left. Contemplating the mortality and the human condition. I power down when my shift's over.“

I hand her the groceries, panic setting in about how she'll leave again and vanish into the ether of the Internet, so I do the only appropriate thing, thing thing any self-respecting New Yorker would do when faced with a vegan.
“Yo, le me buy you breakfast,“ I blurt.
She smiles “Yo, what?“

1) I do read young adult fiction, I love both contemporary and Fantasy/Scifi
2)I'd recommend Permanent Record by Mary Choi
3)That's a great question since YA has changed so much over the years....I would say maybe the writing style and content--content can give an idea of what the book focuses on and topics included in a story and the writing style can determine level of reading or attention and focus on the story
@ozma.of.oz #sundayfunday

The subway stalls out between stations for twenty minutes and everyone loses their minds. Me? I take a few steps back from my eyeballs to sit somewhere deep inside my head. Time has no meaning. I'm perfectly content.

"Plus, little-known fact: The green gummy bears are strawberry," I tell her.
Why am I still talking? I want to cringe until my spine collaspes into itself. "Little-known fact: The green gummy bears are strawberry"?
If sentences could reinstate your virginity, this would be a strong contender.

"Oh," she says, and smiles actually seeing me now. "It's fine. I'm not sad about it. At all." She tilts her head at the food. "It's a fucking celebration, tbqh."
I can't believe she tee-bee-que-aytch'd me.

I both hate and love Wyn. He didn't forget my brithday last year either, even though I'd moved in the week before. Kid baked me brownies for me. With sprinkles. And a candle. It was adorable.

Loving Permanent Record so far. It is very different from Emergency Contact, but Mary Choi still makes you feel a connection with the characters, even in first person perspective. Also, Mary Choi has grasped and shown clearly the attitude and behavior of people who live in New York in their early 20s. Pab is sooo salty, its hilarious!

The screen door clangs on her way out as Gusto jumps onto the counter. Gusto's black all over except for this white patch on his chin that deadass looks like a soul patch. As if he plays upright bass in an all-cat jazz ensemble or something.

I did it! A #BookSpinBingo! 💪🏻😂

The tagged is better than the reviews on here make it seem if you look at it not as a romance but as a modern slice of life story of Gen Z‘s struggles with confidence fueled by social media & celebrity.

My November #BookSpin will have to wait till December as Obama‘s book just came off hold and it‘s a zillion pages. 😅

This book has a good pretty bad rating on here but I‘m enjoying it so far...I saw the author speak at #BookCon and she‘s been on my TBR ever since. It‘s very silly meet-cute/Gen Z slice of life but charming in its own way.

Once I finish I‘ll finally have a #BookSpinBingo which makes me happy since I won‘t be getting to my #BookSpin for Nov for a bit. 😂

Photo is courtesy of a cousin in MA. Readying myself for the frozen tundra of Upstate NY.

DNF @ 26%. Honestly? I was bored. The stream-of-conscious narration of a single narrator moved the plot at a glacial pace. & a book like this derives its entire reason for existence in an adorable, unforgettable meet-cute. & this meet cute was...extremely lackluster. It didn‘t get any better from there, which deflated my investment. The South Asian rep was nice, even if it did wobble sideways once or twice. Shame, I had some hopes for this one.

#currentlyreading | this sounds like “Notting Hill, but better” & I‘m intrigued!

It is just not the right moment for me and this book, unfortunately, so I'm bailing at 30%. I *loved* Emergency Contact and how Mary H. K. Choi writes, but am having a hard time connecting with these characters to the point where it feels like work. Maybe another time!

It's obvious early on that this is more about Pablo finding his way than about the romance. It's real & relevant because nobody gets a guide to life. At the same time, he's REALLY irritating: he's entitled & cynical & a quitter, despite having amazing people behind him. Lee is nearly as unlikable, but at least she feels like she has earned it due to her goals & choices. What kept me reading was Pablo's realness, which will keep me thinking.

Mary H. K. Choi excels at building out her characters and getting you to root for them to grow. There were plenty of times where Pablo is just stupid and you want to hate him but he goes through so much positive growth and at a normal pace.

Today's book is for YA Book Club because my Eclectic Readers book showed up late.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It's about a young man, 20 years old, living in New York. It's about life. Learning to be an adult, making decisions - both wrong and right - and figuring out how to deal with the consequences. It's about love, finding yourself, and discovering how to be okay after messing up.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Picked this up because I wanted a romance. And a bunch of people tagged it Romance. And the BLURB says it's a romance.

It is not.

#romantsy be aware!

This is my 13th book this year. I read it between Jan 20 & 30th. I rated it 3.5 stars. The romantic plot, which is really underdeveloped, should not be the focus of the blurb or even the genre. The book was ok but disappointing because I was anticipating it so much as I love Emergency Contacts.

There is a lot to like about this book, and I do like the regular person + celebrity romance subsubgenre. But the MC is very irritatingly aimless, avoidant and incompetent. Competence porn is my jam, so I'm struggling. I'm only sixty per cent through, though, so perhaps we will see significant growth.

Is there a metaphorical Tasmania?

Rating-⭐️
Dnf. I couldn‘t get into it. Wasn‘t funny. Also, I draw the line whenever books make fun of people who have a disability. Yes, it was a short part in the book, but still. #yabotm #botm #bookstagram #bibliophile #litsy #littens

Too angsty woe is me.

I really love this author and was chomping at the bit to read this book. Thoroughly enjoyable, I probably like Emergency Contact a tiny bit more? Mainly because Penny is so adorable. But this one is in part a love letter to New York City and I am here for it. The last quarter of the book is a winner. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well. That happened. 🎉

This was a smart, page-turner version of that fantasy of meeting a famous person and falling in love. Excellent narrator on audiobook.

Me today

Based on the 47 books I read last month (again, wtf), this doesn‘t seem so daunting? Here‘s hoping I can actually get through a couple before classes end in a couple weeks!

#decembertbr

Pablo, an aimless 20something killing time, meets a pop star at the hipster New York bodega where he works. Loved the multicultural friends and the devotion to snacks, but the romance never feels fully realized. I like how this book starts bridging the gap between YA and full-on A, because what 20 year old really knows what they‘re doing?

This book was... okay. Not great but not bad. I found a lot of complications with the main character, Pablo. The entire book he was clingy, borderline obsessive, negligent, and hypocritical. The love interest, Lee, was also hypocritical and self-obsessed.

The only character I really liked was Pablo's dad. The life lesson he gives in the end might just be a reason to read the book.

3 stars for Pablo's dad... -2 for the irritating characters.

I LOVED Emergency Contact so I couldn‘t wait to start Permanent Record. It‘s made for a great before bed read, being away from life and responsibilities has made getting some reading done a lot easier than usual. Pablo and Leanna are the cutest couple and I find myself rooting for them and their relationship. Might we get a happy ending? 💖

I met Mary HK Choi and Jonny Sun last night! They‘re both so sweet, and so cool to listen to! I didn‘t know Jonny Sun was going to be at the event so didn‘t have anything for him so sign (😭), but I was able to get both Emergency Contact and Permanent Record signed by Choi 😍

So excited that I can connect directly to Libby in my car! #nerdville #nerdingout Rushing to finish this book before my loan ends.

Feeling judged by the library, y‘all.

Choi‘s characterization is the perfect combination of complex and endearing. Pablo is an interesting, layered, and dynamic character with an affinity for creating unique pairings of junk food. With Lee, we get a glimpse of celebrity—how the public obsesses over them, the relentless machine of the paparazzi, and how image is everything no matter how fake. And in this artificial world, Pab and Lee's relationship is real and actually quite beautiful.

Pic 2 of 2. #7days7covers

Pic 1 of 2 #7days7covers

Really enjoyed Emergency Contact. Can‘t wait to start this one. Has anyone read it? Thoughts? #currentlyreading #yalit #yabooks