I read a few books this weekend, one exceptional YA title in particular, The Boy Who Ate Stars. It's about 12 year old Lucy who plans to meet everyone in her new apartment building and ends up discovering Matthew, a young autistic boy who lives upstairs. Lucy decides that Matthew is more interesting than anyone else she could meet and sets out to find a common ground with a boy who seems to come from another planet.

The book could have been cheesey and full of stupid "be good to others" platitudes but it is really so different- so unique - that I don't quite know how to describe it (and I said as much in the review I wrote for the next issue of Eclectica). Lucy is a very cool character, who becomes fascinated by the idea of communication, and along with her friend Theo and Theo's grandfather (and Matthew's mother and nanny) adds up to a cast of eccentrics that I really wish were my family. Matthew is who he is, and what they all try to do is discover that person, touch base with that person, include that person in their lives. It's just a sweetheart of a book and it needs to be read, it needs to be read by tons and tons of people.

I also finished the first book in Poppy Z. Brite's ongoing New Orleans series about Rickey and G-man. The Value of X is the story of the guys when they were teenagers, how they first fell in love both with each other and cooking. I love how Poppy writes about New Orleans and also how she nails the whole relationship factor in her books - you really believe in Rickey & G-Man from the beginning and see them as real and honest. I also like how she writes their families who struggle with the idea of the boys being gay and in this book try to stop it - which is impossible of course, but still, a good family drama to read about.

Hopefully down the line at the Voices of New Orleans I will be writing about the whole series, after Poppy's latest book Soul Kitchen comes out. (I also still have to read the chapbook Feast of St. Rosalie about G-man's sister.)

I just read my second book in the Neighborhood Story Project series: Between Piety and Desire. This was written by a brother and sister living on St. Charles Ave., the main road in the Ninth Ward. I really want to talk to at least one of them, as the book is pretty serious about the drug problems on their street and the danger and how horrible the local high school is. (And again with how the police don't help and end up alienating everyone, guilty and innocent alike.) I'd like to know more about the school thing for sure. But I don't know if I'm going to be able to track them down. I did reach Ashley Nelson a few days ago (author of Book #1) but she needed me to call her back in a 1/2 hour or so when she could talk but when I tried I just kept getting voice mail and it was always full.

So no Ashley.

I need to write the first article this week, so I'm going to try her a few more times and the project's founder through his cell number (email has gotten me nothing) and then I'm just going to have to do this on my own which is a bummer, as it will make a huge difference to have their input. But then again - these poor people are all trying to get their lives back so it's pretty whiney of me to complain about this. I'll still write good strong reviews because these books matter, and the only way to know how much is to read them yourself.

And let's see - read some Charles de Lint, mostly finished Triskell Tales 2 which is a collection of his winter chapbooks. I'm glad I read it because other than loving it (I'm a fan) it's convinced me that I do need to write my YA dragon book in a more hopeful manner. I'm reading War in a Time of Peace right now, (off the infamous To Be Read Pile) about Bush and Clinton and Bosnia (and Somalia and Haiti) and it is so pissing me off - it's such a frustrating book (not the book's fault - the subject matter's fault) and I realized after reading Triskell Tales that there is enough bad stuff in this world today - enough violence. So even though my crew is still facing down a big bad (I am a Buffy fan after all) it won't be as violent and hopeless as I first thought. I just don't want to write that kind of book, and I decided today, that really - I don't have to.

Chin Music is all giddy because the Times-Picayune loves us and okay, I'll admit it, I'm pretty damned giddy too!