Pipeliner by Shawn Hartje

Pipeliner
by Shawn Hartje

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Published: 2016
Genre: Coming of Age, YA
ebook
Rating: 3

First sentence(s):
In the Trail King parking lot, Jason Krabb saw his friend isabel Perkins's brown Dodge Aries sedan parked between giant pickups, a good sign since she'd lately been hanging with Shelly Stewart, whom Jason had been flirting with in algebra II.

Zombie sighting:
She told him to shower first and then go to bed, couldn't stand her child looking like a zombie.
-chapter 6

For seventeen-year-old Jason Krabb, high school life in 1990s Idaho is a world of cargo shorts, cassette tapes, and junk food. Plagued equally by algebra and puberty, Jason sets out to find a girlfriend and become a rock guitarist. His quest is irreversibly jolted when he attends a bonfire and meets an alluring girl from the other side of town and a rag tag crew who are bringing gas lines through the desert in order to keep the lights on in Portland and Seattle, places where Jason hopes to find his nirvana as a guitarist.

Meanwhile, things deteriorate at home. Jason's pediatrician mom, Leah, sadly faces the twilight of her parenting years while his father, Curtis, contends with the enormity of running a big ticket research laboratory and coming to terms with his son's wayward path.

Pipeliner is at once a coming of age love story and a comical timestamp of early 90s family life. Set in the fictional Idaho town of Helen Springs, pop. 58,000, its characters are as vibrant as the lofty peaks and purple sunsets of the high desert. Here we find rich farmers, poor ranchers, dutiful Mormons, government honchos, disgruntled vets, drug-dealing bruisers, irksome teachers, and spirited students, all doing their best to keep the lights on.

My two-bits:

I found this to be a mellow easy going story of life in Idaho and what it has to offer.

Idaho living and its setting of pipeline country provide a backdrop for Jason's coming-of-age story that touches upon the young adult scene, classism, religion, ethnic diversity, first love and intimate encounters.

Jason's desire to move on to bigger and better things by way of music brings in elements of the music scene which he is mostly exposed to via cassette tapes.

Although this story's primary focus is on Jason, there are also parts told in the voice of his mother. The parenting experience of teens with its ups, downs, dramas and uncertainties shows another side of Jason.


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* review copy courtesy of author

Spotlight: Pipeliner by Shawn Hartje

Pipeliner
by Shawn Hartje
-Coming of Age, YA
Amazon | Goodreads
For seventeen-year-old Jason Krabb, high school life in 1990s Idaho is a world of cargo shorts, cassette tapes, and junk food. Plagued equally by algebra and puberty, Jason sets out to find a girlfriend and become a rock guitarist. His quest is irreversibly jolted when he attends a bonfire and meets an alluring girl from the other side of town and a rag tag crew who are bringing gas lines through the desert in order to keep the lights on in Portland and Seattle, places where Jason hopes to find his nirvana as a guitarist.

Meanwhile, things deteriorate at home. Jason's pediatrician mom, Leah, sadly faces the twilight of her parenting years while his father, Curtis, contends with the enormity of running a big ticket research laboratory and coming to terms with his son's wayward path.

Pipeliner is at once a coming of age love story and a comical timestamp of early 90s family life. Set in the fictional Idaho town of Helen Springs, pop. 58,000, its characters are as vibrant as the lofty peaks and purple sunsets of the high desert. Here we find rich farmers, poor ranchers, dutiful Mormons, government honchos, disgruntled vets, drug-dealing bruisers, irksome teachers, and spirited students, all doing their best to keep the lights on.

Excerpt:

In the Trail King parking lot, Jason Krabb saw his friend Isabel Perkins’s brown Dodge Aries sedan parked between giant pickups, a good sign since she’d lately been hanging with Shelly Stewart, whom Jason had been flirting with in algebra II. He found Isabel by herself in a diner booth, smoking Camel Lights and acting older than she was.

“Hey Jason.” Isabel looked happy to see him. “Did you cut your hair?”

Jason shook the long blond hair from his face and sat close beside her, making sure his hips pushed into hers.

“Watch it!” Isabel smiled, pushed him back, and combed a lock of hair behind his ears.

Jason had known Isabel since back when her mom ran a home daycare on their small ranch directly across the interstate from the Trail King Truck Stop. Isabel had long straight hair that she was always dying in various patterns. Today it was blond up top, black at the ears, and maroon-tipped. She was quite pretty, with a tanning-bed complexion, a seductive smile, and sporting a huge chip on her shoulder.

“Where’s the party tonight Izzy?” Jason asked.

“You think I’m sharing that with high schoolers?” Isabel sounded disgusted.

Like Jason, Isabel was fiercely independent of anything to do with high school. As a freshman she’d been mocked for being too country, favoring embroidered getups with horses and lariats and her name stitched golden upon sharp blue denim. Jason remembered how Becca Black, queen of the top tier girls, used to bully Isabel, pushing her into the lockers and pulling on her fringes and tassels.

Isabel was now more ambiguously outfitted, playing to whatever scene she was currently interested in. Today she wore a men’s V-neck shirt in winter camouflage with black Capri pants above white slip-on Vans. Her skin looked too lustrous, as if coated in caramel.

“Your new boyfriend in town?” Jason asked.

Isabel turned serious. “Ben’s partying with his crew up in the Black Elks. He just bought a camper trailer. It’s badass, has a TV with a VCR above the bed.”

Jason laughed at this. “Sounds like a nice fuck pad.”

Isabel winked at him. “We call it the stabbin’ cabin.”

Jason loved this about Isabel. He could relax and be his horny teenaged self around her, could talk about anything sexual and she’d gamely jump in the conversation. “How’d he buy that?” Jason was curious about her latest boyfriend, Ben Stone, who’d graduated high school last year. All Jason remembered about him was that he’d never talked and wore Metallica T-shirts.

“Pipeliners make serious money,” Isabel said. “His parents don’t like me at all. So he bought the camper and moved out. Now we don’t have to put up with them anymore.” “What a stud,” Jason said. “Dude’s hanging around poaching high school girls.” Isabel was into older guys. When Jason started hanging around the Trail King as a depressed freshman, she’d been dating one of the clerks, a mustachioed guy in his twenties who bought her cigarettes and let her wear his worker’s smock.

Isabel blew smoke at Jason. “You high school boys aren’t up to snuff.”

“Whatever,” Jason said. “Hooking up with older guys doesn’t change the fact that you’re stuck in Idaho. Just like me.”

About the author:
Shawn Hartje was raised in Sioux City, Iowa and has lived in Idaho, Colorado and West Virginia. He has lived in Northern California since 2002. He enjoys high desert scenery and skateboarding with his kids.

Stacking the Shelves & Sunday Post - 2.11.17

Stacking the Shelves hosted by Tynga's Reviews (details)
AND
Sunday Post hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer (details)
~*~
Slow reading week due to lots to movie watching - good stuff.

Despite the speed, I am enjoying my current read, The Return of Sir Percival by S. Alexander O'Keefe. Loving learning about this knight from Arthur's Round Table.

Would you be interested in receiving snail mail? SEE BELOW for details.

~*~
For Review:

Pipeliner
by Shawn Hartje
-Coming of Age, YA
Amazon | Goodreads

Won from contest: first win from an instagram giveaway

Day of Ice
(A Crusoe Adventure #2)
by Andy Lane
-retelling, Historical, Adventure, YA
courtesy of publisher -Thanks!
Amazon | Goodreads
Months after their rescue by the government agency Segment W, Robinson Crusoe and his friend Friday have proven their skills as secret agents. They re now climbing the ranks of this exclusive group of spies who reports directly to the Crown. Suddenly, in the dead of winter, Friday is shocked to see her father, who once tried to kill her, walking the streets of London. She tries to elicit the help of Segment W, but they are preoccupied with the continued investigation into an organization that staged a kidnapping of the king s daughter. What will she do? As Friday s past comes back to haunt her, she, Crusoe, and Daniel Defoe must uncover the mystical Circle of XIII s sinister plans to recruit new members into the society using dangerous and magical means. How does her father fit into all of this? Will they be able to escape unscathed? Day of Ice is the second installment of a series that thrusts a young Robinson Crusoe into a new world of espionage, intrigue, and peril."

HAVE not read Robinson Crusoe, so I may have to read the original... or maybe watch the film first.


Author event:

Caraval
by Stephanie Garber
-YA, Fantasy
Amazon | Goodreads
Book Passage in Corte Madera hosted an interview of Stephanie Garber by Veronica Rossi (author of Under the Never Sky) to celebrate the release of, Caraval. It was interesting to learn that the book inspirations included Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby, Disneyland. Fashion was inspired by the tv series, Reign and Splintered series by A.G. Howard.


OTHER things on my shelf:

Stationery
theme: fairy tale
theme: cupcake
theme: jane austen
theme: bronte sisters
theme: surprise me (with something else)
APRIL is the Write_On Challenge sponsored by Write_On (here). It is a call to action to write 30 letters in 30 days during April, National Letterwriting Month.

I pulled out my stationery to prepare and get hyped. Now I need to prepare my list of people to write to.

WOULD you like to be one of those people? If so, pick one of the stationery themes listed above which will be what I use to correspond to you. AND email me ( vvb32@yahoo.com ) your mailing address with that pick.

OPEN to both US and international folks.
OFFER ends March 31.


AND watched: in theatre

The Salesman (2016)
Forushande (original title)
Director/Writer: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Taraneh Alidoosti, Shahab Hosseini, Babak Karimi
-Drama, Thriller | imdb | my rating: 5
Forushande (The Salesman) is the story of a couple whose relationship begins to turn sour during their performance of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Oscar nominated for Foreign Language Film.

The exploration into the condition of women in Iran and the male psyche were interestingly played out in the reality and theatre acting of this story. Fascinating.

A United Kingdom (2017)
Director: Amma Asante
Screenplay: Guy Hibbert
Starring: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport
-Biography, Drama, Romance | imdb | my rating: 5
Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana causes an international stir when he marries a white woman from London in the late 1940s.

Wow. Learned some Botswana history in this one. Despite racism issues in this it ends on a feel good note.


AND watched: on DVD

The Jungle Book (2016)
Director: Jon Favreau
Screenplay: Justin Marks
Based on book by: Rudyard Kipling
Starring: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley
-Adventure, Drama, Family | imdb | my rating: 4
After a threat from the tiger Shere Khan forces him to flee the jungle, a man-cub named Mowgli embarks on a journey of self discovery with the help of panther, Bagheera, and free spirited bear, Baloo.

Oscar nominated for Visual Effects.

I was resistant to watch this as I loved the Disney version. Gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised. King Louie was outrageously huge and voiced by Christopher Walken - loved his singing.

Hail Caesar! (2016)
Director/Writer: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich
-Comedy, Mystery | imdb | my rating: 4
A Hollywood fixer in the 1950s works to keep the studio's stars in line.

Oscar nominated for Production Design.

Notes on some ins and outs of Hollywood shenanigans. Clooney was a hoot.

O.J.: Made in America (2016)
Director: Ezra Edelman
-Documentary, Biography, Crime | imdb | my rating: 5
It is the defining cultural tale of modern America - a saga of race, celebrity, media, violence, and the criminal justice system. And two decades after its unforgettable climax, it continues to fascinate, polarize, and even, yes, develop new chapters.

"O.J." revisits - and redefines - it all. The domestic abuse. The police investigation. The white Bronco chase. The trial of the century. The motive, the blood, the glove. The verdict. The aftermath. Drawing upon more than seventy interviews- from longtime friends and colleagues of Simpson to the recognizable protagonists of the murder investigation to observers and commentators with distinct connections to the story - the documentary is an engrossing, compelling, and unforgettable look at a tantalizing saga. Because at the end of what seems like a search for the real truth about O.J. Simpson, what's revealed just as powerfully is a collection of indelible, unshakeable, and haunting truths about America, and about ourselves.

Oscar nominated for Documentary Feature.

This was a long and in-depth look at the O.J. case phenomena that pulls in American black history that does well in explaining how's and why's of it all.

13 Hours (2016)
Director: Michael Bay
Screenplay: Chuck Hogan
Based on book by: Mitchell Zuckoff
Starring: John Krasinski, Pablo Schreiber, James Badge Dale
-Action, Drama, History | imdb | my rating: 4
During an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya, a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.

Oscar nominated for Sound Mixing.

Got a dose of military history of an event I had not known about before. Good to know what is going on overseas.


AND watched: on Netflix

13th (2016)
Director/Writer: Ava DuVernay
Writer: Spencer Averick
Starring: Melina Abdullah, Michelle Alexander, Cory Booker
-Documentary, Crime | imdb | my rating: 5
An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

Oscar nominated for Documentary Feature.

Shocking data. Also, scary as the number of prisoners continues to go up. Something has to change.


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* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently