Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Somehow I did not quite understand that JK Rowling did not actually write Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, but merely "collaborated" with Jack Thorne.  That was disappointing, I'll admit.  Even though the new book/play is touted as "The Eighth Story. Nineteen Years Later" what we have is officially sanctioned fan fiction.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Plenty of literary critics love crowing about what a terrible author J.K. Rowling is - she was described as "artless" in a recent New Yorker, for example - I whole-heartedly disagree, I'm quite fond of Rowling's style and storytelling, and I'm a big fan of her work under the nom de plume Robert Gilbraith. While Thorne does an excellent job capturing the voice of beloved characters, I thought his stage direction was absurd ("And with that, time moves ever onwards - ALBUS's eyes become darker, his face grows more sallow. He's still an attractive boy, but he's trying not to admit it."), but then again, I am an utter classicist when it comes to stage direction.  His story is clumsy and way too long (for a play) and I honestly couldn't recommend reading it.  However, there were a few things I found very interesting:

Firstly, I really love that a play is doing this well - the book sold 2 million copies in 2 days, surely the first time that's ever happened for a play.  I love reading plays, but they do take some adjusting to, and I think it's great that children are embracing the medium.  Said my 10 year old friend, "At first I thought it would be really hard, but then I didn't even notice!" and then I said, "Shut your adorable face! No spoilers!"  What I found interesting as a reader was that all kinds of crazy stunts are going on on-stage - spells, people flying, multiple UNDERWATER scenes, all of which you can read on two levels:  1. I'm just reading a book and stuff happens. 2. I'm reading a play and I'm trying to imagine how this will be carried out on stage.

Secondly, plays are meant to be performed, and reading a play is always secondary to watching a play.  This play looks like it would be pretty amazing to see, assuming they pull off half the effects.  Apparently it is selling out in its current West-End production at the Palace Theatre in London, and GET THIS:  You buy a ticket for two shows - Part 1 starts at 2pm and is 2 hrs and 40 mins long.  Then you leave, then you come back for Part II, a 7:30 show, which is 2 hrs and 35 mins long!  I am agog.  I mean, that is some Philip-Glass-marathon asses-in-seats shit there and I did not know the contemporary theater-goer had it in him, much less, presumably: Children?  I'm not sure I have it in me, and I love both theatre and Harry Potter.  BTW, prices are between 30-140 pounds. That's $38-180USD.  Actually, the dollar doing very well against the pound right now thanks to Brexit and worldwide financial collapse so... book your tickets?

Fever

I really thought Fever was going to blow up this summer, but while it seems to have a respectful following online, I haven't heard that much buzz about it in real life.  It's by Megan Abbott, of Dare Me, which also gets great reviews - I haven't read it yet.  Anyway, I thought it was fantastic, and while I think it's doing well, it's obviously not reaching like, Hunger Games proportions.

Speaking of, I just saw Mockingjay Pt 1 last night and it was, as my friend duly noted, "the Empire Strikes Back of the series" This morning I looked up what comes after a trilogy and apparently it's a ... tetrology?  I think we'd all better learn that word as Hollywood continues to capitalize on trilogies that could stretch out in a movie.  Also, in a further digression about words that sound suspicious, I took this test at work called a "strength finder" and one of my "strengths" is "Intellection".  Which I looked up immediately because I thought it was made up.  It means an exercise of the intellect.  In other words, I think I'm smart, and I may or may not be.  Also useful.

Anyway.  Fever (btw, that COVER, amirite?):  It's actually been ages since I read it, but here's what I remember:  some girls at this school are having these seizures - it starts with one girl, and then slowly spreads.  And the community and the parents get caught up in this idea that there's some environmental or, you guessed it, vaccination factor that's effecting the girls. But the lead character, Deenie, has a sinking feeling it has to do with having sex.  The repercussions of sex weigh heavily throughout the book, and in fact it begins with this conversation between girls (that sounds like it's about sex but actually isn't, but: clever, right?):

      "The first time, you can't believe how much it hurts."Deenie's legs were shaking, but she tries to hide it, pushing her knees together, her hand hot on her thigh.    Six other girls are waiting. A few have done it before, but most are like Deenie.    "I heard you might want to throw up even," one says. "I knew a girl who passed out. They had to stop in the middle."   "It just kind of burns," says another. "You're sore for a few days. I heard by the third time, you don't even feel it."

Fever is something of a mystery, and as you read, you might suspect that the unsolved seizures are related to the very mystery of girls - which, for me, both hit home and was also unacceptable.  Abbott's story is at once a fairy tale and yet 100% possible.  She really ingeniously taps into the sometimes seemingly inexplicable behaviors of girls and their parents - how both might be searching for answers in an irrational world.

Like the best YA, Fever spans genres, raises questions for all ages and would be appealing to a wide audience.  Like Tana French's latest, Secret Place, it's an intriguing and accurate representation of the lives of teenage girls.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Oh, what a great book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is!  If you thought fun vampire books were SO OVER, think again!

I read some reviews when this book came out over the summer that said how great it was, but I was like, "Vampires? Nothankyou."  But, this is no Twilight, and it's no Stackhouse either.  In Holly Black's YA novel, vampires have been discovered in the human world and relegated to "Coldtowns" - ghetto-ized parts of big cities where vampires and humans are kept behind walls - a self-sustaining and self-governed area that sustains itself on webcasts and black markets.  They're dangerous and perceived as glamourous - some humans want to go there and become immortals, but are more likely to end up dead.

Tana wakes up the morning after a "Sundown party" in which all of her friends have been killed and her ex-boyfriend is "cold" - he's been bitten by a vampire and will turn into a vampire himself if he drinks human blood.  Tana saves her ex-boyfriend and a mysterious vampire named Gavriel.  Gavriel's an old vampire, and he falls in love with Tana because she saves him - the first person to ever help him.  He's dangerous and gorgeous and old-fashioned, hence, he's smokin' hot and irresistible to Tana, but, thank god there's more to their relationship than mere attraction (ahem Edward and Bella!) Black also inserts a little covert Marxism into her story.  Tana reflects on "a bunch of professors talking about monsters" on tv, "The monster is bigger than human. It represents abundance - overabundance, the white-haired man had said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is to many and too much."  I happened across this great article in the NY Times while reading the book: Dreamboat Vampires and Zombie Capitalists that helped me understand Black's not just shitting around here, I suspect she could talk some deep theory with the best.

But, whether you love Lacan or just a good old fashioned teen romance (with vampires!), this book doesn't disappoint. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a terrific read that's full of excitement, surprises and steamy kissing.

Belzhar

Review on Newcity

Basic Eight

Most people know Daniel Handler as Lemony Snicket but his non-Lemony books are pretty great.  I would suggest Watch Your Mouth to just about anybody (less than 50).  Adverbs?  Great.  Basic Eight (2012) has been on my shelves for a while and I finally got around to reading it this year.  It's a dark YA novel about a young woman who is in prison for murder.  She's responding to all this press and a book that's been written about her and she's trying to set the record straight.

It's quite funny and really spot on - Handler writes teenagers, and women, very well.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that The Basic Eight (1999) is one of the first YA novels to come in with a twist.  Seems like every other book has a twist these days.  I just finished Meg Wolitzer's YA novel, and guess what it's got:  a twist.  Unscientifically, I'd say your top YA novels are going to have either: Vampires, Dystopia, or a wicked Twist.  (Idea for YA novel:  A dystopian world populated with vampires with a twist at the end.  Guaranteed blockbuster.)

Handler breaks up the story in interesting ways, like, he ends chapters as if they're part of a school lesson, with vocabulary lists and questions.  But the questions are like, "4. You have undoubtedly seen photographs of Flannery Culp in newspapers and magazines.  Is she fat? Be honest."  Also there are faux excerpts from TMZ-ish media about Flannery which are quite funny.

Handler can write a wicked sex scene (see Watch your Mouth) and he also manages to write about sex with teenagers that is neither creepy nor milquetoast, somehow (see Why We Broke Up).

Somehow Adam and I were talking about something: theater, I think. The line between audience and actor. I felt something warm on my neck, thrilling me. I kept talking about whether Halloween was a form of theater, if parties were a form of theater, if Adam kissing me meant I should get up and leave but it felt so nice, kissing me over and over on the same spot on my neck. It burned delicious like being branded, but as he ran his hand down my dress it turned out I wasn't such a cow at all. That's what turned me on, as much as him kissing me: feeling my own body, thin and gorgeous against him like a celebrity. Thin, even.  

Pills and Starships

I heard an interview with Lydia Millet, author of Pills and Starships, on NPR that sort of sparked my interest.  It's a dystopian YA novel, told over the course of 7 days.   The "tipping point" has passed and the environment is in ruins and the whole planet is dying.  Nat and her brother Sam are supposedly the last generation, because no one is having babies anymore, at least in the "First".  Nat's parents have a "contract" which means they have decided to die, and gone on a 7 day vacation where their death is managed by the "Service".  Nat's parents are in their 80s and 90s, but have the health of people in their 40s because people live longer due to vaccines and whoknowswhat.   I found that bit the most improbable - I don't know any parents who would willingly die and leave their 17 and 14-year-old children to fend for themselves in a horror landscape.  Also, say this couple doesn't have a kid until they're in the 60s/70s, in an increasingly unlivable environment where they suddenly decide, hey, let's have 2 kids?   Doesn't make sense.

This book was really disappointing to me because I'm always on the lookout for my next fave dystopian novel, YA or otherwise.  Aside from the unbelievable premise with the parents, the author simply didn't trust her readers enough to let the details unfold elegantly.  Millet spelled everything out as she went, defining her futuristic vocabulary instead of just letting her audience figure it out, laying out the schedule for the 7 days instead of letting it happen.  It felt like coddling to be held by the hand like that, and I really don't think it matters whether your reader is an adult or a teenager.

As you might guess from the title, there's a lot of focus on medicine, vaccines and "mood stabilizers".  Everyone takes pills to avoid depression and to achieve whatever type of mood they desire.  Nat's parents are on a heavy regimen of pills to keep them calm and tranquil as they approach their death.  It reads as a critic of the Prozac Nation, kids on ADHD medication and whatnot... More than once I found myself wondering if Millet's one of those anti-vaccine crazies.

I haven't read Millet's other work - they seem to be pretty well-received.  Let me know if you've read her stuff and enjoyed it, I would like to hear.

On YA, Dickens, and Schadenfreude

There have been a few articles that have shaken up the book world lately - first was this silly article in Slate by Ruth Graham titled Against YA that sent most of the writers I follow on Twitter into a veritable firestorm, not to mention the gals in my book club. We read about one YA book a year, and our next selection is Eleanor & Park  - one of the examples she uses to support her claim that YA books aren't serious literature. Graham goes so far to say "I’m surrounded by YA-loving adults, both in real life and online. Today’s YA, we are constantly reminded, is worldly and adult-worthy. That has kept me bashful about expressing my own fuddy-duddy opinion: Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children."  Listen: I don't feel embarrassed about ANYTHING I read when I'm reading a fucking book, and neither should you.

So, everyone knows that Graham's article is little more than click-bait, but she does express a common opinion, which is that YA literature isn't serious and that reading YA isn't exactly something to be proud of.  When 1 in 4 Americans don't read a book in a year (and the other 75% average at only 5 books a year) I don't give two shits what people are reading as long as they're reading something.

So, to what does Graham think adult readers should turn their attention?  Why, Dickens and Edith Wharton, of course!  Ignoring the irony that Dickens is perhaps the first YA writer (who else read Great Expectations in the 6th grade?) it's pretty hilarious that the example of high literature that she pulls out are two dusty old Victorians.  Which brings me to article #2, which was published in Vanity Fair July 2014: It's Tartt--But is it Art? whereby the runaway success of The Goldfinch is examined.  While it did win the damn Pulitzer Prize there are plenty of purveyors of high Art (with a capital A) who would like to remind us that it wasn't actually that great.  To tell the truth, I myself like to say that The Goldfinch was merely good, but that's kind of beside the point.  James Wood, book critic for The New Yorker, told Vanity Fair, "I think that the rapture with which this novel has been received is further proof of the infantilization of our literary culture: a world in which adults go around reading Harry Potter."   Oh SNAP!  Additionally, plenty of critics are lining up to say that Tartt, who is frequently compared to Dickens (this is where it all comes together) is not really that much like Dickens after all.  Not only is an honest-to-God, "adult", Pulitzer Prize winning novel getting dissed for being too "YA" by The New Yorker but her very Dickensian-ness, generally acknowledged (not by me, but that's beside the point) as the very Bastion Of High Art and Literature is being called into question.

Actually, I think the Vanity Fair article is fantastic - I love a good old fashioned scrap about the very nature of art and literature as much as anyone.  It's true I do find the abject loyalty of Tartt fans a bit curious, which is why I say that books like The Secret History and The Goldfinch are merely good because her fans, and, yes, the Pulitzer committee, seem to go absolutely ape-shit for her work.  That's where Evgenia Peretz nails it in It's Tartt--But is it Art?  when she writes about the "writer's best friends, Schadenfreude and his twin brother, Envy" and the critical reaction to Tartt's work.  Despite the fiscal and literary success of The Goldfinch, it's still fun to sit around and make snide remarks about it because I suppose when we do, what we're really saying is that we have the highest, more pure and excellent taste in literature - higher than Pulitzer-Prize-winning Tartt, higher than Dickens himself.

You know how there are connoisseurs - who eat fine food -  and then there are gourmands - who like fine food AND county fair food? I like to read like a gourmand and I honestly think everyone should.  If I were such a snob that I couldn't read anything but old classics like Dickens and Wharton how would I ever have discovered my great love for mysteries, or apocalypse fiction, or YA?   I'm certainly not going to make fun of someone, or, God forbid, tell them they should be freaking ashamed for reading something - not even my sister-in-law, who exclusively reads Amish romances.  Which are probably full of steamy side hugs.  But I haven't read one yet so I'm not going to judge (that much).

Do you know why people don't read?  I've asked friends who confess not to read - it's generally because it's hard for them - it's hard to concentrate, or they find it boring, or they actually find it painful.  That's a person that never learned to love reading, or maybe has eye problems, or even a learning disability, or maybe got ridiculed all through school, and definitely hasn't found their genre yet.  And I'm certainly not going to poke fun at them when they do.

The Compound

The Compound was recommended to me by my sister.  She and I are really close and value each other's opinion, but, it's fairly often that she loves something (book/movie) that I don't love, and vice versa.  But, we keep reading each other's recommendations and watching each other's movies because it's just too terrible to admit that our tastes are pretty different.  And, everyone once in a while, we hit it right on the mark.

Anyway, she totally loved The Compound but I thought it was pretty stupid.  It's a YA book about a young boy, who, at the very beginning, is whisked to an underground bunker with his family, minus his twin brother and his grandma, because there's been a nuclear event or something in the world.  Right from the get-go, it's pretty obvious that there's been no explosion and his dad's off his nut, but it takes this kid five or six years to figure it out.

I did enjoy the descriptions of their underground bunker, or compound - it's huge, with like, hydroponic areas and a gym and big bedrooms for everyone with mood light and mood scents and a huge library and dvd collection and there's even a place for cows and chickens, but they all die right away.

Eventually the kid is effing around on a computer, finds a wifi signal, and for some reason the first thing he does is IM his supposedly dead twin brother, but he answers the chat and immediately they're like, OMG, DAD'S CRAZY AND HE LOCKED US IN A SECRET BUNKER FOR SOME REASON!!  And then the kid goes to tell his family, and with each family member, he's like, DON'T TELL DAD WE KNOW, but the minute his dad walks in, he's like, WTF, DAD?!?!

But, that's not even the stupidest part.  The absolute stupidest part is that his mother is pregnant, and she and everyone call the baby a "supplement".  And, it turns out there's a whole room full of supplements that the kid has somehow managed to completely avoid in 5 years.  And, supposedly they will eat the supplements if they run out of food.

Well, I'm sorry, Sis!  But, I look forward to your next recommendation!

The Promise of Amazing

I read The Promise of Amazing quite a while ago, and I'm trying to catch up on my reviews...   Somewhere I read a perhaps over-enthusiastic review of this book which caused me to actually purchase it (a somewhat rare occurrence for me as I usually get books straight from the publisher these days or else the library where I work.)  It's written by Robin Constantine and it's a YA book about a perennial  "good girl" who does what's expected of her and stays out of trouble.  She meets a boy who used to be a star but has made a few screw-ups and is getting a reputation for a "bad boy".  Grayson's a bit of an incongruous character who wears an elbow-patch blazer and has, unbelievably, an eyebrow piercing.  It's his very bad boy charm that Wren (good names, right?) is attracted to, having been pigeon-holed as a middle-of-the-road kid.

The characters never felt fully developed to me, leaning, instead on the sort of stereotypical tropes from John Hugh's movies of which Constantine is clearly a fan.  There are multiple references to Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club (not that there's anything wrong with that - I weep for a generation not weened on 80s movies - I mean, have kids today even seen Say Anything?)  However, there's a bit of a tidiness that rings untrue - Grayson, for example, has done something illegal for which he is eventually caught, however, due to some savvy moves by his dad he basically gets off scot-free.  This freedom from consequence is annoying in a YA novel.... but, I don't know.... they don't all have to be didactic, I'm just saying - in a book about two middle-class white kids, confronting their white privilege might have brought a bit more depth to the story.

Where Constantine does confront a social issue is in the tackling of Grayson and Wren's sexual pasts.  In a chapter written from Grayson's perspective, she writes, "I'd left Wren and her chai latte downstairs, making up some excuse about wanting to get my iPod so she could hear my favorite song from the latest Coldplay album.  In reality I was picking up in my room and figuring out how I could get her to come upstairs, since I pretty much wanted to devour her whole."  

What I did like was how Constantine frees the characters from their sexual "baggage" instead offering a vision of a more sexually empowered teen that's able to experiment and move on.  One of Wren's girlfriends says, "What I'm getting at is - so what if he's been with other girls? It only means he's experienced. You've been with other guys - is he all jacked up over that? We're sixteen... this is how it's supposed to be."  Ultimately this YA novel wasn't really what this adult reader was looking for but I suppose it did have some promising aspects.

Panic

Panic is the name of a game played by high school seniors in heather's small town. The winner gets a pot that all seniors are bullied into contributing $1/day their last year of school, whether they want to or not. The game is extremely dangerous. It begins with participants leaping off a cliff into a quarry, and ends with a game of chicken in cars, though the years, players have been killed or maimed, but they keep playing the game because they feel like it's the only way to escape life in this nowhere town. Sounds a lot like the Hunger Games, right? Except it's not a dystopian future and the game's not mandatory. But it is an impoverished town with little to no options for young people to strive for, and Heather's even got a saintly younger sister she feels responsible for and an incompetent mother that can't care for either one of them.

 Heather falls into a job helping a local woman care for her chickens and farm animals and starts, for the first time, to trust an adult parental figure and experience a type of stability for the first time in her life. This woman improbably has two tigers on her farm, rescues from... somewhere. It brings to mind, naturally, that age-old saying by Chekov: If you introduce a tiger in the first act, it had better go off in the second act. 

I've read Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall previously. I'm not nuts about her writing style, I find it slightly unsophisticated, like a YA novel that is definitely intended for a young audience. Her heavy handed foreshadowing, the obvious conflicts of the love interest are just a little tiresome.

Stephen King recently announced that he was self-censoring his short story, Rage, because it seems to have influenced a number of real-world school shootings. The story will not be published in reprintings of the compilation. I found it interesting that that story came out while I was reading Panic, which explains how to make a car bomb, "easy as making salad dressing", and describes a game of Russian Roulette. I think Panic is unlikely to garner any more publicity than The Hunger Games, particularly because it's main audience is girls. Ultimately I wouldn't necessarily recommend Panic to mature readers but I can see it being appealing to younger readers.

The Bone Season

I read this review on NPR that gave The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon some high praise - "There's a distinct Margaret Atwood-style wash to Shannon's dystopian universe" they said.  "The new J. K. Rowling," they said.  Let's not get carried away.  The author is 21 and has gotten a 7-book deal and a film in the works, but I don't think we're looking at the next Harry Potter.  

It takes place in an alternative/futuristic London where some people, like the main character, Paige, have magical powers, but they are outlawed.  Paige is arrested and taken to a secret land where some other alien-types keep the magical people as slaves and suck up all their energy and whatnot.  Paige's "master" is some brooding old dude that glares at her all the time like Heathcliff and... can you guess what is going to happen???? 

Shannon invents a fairly large vocabulary as well as world (there's a glossary I was rather annoyed to find at the end - but, I never skip ahead...) so if you like that sort of thing you may find The Bone Season right up your alley.  It's really quite complex, I wonder what her notes looked like.  

Ultimately I found it wearisome - there were no surprises in the romance area and once the introductions were made to all the ins and outs of this universe, I just didn't find the story that compelling. 

Who knows, maybe this series is going to blow up - maybe as the books and the author age, it will grow into itself.  Anyone else have a different experience than me with this book?  

The Fault in Our Stars

I've read nothing but great things about The Fault in Our Stars all year long, so I finally read it!  Hazel is a teenager that has had thyroid cancer for most of her life.  Her lungs don't work well and she always has an oxygen tank with her. She meets Augustus Waters at a young person's cancer support group and they fall in love.  Well, they fall in love carefully, because Hazel doesn't want to break the heart of Gus if she dies.  Mortality is a constant companion in this book - Hazel will not likely live very long.  Gus is also a cancer survivor - he had cancer in his leg, which was amputated.

One of the most influential books I read this year was The Colony, so I've been extra-attentive to narratives that feature people with disabilities, and when authors choose to include these narratives in their books.  I think it must be a difficult decision to make, because, obviously they would want to avoid any mere tokenism - I think books like The Fault in Our Stars and Beauty Queens did a great job of including differently abled characters who are much much more than their disabilities.  

Hazel loves a novel called An Imperial Affliction, which ends in the middle of a sentence.  She loves the novel, but really wonders what happened to the characters - Gus helps her in an adventure to meet the author.  Probably shouldn't say much else with out dropping some major spoilers.  Although... I did spend a lot of time dreading the idea that the novel would end in the middle of a sentence and I would tear out my hair and catch something on fire.  I'll spare you the agony and tell you (spoiler): it doesn't.  

Like the other Green novel I read, these characters are idealized - they're smarter, wittier, more thoughtful teenagers than you or I were (even though you and I like to think we were that smart and witty).  Hazel says, without irony, that her parents are her best friends, and spends a fair amount of time worrying what will happen to them if she dies.  She says something like, "The only thing worse than being a kid with cancer is having a kid with cancer."  Lines like that kind of take me out of the story a little bit, maybe because I'm a cynical a-hole, but I just can't see many 16 years olds with that type of actualization.  I mean... I just don't think kids can or should be best friends with their parents.

If you read any reviews of The Fault in Our Stars, what you'll find is a breakdown of how many tears were shed throughout the book.  I did, I'll admit, shed one or two tears.  Here, for your reading enjoyment, are some quotes:

This book made my eyes insanely puffy for days because THE CRYING. SO. MUCH. CRYING. via 

The Fault in Our Stars had me laughing and crying, then laughing more and crying more. via 

The ending. Oh, wow, that got me going. DANG IT, I WILL NOT CRY AGAIN. via 

This has, hands-down been my favorite book of the year and was three and half hours of crying, laughing and coming to grips with the ubiquitous fact of life: we all face oblivion all the time and one of these days, we will have to embrace it.  (via That one's from a dude.)

Of course, I need the obligatory cried-my-eyes-out line.  Because I totally did.  It got really messy, and I snotted a little on my sweater sleeves because I couldn’t bring myself to get up and get a tissue.  I couldn’t pull myself away. via

Aside from making you cry like a little girl, you'll probably laugh a little too.  Green is legitimately funny, and it's hard to write funny.  Gus and Hazel poke fun at stereotypes of kids with cancer, like this:

"Like, are you familiar with the trope of the stoic and determined cancer victim who heroically fights
cancer her with inhuman strength and never complains or stops smiling even at the very end, et cetera?" 

"Indeed," I said "They are kindhearted and generous souls whose every breath is an Inspiration to Us All.  They're so strong! We admire them so!"

That's funny. And, he writes from a GIRL'S point of view and didn't make me want to GAG????  Unprecedented.  

via

Well, I guess I've done my part to perpetuate the idea that this book ends in tears, tear, tears!  But, seriously, you probably will cry.

Beauty Queens

Beauty Queens (2011) by Libba Bray is a hilarious novel about a bunch of beauty queens on their way to a pageant, whose plane crashes on a desert island.  I liked it so much that I don't really want to say that much about it.... it's a fun, feminist, romp, wherein the beauty queens transform from stereotypes of themselves to independent survivors thriving on an island against all odds.  I'll tell ya, I love nothing more than a survival story, it really captures my imagination to picture people (me?!?) getting by in the wild.  

Each surviving queen has a bit of a backstory - if I remember correctly, none of them was independently interested in becoming a beauty queen, most of them were doing it to satisfy a parent.  Not surprisingly, Bray includes a reality tv element (something tells me this woman is well schooled in ANTM and Honey Boo Boo and also I would like to meet her and become best friends) in the form of these guys who... I don't want to drop any spoilers because it really IS a fun read ... let's just say that some male characters are introduced, and the beauty queens are in danger, but one of the things I loved (tiny spoiler) is that the beauty queens never sit back and wait for a dude to get them out of a jam.

I guess this book is officially YA... I suppose it would be a fine book for YA readers, but categorizing it never entered my mind as I was reading.

Bray's cast of characters includes a couple of gay beauty queens, a beauty queen who used to be a boy, a deaf beauty queen and several beauty queens of color.  I loved that her book incorporated such a wide cast, putting all these women on equal footing and as equal contributors to the community they create on the island.  There's also a very strong anti-capitalism line, with repeated gags about commercialization and how the sale of so many products hinges on making women feel bad about their bodies or selves.

In school, they would tell you that life wouldn't come to you; you had to go out and make it your own.  But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don't. Don't go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.

At book club, one of my friends picked up my copy of Beauty Queens, and thrust it in my face, saying, "Throw this out, immediately," (*gasp*) "and get the audio version, it's hilarious."  So, I have it on good authority that the audio copy is great, and read by Libba Bray herself.

Paper Towns

John Green has been getting crazy buzz this year - every YA blog that I read gushes about The Fault in Our Stars (the TEARS!  Oh, the sobbing that was recounted...)  So... I've been missing the boat on this Green fellow.

I snatched up a copy of Paper Towns (2008) at my local library to see what all the fuss was about.

In Paper Towns, Quentin (Q), is woken up in the middle of the night by his beautiful, slightly older neighbor, Margo, who he has naturally had a crush on his entire life.  Margo needs his help on this all-night adventure trip to exact revenge on her popular friends that have sort of double-crossed her.  Margo is a meticulous planner and has a great imagination, so the reader might get a little crush on her as well.  She gives Q a list that includes catfish, VEET, Vaseline, & Mountain Dew - and the mystery of their night unfolds for the reader just as it does for Q - what are they going to do with this bizarre list?  This all-night adventure, which is about the first 1/3 of the book, is really fun to read, and clips along at basically an "unputdownable" rate.

The next morning, Margo's gone - run away.  But, she's left a handful of clues that Q and his friends unravel and attempt to find this poor, lost girl.

I quite enjoyed reading Paper Towns.  Green crafts a good story, and includes some sophisticated themes that appeal to older readers like me, and, I'd imagine, gives younger readers access to some larger ideas to ponder.  "Paper Towns", for example, refers to non-existant towns that are put on maps as a kind of copyright test - if the false town shows up on another map, there's proof that someone just  plagiarized a map.  Margo sees people living paper lives - inconsequential and unimportant. She and Q live in Florida, not far from Disney World - in the created environment of that strange land, you can understand how a bright, existential kid could get the itch for something "real".  And Q learns some big-boy lessons about the impossibility of knowing someone - that his idealized girl-next-door is mere mortal with the breadth of human tragedy and triumph wound up in her teenage form:

The fundamental mistake I had always made-was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.

Despite Q's little lesson about not idealizing his neighbor, Green's teens are hyper-idealized.  (I did finally read The Fault in our Stars, more on that later...) Green writes teenagers that have great relationships with the parents, are smart and witty, thoughtful and kind.  Q and his best boy pals are considerate, brilliant and helpful (do you know a lot of 17 year olds boys like that?)   I've heard tell that it's not that unusual for today's teenager to claim, with utter sincerity, that their parents ARE their best friends... I concede that the modern teenager might be a bit more sensitive than I and my friends were when I was a kid... but  I did find Green's teenagers eye-rollingly mature and witty.  His characters remind me of Daniel Handler's.  (Not surprisingly, Handler told me he liked Green's work when I interviewed him earlier this year.)  The alternative to my cynical criticism is that Green's teenager serves as a Guide to Good Teenaging to actual teenagers, as well as a romanticized image that teenagers and adults can "relate to".  In other words, I think his charming young people allow the reader to see their best selves as they inevitably relate to the characters.  I think if I had read this book when I was 16, I would have thought, "Yeah, I'm a lot like this kid..."  (even though I probably wasn't.)  So, in the end, I love that how his books have the power to inspire the reader to be a better person.

   "I just want to find her," I say, because I do. I want her to be safe, alive, found. The string played out. The rest is secondary.    

"Yeah, but--I don't know," Ben says. I can feel him looking over at me, being Serious Ben. "Just--Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are. Like, I always thought Lacey was so hot and so awesome and so cool, but now when it comes to being with her it's not the exact same. People are different when you can smell them and see them up close, you know?" 

"I know that," I say. I know how long, and how badly, I wrongly imagined her.  

"I'm just saying that is was easy for me to like Lacey before. It's easy to like someone from a distance. But when she stopped being this amazing unattainable thing or whatever, and started being, like, just a regular girl with a weird relationship with food and frequent crankiness who's kinda bossy - then I had to basically start liking a whole different person."

The Age of Miracles

I read this FANTASTIC book called The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker - it was so good, and I just want the whole world to read it.  It's about... the end of the world, sort of.  This girl and her family live in California, and pretty soon they and the rest of the planet discover that the earth is spinning more slowly.  By about a minute slower a day, if I remember correctly.  At first everyone freaks out, and they cancel school and work for a week or so.  And some people move out to Utah and start end of the world colonies and whatnot... but what's really interesting is how, after the initial shock, people sort of return to life as usual.  Aside from the planet's actual orbit changing, the life of the teenage character, Julia, continues in the somewhat standard manner.

Partly this is a rather brilliant commentary on how all events are like the end of the world to teenagers, but what really struck me, and maybe this is just me... but what I felt was this larger metaphor of how we react to global catastrophes.  For example, right now global warming is this really serious situation, and I feel pretty strongly that we're all pretty much going to die from it in the relative near future.  But, the average person doesn't really spend much or any of the day fretting or doing much about it, they just carry on with life, even though this major, global, disaster is literally getting worse every minute.  But, also, it's like, what are we going to do?  Just, freak out for like, the next 20 years or whatever?  Just ... constantly freak out?  That doesn't make sense.

Thompson Walker really thought through the implications of the earth spinning slower.  So, after a while, the day gets really, really long - I love how she dealt with the reality of time in her story (You know I'm nutso about Time and Space, y'all.)  Because the Earth spins slower, gravity changes slightly - how does that effect people.  How does it effect crops, and so on?

Most of all I loved the pacing of the book.  It frequently reminded me of Eugenides' Virgin Suicides, which has a beautiful, yearning, slow pace.  Both books are simply exemplary for their treatment of the contemporary suburban American teenager.

We were Californians and thus accustomed to the motions of the earth. We understood that the ground could shift and shudder. We kept batteries in our flashlights and gallons of water in our closet. We accepted that fissures might appear in our sidewalks. Swimming pools sometimes sloshed like bowls of water. We were well practiced at crawling beneath tabletops, and we knew to beware of flying glass. At the start of every school year, we each packed a large ziplock bag full of non-perishables in case The Big One stranded us at school. But we Californians were no more prepared for the particular calamity than those who had built their homes on more stable ground.

Speak

I read this fantastic book called Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson!  I'd been reading about how influential it was on a handful of blogs I read, including Paperback Treasures, a YA book blog that I read, where the 17 year-old author put it #1 on her list of Books that Made Me Think and then immediately said it was not creative because it was such an obvious choice.  Because everyone's already read it.  Except me.  

Also it's come under attack by people who would like to censor it.  I like going out of my way to read banned books just because some jerk out there said not to.

It starts with Melinda going to school for the first day of the term - she feels like an outcast, and all of her friends have turned on her.  Something happened over the summer, but it's not quite clear at the beginning.  This isn't sugar-coated Sweet Valley High, Melinda's been through some trauma, and she's suffering.  For example, on cheerleaders:

  In one universe, they are georgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sports cars on their sixteenth birthdays.  Teachers smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the Pride of the Trojans. Oops - I mean Pride of the Blue Devils.
  In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship the stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancún during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before the prom.

Eventually the reader learns that Melinda was raped by a classmate at a party over the summer, and was  too terrified to say anything to anyone.  Her parents are absorbed with their own issues and most of her teachers treat students as aggressors or delinquents.  When Melinda's grades start to sink, and she speaks less and less, she easily starts to disappear in the cracks of the school.  Still terrorized by the student who raped her (she calls him "IT" because she can't even think his name), Melinda is this brilliant, witty young woman that's just trying to keep her head down - so it's really amazing when she starts to turn the corner and become more assertive.  She doesn't tell anyone what happened, but she wants to stop it from happening again, to another girl.

The final pages of Speak are really amazing - I nearly shouted and certainly did a fair amount of crying - it was inspiring and empowering to read - a great book for women of any age, I highly recommend it.

My Darling, My Hamburger

I can't remember where I read about My Darling, My Hamburger, but it was inspiring enough to add it to my Amazon Wishlist.  Apparently a lot of people my age read it when they were kids and it made quite an impression on them. It was originally published in 1969 by Paul Zindel.   Eventually got around to reading it myself, but, I have to say, I wasn't that impressed.

It's a pretty dated attempt at describing teenage relationships - it carries a kind of after-school-special morality tale about the dangers of sex.  It's about these two couples, one is dorky and awkward and the other is cool and popular.  The popular guy is pressuring the popular girl to have sex and she doesn't want to.  "Is it that you think I won't respect you?" Sean asked quietly. "I'll still respect you. We love each other. I need you, Liz."  Poor Liz gets preggo and ends up having a back-alley abortion (remember this is three years before Roe v Wade). The dorky friends goes for help when she starts bleeding profusely afterward and they aren't friends anymore.  Liz is bitter and angry and the dorky girl goes on with her life.

The title comes from the beginning when a student asks a teacher what to do if a boy wants to "go all the way" - the teacher says the girl should suggest going out for a hamburger.  Whaa whaaaaa! Get it?!? Teenagers don't have the resources to handle the complexities of sexual relationships.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone besides, like, historians or YA Historians.  It's too outdated.  It's hard to imagine why so many people found this book so influential (just check out the reviews on Amazon), I guess back in the 70s it might have felt "real" and "gritty", but now it reads as a mostly sad reflection on the lack of resources available to women.

Insurgent

Insurgent, the follow-up to Divergent, is finally (ok, it's been less than a year) out, and I picked up a copy at the airport to read on my long-weekend trip to LA.  The cashier says to me, "Sooooooo gooooood." and I'm like, "Did you know the author lives in Chicago?" She goes, "Yeah, she wrote the first book when she was in college.  I was just writing papers when I was in college."  And I say, "Yeah." and then we make faces at each other and laugh.  YA love in the airport! Squee!

The downside to this whole thing is while I remembered the broad strokes of Divergent (this girl, Tris, is in a faction in futuristic Chicago called Dauntless, which is characterized by bravery and strength, and she's "divergent" and there's some inequality in the factions...) I didn't remember the details very well.  I suppose I should have re-read it before I started this one. If you're like me, you may want to read these reminder/spoilers about Divergent, written by Veronica Roth herself.  BTW, her blog is pretty cool, I especially liked this post about sexual assault and how she wishes she had written a scene differently.

Anyway, at the end of Divergent, this crazy thing has happened, which you may or may not remember very well, and Tris and her bf, Tobias/Four, are trying to regroup.  Imma try not to be too spoiler-y for anyone who intends to read the book.  What's nifty is she ends up living for a while in each faction's building/living space and sort of experiencing what it's like in each place.  She and Tobias have a lot of secrets they're keeping from each other for various reasons and they go through a few spats, with Tobias being largely wise and sensitive and Tris being mostly impulsive and insecure.  Whatevs, she's 16.

I really enjoyed reading more about what it's like to live in each faction and how the groups communicate and function.  A couple of mysteries emerge and Tris tries to solve them.  For various reasons that were not entirely clear to me, Tris finds it necessary to hide things from Tobias.  One thing that I admire about Roth's books is that they're very grown-up YA, like Rowling and Suzanne Collins, she isn't afraid to include some big themes, violence, and death of beloved characters.  I also really like the main character.  She's flawed, she's smart, she's really brave, and she's a kick-ass inspiring girl.

YA books

Ooo - Goodreads has posted a list of supposedly all the YA books of 2011, which you can organize by average ratings.  Hey, how come I haven't heard of so many of those top 10?   (Except, notably, Divergent, of which I have been a big fan since its publication.)

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Cover Girl

Kate Hart has an interesting blog where she posts her infographics of YA books - she studies the covers, amongst other things, and makes these amazing graphs with her findings.  Here's an example:

Ah, the ol' "no head" technique - classic technique (literally!) in the history of representing women.  

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