junior fiction - tally: 1
the liberation of gabriel king by k. l. going
a gentle introduction for young readers to america's post civil rights era where the klan still exists, but it's grotesque actions aren't detailed. the main story revolves around 2 fifth graders and their lists of fears they plan to conquer in one summer. too mild for my liking.
YA - tally: 6
kiss by jaqueline wilson
read this while at the dude ranch. it was cute but hugely predictable. the british flavor of the story made it more interesting than it probably deserved to be. my fav part was the main character getting her period in grade nine; probably very comforting to a girl who wonders when-oh-when will it be her turn. pepper read it after me, after i left it out for her on her bedside table (hint-hint)
withering tights by louise rennison
another one read at the dude ranch, and it utterly mystified me: just who is the target audience supposed to be? the main character is a knobby-kneed 14 yo whose never been kissed, and yet the humour would simply go over a YA crowd (one of the 'lads' sings: girlfriend in a river, i know, i know it's really serious à la morrissey) (yup, it was another british one) it reminded of bridget jones' diary - if her diary went on and on about nothing.
godless by pete hautman
what starts as an amusing premise - bored teen brought up catholic invents his own ridiculous religion by worshipping the town's water tower - really irked me. it wasn't the story, but the main character - full of misplaced anger, bitter over the smallest of insults, self centered to the point of endangering others. in short, a typical teenager.
so it's probably a victory for the author's writing ability that i loathed him so, after all i should (and did) relate more to the adult/parent characters in the book. i fear this is exact scenario: i'll no longer being able to empathize with my teens when they reach that frustrating age.
boy heaven by lauara kasischke
i often make book lists after reading my favorite bloggers, but i don't always remember who reccommended which book and for whom. (i take note of books for me, as well as pepper and fierce)
when this YA one came in - innocence title and slim width - i thought it was pepper. well, thank-god i read it first! it's the kind of scary tale told around the campfire and was VERY effective in that sense. the tension kept building and i thought this would be a great alternative to those horrid goosebumps series that pepper likes to read. but the characters - so smutty! more flawed than redemptive. i tried to give it a chance (because maybe the ending would provide a moral judgement to counter point all this bad behavior) but no - the beautiful chearleaders keep their perfect lives and the world keep turning.
what i saw and how i lied by judy blundell
the first half of this book was tedious: all the of the hidden plot points were SO obvious that it was annoying to be in this narrator's incredibly obtuse head. but then the truths are all reavealed (to her at least) and it gets more interesting. how to react, who to believe, and what does this mean to this girl's whole childhood?
i heard about this book on a blog that dissed liar and recommended this one instead. but really, the two could be more different. liar was sophisticated, clever, and certainly more adult. if you took the sexual parts out of this book, and trimmed down the plot, this could have easily been in the junior fiction genre.
finally, there was supposed to be tension in this book - there's a dangerous storm, the girl's almost raped, her parents may be charged with murder- but the author simply couldn't create it. it was a great contrast to boy heaven which had me on the knife's edge over a much lesser fear.
i am the messenger by markus zusak
this book defies categories and, depending on your take of the ending, will leave you annoyed or exhilarated... but more on that later.
it's laugh-out-loud funny in spots, seems to be a mystery, but continually hits the core of humanity with poignancy. the author has an almost bottomless ability to twist the english language into unexpected poetry. he's today's shakespeare with new uses of words that should become the standard (beautiful) way of speaking:
"I nearly forgot." I stop running and stand about fifteen meters in front of him. "Your brother." The father's eyes reach a little closer. "He said to tell you that greed hasn't swallowed him yet."
The priest's eyes lighten then, with a touch of regret poured gently into them. "My brother, Tony..." His words are soft, and they hobble toward me. "I haven't seen my brother in a long time - how is he?"
"Not bad." I say it with a confidence I don't understand. Only a gut feeling tells me it's the right answer, and we stand there now, among awkwardness and the rubbish.
as for the ending - the way i interpreted it - i saw the validity of a concept that couldn't fit into a ending. and should a small thing like an ending really determine whether or not something gets published? this is a young adult novel and hits that audience exactly where it needs it. that final sentence of the book IS the point
graphic novels - tally: 4
v for vendetta by alan moore and david lloyd
moore created this comic strip before he did 'watchmen' and that is painfully obvious. i thought the plot line were muddled and predictable. and while we're at it - violent for violence sake. V speaks in shakespearean-laced poetry but is a character without any moral redemption. capable of immense cruelty (justifiable in his/her sick mind), V is not a hero - super or otherwise.
crap
walking dead: volume 3
i must be a glutton for punishment. now that we've seen an infant and mother shot, where to go?
the main character's young son is hardening up like the best of them - ready to shoot his own dad if need be, it seems. but finally (on a positive note) the pathetic decisions and leadership of the main character are being called into question. i say i'm done with this gory series and yet i keep coming back for more.
bayou - volume 1 by jeremy love
in a place that contains plenty of real-life monsters and miseries (this is deep south mississipi in the middle of the depression and our protagonist is a motherless black girl who is wronged by every white person we meet - even her supposed best friend), this story delves feet first into creepy, imaginary worlds. is this a way for the little girl to process all the horrors around her?
the symbols are everywhere - a gollywog coming to trap her in the swamp, a bunch of 'jim crows' descending and pecking open a man's stomach, a bloodhound as a civil war general with his posse of hooded klan members...
in spots, i felt as ill as i did with 'the walking dead' - but these horrible things really did happen
the walking dead - volume four
yes, i went back for more, and yes, the violence was just as unpalatable - this time the slow beheading of a major character, some broad hints at zombie pedophilia, and the central character's wife and new baby are shot dead in a full page spread. it's like a season of 'lost' - a new boatload of people arrive just as the main people are thinning out... this time i can see who is going to 'replace' the main character's wife. of course they leave you hanging - just he and his son running up the hill, away from the prison, with the zombies (slowly) at their heals. guess this means i'm destined to take in the next volume...
novels & short stories - tally: 5
revolutionary road by richard yates
i've got mixed feeling about this one. first of all, i saw the movie awhile back and it left me thinking for days. there seemed to be so much said within the silences (i think kate winslet has a gift for that - the silences in 'little children' also provoked me for days) so when i saw there was a book, of course i wanted to read it. there's a handicap in seeing a movie first: of course i 'saw' leonardo dicaprio and winslet in the roles when usually my mind would independently construct fresh characters. and since i felt the movie was primarily about them, i was annoyed (too strong a word?), ok more like bored with reading the backstories of other characters.
the book started strong: i was impressed with small details - like having frank sitting in the audience in his damp underwear. so real. and the content - the rejection of mainstream values and culture and this internal rebellion of wanting 'the american dream', it seemed so current. i was surprised to see the book was published in '71, which meant the book was set in the late-ish sixties at the most. so i'm guessing that middle class folk - already weighed down by commitments and therefore not participants of the counter culture movements - still felt the reverberations of that era. it's like their minds were infected by the virus, but their bodies kept living the pattern that was set before them.
anyhow, the ending was weak. suddenly all the minor characters build a crecendo to the final act (april's act, in fact) when these characters were simply distractions. what i wanted to read was frank's reaction, frank's viewpoint. all the other people with their chimed in thoughts reminded me of another late sixties book, 'boys and girls together' , and felt like a device that may have been popular at that time - the ending as a joint commentary.
i'll be watching the film again soon to see if my reading of the book changes my (excellent) opinion of the movie.
the art of racing in the rain by garth stein
an easy read, i finished it in 2 days. it was sentimental, but it worked - i cried where i was supposed to, and felt better for it. after the success of marley & me, it was inevitable we'd get the same type of story, only told from the dog's point of view. i think it's a much better approach: the dog's thoughts and actions are conveyed, but he (the dog) is watching and commenting on the people's lives, and isn't that why we read the book in the first place? for the people? personally i hated marley and me for the way the author centers the book on a DOG, meanwhile he gets married, and starts a family, and these things should be the focus of the story, not a dumb dog.
lastly, i admire how the author was able to incorporate his obvious passion for racing into the story. it wasn't a throw-in-some-extra-detail appendage, it was an absolute metaphor for a way of life. i may even watch a race now :)
the way the crow flies by ann-marie macdonald
a few pages before the end of this book, i would have said: what a tour de force -
as it stands though, the sensationalist ending taints the whole book. and is probably why it didn't win the awards it deserved for the first 98% of it
when you pick up such a big book you think: really? do you really need so many pages to tell this tale, or is this vanity? but this is more like three books in one.
i was on pg 375 of an 800+ page book when the visual hit me: the back of a boy in red jeans, a girl in a fluttering blue dress, the turning wheels of a bike echoed through a wheelchair - oh god, this is steven truscot... his story inspired this book.
and then it was sickening. because you know how wrong it's going to turn out, and there's still so much left to read, still so much left to suffer through.
this was the biggest surprise for me: here i'd already read the upsetting story of a child's slow drowning inside the sick mind of a pedophile (and her family's repeated near-misses to see and stop those events) but when i got to the second part of the book - the gross injustice done to a teenage boy - it bothered much more than the first part. why?
because the molested child is a fictional character here, but the boy - the boy was obviously modeled on a real human being and these things really did happen to a flesh and blood man. it stopped being fiction; it stopped being a novel. i couldn't stop reading because i had to get to the other side when it was going to get (marginally) better. i couldn't leave this real human being in the middle of that misery.
the third part of the book is probably where most novels end - the story of what happens afterwards. this father and daughter, each holding a dreadful secret that informs the rest of their lives. this was the most honest, and the saddest part.
i can understand intellectually why the author did what she did with the ending - to turn the tables on the reader's conviction of guilt. but my emotions still can't abide by her ending.
life and death of seals by urban waite
this overwrought short story of a teenagers's perception of his parent's failed marriage was too obvious. using the discovery (and ultimate burial) of a dead, bloated seal as a symbol of the marriage was too obvious and gave me no pleasure when this thematic device was hit over and over and over again.
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by mark haddon
i should have liked this more; it's an unfortunate case of bad timing. you see, i read born on a blue day, an actual memoir of an autistic person, 2 or 3 years ago so this fictionalized version didn't seem quite as original and interesting as it would have if i'd read these 2 books in reverse.
that said, it was enjoyable enough. i liked the connections the author made with sherlock holmes, and the presence of red herrings in his stories. it's renewed my drive/desire to push these dvds on fierce :)
on a side note, my neighbor's pre-teen noticed me reading the book and announced she'd read it last year and liked it and that made the curious about the choice to make this an adult fiction, as opposed to a young adult one. the content was appropriate enough, and might even have been accessible to the junior fiction crowd. i doubt a teen / pre-teen would pick up a thick memoir, but a short novel could do a great job as far as empathy goes.
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