junior fiction - tally: 3
odd and the frost giants by neil gaiman
it's no secret that i love neil gaiman and he didn't disappoint. this book is aimed at the younger ones so it's a more straight-forward story: very mythic/legends type stuff. in fact, many of the characters are Norse gods, and live up to their reputations. odd (sounding alot like the endearing 'bod' of the graveyard book) is the boy that grows in more ways than one when he conquers a giant.
i read this aloud to the children, and fierce - himself a fan of all things mythology - knew alot of the side plots that were only hinted at. consequently, i think this book would serve as a great gateway to starting Norse mythology with somewhat relunctant children.
any which wall by laurel snyder
a magic wall transport 4 children to different worlds and adventures. so this could easily be seen as a magic-treehouse-wanna-be, but the author is clever enough to make the character development just as important as the adventures. kids used to being bossed around have to learn to think for themselves. a girl on the precipice between childhood and teenagehood mourns putting her books and dolls away too soon... this book seems an allegory of that - allowing your preteen to indulge themselves in last bit of magic, and then maybe seeing that magic can still exist for older people - it's just a different form
rules by cynthia lord
this book won a newberry honor award and had me almost to the end. a pre-teen girl with an autistic brother is so eager to be 'normal' that she omits some details of her life to a new friend. in that way, it was so believable and relatable for the jr fiction crowd, but it ends with way too much recrimination and guilt. personally, i don't think the new friend had any right to her righteousness. their friendship is new, and untested, and this new girl has yet to show any loyalty toward the main character or her brother. it's not fair that the main character is saddled with all that guilt.
YA - tally: 3
the book thief by markus zusak
my second time reading it, and it was just as powerful as the first time. truly, this author has a talent for clobering us - the reader - with emotions, but it never feels sentimental or over-wrought. and i'm just now realizing that it's probably his deft hand with language that allows this to happen - new words and word combinations that haven't been told/used over and over again and allow the pure thought/motion to escape before we can react with cynicism.
having grown up reading anne frank'sdiary of a young girl, and seeing WWII as a very unidirectional assault of one country on one people, this book widens the the scope to include the german people as victims of this war as well.
lastly, using 'death' as the omniscient narrator was a brilliant ploy: original in itself, it added an extra reminder of man's self-destruction (showing 'death' collecting soul from russia's deep cold) and allowed for a more current, modern commentary of the story being told.
invisible by pete hautman
this was good. the author teases you with hints about a terrible event and then shocks you with the truth. i only guessed the real story a page or two before it was revealed, and my guess was still not spot-on.
good enough that i'll earmark this one for the mother/daughter bookclub
want to go private? by sarah darer littman
wow. this was very edgy for a YA book but, considering the topic (internet predators), it had to be in order to be believable.
abby is reluctantly starting highschool and losing her best friend to all the newness it brings. she feels lonely. she's got all these strong negative emotions where her parents are concerned (like all teens) and she spend her time on-line. when she 'meets' someone who is nice to her, then supportive of her, and finally in love with her, she does the one foolish thing we drum into our children to NEVER do. she arranges to meet him.
this book does not shy away from the goal of these pervs. it gets very, very real. it gets very, very sad. but the book also doesn't just stop there, like a cautionary tale. our heroine survives, and there are many consequences she has to face.. just like anyone who survives a pedophile's grooming. so you end up with a much fuller picture, regardless of where you stand inside the story. and a reader will come away more reluctant to immediately judge and blame the victim (victimizing them again). and maybe see their own vulnerabilities to baby-step mistakes.
graphic novels - tally: 4
daytripper by fabio moon and gabriel ba
in the first chapter, our obituary-writing protagonist is on his way to see his father but is shot and dies. when he is alive at the start of the next chapter, it's easy to see we are reading about an earlier time of his life. but then he dies, again, at the end of this chapter.
out of chronological order, and at the end of every chapter, he dies. maybe from an act of violence, an acciddent, a bad decisions, an illness... but always death comes. truly as death comes for us all.
so is the gift the extra years he lives after that first chapter's death? is it his successes - both personal and professonal? is it the realization that all of it is temporal...
there's an image of him - with his father and son - under the aurora tree and the chain of life is evident: your life is out of your hands once your child is born - and you work your hardest to raise that child to be able to live without you. so the very act of procreating is admiting, and accepting, your death
boys and girls by lynda barry
this was not so much a graphic novel as an anthology of barry's comics from the 80's. i used to read her all the time back then, so it was a nostalgic experience. it made me realize how comics are an immediate medium and comment on current events versus novels which usually have more timeless themes.
unwritten - volume 2 (inside man) by mike carey & peter gross
this is an awesome series - the most intelligent graphic novel(s) i've ever seen. there's so much content - historical and literary - that they need to be reread numerous times.
in this volume, we meet up with the song of roland, (the oldest known piece of literature from france) which was used to conjure up hate toward muslims and then launch the crusades. then we are transported to goebel's germany during WWII where he is producing his own propaganda films against the jews. there an underlying belief that this title character 'tommy taylor' is the word made flesh - another historical and literary reference: the bible. and now we can add an amalgamation of beatrix potter/a.a. milne to the existing harry potter themes. this story never quits!
there's a massey lecture, called the truth about stories, where thomas king says the narrrative we hear and tell shape our lives. in his case, it was aboriginal stories, but he applied this thinking to all peoples. this seems to be where the author is going - and tapping into the particularly vivid imagination of children. but make no mistake: this is entirely an adult novel.
best american comics 2008
i found this anthology when searching for lynda barry stuff last month (she's listed as editor). for every really good segment, there was an equally boring one. and then i couldn't find any of these good leads at the library! so i won't be wasting any more time on anthologies.
novels - tally: 6
we were the mulvaneys by joyce carol oates
something bad happens at the start of this book, maybe even something terrible - but nothing so bad that merits the absolute destruction of this family... and yet that's exactly what it does. the reader is left pondering all the 'what-if's' where the outcome could have been changed, the damage curtailed.
now don't get me wrong, most of the character motivation and subsequent action (or inaction) was understandable: the dad felt targeted, talked about, the brothers - complicite, and the mother (all of them really) abandoned by the former good will and loyal friendships of their small town. the daughter is crippled by her father's rejection, so she cannot her see own value, and flees from every attempt to promote her or recognize her. in short, every family member is damaged tragically, and yet, realistically
the ending was both hopeful and implausible. they pervail. somehow, after many years, all are gathered and the family seems united once again. i can believe that. families, with their unbreakable blood ties, are able to get 'past' the past, or at least live in the present.
but the author does a poor job of convincing me how each character got to that spot. the daughter, in particular, has escaped her habitual self-doubt without much explaination. i feel like the author cheats by leaving those parts out.
the sea captain's wife by beth powning
an unremarkable and uninteresting book. i could never understand why this woman felt such anger in the face of her husband's acusation of infidelity when she, indeed, pinned for this other fellow and was deeply attached to him emotionally. so off they go, mother and child, to sea where the husband can keep an eye on them. in port, she chances to sightsee on her own, and we could all see it coming that she would - ridiculously - run into her old friend (incredulous snort here).
lots of research there - nautical terms, weavils in the hard tack, mutiny, pirates, the death knell of wooden ships - but this is only appreciated if the reader has an interest. which i guess, i don't.
joe college by tom perrotta
i've earmarked a different book from this author for a want-to-read for bookclub but wanted a taste of him now. the book seemed fine until the abrupt eding. set in the early 80's and in college, alot of the dorm life was true to my memories of that time. there were lots of plot point revolving around class, and i wondered if this guy was supposed to be a modern holden caulfield. but his default position is laziness - although he may think a revolutionary thought here and there, he doesn't ponder them for long, let alone act on it.
the ending, like i said, was abrupt and too convenient. the conflicts were interesting and as a reader you are invested in seeing how they will right themselves. this guy just caught lucky break after lucky break - a disappointing resolution if you believe that we can overcome our character flaws.
the lonely polygamist by brady udall
i absolutely loved this book! and i think the author used a great idea: sure, we aren't all polygamists, but we all come from families, and lots of us have a spouse, and maybe some children. with the polygamist approach, the pitfalls of marriage can be exaggerated and even be worthy of complaint. it becomes more of a plot point than an indulgence.
anyhow - this book was laugh out loud funny in spots, and then you'd be caught off guard by a tender or sad chapter. like a little bit of sugar to help the medicine go down.
the book is told from 3 character's perpectives - the husband, one wife, and one son (named rusty: hands down my fav character!). and they are all lonely. that's another poignant point this polygamist family can exaggerate: how can someone be lonely in such a huge family? but life-giving relationships need to be fed with the real contact, understanding, and communication. even with only one spouse and a few children, it can be hard to sustain. this man has 4 wives and 28 children! lastly, i liked that no one turned their back on polygamy at the resolve of the book. that would be preachy and judgemental of a lifestyle, instead of keeping this man's family symbolic for our own life and connections.
annabel by kathleen winter
i didn't care much for this book about a hermaphrodite turned (through hormones) into a boy in labrador. mostly it was because a lot of the conflict, on the page and within himself, would have been avoided had the parents chosen him/her to be a girl. actually, it was the father who decided he was a boy and then he spent the rest of his life trying to peg him into stereotypical boy behaviors. couldn't he foresee how his fears would affect a future relationship with his son?
the mother's character was somehow destroyed through 'losing' this daughter, but i couldn't really buy that either. a mother's relationship with her children are not based on gender.
at the book's conclusion, the "boy" (now a man) goes off the drugs and embraces his ambiguity and, in a unfortunate violent turn of events, even his father accepts him/her. that's all fine and dandy for the family relationships, but the ending comes too soon. this ambiguity cannot survive the scrutiny of society and he/she will have to decide their identify - if only for the university admissions forms, and introductions :) this character is simply not strong enough to be some barrier-breaking case, so ending the story without his/her final decision is a cheat.
i don't know how she does it by allison pearson
this was my second time reading this book (renewed interest due to the movie coming out) and it's quite telling that i remembered very little of it except that the character sort of annoyed me, and that she gives up her job by the end of the book.
so. now i remember why she annoyed me.
i can understand her timidity with her nanny (not wanting to lose her children's one constant: their care giver) and her overspending on her children (guilt), but letting her cleaning lady's (supposed) health issues excuse her from doing any real cleaning for 2 years is ridiculous. and if she's so busy, and in huge sleep debt, and is always canceling lunchdates with friends, why does she take all the school holidays - AWAY. why not stay home and catch upon your life?
it's supposed to be pivotal that she can never get away from the office ad misses her children's concerts, etc, but towards the end she fakes a client call in the middle of a meeting and goes home. umm. couldn't she have done exactly that at any number of times? it's hard to sympathize with a complaint when the solution is obvious to us all.
lastly, she starts an on-line flirting relationship with a client and never sees how immature she is being, never sees she is simply projecting an ideal on to this stranger. after her husband -temporarily- leaves her and she finally realizes she had herself a good man, she still has the gall to be wistful that she never slept that fantasy man!
as a second reading, it was shocking to see how quickly the content of this book became obsole: all her communication is by phone and emails - no texting invented yet. she needs to 'get' to the office so much that she dreams it, but we are now in an age where the office come to you via smart phones. in an update of this book, the character would have hit a wall and dropped her job by chapter 3.
non-fiction - tally: 2
the immortal life of herietta lacks by rebecca skloot
this book was a great combination of story and science; i was one-third into it on the first day of reading and still didn't want to put it down. the author heads each chapter with a timeline which makes the jumps between timeframes easy to follow and lets her see through one 'arm' of the story (of which there are many!). this must be one of the hardest things to balance: how to weave scientific discovery - which is incremental and is often atributed to many different scientists - into a story that encompasses not one, but 2 women's lives. what results is a remarkable piece of non-fiction that couches the details of cancer research, gene mapping, the development of the polio vaccine, tissue culture and it's legal implications into a memoir.
the longest trip home by john grogan
this author did marley and me (which i found sentimental and contrived) but my mom loved this title so i wanted to give him another chance. i got the book on audioCD to make him easier to take. hmm. maybe that was a bad idea. read by the author himself, the delivery was terrible and often times didn't seem plausible- even though he was supposedly reading his own words/thoughts! for example, i was certain he was mispronouncing st francis of assisi.
when the book got to his college years and young adult part of life, i found him to be an absolute cad! remember that he himself is writing his memoir and could have attempted to explain his reasoning, or felt bad about it in retrospect... he tells of how he had a younger, steady girlfriend the summer before he leaves for college but one night has the chance to lose his virginity to his highschool girlfriend and does so. then he continues with his existing girlfriend like nothing happened, finally taking her virginity while they are both in college (she chooses his college to be with him when given old enough to attend). at no time does he come clean! lies, lies, lies
ultimately, i mostly found the book uneven. i've read much better memoirs of catholic childhood (think wall lamb, frank mc court) and yet there were a few moments of his post-catholic life that were spot on - like reaching for prayer in times of great despair, and feeling absolutely foolish performing rituals like the sign of the cross that must accompany such a prayer.
like marley and me, which solely concentrated on his relationship with a dog, this book focused it's attention on his relationship with his parents at the detriment of the matrix of relationships that we actually inhabit. what about his siblings and the unequal care they gave to his aging parents? how did his own children view their grandparents and the relationship between adult children and parents? his wife had an uneasy relationship with these people that practiced almost a cult of catholicism; how did that affect their marrige? i found these silences too awkward to ignore. and one almost deafening silence: the few paragraphs disliking the brother-run catholic highschool and his parents subsequent strange and not-truly-explained decision to let him switch to public school. sadly, i think he was a victim of the prevalent sexual abuse of that time; he just couldn't bring himself to put that in the memoir.
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