junior fiction - tally: 3
summer of my german soldier by bette green
read for girl detective's summer reading challenge, this was a new-to-me read, and not a re-read. i didn't like it and that surprised me because, over the past few years, i've heard so much praise for this novel. i think it's suppoised to be a romance (from the main character's and audience's view) but i cannot stomach a budding love affair between a 12 yo girl and a man - even if it is couched in the language of friendship
as a 12 yo, patty has an active imagination but the author's attempt to express this inner life beside her actual life comes off as disjoined.
and let's be truthful, it is this naitivity that allows patty to become obsessed with someone she's just meet, place herself (and her nanny) in grave danger by helping him, and springboard to a time - 6 years in the future - when they we met again and be together.
heck, if she told the FBI and lawyers and judge her foolish heart's desires, she'd never have ended up in juvenile detention. and if her parents gave two hoots about her (and how about that nanny? she knew the girl well enough to figure out her motives) then they could have gotten the truth out of her.
this whole thing left me incredulous of the events, and bitter about the girl's stupidity. at the end she is still fantasizing that she'd meet anton's mother and be taken in. this child is no criminal.
deenie by judy blume
another for the summer challenge, this is a re-read for me.
it was pretty much as i remembered except this time i could see the foreshadow of the scoliosis from the first 2 pages, and the mother character really grated on me from the start. and i forgot how nice the sister reacted. someone over at girldetective noticed that blume's books always have a nasty mother, but there's always a good relationship between the fathers and the protagonists so i really noticed that as well. i wonder how judy blume's mother took that - every mom a mild sort of witch (but maybe i'm reading too much into that - teenage girls always have a rocky relationship with their moms and that's one of the reasons why i loved blume book - she got me)
the roar by emma clayton
found this story quite entertaining and was surprised that, at almost 500 pages, this book was categorized as junior fiction! the companion, and sequel, is shelved with the YA so i'm guessing there has been an error somewhere.
i can see this plot as the next hunger games: futuristic city where the haves and have-nots are so distinctly seperate that one lives in the 'shadows' while the rich and the governing bodies get to see the sun in an overlaid city. an animal plague has left half the world uninhabitable and the resulting density problem is solved by banning procreation for 30 years. the first children allowed to be born are now 12 and there seems to be a plot to either raise them as an army.
YA - tally: 8
ok for now by gary schmidt
in the first few chapters of this book, i mildly disliked the main character. he was such a negative, who-cares?!, angry kind of guy. plus his brother was a jerk. and i wondered why i was wasting my time with such a hater... and yet i love this author, so i persevered.
and then it hit me. the guy is entering his tumultuous teen years - anger is inevitable as the testosterone surges. not to mention anger and deflection are ways to protect yourself from emotional pain and - as he is the narrator - i should NOT rely on his account as being the true account. add his older brother as a negative role model, and the book began to make more sense...
and then the father character gets further filled-in, and EVERYTHING makes sense: why the brother is the way he is, why the narrator gets the pent-up rage from his brother, why the mother acts the way she does. then it's hinted that the narrator can't read (explaining his hate for school) and soon the true story starts bleeding into the narrative and we understand what a wonderful, gifted author this man is.
it was a great, great book. i knew he wouldn't let me down.
the things a brother knows by dana reinhardt
this books knows how to pull the heart strings when the protagonist's older brother returns from his tour of duty as a marine (the toughest and bravest soldiers there are) troubled and broken. they go on an unspecified march to washington and the main character confronts his ambivalent about war. realizing he's neither anti or pro, it seems like he's about to pick a choice and even goes so far as to shave his long hair down to a marine-style crew cut, but then he waivers when he's no longer sure of his brother's viewpoint. and the general sentiment turns to: i'm simply supporting my brother.
but this is the type of stuff that waters down discourse. why can't he have a position on the issue of war AND support and love his brother? can't we stomach healthy debate?
the pigman by paul zindel
read for the summer challenge, this was a great book i'm sorry i missed as a youth (though i'm pretty sure i saw it on a sibling's desk) the kids are less than ideal - from immoral homes, selfish, prone to mean pranks - but they are the equivalent of the everyday man for a city kid in highschool. and they are redeemed by their own actions and hopes. the books reaffirms there a quiet dignity in every human being.
homecoming by cynthia voigt
another read for the summer challenge, this was a new author for me. when talking about girl detective's challenge and lizzie skurnick's book, it was either my sister or cousin who announced her love of this author. she seems to be prolific so, with someone to vouch for her, i decided to squeeze another book in my already full roster. i'm glad. this book reminded me of 'the girl who owned a city' and i LOVED this type of modern day survival book when i was a girl. perfect timing with the summer here and pepper needing lots of (quality) books to fill her free time. as a bonus, this is the first of seven (!) books about this girl.
the witch of blackbird pond by elizabeth george spear
again: read for the summer challenge and a first time read. i didn't care for it. kit, the main character, starts as a whinny complainer who obviously didn't think through her decision to leave the wealth and ease of barbados for the unknown puritanism of the new world. i had little sympathy for her. head-strong and impulsive, she invited every danger that came her way. i imagine her willfulness would endear her to a younger reader, but i had no patience.
down a dark hallway by lois duncan
again, read for the summer challenge. a creepy boarding school that only houses 4 students, and all of them have some sort of ESP. this book was familliar again - i'm sure i read this as a teen/preteen. funny how 'killing mr griffin' was the only title i remembered of hers. at the end of the book, there was an interview with the author and i was somewhat shocked to learn her adult daughter was murdered. still unsolved, i think
stranger with my face by lois duncan
another lois duncan for the summer challenge. i'm starting to see the common element of her novels: isolation. even though this book is set within a family, her parents are mostly absent due to their obsessive work habits. the main character in 'summer of fear' was isolated within her family all well (due to their anger as her lack of compassion for their bereaved cousin - um, who turns out to be evil!) anyhow, this one really scared me b/c it was about astral projection (something i tried as a teen) and took the subject very seriously. so, it kinda freaked me out and i'm old. now imagine a 13 yo picking it up and trying astral projection.
forever by judy blume
another for the summer challenge, it's a pretty straight forward story of first love. if i read this book in the past (and i may have been passed the book for the juicy parts) i doubt i would have understood every innuendo. just like i didn't get the masturbation references in deenie.
i may be getting sick of judy blume... even pepper is commenting on her writing style being repeatitive and simple.
after the wreck, i picked myself up, spread my wings, and flew away by joyce carol oates
i've read this author before - in the adult section, and with mixed thoughts - but i thought i'd try her out as a YA author. in a word: yuck. the drama is over-the-top, the psychiatric help is absent, and the surrogate parents are willfully blind. whereas i found her characters in her adult novel behaving realistically, i thought these characters were little more than stereotypes.
graphic novels - tally: 5
alan's war: the memories of G.I. alan cope by emmanuel guibert
every life has a depth and richness we cannot know. this graphic novel is one chunk of a man's life after he was conscripted during the last half of WWII. and even though there were plenty of tales on the page, it felt like there was another one being told underneath the one we were seeing. like, i think, alan was gay but may have never acted - physically - on this. i think he deeply loved a fellow soldier. and this was based on a personal connection - love, as opposed to attraction/sex.
his recollections/stories during the war are the most vivid, and the easiest to compartmentalize and follow (as opposed to the later, post-war stories that - by their very nature - cannot be held in a narrow space of geography and time) plus, i think alan could not 'tell' the full details of his more recent past without damaging the privacy of others. still, it is a worthwhile book.
the absolute sandman - volume one by neil gaiman
after hearing so many good things about this series, i'm finally starting it.
it's quite dense, plot wise, and i'm still not sure if this sexy immortal-man-of-mystery is supposed to be a hero or villian (i'm imagining a mix of neil gaiman himself with a heavy dose of alan rickman's snape) but i'm enjoying the romp so far. this was a huge volume - 600+ pages - and i didn't look ahead to see how many volumes there were, so imagine my oh cripes reaction when i finally saw there are 5 volumes. so this will not be a quickly acheived goal.
t minus: the race to the moon by jim ottaviani and zander cannon
putting a man on the moon is just a point of history of us - it's easy to lose the context of the moment. back then it seemed like an impossible feat. and in many ways it was. this idea of getting to the moon was largely a reaction to the russian dominance over space: first dog, first man, first woman, first-you-name-it in space. the soviets were launcing rocket after rocket and kennedy reacted with a wide pronouncement that america would get on the moon by the end of the decade. a huge goal; a concrete deadline.
the book is filled with names and events that have history but i'm not enough of a space geek to know them, just the wide strokes: jim lowell, armstrong, buzz aldrin, yuri gagarin, the capsule fire, etc. but it's a great way to either learn more, or start off an exploration of this subject.
my friend dahmer by derf backderk
i'm not sure how i feel about this one. the subject is exploitative so i wasn't sure if this guy, derf, was cashing in on something - even if it is 20 years later. the drawing style reminded me strongly of a particular segment of MAD magazine. at first this made the illustrations appear trite, but when i realized the timeframe of the story (the 70's) - that was the height of MAD magazine's popularity in my household too - then the drawing felt appropriate, and belonging to this era.
as for the actual plot, the author does a decent job of keeping it at the moment. he doesn't colour much of the content with foreshadow, or what dahmer ultimately becomes. it is supposed to humanize jeffrey dahmer (but i read his father's memoir decades ago so it didn't need to do that for me) but there is a truth about how you act around your buddies - the mask you put on - and it is unique from how you behave around your parents/adults. so this book actually makes for a fuller picture.
funhome by alison bechdel
this memoir intertwines the author's declaration of her homosexuality with the revelation that her father was a closeted gay man until a few months before his apparent suicide. using numerous literary works by authors that are too daunting for me to approach just yet (like proust, camus, and james joyce) the implications of the parallels were - more than occassionally - lost on me.
novels & short stories - tally: 4
irma voth by miriam toews
didn't like it. i've read 3 other books by her and really enjoyed them, but this one was disjointed and (unnecessarily) dark and depressing. plus she uses ugly language in reference to a baby which i cannot relate to at all. lastly, the three sisters somehow land on their feet all due to a nice couple that takes them into their B&B - with a maid job for the oldest, tons of free time for the 13 yo to go school and get a boyfriend, and a free babysitting at a moment's notice for the the infant.
persuasion by jane austen
this is my 2nd time trying to read austen, and the first time i was successful (thanks to the bookclub lending out the books for the whole summer - so what excuse could i have?) but boy was it hard.
as an author, she is verbose - her sentences run twice to three times the usual length. her books are almost 200 years old and their limitations show. it's like a victorian soap opera - all melodrama and overwrought dialogue with no bodice riping in sight.
the girl with the dragon tattoo by stieg larsson
i've been looking forward to reading this one. it's a best seller, was made into 2 movies (one swedish, one american), and - because it's a trilogy - the buzz is still going strong. and while i read it, i was carried along - good story telling with with some odd, almost catelogue-like descriptions of products in there - but always there was this sense of unease. the chapters open with stats about violence against women in sweden - it's a foreshadow of violence to come of course, but as the novel progressed, i started to doubt the author's intention in using these stats. what initially appears as an indictment against such violence, soon feels like an instruction manual. the author even has a character that catalogues which types of behavior he can inflicit on which types of women. finally, the pivotal rape scene (which i hear is quite graphic in both movies) is positioned in between a passage of 2 other characters having consentual sex... does this mean the author sees both sexual acts as equal? (no one can ask him these hard questions as he died shortly after he handed in his 3 novels)
at the end of the book, there's a teaser for the 2nd novel. i only skimmed it, as by this time i was feeling rather disgusted in this man's success in feigning his feminism. basically the opener is a captive and bound twelve year old being sexually assaulted repeatedly. so now the author has widened his scope of misogyny to children
a good man is hard to find and other stories by flannery o'connor
what an amazing writer! i've been hearing things about her for a while but my library had very little of her stuff. then we got a playaway (audio recording) of this set of short stories. they are so packed with visual images, and the plots switch so quickly, that i had to keep rewinding the stories to stay with them... the brain just can't keep up with another voice telling the tales. you really need to read them at your own pace.
i was most shocked by the content / genre. the stories are creepy but not in a ray bradbury way - things happens and tides turn, and all of it is believable and must form the basis of our set fears and biases. her characters had a level of maturity and complexity that i didn't think was possible for the 1950s. i can't believe i've never read her before!
non-fiction - tally: 6
cleaning house: a mom's 12 month experiment to rid her home of youth entitlement by kay wills wyma
the biggest thing(s) i got from this book was not the subject or what was actually said, but what i could read in between the lines :) and what i read/understood was how annoying/frustrating it must be to be married to an evangelical christian who is able to call god on her side for each and every marital spat (plus bring along your blog audience to witness your rightness/righteousness)
point of fact: said author's husband (understandably) wants to NOT have their teenage son potentially damage their property while learning to do handy man jobs, while author feels just the opposite. author states that the ensuing argument was mutually forgiven that evening but they needed 3 days before they could discuss the incident (anyone else read that as: i wouldn't speak to him for 3 days?) author gives lip service that her "wonderful, loving" husband deserves her respect in this matter but can't help but include scripture that supports her argument that god trusts and needs man to care for the earth and it's creatures. so let's see: hubby against wife and god. who do you think will win? (not to mention that she gets to re/interpret the argument's details for her blog audience and be sure she comes off as respectful, reasonable, and loving. her persona feels too familliar: if karen mackay was an evangelical christian, her name would be kay wills wyma.
and the god angle bugged me too. the first few chapters had NO mention of god. then there were sprinkles of youth groups and hints that friends homeschooled, it progressed to church attendance, and then direct references to our lord and saviour. it's obvious her publisher told her to can it on the religion talk until folks got fully into the text
she had some ridiculous advice sprinkled in there: like kids earning cash by setting up a lemonade stand (hello? every town has a bylaw against selling food without a licence) like suggesting the 'trash-bag tango' (this is where everyone gets 2 trash bags and fills one with trash, and one with stuff to give away) ok, that sounds fine you might say. but she suggests doing this twice a week! with 5 kids and 2 parents, that's 28 bags of stuff leaving your home A WEEK. wouldn't you empty your home within a month?! and the thing that bothered me most: paying kids for chores. this goes in direct contradiction to one of the author's essential points: self esteem. being paid one dollar to clean your room doesn't give self esteem. helping out your family, in a meaningful way, will do that. if the only recognition you receive for your efforts (instead of acknowledgment for example, instead of praise) is a dollar, you'll quickly lose interest.
that said, i did like the idea of getting the children to be more self sufficient (for their own good) and, as a result of reading this book, i have instituted rotating lunch duties and plan to add laundry to the list next month. but as for money... i'm still not sold on that concept. i want to raise their allowance in recognition of contributing more to the household, but i don't want it tied to chores. so i still need to reflect on that.
shelf discovery: the teen classics we never stopped reading by lizzie skurnick
what a great idea - categorizing, listing and remembering the classics books of my generation's youth. the author is uncanny in her selections, and she brings in guest writers to fill in additional book reports. i revisited books i'd read when i was 12, and read new titles as well. i found some books didn't stand the test of time, and others deserved to be shoved into pepper's arms. i was shocked at some of the content (that must have gone over my head when i was younger) and reassurred that some things don't change: like the politics of girl friendships, the agony of does he like me?, and the propensity for young girls to devour paranormal novels.
the lost art of reading: why books matter in a distracted time by david ulin
this was more like a long essay than a book, with no chapters to break-up the main points. it was intellectually dense in parts, with lists of literature i haven't read or heard of, but other parts were easily relatable, such as the danger of placing novels solely within ebooks where content can (and has) been rescinded by the company that produced it. he laments the early editions of ereaders were dark grey type on light grey screens - hardly enticing anyone away from the crisp black type on a clean, white page (not to mention the physicality of a book - it's ability to be borrowed, perused on a bookself, be categorized as the owner sees fit). and he's hit on a truth that email and twitter and net surfing have conditioned us to read widely but not deeply, and that our concentration is easily broken (especially when trying to read a book on an electronic device). i liked how he saw reading as an individually paced medium (as opposed to film where we must follow at a prescribed pace) where we can disconnect from the present world and enter any number of new ones. but mostly, he encourages us to keep reading quality literature, and to allow ourselves to be affected, and changed, by it.
this is how: proven aid in overcoming shyness, molestation, fatness, spinsterhood, grief, disease, lushery, decreptitude and more by augusten burroughs
having read at least one of augusten burroughs' memoirs - and knowing he can be quite funny and/or weird due to his very unusual upbringing - i didn't know what to make of this book. was it supposed to be a joke on self-help tomes? once i realized it wasn't that type of book, and saw that he was giving serious advice on all these issues (and more), i was taken aback more than once. he thinks AA encourages alcoholics to relapse; he says he'd kick an anorexic daughter out of the house (control issue: actually, on paper, his reasoning seems firm), he recommends admiting to a dying child that they are dying (!), he channels a whole bunch of new agey bullshit: "we are all made of recycled stars" and he tells the reader that therapy (and therapists, and revisiting the past) are mostly a waste of time.
can i bring up his lack of expertise now?
he's no psychotherapist; he has no background anthropology; he has no 'letters' after his name to back-up his opinions/theories. true, he's had a very wide experience of life, he's a recovering alcoholic and he's had to face a lover dying, slowing, before him. and some of his advice was good, but mostly he veered into the 'we are all miracles' stuff that is too saccharine for the burroughs i know.
drop dead healthy by a j jacobs
the biggest takeaway i got was that health is an industry. for every ailment, real or imagined, there is a supplement or a piece of equipment you can buy. worse still, there's need to purchase diagnosistic tools or pay for tests just to SEE if you have a problem/ailment. for example, look at something as mild as sleeping. you can pay to go to a diagnostic sleep lab or buy a contraption that measures the ratio between your REM and non-REM sleep. when you find your sleep problem - and there's always going to be one - you may need an expensive machine to fix your sleep apnea, or breathe right strips and ping pongs sewn onto the backs of your pjs to reduce your snoring. or maybe you need to buy special blinds to cut out all light. or sleep away from your partner. the extra time and stress of keeping a sleep diary and obsessing over data can't be good for your sleeping or overall health.
the tiger: a true story of vengeance and survival by john vaillant
meh. 2 people gushed that this was a great book when i was taking it out (for bookclub) so i'm disappointed that it wasn't a better book. truly, it could have worked as an extended magazine piece. especially at the end when the author tacked on the whole man-ruining-the-world-environment shtick. at interesting as it was to read about tigers, do i want their population to increase and have them live on the outskirts of my town? no way.
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