Once again into the fray!

The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch: I first heard of this book on Fantasy Book Critic and pointed it out to several people who then proceeded to read it before me and then come back and tell me how awesome it was and how had I not read it yet? It's so good! I run scared from a lot of thick fantasy; maybe I am projecting my fears about A Song of Ice and Fire onto other books.

I really loved this book. I kept putting it down because I couldn't know what happened next what if it was horrible! Then I would pick it up again. I chewed through it in little chunks. The alternating sequences with the past and future I enjoyed at the beginning but as the novel went on I got impatient wanting to know what was going to happen to Locke and Jean as adults can we get back to the main story, please! Chains was love, absolute love, gambling so much to take the thieves mafia for fools. Thieving and mystery and merciless killing and adventure! Although, I wonder why I keep reading about this book being referred to as "one part Robin Hood". I really don't think the point of Robin Hood is to just steal. The Gentlemen Bastards don't give anything to the poor (OR DO THEY AND I MISSED IT?). Just because they're stealing it from nobles doesn't make them noble thieves, blurb writers! You're confusing me!

My love affair is with Locke and Jean. They made this book for me. There has not been two characters that sparked off each other like this in books I've read in recent memory. Locke is bossy and arrogant and charming and Jean is loyal and reliable and can kick some serious ass (how much did I love the name of his weapons?).

The story kept me guessing until the very end and although I found the Big Bad to be kind of lame at the closing act, it was still worth the whole journey. Now if only Locke and Jean could have made out a little. *sob*

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Keeping the Moon, Sarah Dessen: I am not sure how to feel about this book.

I started my Dessen adventures with Just Listen, which I loved. I then proceeded to read Dessen's other stories out of order; going back to her older work. I found that the farther back I went the heavier the More You Know hand weighed down on my shoulders. The books aren't terrible (has she ever written a bad book?) but they're lacking a spark that I found in Just Listen and The Truth About Forever. There's a depth that's missing from her earlier work that her more recent work has in spades. Even Lock and Key had it and I didn't particularly care for that story; it was trying too hard. There are layers to Dessen's later work that feel more true to life. It wasn't a bunch of episodic events that related to each other enough to tangle them together into a cohesive story. I don't feel that Dessen is pulling archetypes and standard high school scenarios out any longer. She's graduated beyond the building blocks and now she's into Tinker Toys, to abuse a metaphor. You can build cooler stuff that people can recognize as yours right off the bat.

I went into the story annoyed at the tone. I worked this out with owlmoose, who eventually pinned my problems with the opening sequence where Kiki Sparks is sending Colie away to stay with her eccentric sister Mira while she tours around Europe promoting her fitness line. She advises Colie to eat the pre-planned meals she's sending along because it would be a shame to gain all that weight she lost back.

What's the biggest shame is that line of dialogue. Awesome: Colie's mother is a weight-obsessed jerk! It set the tone for the entire story in the gutter for me. Right off the bat Colie and her mother are characterized by their weight and defined by how they live their lives around it to escape the "fat years" as if being fat is equal to being miserable and lonely and avoided, period, no way around it. I know it's hard to find books that don't treat fat girls and women like they're some sort of alien from the planet Lard, but I swear it's possible. Keeping the Moon isn't actively hostile to heavy characters, but it wasn't too kind, either. Colie was the fat girl with no friends and no self-esteem because she was fat. Those negative feelings followed her as she lost the weight, too—true enough to life, but I'm still bothered. Being fat means you don't have self-esteem? Being fat means you learn to hide behind the rolls and the thick thighs? Being fat means you'll only gain the confidence you need once your mother finds her religion in fitness and molds you to where you're "supposed to" be?

I would have enjoyed this book more had Colie not lost the weight, truth be told. I'm tired of the fat-girl-becomes-a-swan-and-is-reborn! story. I want stories where the fat girl doesn't have to change her exterior. I want stories where there's more focus on being healthy and making better choices instead of "I was a fat kid and lost 45 pounds!". These stupid numbers. Who cares about them. Being heavy doesn't mean unhealthy or weird or freakish and this book aligns them so often, especially in Mira's case, that I just don't know how to feel. Mira's part in this novel: the fat aunt who has a thing for cats and pack-rat behavior. Most of her cameos in this novel leave her weight as the biggest and most important issue, even after it's ceased to be a problem for Colie.

Both of Colie's best moments happen because boys paid her attention—the new her, not the old her. The new Colie, who is not fat anymore and will no longer be a pushover finds her voice and sees herself...through boys. It felt like the novel was telling me that if she hadn't lost the weight she would still be holding on to a negative self-image and therefore never have the nerve to approach either of the kids as equals. Once again, I am left bemused and wondering what the hell this book is trying to tell me. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING, DESSEN? That the negative self-image is caused by the weight? Because I'm fat and I still have self-esteem. I don't let people treat me like crap. You don't have to be thin to demand respect from people: it has nothing to do with weight.

The sisters were the best developed and that might not be a compliment. It was another ugly-duckling-to-swan story: yawn. Another Days of Our Lives flavored plot point: predictable. Norman was a non-entity and also, I might be tired of the sensitive artist love-interest type. The romance and conflict around it felt shoved in at the last second, whereas a friendship would have felt more true to where Colie was at the time.

All in all I wish I had started reading Dessen's books when she first started writing. Her stories of the past are cobbled together. I don't want to knock it too much: I do it myself with my own writing because I'm learning, but also I'm not published yet, either. Ira Glass talks about this: how we create and we can see that although we're making something to the best of our ability, it's not where it should be yet. There's a gap. This Lullaby was the line in Dessen's work where she finally walked into her own voice with an ability and experience to create really well-rounded characters that weren't predictable and flat, but rich and human, and scenarios that were the same.

That said, now I'm going to go eat some ice cream.

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Freak Show, James St. James: Let's talk about this book that I laughed my way through in a about four hours.

Billy Bloom is a recent transplant to Republican-red Florida, a teenage drag queen out of place in the swampy conservative scene he finds at his new school. Daily, he faces ridicule and attacks on his person by the uptight rich kids he tries to befriend on the first day of school, putting himself immediately and permanently on their radar. It's flat-out hysterical and I'm really not sure how James St. James wrote a book where so many terrible things happen to Billy that kept me so entertained. You should not laugh after horrific events. You should not laugh after horrific events. I could write it 5,000 times and if I went back and read the scenes again Billy's voice would still have me cracking up. I can't say if it's tissue-worthy, but I do know that Billy's smart-ass, intelligent voice and his personality make this book just A+ awesome. How he handles his move, attempts to garner acceptable from his classmates and seduce a totally hot jock were fantastic to read about. He does it with such verve and capslock, a whirlwind of knowing exactly who he is and exactly what he wants—and demanding it.

When I like a book like this I have a hard time finding things wrong. I am sure this book has flaws but am I going to find them? Absolutely not. I love this book for its straight-up honesty, excellent portrayal of what it means to be different in a place where different means you are, by definition, "other" and by definition, "wrong", the eternal debate over how much make-up is too much and whether these skin-tight pants with this wig actually works (although I have a feeling Billy and I would disagree on these subjects). The book doesn't lie; Billy is an out-and-proud teen, both with his sexuality and his preference for drag. Way back when Dewey recommended this to be, she reviewed it on her blog and said:

Billy wanted to appear very hetero, you see. He wanted to fly under the radar, get through his remaining time in high school unnoticed. So he decided to go with a manly look. And what is a perfect example of a real man’s man, in Billy’s view? Why, a pirate, of course! Yes, Billy went to his first day at a new high school decked out in pirate garb. Only, more Adam Ant than Johnny Depp.

The fact that Billy's idea of what image best represents masculinity is a pirate might give you a peek into his world view and show just how far outside his element he's in going into the novel and into his new school. He is woefully unprepared for the glass ceilings he's going to hit and throughout the course of the novel attempts to crash through them all: ending with taking the title of Homecoming Queen. Sounds totally outrageous? Yes! Sound totally fucking awesome? It's also that!

I fucking loved this books guys, I'm not even kidding, and not just because it has boys making out.

Disclaimer: this is not a book for uptight people. This is not a book for people who dislike gay or transgendered characters. This is a book about acceptance and tolerance and whatever GLBTQ buzz words you want to throw around. It is a story speaking for all the future drag queens who can't yet talk and who haven't found their voice. And you know, it mentions erections and gay sex, if those kind of things make you clutch pearls, well, um run away, because I don't have any smelling salts.

I loved this passage. I rolled:

"I'm pro-glamour and anti-khaki. I support total artistic freedom, and I'm against conservative backlashes. I intend to stamp out redneckism where I find it, and fight discrimination and Christian intolerance, using only my beauty, wit, and wig-styling skills. I'm going to try, single-handedly, to bring about an end to the hatred I'm found here at Eisenhower. ... TEASE HAIR, NOT HOMOS!"

Anyone who can resist Billy has more self-control than I do, that's for sure, but they probably wouldn't be reading this book in the first place. Great! MORE GLEE FOR THE REST OF US.

Read it! The end.

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Dairy Queen, Catherine Gilbert Murdock: This book got as much play in the kidlitosphere than RPatz naked at ComicCon would boast.

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. Not by much, though.

I heard about this book over and over and over and over and over and over—the picture is acquired, I trust. There were times when I would see reviews of this book cross my feed reader up to three times a day. I was bitter about missing out on this piece of awesome literature featuring cows and cow piles and crossing of the social tracks and a girl deciding she was just as awesome as the boys.

Then the copy I saw at my library got lost. For a year. It's actually still lost and the sequel is there but every time I ask they say, "I'm sure we have it..." No! You don't. It's lost. Deal with it and order a new copy because it makes the sequel worthless to me. LIBRARY. YOU ARE USUALLY SO AWESOME.

I'd like to talk about the original cover of the book. This is the cover I saw on the copy my library owned:



After reading the story I went back and stared at this cover for awhile and all I can figure out is that whoever was in charge of this cover didn't read the book, forgot about it in favor of jello shots at the bar downtown with friends, remembered at 3am as they stumbled out of the taxi that took them home, cursed about it as they stumbled into a new taxi and went back to work drunk off their ass, sat down at the computer, googled "cows" and "girls", slapped this horrendous piece of crap together in Photoshop with some filters and called it done. Whew! Cut it close that time!

I bet they told themselves it was gosh darn pretty, too, right before they passed out on their desk from too many rum and cokes, only to be discovered at 8am the next morning drooling on the copy of the manuscript they were supposed to read and didn't.

Perhaps I'm being overly harsh, but damn. Phoning it in doesn't begin to cover it. I have to create elaborate stories and reasons for why this cover sucks balls because I can't begin to imagine a reality in which anyone who had read this book could think this cover represented this book honestly. I'm tempted to drag out my fail boat icon over this. Almost.

The book didn't live up the hype for me story-wise. It wasn't bad, it wasn't OMG COWS WISCONSIN FOOTBALL THIS IS SO GREAT I MIGHT EXPLODE awesome, the second coming of whatever book where a girl tackles (har har) predominantly male spaces and comes out on top. It's a quiet story with a quiet narrator who changes (because of a boy but don't get me started) and becomes all she can be. It's slice-of-life, which is nice for a quick read where you don't want to run mental wind sprints.

I liked it! I just finished confused about what was so great so many people were gushing so many adjectives in its general direction. This is why I assume everything is crap. No expectations allowed.

My biggest gripe: I found the parents in this refreshing but also totally useless. They were refreshing as characters assuming the opposite gender role—an interesting parallel to DJ's story—but much of the time as people (adults! are these not ADULTS) I wanted to ram their heads into a wall and tell them to grow up and stop acting like they had a combined age of 12 between them. I wasn't very impressed overall with many of the adults and I'm not sure I am not being influenced by being raised in the country with adults just as hard-headed and d-baggy as the father in this story. At least he redeems himself by the end. Sort of.

Tangent: Of course, in a family of jocks the mom gets to be fat. Sure! Totally true to life! The whole thread rubbed me the wrong way. I am not rational about this. I found DJ's response to her mother's new found goal offensive. Her mother wants to get into shape and be healthy, all D.J. can think about is wow, at least she has time to lose weight now instead of working two jobs. I debated with myself over whether D.J. was commenting on the classism inherent in poor people not having time to work out and be in shape and decided she might be, after all, she comments on it in other spaces, too, but boy she chose phrasing that rubbed me the wrong way. As if losing weight has anything and everything to do with overall health! sd;flksd;fffssdkslkdf

I don't want to get too bogged down in that point, though, because I do believe D.J.'s thoughts throughout the book about her school and home situation, how her father can't really work and mother has to shoulder so much financial responsibility focus on a theme where sometimes people who are poor don't have the same chances as people who don't have to worry about it. The book's premise, D.J. writing it all down as a way to make up all her missed work in English, underline the issue for me. Poor people have to work twice as hard as middle-class folks just to get by and when there are tough times, those times are hellish and hard to come through. I can't remember where I saw this, but on a few blogs a few months ago I read commentary about how YA is littered with plenty of characters who are middling to upper class and don't worry about these things and how there wasn't enough books like this, with D.J.'s from around the country worrying about the same things. I can't remember the last YA title I read where the narrator worries about their home being sold off, piece by piece. I can't remember a story in which the narrator counted on a sports scholarship to get a higher education. I can't say with confidence I've read any (let's hope I have and my memory just sucks, otherwise I'll mourn this fact all night).

I wanted D.J. and Brian to wise up, find a secluded area and make out for hours, even as it hints that, oh hey, Brian is kind of a jerk. Talk about being conflicted. It was either: KISS HIM or PUNCH HIM IN HIS FACE or worse, both at the same time. They played off one another well; Brian, with his aversion to embarrassment, D.J.'s ability not be ashamed by living how she wants, and their twin desires to be successful. Want some character growth and change and also some enraging abusive boyfriend behavior? This story sprouts it like demented dandelions. The back cover might as well say "I HATE YOU BITCH *SNUB* OH BABY I DIDN'T MEAN IT I LOVE YOU".

Also, like I said, the father redeems himself...eventually.

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Wild Fangs, Yamagishi Hokuto: All right, so my favorite thing about this was Gido. He completely stole the show. Mao, Sy, I'm sorry. I am in this for the furry creature. On the other hand, I find the brother to be kind of an ass in this story! Gido and boys making out make up for this, though.

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Wild Rose, Yamagishi Hokuto: This is the prequel to Wild Fangs...I think? The time line is pretty confusing. I just went with it. TRUE STORY: even though Mao and Sy were sweet Kiri and Mikhail were more hilariously dense with each other (hilarity wins over sweetness!). Also, it felt like the more meaty story; the world-building was a little better. It was more like diving in than playing in the kiddie pool. Perhaps Wild Fangs was supposed to feel more shallow and naive on purpose, since Mao is the younger brother. Therefore, Kiri's story would be more serious (and how can it help with Mikhail in it). I think he might as well have BLOOD TYPE A tattooed on his forehead.

I liked Kiri and Camille, though. Did a good job of showing how Kiri was a good big brother. Kiri/Mao brother squishyness! I want it. >.>

Also, dude, do people really bend that way when having sex? *boggle*

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Sangen Tonari no Tooi Hito, Suzuki Tsuta: Boy gropes boy, boy runs away, both meet up again ten years later! WILL GROPING RESUME? All I can say about this one is that I wanted to to be way longer than it was. Also, I wish so many characters weren't drawn the same; I had a lot of trouble slotting people with their names. With this story I decided that I am really, really picky with how squishy the seme is and how useless and beggy the uke is. This is sad for me because it means I will probably not like much yaoi.

The story itself! This was so perfect. Ahhh, Noboru, you are so pretty.

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Koi Cha no Osahou, Yaya Sakuragi: I've read chapters of this before, but after I started reading other manga I tracked it down again. It's licensed now (under Tea for Two) and I am tempted to buy it just to have, because I love it so much. Possibly because this feels more like a story that a romance happens to fit into, rather than a romance that the author looked at and thought oh wait I better super glue some story onto the hot sex.

For the record, there's hot sex. TWO THUMBS UP?

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Skeleton Creek, Patrick Carman: As with most ghost stories, I was hesitant to read this one. I warned Patrick Carman that well, he might not like the conclusions I came to. I make it no secret I am a skeptic. There are few things outside of fantasy a majority of people take seriously. People don't truly believe in dragons or unicorns or trolls or fairies, but boy do people believe in ghosts and hauntings. I find most of it ridiculous thanks in large part of the shows about ghosts that feature on channels like sci/fi. Ghosts are not science fiction; they're just fiction. Most of the time they get paired with religion, to my constant horror and woe, as people seek SALVATION from the EVIL SPIRITS. It's all so hokey and overblown and clear that most ghost stories are shills for religion. I don't need to be converted today, thanks, Casper.

(Aside: who loved Casper? Oh, Devon Sawa...you were so dreamy.)

I feared I would get the same from this book. Videos and ghosts; like TAPS, but in book form. When I read the premise and visited this site warning bells started to go off in my head. Combining these things is a match made in madness. I thought, "Wonderful, an entire split media project showing a bunch of grainy, barely-there hints of something supernatural. Just what I've always wanted."

I'm hypocritical; I watch and love shows like Supernatural because it brings along some consequences and does an okay job of leaving out the meanderings about Jesus. Nothing gets me to throw down a story faster than holy-ghosting it up. It's not just stuff moving around and regular people scared by their own imaginations and then bringing in priests or worse (PSYCHICS) to cleanse their homes. There's blood and guts and fallout and true horror. I live in fear of ghost stories not because they're scary, but because they fail to own their fantasy elements and take themselves too seriously. They rely on scare tactics to operate to distract people: flashing lights, sudden loud noises and pareidolia. Oh, the pareidolia.

You're fiction, guys. Embrace it.

Everyone can imagine how successful those tricks are going to be on me! It's like a cheap date who gropes you inappropriately. Not impressed.

I thought I would dislike the story as per my automatic assumption everything is bad until it comes along and proves to me through old fashioned being awesome that it's definitely not bad. I know, I know, it's a cruel and cynical way to view the world, going around looking at everything like it's a pile, but it saves me heartache when I am inevitably disappointed. I could roll off the list of things I thought would be awesome that ended up breaking my poor fangirl heart. Better to be cautious.

Operating this way has the benefit of leaving me fucking impressed when something is actually as good as it claims to be. For the record, Skeleton Creek is pretty awesome; it does what it sets out to do really well. It might even kick some ass.

Yeah, I'll say it: I was planning be horrified and disappointed and I ended up pleased and bemused. It wasn't total crap? Wait, did I read the right book? This story brought me back from the brink of Split Media Disembowelment. I have some ideas of why it managed to do it that have less to do with me being easy and more to do with how the story is structured. I had problems, sure: the awkwardness of some of the supporting characters, the gratuitous abuse of Poe (really?), the terrible acting by anyone who wasn't Sarah...but who cares! There was an awesome mystery here, guys! There were some shady characters! There was effective foreshadowing! There was only a little force-feeding of the details!

The plot: Ryan is house-bound after an accident involving a dredge, his friend Sarah and failed super-sleuthing. His leg is out of commission, he has a wicked cast and a head wound and his parents, together with Sarah's parents, decide that he and Sarah are not good for each other. Too much chemistry, too much trouble and too big a chance that instead of acting like normal teens and having wild sex in the woods they'll go to the woods instead to wander around an abandoned dredge and die horrifically.

Note: I spent the first half of my reading picturing these guys every time Sarah mentioned the dredge:



Note: these are Drej, not a dredge. However, upon revisiting my old baddie friends from Titan A.E., (The Drej! They're pure energy!) I said, "wow, these main characters actually have something in common." That's a big fat spoiler right there, but the similarities! They're uncanny. Someone who has seen this film and read this book needs to come have this discussion with me. I'm awed! I am also impressed that the Titan A.E. folks could have been saying something about ENVIRONMENT DESTROYERS. Unlike Ryan, I love technology.

Ryan seems an odd stick to be in the mess. I don't want to call him a coward because he was in a position to get hurt in the first place by being somewhere dangerous at night. However, after I met him and watched Sarah's first video I quickly realized that probably there was more to Ryan's parents keeping him away from Sarah than just wild and crazy late-night adventures. It was interesting: a kid brave only in context of his headstrong, stubborn female best friend. As Ryan continues to write and Sarah keeps sending him videos the real mystery begins to take shape. I was pleased with the mystery of the town that Sarah and Ryan uncover as it implicates people they know and points to dangers bigger than ghosts. The best part wasn't the ghost giving Sarah the eye or picking on a lonely, forgotten video camera (note: scare tactic fail) or generally being an asshole: no, it's everything that happens outside the dredge. Carman did a bang up job of laying down solid foundations for the suspense in this story, starting with Ryan and Sarah's first attempt to discover the secrets of the dredge up until the revelation that perhaps there's not just one ghost in town, but several—none of which want to be discovered and one that must have made loads of prank calls in his day (totally had the breathing thing down).

Skeleton Creek is a character in its own right. I'm a sucker for towns-as-characters, especially small towns with big secrets. See: Hot Fuzz (bonus bro-mance) or Three Bags Full (sheepish shenanigans).

I was concerned about the acting before I started this, but I needn't have worried because Sarah is flat out awesome in her videos. I can't say the same about the other characters we see. We meet Ryan once, but the other character was trying so hard I felt he was going to break the fourth wall with his face. I've watched plenty of awesome acting and plenty of really bad low-budget B-movies and I think the actors in the B-movies were coming out on top if we wanted to do a comparison. Sound more fake, please! I'm sure it will help lend relevance to the piece of media you are making look like a joke.

TL;DR about the split media: I am not convinced this is the Next Era of Story-telling. I agree that it's a neat way to bridge the gap between print and the world of the internet and video, but it's not going to change the way the majority of people read books, even kids who tend not to read because they're making Youtube videos or watching porn on Xtube. The Kindle hasn't been The Second Coming of Literacy, either. The idea buys into a fallacy that all kids are plugged in. This just isn't true: I work with many high school kids who don't have the internet available at all who are just going to see this book as something out of reach. It's one thing for middle class white kids to get excited about this book and another thing for low-income kids or kids like Ryan, who says he hates technology, to get excited about this book. Kids would need to identify with his technological aversion and to do that they would need the book which turns them off because of technological aversions. I get just as boggled when someone tells me they hate using the internet. I know, right? It happens so often here; they do exist! Okay, so most of them are mouth-breathers and lost to the twin traditions of hunting trips with beer and early fatherhood, but they exist. Much like Sarah and Ryan have to work and follow clues this book asks the reader to do the same thing and this is just not going to be popular with people who don't use the internet in a very particular way. I would love to be proven wrong!

Meanwhile, I think this particular story works well with the videos because of the plot; it caters to it. Ryan and Sarah are separated. It feels natural to the situation; I'm not sure it would work otherwise. That's not something that can be switched to different premises over and over. This format is a bit of a one-trick pony for the series unless it can be rebooted. I was pleasantly surprised I didn't get tired of the back-and-forth, though. Plus!

The clues Sarah and Ryan find were the most fun. They both developed theories about what the clues meant. On one hand, sure, okay, they're smart kids. On the other, they're not Sherlock Holmes. Let's not make the search so straight forward. Their habit of hitting so close to the truth right off the bat had the side-effect of me figuring out most of what was going to go down halfway through the book. I let this go because I made a discovery about myself. Some people have a furry fetishes. Some people have leather and rope fetishes. Others like to collect thousands of terrifying dolls. I apparently have A Thing for secret societies. I'm the freak in the corner drooling over the copy of Inside Secret Societies: What They Don't Want You to Know which I can't afford. The best part of this book for me was the fact that all the most terrifying bits had nothing at all to do with ghosts, but the people left behind.

Here's how I felt about the end:

bottle_of_shine: I died inside a little. I did not hang on the cliff. I was BRUTALLY SHOVED OFF.
owlmoose: aaaaaaaaah *splat*
bottle_of_shine: pretty much

Is the ending too aggravating? It depends on how much people like open-ended stories. I don't mind them, but I'm a fanfic writer. I spend most of my spare time extrapolating from whatever canon I'm living in at the moment. At the very least, the clues are enough for the conscious reader to piece together the puzzle and then turn it around like a four-dimensional Rubix cube, but I can hear the outraged screams already.

Congratulations, Patrick Carman. You have written a really great mystery that is actually saying something and a ghost story that I do not want to set on fire (although that church channel thing was pushing it for me). Sweet.

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Otona no Manaa, Suzuki Tsuta: I think this story bemused me more than anything, because it comes out of nowhere and ends out of nowhere and feels like a part of something much bigger. Also, while being pushy is okay sometimes it can rub me the wrong way, which it did at one point here, where I just felt bad for the kid's poor boss. Bottom line: needs moar story (and also cowbell).

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Akanai Tobira, Suzuki Tsuta: The first story was okay, but I spent most of my time ticked off at Masouka begging. It was very strange and didn't feel like it fit, somehow? I am fairly sure this is a normal uke-reaction (yes? maybe?). The second story was sweet until the second half, then it decided, "lol rapist" and I uh, got pretty confused about what it was trying to say. Something got lost in translation, here or perhaps I'm just pickier than I thought.

I don't like rape used as shorthand character building. :(

The last story was the best (like a reverse Pretty Woman with um, guys having a lot of sex! Totally similar!) but my favorite was the extra and the end of it where Mori is like "I AM SURROUNDED BY GAY MEN!" :D Give in Mori, give in.

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Looks, Madeleine George: I should not have read this book so close to Keeping the Moon. That story ticked me off so I'm not sure if my displeasure with this book is because of my problems with how weight is portrayed in the aforementioned title or if I'm just tinhatting. Although I made a wish there about exteriors. Perhaps I should have been more specific.

This story is wrapped up in a pretty, pretty package. I have plenty of positives for the novel itself and the writing is at the top of the list. The language is amazing. I can climb to a mountain top to wave a big sign with the title on the book that says "READ FOR THE PROSE BUT BEWARE THE LAME UNDERTONES."

They are lame, too. The copy for the story grossly misrepresents who and what the story is about. When I finished, I browsed some pro-ana communities just to remind myself how much more seriously people take the stick-thin who are living on the edge of their own bones. I couldn't decide if Meghan's weight and her invisibility was a commentary on how society at large brushes obese people aside as an impossible problem to fix, how organizations focus on FIGHTING OBESITY and making it all about the weight instead of simply focusing on health. It's the latter that can create girls like both Meghan and Aimee. I was still undecided even after all that. Instead of making up my mind I ate some gummy lifesavers. Tasty and less frustrating than this novel.

Despite the fishbowl point of view it is never the kind of book it promises to be. Meghan is fat and Aimee is anorexic and the book claims to be all about their story and how they find each other and how they don't change, but maybe find a better path—one that's less lonely. Instead of the loneliness eating away at them in the form of their relationship with food their friendship gives them an outlet. In truth this is all about the thin girl and her woe and angst. Anything to do with Meghan is in the context of Aimee's story. It's easy to say, "Without Meghan, Aimee wouldn't have a story!" but I can't invest in that, either. We see so many more sides to Aimee than Meghan. To me, Meghan becomes invisible in much of the novel and that's not what's supposed to happen when a novel is telling you that person's story. Her life away from school was focused on a handful of times and it felt superficial—an afterthought.

I am tired of the fat girls playing second string. Know what it feels like? Well, overeating and binging are bad, sure, but anorexia is so much worse than that. Let's focus on the angst of the one that treats eating carrots like a religious experience and let the fat girl's story inform it. By the way, the thin girl is going to have a caring mother, but the fat girl is going to have a mother who only sees what she wants to see (that's almost a quote I wanted to punch something holy crap).

Meghan takes a backseat to Aimee and it's such a disappointment. She's characterized like a shadow, only coming out to a) stalk people or b) seek revenge. One plus: her talents for observation were fantastic because without them everything and everyone would have been flat. I'm not sure if that's a shining endorsement. Other than that, she's silent. The only one who makes her stand out? Aimee. What causes her to do so? Aimee's troubles and her own desire for revenge. All in all, I'm not sure how likable Meghan is as a person.

Am I interrogating the text from the wrong perspective?

This high school and these characters are every bitchy jock and oblivious, backstabbing girl from any teenage experience. The characterization is like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise toxic landscape of fat girls are always going to be second, even if books that claim to be about their story. There wasn't one scene; I waited the whole book for one scene where Meghan seems to be Meghan, not in context of where Aimee is and what she needs and how can I get her to be my friend and revenge time hooray and I never got it (even the scene with the teacher was Aimee-infused!).

Meghan is there is tell Aimee's story and she was necessary to the plot because she needed to be invisible and the best way to make her invisible was to make her fat, because fat people aren't really people, they're nonentities; they're like furniture, just in case you didn't know. Society erases the Other, erases the lumps and erases the curves and leaves a space small enough for only a certain kind of person that's fit to be visible. There are hints of how Aimee will recover, hints of how Aimee's mother will make things better, how Meghan will be her answer, but there is none of this foreshadowing for Meghan. She only gets to be an entity in Aimee's story of finding her way back from the brink. It's enraging. Did George mean to do this? Did she mean for this to be a critique as well as a story of girls finding a connection that will take them away from harmful habits? I can't decide.

I actually find I agree with Becky, the only reviewer I can find who seems to agree with me about Meghan. She said:

While I wanted to love this book—really wanted to love it—I found myself increasingly annoyed by a few things. Nothing major. But the fact that "the fat girl" was always "the fat girl" and sometimes the "friendless fat girl" or the "lonely fat girl" but hardly ever just Meghan was something that really really really really annoyed me. Fat wasn't only a label, it was the defining characteristic for Meghan. And that just doesn't sit well with me.

Although I disagree with Becky that this sort of thing is "nothing major." This ripping away of the identity of people who are fat is a major problem. When you let someone take away your name, that's serious, because you let them take you and Meghan had a terrible problem letting the other kids unname her. George might have done this on purpose to highlight how invisible she was; so much so she didn't even think of herself as a person, but I don't think it worked in the favor of that end at all. It's just frustrating that I haven't seen anyone else comment on this.

I am glad for the end, which at least suggests, if not a happy resolution, a better beginning for both girls in the context of their emotional health, but I cannot get past how much Meghan is used for her talents and skills, how her weight is a negative but yet still an asset. This is not really Meghan's story; this is Aimee's story. I think it's an important distinction the copy should have made clear. Simply because both girls are in the book does not mean the story told reflects both of them equally. Looks does not do that.

I will continue to pretend there is more social critique in this book than their actually is. Fooling yourself with literary lies: RECOMMENDED.

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Nemurenu Yoru ni Nomikonda Hoshi, Ootsuki Miu: I have decided that this art type is not my favorite. It's too soft, I think, and the characters end up reminding me of what a hybrid cross between boy, fairy and elf might look like. Story: okay! Ending everything abruptly with sex: um.

Also, why was there so much crying! It was so odd.

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Battle Royale, Koushun Takami: The first day I read this book it gave me nightmares because I read it right before bed. I do not recommended this. I am a moron. Please learn from my mistakes unless reading about kids dying horrifically at the hands of sadistic adults and crazed classmates is enjoyable.

For all its claims about being a science fiction dystopia, I really think this should fall somewhere outside dystopia and on into horror. I knew the book was about a bunch of kids getting dumped on an island and being forced to kill themselves—that's the premise I've been aware of for awhile—but I didn't know about the tools the government used to trap them and keep them and how they forced them to move around with zones.

The translation of the book is frankly, awful. I don't know if it's the only one available, but if it is, holy shit. Perhaps it's a translation issue with the story not coming across in English the same way as it was written in Japanese, or if it's just a lazy job, but it was so hard to follow and keep reading. The prose was flat and dull, there was no verve to the writing at all. Are translators supposed to add verve? Are they allowed or are they simply exchanging words with no leeway allowed? If it's the latter, I really think it hurts the book's readability.

I liked that all the characters were focused on and built up, even when you knew they were about to die horrifically. The point of view was odd, though, a mixture of at least three (third person, third person omniscient, first, second).

I loved Shogo, guys. He was my favorite, with Shinji being a close second. Shuya and Noriko were good, too, but I find it curious out of all the people we learn a lot about, we really don't learn as much about Shogo, Noriko and Kazuo as we do about the others. In the end, the game itself—why the government played it, what it meant to them and what it meant to the people—was intriguing. I'm not sure I bought it. I was so sad at the end. :(

I liked the last two lines the best out of the whole book. I think this is a book best read with someone so you can discuss the points Shogo brings up throughout the story. It's very thinky and hey! Cult hit.

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Total: 14/26

The full list is here if anyone cares to know what I think of the books I haven't reviewed yet. I will surely tl;dr at you in the comments!

What did everyone else read last month? What book(s) were your favorite? What should I be reading that I've missed (besides the remaining 30+ books on my to-be-read shelf?).