subverting the text

Let's put all the cards on the table: I read 48 books this year plus some comics. That's pretty shameful and there's no good reason for it! I am filled with the pungent scent of my failures. I know FFEX contributed to this, and also work being super busy starting in July and it never, ever let up, plus joining OTW and the wrangling team, getting ready to go back to school in January, etc. Now I'm in the middle of the newsletter reboot, ha ha, I'm never going to read more than 100 books a year again.( Read more... )

( stuff I did not like! )

( nerdy stats! )

*Not really.

It seems I am going to rock the boat with my review, because I didn't like this book much and everyone else I've seen has loved it to itsy bitsy pieces. The people who don't are usually complaining that it doesn't hold a candle to The Catcher in the Rye, it's too porny, or it's just boring. I disagree with all of these assessments except The Catcher in the Rye charge, but only because I read that book when I was 12 or something and it went completely over my head and I've never tried to pick it up again.

This is a good book. I'm not joking, internets! It's really good, but I'm troubled by some of the parallels I see in it, between the characters, both alive and dead. Also, I never connected much to Adam's story, whether because my struggles as a teen were just so different that I wasn't able to really empathize or for some other reason, but it never happened. I felt sorry for him, but never felt the snap of "Yes, this." like I have with other troubled characters. There was always a strange distance between me and the emotions of this story. Also, I'll be honest: I don't believe in ghosts, and because I could never decide whether the ghost was real or a product of Adam's mental breakdown, I was just unsettled and couldn't lay into the story. Apparently I can't handle the ambiguity. It was too real to treat as a ghost story, and therefore for me, a fantasy, and yet I couldn't shake the fact that it was all too real and therefore, ridiculous, because ghosts don't exist so how is any of the possible! I demand science to explain this dead space phenomena! Sometimes, I wish I could turn the skeptic in my brain off.

Truth: Adolescence is a difficult time. Growing up, becoming an adult, dealing with changes in body and perspective and the amount of expectation is never easy to deal with, and One for Sorrow introduces us to Adam McCormick, who understands all too well the hardship of being a teenager, trapped between childhood and adulthood with so many paths to choose from. Adam's future seems grim; plagued by troubled family he sees no joy in, a brother who hurls abuse, parents who fight constantly, and a lonely existence with few friends—where does he turn for brightness, the hope that he'll come through okay?

Added to the stresses of life in the Rust Belt, the molestation and murder of Jamie Marks shocks the town and Adam even more, a boy Adam felt he might have been friends with. At the same time, an accident that alters the fabric of his family strikes, not unexpectedly, and Adam is thrust into a place he doesn't understand or feel prepared for.

Soon after, he attaches himself to Gracie, who discovered Jamie's body, as well as Jamie himself through an act that further alienates him from his family; I think not knowing it makes it have more impact, though I failed to get that impact. I was mostly confused. Jamie's influence and skewed sort of friendship comfort Adam in the beginning, and instead of the void between child and adult, Adam finds himself between life and death, slipping further and further away from Gracie, his family, and truly, and feelings at all.

This story perfectly captures a place and a time and a family caught in the throes of an unforgiving, changing country. Adam's father is constantly out of work, and his failures only exacerbate his problems already obvious to Adam and any onlooker. Adam's mother is in no position to be an emotional support structure for either of her children—for her story is almost a mirror to Adam's. Both deal with almost parasitic influences, both strange and almost unbelievable, and the book tells the story of how they lose their way and try to find their way out. As much as this is a coming-of-age story, it is also a story about how hardship can strike at any time, because life is unfair and unpredictable, not just being a teenager, and how easy it is to fail and fall, over and over. People can attempt to pull you out, but in the end there is only one person that can successfully do so.

We come to my issue with the book with Adam's mother, Linda. I mentioned parasitic influences, and feel that although their stories mirror each other as they both struggle with a ghost, or something similar to one, that I was...not angry, but nervous about the fact that for Linda, her anchor was a woman, and for Adam, his was another boy. Jamie is not a healthy influence for Adam, as much as Adam sees he and Gracie's discovery of him helping him to live after death when he was mostly invisible before. Linda suffers the same in Lucy, and in Lucy's doting there isn't a homoerotic charge like Jamie's interactions with Adam, but... I really fail to have the right words that two relationships between people of the same gender were so strange and convoluted and vaguely uncomfortable for me, especially seeing as how they still felt this way at the end of the story, even given the characters we meet there. It's a small quibble, and one I can't explain very well. I have issue with female relationships being framed as automatically fucked up, and women being characterized as parasitic sluts, I suppose—and found the female friendship here pretty gruesome on more than just the level it's supposed to be gruesome on. It pinged me as such a stereotypical out and I was immediately disappointed that Adam's story was rich and emotional and Linda's story ended with "she wants cock! EH OH EL."

Boring. Predictable. The only redeeming feature was Linda herself, and the resolution to her personal story.

Regardless, this is a true story, a sad story, honest and gripping. Is it a ghost story or is the ghost a representation of something else, something inside Adam? I couldn't decide, but maybe that's the point. The writing is excellent, the sense of place immediate and almost tactile in the prose. The backdrop against suffering rural Ohio is a stark landscape where Barzak draws a starker picture yet of a family in turmoil, beset by their own failures and a world so unfair and unforgiving that Adam eventually runs away with Jamie to the end, giving up on his ties to the living who have so let him down, becoming more and more ghost-like. Adam's choice is to whether to find a way through the middle, to choose life or death—to choose whether to accept life, and the terror and the unknown, just as Jamie must accept death, and the terror and the unknown.

One for Sorrow is bleak, but in the end its message is one of hope, through the good times and the bad, and how it will always be there, even if we fall prey to weakness, or loneliness, and perhaps especially, the failures of other people. It was an interesting read regardless of my issues with it; recommended if psychological stories are an interest.

Why yes, I am about to boggle the world with a positive review! ( Read more... )

I don't believe in fairies, and you better believe I'm not going to clap at any point in this post. ( Read more... )

This is a (slightly modified) version of a review I did for a podcast, because the podcast version was TERRIBLE WRITING and I am mortified it exists on the internet anywhere, even in audio form and I'm REALLY glad my audio input no longer works so I cannot inflict myself on ears around the world ever, ever, ever again. Internets, I am so sorry. Please forgive me; I will never commit such an atrocity again! /o\

My feelings about this book have changed a little since I read it. I appreciate more the fact that the romance is interracial and it's not a big fucking deal. It's just there and it's not a problem, it's just who the character is—and that's positive and kindhearted and compassionate. The other feeling is less than complementary, though. This book is too quiet, where all the emotions are a little distant, a little muted, and therefore at times emotionally inaccessible to the reader. Upon reflection I would love to see Wilson work in settings with more oomph, dig a little deeper—but in other stories. This was supposed to be a gentle story, though, and while gentle has its place, for those of us used to the rough tumble of GLBTQ YA in its current form, and sudden intake of breath at a situation in a story that completely tips the reader over into the world and into that character's place, this story didn't do that much, if at all. I can't judge it harshly because I'm not the person who might need this book, the quiet discovery of happiness after misery this story provides amid a riotous life of confusion and societal peril. I'm not that person—but I'm sure they exist. I hope they find this book; it deserves to be found. ( Read more... )

Out of the Pocket, by Bill Konigsberg: Oh, Renay, you say. Not another coming out novel. Do we really need another one? Is it necessary to tread this ground over and over and over? Yes, cynical observer! It is necessary and will continue to be necessary until things like Day of Truth, which I will not link because I am against raising the Google Rank of complete bigots, cease to exist.

I put forward the claim that Bill Konigsberg was quite justified in this simple tale of misery, panic, change, and growth; these problems aren't gone and he highlights many of the places in our society they still exist: high school is just one of them. They won't be gone for a long time, especially in professional male sports. Konigsberg confronts the fact that yes, there are people that will out, and out proudly, and not regret their actions, and will do it to feel more important or gain something from another person's suffering. Out of the Pocket reminded me of how people consider celebrities to be public property (see: ohnotheydidnt), in a way—if someone is in this particular social position, does it mean we deserve to know everything about them? This and more if you read this book with bonus subtle romance. Sign up now while supplies last!( Read more... )

I did so much better this month. I caught my reading bug from whenever it went to hide and finally found a good groove. I've noticed that when I mean to read at work during my breaks I can never quite manage it; it's pretty frustrating. I would have read a lot more if I had goofed off less (this applies to everything, actually, but I'm working on it). I finished two review books, which I am glad I managed. They were both good! One a surprise, the other predictable but comfortable. Now to write/polish the reviews for them. The Knife of Never Letting Go is done, I just have to tweak it and take out of me-me-me.

1. The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
2. Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan
3. Something, Maybe, Elizabeth Scott
4. Out of the Pocket, Bill Konigsberg
5. Graceling, Kristin Cashore
6. My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed most of these books. Because everyone already knows how much I loved The Knife of Never Letting Go, I also really loved Graceling (chaosraven, I think you might really like this one). Tender Morsels was fabulous and My Most Excellent Year cracked me up. Overall, it was just a great month for books. Right now, I'm reading One for Sorrow, which is another review book.

At least I made a dent in my reading pile! :D

I heard about this book last year, not through buzz about the book itself, but instead because some dude reviewed it and managed to insult the whole of the yalitosphere:

If I have one quibble, it is that I think it should be sitting proudly on the shelf next to these books, rather than being hidden away in the "young adult" ghetto. There's been a lot of fury among authors recently about the proposal to "age-band" children's books, but in a way they're too late. The real disaster has already happened. It's called "young adult" fiction.

Stay classy, Frank Cottrell Boyce. Stay classy.

The part he did get right is that The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy, is fantastic. Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown, the last town, full of all the world's got left: men. It's full of men whose lives were forever changed by the war with the Spackle, a war that ended with a germ that killed all women and left behind Noise. Noise is everywhere; the thoughts of men, overlapping, every dream and memory and hope and lie broadcast in every other man's head. There's no escape from it at all. Animals, too, talk and are heard. Todd lives in Prentisstown with his dog, Manchee, and his guardians, Ben and Cillian, as the last boy. In one month, he becomes a man. One day, that's like any other day, he and Manchee visit the swamp. There, they find something and everything changes.

They find silence. ( Read more... )

It took me a month and a half to get through this book. The beginning was slow going, but I'm done! Yes!

( Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (incidental spoilers for The Lies of Locke Lamora) )

Watch me cry my bitter tears, just as I felt like doing when I reached the last fifty pages of the book and Lynch decided to take a time out and punch me in the soul.

The next book, Republic of Thieves, has been moved back. We probably won't see it until 2010, but with the recent hate-on's for authors who don't finish on time and get the virtual version of a back-alley beat down, I say: take your time, Scott Lynch. Take your time.

(Seriously, that first link broke my heart for the author. My HEART. I blame the cartoon.

I also picked up Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. The picture-book is ten lines long; it's an interesting study in how children process anger (dude, who doesn't want to be the boss? Seriously.). I think it's interesting they're making a movie out of it; I think I am probably attached to the trailer more for the song in it, "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire. Trailers: good for discovering new music.

I also finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but I am thinking about it. Now I am going to go pick up The Knife of Never Letting Go and get lost for awhile.

PS: 102 books! SWEET.