Short Cuts

Not much to say about these books:
            A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

 In this Discworld book for children starring the young witch Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men (basically the toughest fairies of all time), Tiffany moves away from her home to study with another witch, but doesn’t realize that she is being chased by an ancient evil. Granny Weatherwax makes an appearance. Like everything Pratchett writes, it’s really funny, but it’s not his best and there are actual chapter divisions and fewer ridiculous footnotes. I love his footnotes.

Crazy Beautiful by Lauren Baratz-Logsted       (YA)

This novel is a modern retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story, with the Beast being Lucas, who accidently blew off his hands in a chemical explosion and is starting over at a new high school. Aurora is the Beauty, who has moved after her mother’s death. It’s short and sweet, but I feel like the author could have gone an awful lot further. The story isn’t particularly fable-like, with the first person point of view switching between the two main characters, so I feel like there could have been more realism around Lucas’ disability. Yes, Lucas does talk about wishing he could touch Aurora, and his shame around the explosion, but I would have liked some more information about how he used his hooks to do everyday things. Sometimes, I honestly didn’t understand how he was doing certain things. As well, Aurora could have had more personality. She’s beautiful and she’s kind, but because she’s new she’s going to go around with the popular crowd. I believe that, but I can’t believe that she doesn’t have more defining features.

                Thank you, Jeeves by P.G Woodhouse

                I usually love P.G. Woodhouse. I love the wacky hijinks, I love the silly names and I love how incredibly smart and sane Jeeves is, especially since he’s the personal valet to the (though often engaged) permanent bachelor Bertie Wooster. Most of this novel gives me exactly that, but unfortunately the entire last half of this plot revolves around black face. Bertie and other characters end up with boot polish on their faces, while they are masquerading as black musicians and can’t take it off for various comic reasons.  It’s a novel from the 1930’s, so it’s not entirely surprising but it did really ruin my enjoyment of the novel. Bertie is mistaken for the devil a few times with his face covered in boot polish, and although I hope it's because boot polish simply looks unnatural on skin, I don't think that was where Woodhouse was going with it.

The Quiet American

The Quiet American by Grahame Greene

Sometimes there isn’t a fight between good and evil. Sometimes there are just varying levels of evil and the reader has to decide what is worse. The Quiet American is a story about the moral complexities of life, and how a simple, reductionist view of a conflict, of a country, or of a person is never possible.

 Set in Vietnam  during the French colonial war, the novel is told from the point of view of Thomas Fowler, a British journalist. He doesn’t seem to do much reporting, for he spends a lot of time smoking opium with Phuong, his lover.  She is beautiful and decidedly much younger than him, but we never really get to understand her, mainly because Fowler doesn’t understand her either.   Then Pyle arrives and changes everything. Pyle is an American idealist. He believes that a Third Force will save Vietnam and since he’s part of the (soon to be) CIA, he has the power to put his ideals into action. He also loves Phuong and since he is younger (and unmarried) he decides that he would be a better lover for her. He could marry her and take her away to America, while Fowler still has a wife in England.

The clash in the story is between cynicism and idealism, with cynicism being the voice for actual, individual people. Pyle’s idealism and innocence  allow him to see civilian casualties as necessary in the grand scheme, while Fowler is distraught over the carnage and knows that no matter what happens, France cannot win.  Metaphors abound, with Fowler and Pyle representing the old colonialism and the new imperialism respectively and Phuong being both a woman they love and a country that must be won. Fowler always tries to escape his colonial ties by having no opinion, by simply reporting, but even he cannot escape taking a side.  As the French captain says, “It’s not a matter of reason or justice. We all get involved in a moment of emotion and the we cannot get out. War and Love – they have always been compared.”

I decided to read this one because I noticed that there were spies and opium addicts in it. I mean, I was also recommended it by Sarah, who knows her books. But I am a sucker for spies. My love for John le Carré doesn’t need to be documented, and the flawed perceptions of an addict can add completely unexpected twists and turns to the story. I liked this one a lot, and I’m still pulling the ending apart in my head. Has it all been done for moral reasons, or was it simply for love? And if it was for love, was it something real, or imagined that will all fall apart soon enough?

Going Bovine

Going Bovine by Libba Bray  (YA)

                I haven’t really been reading much because of exams, but this book  got me through the drab, desperate days of December.

Cameron is a slacker in every sense of the term. He doesn’t try hard. He doesn’t really have friends, and he can’t pay enough real attention to the people in his life to really get to know them and try to understand them. All he really does is smoke pot and make fun of the music of the Grande Tremeldo, who sings Portuguese love songs in a ridiculously high falsetto. His mom doesn’t really do anything, his sister is too popular to talk to him, and his physicist father may be having an affair with his research assistant. Cameron isn’t really happy with the life he has, but he’s too lazy and apathetic to try to turn things around. Then he gets diagnosed with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, also known as Mad Cow.

He learns is that his brain is basically turning to Swiss Cheese and he is definitely going to die, very, very soon. Then, like all human beings, he gets mad. He’s only sixteen, and he hasn’t really done anything , which is partially because he is young, but also partially because of his own unwillingness to really live. Unfortunately, he’s now stuck in the hospital, hooked up to IV fluids. That’s when he meets Dulcie, a pink-haired Angel who tells him that only he can save the world. The only way to do it is to grab his hospital roommate Gonzo, a hypochondriac little person with a ridiculously overprotective mother, and go on the run to find Dr X, the only person who can stop the end of the world, and might even be able to save Cameron’s life. Cameron grabs Gonzo and goes on a road trip from New Orleans to Disney World, even picking up the Nordic god Balder, transfigured into a garden gnome, on the way.

This book is very surreal and definitely is inspired by Don Quixote, as it’s the book that Cameron was reading in class. Unfortunately, I never got very far in Quixote (but if someone could recommend a good translation I could try ) so I may be missing countless references. I think the key point though is that it’s only as he’s dying that Cameron tries to live. And boy does he live. He finds a  community where everyone has to be happy and equal in every single way, and he helps bring it down by exposing it as the totalitarian regime that it is. He’s a wanted fugitive, he falls in love, he plays the drums on stage in New Orleans. He fights the fire giants that he sees everywhere, and he faces the Wizard of Reckoning. Key to it all, is that everything might just be in his head. All of his adventures might be the last of his brain cells dying off, transforming his memories into some strange story that he’s telling himself. The question is: does it even matter as long as he’s having an actual life?

                I definitely cried, which I did not expect. There’s just something about  people taking chances and being good to each other that makes me sob. That’s just the way I work. I didn’t expect to like it so much, but I just love the surreal and the strange elements of the story. It was wild and crazy but it all made sense.  Cameron grew on me, as he slowly realized what he had been missing out on, and that life is about taking risks and being with people. And it’s such a bittersweet thing to learn, as you’re going to die.

The Manual of Detection

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

Imagine a city with a rather strange detective agency. There are the watchers, who meet the clients, the detectives who investigate, and the clerks, who make the detective’s notes into tidy little reports. The clerks and the detectives are never allowed to meet.  As well there are the archives of the agency, including one of mysteries, one of solutions, and one of… well that’s sort of the secret at the heart of the book, so I can’t really tell you.

Charles Unwin is the clerk to the best detective in the agency, Travis Sivart, but when Sivart goes missing, Charles is promoted to detective and gets his office. Unwin really doesn’t want to be involved with this sort of thing. He feels that he’d be best as a clerk, so he decides that his first and last case should be to find Sivart and get him back on the job. Things aren’t that easy though. He’s dreamt that Sivart was in his bathtub and told him to look at chapter 18 of the manual, but it’s non-existent in his copy. He gets a secretary to help him with his work, but she’s narcoleptic and always falls asleep. He goes to meet his watcher, but discovers him dead. To top it all off, as Unwin investigates he discovers that Sivart’s three greatest cases: The Three Deaths of Colonel Baker, The Oldest Murdered Man and The Man Who Stole November Twelfth, were undeniably solved completely wrong.

The book is surreal and strange and it drew me into its odd little world. There’s a cast of wild characters including the separated Siamese twin  gangsters, Jasper and Josiah Rook,  who never sleep and Edwin Moore, the museum guard who tries to forget everything he hears.  There are also some incredibly beautiful odd moments, like crowds of sleepwalkers arriving at a grand mansion and gambling away their alarm clocks, and the man who types down everything everyone says. The revelations of the story make sense in the logic of this book, and the climax is genius and genuinely thrilling.

I have a soft spot in my heart for both surrealism and mysteries so I loved this book, especially Unwin and his discomfort with being a detective. His love for logic and reason has made him cut out parts of Sivart’s reports, so the cases have only one obvious answer. However, once he learns how wrong the solutions are, he realizes that he’s probably the only one with all the information, and that his need for reason has made him lose sight of the irrational nature of life. The overarching theme of the book is that mystery is necessary, and that logic can be restrictive and even wrong. The facts may speak for themselves, but they can be lying.

A complete and total shock.

I wrote out my top 10 YA books last April when a request came up (maybe on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books?) for Persnickety Snark's Blog. I completely forgot about it until today, when I came upon the top 100 list.

The main reason why I'm shocked? I'm quoted a few times in the posts about the individual books. I think that's what happens when you say that you're a future librarian.

 Anyway, if you love YA then you'll love this list

Also, I really am a future librarian... I'm working on my MLIS and everything.

Sometimes we’re always real same-same

 Sometimes we’re always real same-same by  Mattox Roesch

             There is a huge amount happening in this novel, and I’m not sure that all of it comes together. Cesar, 17 moves from Los Angeles, when his mom decides that she wants to return to where she came from: Unalakleet, Alaska or Unk for short. Cesar really doesn’t want to live in such a small town, where there are no real stores and the only job going is counting fish in the stream. However, his life in LA wasn’t exactly that great.  His brother ran with a gang, but is now in prison for killing two fifteen year-olds,  so Cesar hasn’t seen him for years. His father has left his mom, and doesn’t really seem to care much for Cesar. As well, Cesar has been running with a gang for the past few years, and he’s done something horrific that he doesn’t feel that he can admit to anyone.

            When he gets to Unk, he meets his cousin Go-boy, who has huge reserves of energy and enthusiasm. Go-boy is the kind of guy that you want to know because he cares about everyone and he always tries to make a difference. However, as the novel continues, it becomes apparent that Go-by isn’t the stable presence he appears to be. Go-boy’s step-sister Kiana, a math genius who still keeps on messing up, is a possible love interest for Cesar, but she really seems to hate his guts.

             Go-boy is really interesting because as Cesar starts to build a proper life for himself, Go-boy seems to be falling apart. Go-boy has a strong personal philosophy about how people should behave and how they should be good, but there seems to be something wrong with him. On one hand, he runs for mayor and makes t-shirts for the entire community that say same-same, indicating how much he cares for and loves his town. On the other hand, he starts writing the 100 reasons why he loves Valerie all over town, but she isn’t interested in him anymore. In fact, she’s become scared of him.

            I’ll say it again; there is a huge amount of things happening in this book. First there is Go-boy and the question of his mental health. Then there are the issues within the Eskimo community of Unk (As a Canadian I feel really weird typing Eskimo, but apparently it’s the only word that really covers the two native communities in Alaska).  There aren’t a ton of jobs, and the old jail still exists as a symbol of some of the past traumas within the community. As well, there is a horrific incident in which a father comes home drunk and accidently puts his four year old son in a coma.  Then there is the fact that Cesar is unsure if anyone can know him, unless they know what he’s done. In LA, as the situation between the two gangs kept on escalating exponentially, he participated in the gang rape of a rival leader’s girlfriend.

          There are some really interesting ideas in the novel, especially when Go-boy is talking about religion or community. However, the novel comes from Cesar’s point of view, which means that the plotting is confusing, as we discover things that happened months ago only when Cesar finds out. As well, Cesar’s not the most organized of story tellers.  I enjoyed this book, but I kept on flipping to the end, or back to the beginning to figure things out.  I did like that this book tried to really show how life is in a small town fishing village in Alaska. The only other book that I’ve read recently that dealt with the North (from a Canadian perspective) was Consumption by Kevin Patterson. I will say that the end of the novel moved me, but it took me a long time to get there.

There's a darkness inside of you

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta     (YA)

                Francesca is having a tough time. Since her all-girls school ends in year 10, she has to start all over at a new school. However, her mother doesn’t want her to start just anywhere. She is one of the pilot project of 30 female students to attend a traditionally all-boys school, St Sebastian’s. All her friends from before have gone off to another school, while she is stuck with the outcasts from St Stella’s. As well, none of the boys like having the  girls at the school, and the school itself has been fairly unwelcoming by choosing to put on Stalag 17 and have no sports teams that the girls can join. On top of all this, Francesca’s mother, usually the loudest one in a room, won’t get out of bed.

                 Just to make things clear, depression doesn’t just affect the individual, although that’s the most noticeable thing. When someone you love is depressed, it can be absolutely devastating.  It sometimes feels like that person has disappeared, and you have no idea if they’ll ever return.  It’s painful for family and friends, and they can feel lost and unsure of how to help or what to do.

Francesca is used to having an incredibly loud and bubbly mom who she fights with constantly, but who is always there in the end.  In fact, her mom was one of her constants, always telling Francesca that she is hiding part of herself from her friends and cheering her on when she was wild and out there.  Now Francesca has to fight for her mom, who barely seems interested in her own life. She has to try to keep her family together, take care of her brother and try not to blame her father for her mother’s illness. On top of that, she’s expected to lobby for the girls at school, get good grades and not cause too much fuss in the classroom.

I love the fact that Francesca is so wrong about her own life. The girls who she thinks are her friends never liked the real her, they only liked her once they’d taken her down a few notches. Instead, at St Sebastian’s, she becomes close friends with girls she never would have talked to before: wild Siobhon, radical feminist Tara, and nerdy accordion player Justine. She also finds that though the boys are sometimes gross, they also have hidden depths  and can be wonderful friends.  It turns out that not everything about a person can be seen at first glance. Fairly obvious, but it’s nice to be reminded.

There’s also the standard love plot, but I did like how it involved a lot of mistakes and horrific embarrassments. Finding out that the boy you kissed has a girlfriend is pretty humiliating. I didn’t really care too much about the love story, but I thought it was necessary for Francesca. I find myself at the point at which I’m starting to believe that love (at least in books) is just a way to help people to distract themselves from the harder times in their lives, which is a worthy goal in itself.

Finally, I loved the fact that depression did not suddenly disappear in time for the climax, or even in time for the end of the book. Life isn’t that easy, though it can and usually does get better. There will be setbacks and delays, and people will need you to be there for them. It's just the way things are, but it's nice to know that in advance.

Addendum to Libraries as a Safe Space

  I'm not sure that I got my point across before, and I'd rather use someone who is better with words. My belief in empathy is best said by these two authors.

John Green in Paper Towns, using Woody Guthrie as a starting point: Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else[...] But imagining being someone else is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.


Kurt Vonnegut: But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

Libraries as a Safe Space

               Last week I attended a workshop on Libraries as a Safe Space. There was a quick talk on cyber bullying but the main focus was mainly on making the library a safe place for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer/questioning) clients. Some scary things came up. In a study by School Library Journal, 73% of public and school librarians have admitted to not purchasing certain books for children and young adults, even though they are best sellers and/or award winners, because they were afraid that they would be challenged by parents. They self-censored  to prevent any fuss. Books about sex were the most likely not to be bought, and unfortunately, since homosexuality is seen by society (or these librarians) as inherently sexual, books with openly homosexual characters were also less likely to be bought. Oh and if you’re looking for young adult novels about Trans youth, there are apparently only three that have been written. If there are only three books that deal with the subject, it seems unlikely that every library will have a copy anyway, so at the workshop we were told to go out and write another one. I had actually read one of the three in the past two years, Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger, and I thought it was really honest and funny.

             There are tons of issues with self-censorship, the main one being that it's a failure in one's duty as a librarian. Obviously, there are going to be LGBTQ clients at any public library. They are going to want to have access to books that reflect their lives. They are going to need access to books that help them understand issues, especially if they don’t have the acceptance of their families.  Since these clients exist, there need to be books for them, end of story.

            For me, however, clients need access to the books for a less obvious reason. Stories do so much for us, especially when we’re young. Of course they can help us escape reality, but they also help us understand reality as well. They put us in other people’s heads and give us the tools to help us understand other people, as well as to understand ourselves. In a course on slavery and the Middle Passage I read an article stating that empathy is dangerous and destructive because it is satisfied through another person’s suffering.  I don’t agree. I cannot see another option for mutual human understanding other than empathy, because logic only does so much for us. Straight and cis-gender teens also need access to these books in the hopes that if they read them, they’ll be more understanding of other people. 

It’s an old self-censorship checklist from the New York Library Association, but it just might help.

http://www.nyla.org/index.php?page_id=444

Does anyone deserve to be treated so badly?

The Treasure Map of Boys  by E. Lockhart  YA

I was so impressed by The Disreputable History that I decided that I had to read something else by Lockhart. Unfortunately, the Education Library doesn’t have a huge range of books. This is the third in the series of Ruby Oliver books, and while I haven’t read the other two, there is enough background material to help me understand what is going on. In the past, Ruby’s boyfriend, Jackson, left her for her best friend, Kim.  Understandably, Ruby was pretty heartbroken about this and when Jackson kissed her while Kim was away, she went with it. Kim was disgusted with Ruby when she found out, and turned all her friends against her. Without any friends, Ruby starts to suffer from panic attacks and while in therapy she writes down the names of all they boys she’s had crushes on. Her ex-friends find the list, photocopy it, and leave it all over her school. Everyone at school assumes that this a list of boys Ruby has slept with, and that she’s a slut, resulting in her getting tormented in various ways. The Treasure Map starts after all this has occurred.

 Ruby has managed to make two new friends, Meghan and Nora, and there is a boy who thinks she’s lovely, Noah. However, Nora is completely head over heels about Noah, and since she’s one of Ruby’s only friends, Ruby feels that she can’t date Noah. As well, Jackson has finally broken up with Kim and he wants to be friends (or more) again. In case this isn’t too much, Ruby has been fired from her job at the petting zoo because she tells off a drunk man who puts his child in danger around the animals. Ruby’s life is just a mess and she has very few good things in it.

What I really liked about this book is the way it deals with slut shaming. It’s a real thing that happens to tons of girls and there is nothing similar that happens to boys. Ruby hasn’t done anything other than kiss someone else’s boyfriend, but that’s enough for everyone to hate her and assume the worst of her. Obviously, it wasn’t a good thing to have done, but it was a mistake and she feels horrible for having done it. People do mess up, but girls and women have to deal with the consequences for so much longer than boys and men do. I could really feel Ruby’s loneliness as she hears her ex-friends in class. She’s just managed to rebuild some sort of life out of what has happened and now there’s the chance that it’s going to be destroyed all over again because of the boys in her life.

One other thing I loved about Ruby is that although she’s a feminist, she admits to being boy crazy. She really likes being in a relationship and this makes it harder for her to ignore the sparks between her and Noah. I just find it interesting to read about a character who admits that her values don’t fall exactly in line with her desires and needs. It’s pretty realistic and I feel that teens sometimes need reminders that life isn’t all that cut and dried, especially because expectations that things must be just so can lead to bullying, as seen in the novel.

I didn’t like this one as much as The Disreputable History, possibly because I didn’t read the first two books, but I think it really has a message that some people really need to hear. There are girls experiencing slut shaming and there are tons of people letting this happen.

Love does not exist

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen                  YA

           I have a huge backlog of books to review,  but I decided that I had to write about one of my favourite young adult writers. Sarah Dessen knows how to write girls on the verge, afraid of who they could be but not willing to stand still anymore. Yes, the books are about love, but the love is usually a distraction from some of their other issues. Take Remy, for example.

           Remy has a bit of a bad reputation that she’s still trying to get away from. She’s always trying to quit the combination of boys, beer and smokes. Part of her problem is that she doesn’t believe in love. Her mom is a romance writer who is just about to get married for the fourth time. Her father was a musician who died without ever meeting her; he left her mom before she was born. All she really has of him is his only hit, a song that he wrote for her called “This Lullaby”, where he sings “I will let you down.” Her mother’s relationships and her father’s song have led Remy to believe that every relationship is doomed from the beginning so you should leave before you are left. Then Dexter decides that she’s the one for him.

            I love Remy because she’s so mean, but she’s not sure that she wants to be. She regrets the things she says, but she can’t see a way to not say them. She’s self-aware in a really refreshing way. She knows that her name is ridiculous, and she makes fun of it herself. She knows that her mom’s marriage is doomed to fail, but she still plans a spectacular wedding for her, because she can’t stand things being done wrong. She knows that two of her friends hate each other, but she’ll cares about them both, so they better deal with it. Remy is a perfectionist as a way to cover for her “bad old days”, but the novel makes it clear, even if Remy doesn’t admit it, that at least one time Remy was raped. This event never seems to make it into Remy’s calculations about how things are, but it’s a silent factor in her dark world view.

          Now Dexter is not my favourite Dessen character.  I never really got to understand Dexter since we only see him from Remy’s view, and I’m not exactly sure how he wins her heart. He’s a struggling musican who travels each summer with his band to a new town with a good music scene as they try to make it with their “Potato Opus.” He and his bandmates are an adorable mess, and it’s fun to watch Remy struggle with the desire to clean them up. However, he’s going to be gone by the end of the summer, and Remy’s going to Stanford, so Remy thinks that nothing major will happen. Obviously, she’s wrong.

         This Lullaby was my first Dessen novel, but not my favourite because she doesn’t talk so much about female friendships, and Dexter doesn’t feel as real as he could. (In case you care, Someone Like You and Just Listen are my favourites) However, Remy’s voice is so strong and so real that after I first read it, I went out and bought a copy for a friend.

Let's hear it for the sidekicks

Harry Potter and the etc.... by J. K. Rowling

I’m not actually going to write a review of any Harry Potter novel, because either you’ve read it or you haven’t. If you don’t like these books then there is nothing I could say to change your mind, though you do have to admit that J. K Rowling really knows how to plot things out.

 Instead, I would just like to talk about my favorite character in the series, Ron. I mean sure, Harry is always going off and being brave, but he’s also always wanting to do it alone.  I think if you’ve read enough children’s books, you know that doing it all by yourself is just silly. There is a time and a place to be a lone wolf, and it is almost never when fighting the forces of evil. Without Ron and Hermione, Harry would have died multiple times. Now although Hermione is smart, loves to read, and loves the library, she isn’t actually my favorite. She is the smartest in the year, she’s helped the guys with their homework on too many occasions and without her we wouldn’t have had the intricacy of plot of the Prisoner of Azkaban. My problem with Hermione is that when she is being at her worst, a know it all who is shocked that you haven’t read Hogwarts: A History, she reminds me too much of myself, and some other people I know.

No, why Ron wins in my books is because he is useless. He is not the smartest, nor the bravest. He isn’t even the best at magic. He knows all of this, especially since he is the youngest boy in his quite large family. He comes along anyway.

Harry and Hermione have a purpose in the trio, they even have names that start with the same letter, but Ron is the prop that keeps them all upright. When he goes missing, things are worse. He is the guy who will tell you a funny joke and cheer you up, and yes, he makes many, many mistakes, but he always apologizes and he’s always genuinely sorry. He’s also Harry’s first real friend, and his family always treats Harry like he’s one of their own. The movies have definitely added to my love of Ron, especially since he has the best actor of the trio, but it started with the first book.

As a side note, I would also like to note my love of Snape, for the obvious reason, as well as because all of his visible plans; stopping Quirrel, capturing Sirius etc. always come to naught because of Harry. Can’t Snape have anything good?

Returning to an old friend

The Ear, the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer

 I must admit, I have always been a serial rereader and as a child I reread The Ear, the Eye and the Arm, as well as A Girl Called Disaster about five times each . I decided to return to The Ear to see how it holds up.

            It’s set in Zimbabwe in 2194, and it follows the three children of the Chief of Security:  Tendai (13), Rita (11) and Kuda (4). Since their father so powerful and has eliminated almost all the gangs, he is always afraid that his children will be kidnapped as a way to get back at him. Instead the children are homeschooled and never experience much of the outside world. As well, since their parents are always working, they live surrounded by robots and are watched over  by the childlike Mellower, who is a professional Praise Singer. Unfortunately, this makes it very hard for Tendai and Rita to get their explorer badge in Scouting, so they ask  the Mellower to help them leave the house for a day to go from one part of the city to another. The Mellower hypnotizes their father during Praise into giving them codes out of the house, as well as money for the bus and for food. However, the three children have no experience of the real world, including how to pay for food and how to take the bus and they are promptly kidnapped. When their parents realize what has happened they hire detectives.  The Ear, the Eye and the Arm were born in Hwange village, where their mothers were exposed to plutonium in the water. Each of the detectives has specialized mutations, including amazing hearing, amazing sight, and the ability to sense other people’s feelings, and occasionally read minds. The novel follows Tendai as he tries to bring his sister and brother home, and the detectives as they try to find the children.

             I still love this book because it has such a mishmash of genres. It’s sci-fi futuristic, it’s filled with adventure, there’s a coming of age story, there’s a detective story and  Shona beliefs about ancestors, spirits and witchcraft are integral to the plot. Ancestors can pass their gifts on to their descendants, and if it is necessary,  the mhondro or spirit of the land can enter people to help them save Zimbabwe. At one point, the children reach Resthaven, a walled community that decided 200 years ago to live as their ancestors did and to deny the advances of technology. Tendai loves the traditional village life because it feels so right, especially compared to his machine-filled home, but he can’t deny that there are some problems too.  In Resthaven, Rita has to work harder than he does because she’s a girl. As well, when twins are born, one must die, and the witch who cursed the mother and caused twins must be found and punished.  Traditional life isn’t seen as perfect, but it also isn’t denigrated as the bad old days.

  The novel also talks about the way that people put a blind eye to other people’s problems. The children had no idea that there were place like Dead Man’s Vlei, an old garbage dump, where people live and mine the plastic and other resources. The people who live there are seen as disposable people, out of sight, out of mind, but the Vlei is also a safe place for people who have been thrown out of regular society. A lot of stock is put in the way that too much Praise may help people feel so good that they ignore the experiences of others.

You are allowed to mock me, but I only found out that Nancy Farmer is white when I was in high school.  At first, it bothered me because I was concerned about appropriation and (when I was younger) authenticity, but rereading the novel again I think that it demonstrates a love for Zimbabwe and its people. It doesn’t make the country or the characters exotic and the appendix mentions that her explanation of the spirit world of the Shona, and of the Shona as a people is simplified because a young non-African audience might not understand. I did some research and found out that she worked as a scientific researcher in Mozambique and Zimbabwe from 1972 to 1988 and lived through some very dangerous situations, especially because there were civil wars occurring in both countries at the time. She returned to America mainly for her son’s sake. Rereading the novel now with that in mind, my main thoughts are that I hope that Zimbabwe can someday be as bright and peaceful as what she’s imagined, because right now it’s a dark, hard place.

All I want to do is write to you...

The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty         (YA)

                 Cassie, Emily and Lydia are three best friends who go to posh Ashbury in Australia, but their teacher wants to expand their horizons and makes the entire class write letters to the close by but “rough” Brookfield High. Although the girls have low expectations that this experiment can work, Emily and Lydia find that their male pen pals are actually alright people… even if they go to Brookfield. Cassie, however, has already been having a hard time in her personal life, and her pen pal just seems to be making things worse.

                I’m just going to put it out there that I love Jaclyn Moriarty. She writes epistolary novels, with this novel consisting of letters, diary entries and notes left around the house. It really allows the reader to get inside the heads of  the three friends, and also understand the Brookfield boys. Each character has a unique writing style and it helps to create really distinct personalities. I also love how the three girls relate to each other. Sure there are boys and the possibility of romance, but that is not in any way their main focus. They really care about each other, and they try to help each other out any way they can. The secret assignments from the title are a way for Emily and Lydia to distract Cassie from her grief and hopefully cheer her up. The girls are also really funny, especially Lydia who writes the most absurd, hilarious things to her pen pal in the hopes of scaring him off. These girls aren’t perfect by any standard, but that’s the reason why you’d want to be friends with them.

 If you’ve read Feeling Sorry for Cecilia, then Elizabeth makes a quick appearance and you’ll meet Bindy from The Murder of Bindy MacKenzie. My favourite Moriarty is Feeling Sorry for Cecilia, which is about building a new friendship when an old one falls through. I loved that novel because some of the letters from groups like the Association of Teenagers, and the Cold Hard Truth Society, showed how Elizabeth thinks in a funny but honest way. The Year of Secret Assignments is always written by a particular character, which still works but can be less engaging. We know that some thing is going on with Cassie, but since the friends know what's happened, we rarely get any information about it. However, I still love this novel for its humour and its portrayal of friendship.

What will we do to fill the days?

One Day by David Nicholls

                I don’t really like to think about the future too much.  I don’t mind thinking about what I’ll be doing next week, or next year, but I can’t stand to think of what I’ll be doing twenty years down the road. I can’t even picture it. It’s too far away and so much can happen in the meantime. David Nicholls doesn’t have the same squeamishness that I do and he decides have his two main characters imagine their lives in twenty years, and then actually show how their lives ended up twisting and turning.

                Emma and Dexter both went to the University of Edinburgh and on their graduation day they have a quick romantic interlude. Nothing really happens between them because of their own faults and fears and they end up as close friends. The day they meet is St Swithin’s day, July 15^th, and the narrative drops in on them every St Swithin’s day from 1988 to 2007. Life happens, and Emma and Dexter change as time passes. They both grow and regress, fall in love, do good, behave abominably, and all the things that they can do in between.

One Day is really about the way things change, the chances we miss, the importance of love and the difference between our expectations and reality. Since I’m still a student, I really loved the sections on the early and late 20’s in which Emma and Dexter do all the things that scare me about life outside the ivory tower. Emma tries to become an artist, fails and ends up working in a Tex-Mex restaurant for so long that they want to make her the manager. Dexter bums around Europe and Asia on his parent’s money, plans on being known for his work (whatever that will be) and falls into opportunities that Emma can't even imagine for herself.   

What I really loved about this book, was the way that dropping in on the same day every year meant that important moments were missing. There were things I, the reader, wasn’t privy to, that I couldn’t see. It also meant that things were always in the middle of happening. I don’t mean that Nicholls was following the writer’s handbook of beginning in media re , but more that life is always happening, things don’t always have an obvious beginning, and sometimes they don’t even have an obvious end.  Life is full of middles.

Dark doubles

Too Late by Clem Martini
Train Wreck by Malin Lindroth             (YA)           

   

There are some pretty great things about being a library student. Publishers will actually send books to various student groups because they know that the students publish newsletters with book reviews in them - and the people who will read the reviews are actually going to be a position to buy tons of books in a few years. In fact, I got a free copy of this book so that I could write a review for the AQBLA student chapter's newsletter. However, I just couldn't get it out of my mind, even after I wrote the review.

             The book is two completely separate short stories for teens, put in one book that can be flipped so that the other one can be read. These "flip" books are part of a series in which two stories on similar themes are put together. The stories are quite short, about 55 pages each. I would hesitate to call them novellas because the type is so large.

The issue with these two stories, for me, is how stark they both are. The theme that they share is dealing with the consequences of rape and sexual violence. In both cases, the narrator helps perpetrate this violence, even if he or she has also been a victim of it. For example, Too Late is about a boy in a juvenile detention centre for individuals who have committed sexual assault. He has definitely been the victim of his father, but he has to face the fact that he has done the exact same thing to another person. I’ve never seriously thought about people like him, and what opportunities they have afterwards… can they change? What chances do they have? I don’t know.

In my review for the newsletter, I needed to suggest what age range the book is written for. That is where my real problem came in. I really don’t know when it comes to a book like this. It’s a young adult book, but it isn’t for everyone in that age range. It isn’t graphic, but there were enough details to make me feel queasy, and both stories have such ambiguous endings. I know that there are teens out there who need to read books like this, because the right book at the right time can change everything, but I don’t know who they are. I finally ended up recommending it for reluctant readers over age 13, but I'm probably very, very wrong.

Capture your world while you can

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

                Ok, this is a classic for a few reasons.

1)     Cassandra lives in a castle! A run down, drafty castle, but a castle!

2)     Her family is incredibly poor even though her dad wrote Jacob Wrestling, a modernist classic.

3)      Her sister, Rose, begins the novel by saying that she’s so tired of being poor that she’s going to sell herself on the street. She doesn’t end up doing that. She does possibly sell her soul to the devil, though.

4)      It’s set in 1930’s Britain and written in the 40’s, so it has all the lovely and ridiculous details of British life that both charm me, and make me very glad I live in the present day.

5)     There is unrequited love and then there is unrequited love in I Capture the Castle. I think I would need to make a graph or something to show all the connections.

6)     Stephen! He’s incredibly handsome and loves Cassandra and would do anything for her. She doesn’t love him and finds that he has a “rather daft look on his face.”

7)     Cassandra’s stepmother Topaz is an artist’s model who loves to commune with nature in nothing but her rainboots.

8)   It was written by the author of 101 Dalmatians

.                      Looking at the list, you probably are thinking that I have terrible taste, but honestly, Cassandra Mortmain charms me like no one else. She is honest to a fault about herself and her family as she writes in her notebooks and tries to “capture” her family and the castle she lives in. Of course, the story would be incredibly boring (and depressing) if it were only about how poor the Mortmains are, so the narrative really kicks in when the new landlord from America, Simon Cotton, arrives with his brother Neil. Everyone, including Rose, decides that Rose needs to marry one of the two so that the family won’t flounder in poverty forever. As well, it would be great if their father would write a second novel  and not just read mystery novels all the time.

                      With those two goals in mind, Cassandra does what she can to help, and records the consequences of everything. There is a lot of talk about modernism and how music can make you feel, and a few moments of discomfort that always make me squirm with recognition. Of course, there are twists and turns, and even Cassandra finds herself in love.  Not everything ends happily, but that’s life. 

That girl was born for trouble

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart  (Y.A)

                Every so often you get your hands on a book that makes you want to cause some serious trouble. I mean, I now want to organize a group who works in mysterious ways to arrange Dada-esque protests in an attempt to change the social order.  I want to have a secret order at my beck and call, and I don’t want any of its members to realize that they are acting under my orders. I want to be Frankie.

                Not really, though, because Frankie never gets any respect. Everyone, including her adorable new boyfriend, severely underestimates her. She just recently bloomed, so people are falling all over her as if she’s new, but she remembers how she seemed invisible before. She’s tired of only being noticed when she needs to be rescued.  She’s mad that her boyfriend isn’t as interested in her life as she is in his. She’s mad that she’s seen as Matt’s girlfriend and not as a person in her own right and she’s mad that the guys at her boarding school have no idea of their male privilege. However, Frankie has a plan. She’s learned about the panopticon and she is ready to take it on with some tips from the Suicide Club.

                What I really loved about this book was Frankie and her single-minded need to have some power.  It’s hard to be honest about it, but everyone does want some power, some control and it’s rarer to see female characters portrayed as openly desiring it. Frankie just wants what she wants and she is willing to go after it.  As well, the girl has a wicked mind. The pranks she has the Order play are pointed and symbolic and they actually do affect some change into her world, even if the people she is trying to impress don’t realize it. The subtext of the novel indicates that the people who will understand her message best are not those in power, but those who never see power as an option, All in all, I love this lady and her willingness to destroy the cultural hegemony just so people will stop underestimating her.

               I have to agree with the narrator who says, “ And so, another possibility – the possibility I hold out for – is that Frankie Landau-Banks will open the doors she is trying to get through.  And she will grow up to change the world.”

What I like to read...

Technically, I like to read everything. I love science fiction, mysteries, classics, "literature" (whatever that might be) and so much more, but my real love right now is young adult fiction. I just finished a Masters in English, which was full of depressing reads about slavery and disease. I'm not saying that I didn't love it. I did, but it was hard and the only way to make it through was to read children and young adult books, along with some books my mom (but not I) would call trash. So don't worry. I do love the classics, I do love the thinking about higher things, but at the moment books for teens are getting me through life.