Reading at the right time or Why YA?

                Let’s be honest. There is both a wrong time and a right time to read something, and it can be impossible to know the difference until you start reading. When I was 11, I tried to read 1984. It didn’t work. I found it boring and dry and I only got 50 pages in. I shocked a teacher by saying it was the most boring book ever. I was eventually able to read it though, when I was 15, but only after reading Animal Farm and a whole bunch of other things. I was amazed to find the book so different. It was intense and dark and terrifying, a beautiful nightmare.

                I’m not just talking about reading things before you’re ready, though it is the more likely thing to happen. There are tons of works that are only able to speak to you because of where you were at that time, and they are still able to speak to you as a reminder of the past. It’s hard to imagine people who can’t remember the emotions of adolescence finding anything to enjoy in Catcher in the Rye. Sure Holden’s just as phony as the people he hates, but I felt sorry for him because he doesn’t recognize it yet and because I could recognize myself in him.

                 There are books you need to read in certain ways, at certain times, so that they can touch your heart, save your life, change your mind or move you forward so that you can read that next thing that will mean the world to you. There were books I read, like The Chocolate War and Huckleberry Finn, that I read because other people didn’t want me to. I had found the ALA list of most challenged books and decided to read as many of these as I could. Part of the power of these books came from the fact that someone out there thought that I shouldn’t read them.

                Where does YA fit in to this? Everywhere.

                 Going back to 1984, I needed certain books to move me forward to the point where I could admire it. I needed to read other dystopias, as well as other completely different books. I also needed other books that referenced it to pique my interest once again. A lot of YA makes allusions to other “greater” works, or raised my consciousness about issues that had never crossed my mind before. It made me want to read further, to find out more. YA can be a stepping stone to other works, but it can also be a good unto itself.

                And then there’s The Chocolate War. Right now I’m working on a presentation on a challenged book, and I found myself returning to this one. When I first read it, I was a pretty typical teen. I was a mystery to myself.  I didn’t understand what I was feeling or why I was acting the way I was, and no one else seemed to understand me either.  It didn’t help that I’ve never liked to talk about my problems and there was some bullying going on. I’ve mentioned this before, but this book meant a lot to me back then; however, I don’t ever want to read it again.  In the novel, bad things happened to good people and evil triumphed… or did it? Maybe life wasn’t that simple. Maybe there were other options. It was comforting to hear about the dark things, things that sounded like part of my life and not have it banished from the story.

                I was sad when Robert Cormier died and when Monica Hughes died and when Madeline L’Engle died. I'll be sad when other authors die too. These people mattered to me because they helped give me an emotional vocabulary. Maybe not new words, but new stories, new phrases that helped me recognize myself and others. Sometimes you need to be shown that what you feel is real, that you are not alone in feeling this way, that other people have it worse, and that you should help them if you can. Maybe today sucks, and maybe tomorrow will too, but that doesn’t mean that something better won’t show up someday and you have a role to play in that. Yes, adolescence is a time for melodrama (and oh what melodrama!), but that doesn’t mean that the feelings aren’t real. And sometimes a book can help you figure it out.

CB #8 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

 I love a good mystery, especially one by Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. They both wrote ridiculously British mysteries with oddball detectives, and if it’s one by Sayers, then you learn about something completely unrelated like the architecture of Oxford University, or about the complexities of bell ringing. Sayers translated Dante so I’m certain that she’s researched  the facts that she presents. I think that Bradley was aiming for something along the same lines (even if he's Canadian). This mystery was supposed to teach me about chemistry, stamps and a certain period in British history, and maybe it did. Mainly, I just wanted to punch Flavia in the face. However, since the police detective seemed to feel the same way, maybe that was the point.

  Sweetness is set in 1950’s Britain in a small town that is very like Miss Marple’s St Mary Mead. Flavia is the youngest of three daughters (the other two are Orphelia and Daphne), living in a grand old (decaying) house with her father. Her mother died in Flavia is extremely precocious. Her obsession is chemistry, poisons in fact, and she spends most of her time terrorizing and being terrorized by her sisters. One day, a dead bird ends up on their doorstep with a stamp in its beak. The next morning Flavia watches a man die in her garden. Now she has to solve the mystery, or her father could be charged with murder.

                I’m confused about how I feel about this book. On one hand, I enjoyed the 1950’s setting and I liked the writing style. There was a richness to it that I really enjoyed. I also enjoyed the way the sisters plot against each other. On the other hand, I found Flavia to be a bit too precocious. She felt unreal. I might have believed it if she was a bit older, or a bit younger and had a less strong vocabulary, but she felt like a character in a book, and not like a real person.  As well, I didn’t feel the urgency of the mystery, though I know that Flavia did. I guess that this is just a case of a disconnection to the book. I know lots of other people loved it, so it might just be me.

CB #7 Pandaemonium

Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre

                I loved my exchange year in Scotland. Sometimes I get homesick for it… well not exactly homesick, because it wasn’t really my home, but I start to miss mountains and that particular shade of green that only comes from daily rain. I miss Scottish accents and taking the train everywhere. I miss seeing the Wallace monument in the distance. I also miss the nightly cage around the William Wallace statue that prevented locals from decapitating it because it looked like Mel Gibson. I was feeling morose over Christmas so I picked up a book by someone who gets the accents  and the Scottish attitude right. I have found Brookmyre hit or miss in the past, but I thought that a darkly comic thriller involving the US military’s secret facility in Scotland, physics, possible demons from a Hell dimension, the Catholic Church and a group of high school students who are going on a retreat to  deal with the murder of a classmate would keep my attention. This book definitely bends genres.

 At the beginning of the novel, there’s a chart that names all of students at the retreat and puts them into little groups, like the Hard Team, Heidthebaws, the Beautiful People, and the God Squad, so that you have some understanding of the group dynamics. It was essential with about 33 characters including the teachers. Oh, and that was only the school narrative. There’s also the people in the top secret military facility who are studying the demons, until of course the system is sabotaged and the creatures escape.

I loved how Brookmyre portrayed the relationships between the high school students. I liked the  group dynamics, as well as the way that people struggled with how they are perceived both inside and outside the group. They were worried about sex and friendship and the aftereffects of witnessing a murder, but that they also just wanted to drink and have fun as well. It felt pretty realistic. Not all the students were focused on, obviously, but those that were, were distinct individuals who I cared about.

Now my problem with the book is this. I started it on January 4^th and read most of it in 2 days. Then I stopped and I only finished it today. Part of the problem is that I often read two or more books at once and sometimes one falls to the wayside, but the other part of the problem is that after all that set up, I wasn’t very interested in having these kids battling for their lives. I just wanted them to figure things out and have some fun.  I didn’t care at all about the people in the military facility and could have used less of that (even though it was incredibly important to the plot).  A final factor was that after reading two chapters I remembered one of Brookmyre’s particular interests and realized how exactly the novel would have to end. If you haven’t read any Brookmyre then it will probably be surprising, and you might love it more than I did.

Overall, I did get my Scottish accent fix, and the teens felt real. I even loved some of the fight scenes (there was a chainsaw!) but I felt that it went on a bit long and could have been tighter.

Author Appreciation: E.M. Forster

There are authors out there who will win you over with their words. I won’t even try to deny it. If E.M. Forster walked up to me out of the blue and asked me to marry him, I would. Unfortunately, this will never happen because he is a) gay b) dead. I never really had a chance.

I think the main reason why I love him is because his stories aren’t really about plot, although it happens. He's a humanist and it shows. His novels are all about decency. That’s the only thing that matters to him, and although this sometimes has written his novels into strange narrative corners (Howards End, anyone? How on earth does Meg get pregnant? Really. I know how it supposedly happened, but I can’t really believe it. This is a man who married a prostitute to save her from the poorhouse or worse. He is not going to have sex with an unmarried lady.) But I have to agree, decency is everything.  Dear authors: do you want to make me cry? Don’t try so hard with the death and the despair. Instead, have someone be kind in spite of everything. I will be sobbing on the floor.

As well, Forster just understands people, and the way he writes is just… well read him. This is one of my favourite parts from A Room With a View.

It did not do to think, nor, for the matter of that, to feel. She gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart not the brain, and march to their destiny by catchwords. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters – the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athena, and not by any heavenly intervention but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities will be avenged.

Forster catches out that moment of becoming that person, a moment that I’m rather afraid of, and describes it so that I know why I’m afraid that I could end up like that. I don’t know, I feel that he really understands (a certain group of) people. Maybe that didn't speak to you, I understand. I regularly have moments of ridiculous connection to certain characters. There's a reason why the book club at Queen's knew about my deep connection to Dorothea Brooke from Eliot's Middlemarch (also why The Cider House Rules changed my life). I do tend to go on about things.

Now, I have to admit that my Masters in English, which I finished in June, has sort of drained me. At the moment I have trouble reading "important" books.  I started A Passage to India this summer and I’m only a quarter of the way through. In fact, my copy got left behind in Ottawa. It probably doesn’t matter; I’ve been halfway through Dostoyesky’s The Idiot for a year now, and that one is actually in Montreal with me, glaring at me on my bookshelf. I guess my real reason for this author appreciation is to wish that I had the enthusiasm to read something really, intensely wonderful again. I am loving the young adult fiction, thrillers and mysteries that I have been reading, but I wish I had the strength for something sublime. I don’t know. Am I the only one who isn’t summoning my full reading strength? Is there someone else I should be trying to read? If you have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it.

CB#6 Flipped

 Flipped by  Wendelin Van Draanen         (YA)

                Getting mail is one of the loveliest things. It’s so much more exciting than an email and mail is even better when it’s a friend sending you a book.  Thanks Britt, for making my day when you mailed me an awesome novel.

                 Van Draanen has been on my radar for a while because I really like her Sammy Keyes mysteries. Keyes is a tomboy in middle school who secretly lives with her grandmother because her gran isn’t supposed to have anyone living with her. She sarcastic, loves softball and solving mysteries. Keyes is a really awesome character who does what she believes in and doesn’t go along with the flow. Juli Baker is the same. She raises chickens, she loves soccer and she’ll stay up in the old sycamore tree to try to save it from being cut down.

                The narration of Flipped switches between the two main characters: Julianna Baker and  Bryce Loski. In the second grade, Juli has a crush on Bryce from the first time she meets him. He’s just so cute, and she’s been waiting for a friend her own age for a while. Meanwhile, Bryce is just terrified of her and doesn’t like that she’s messy and so eager to be friends. The plot quickly zips along to the eighth grade, noting that all the while Juli’s had a crush on Bryce, while Bryce tries to completely avoid her.

                However, things are starting to change. Juli is slowly becoming aware that Bryce isn’t who she sees him as, and Bryce is starting to wonder if he’s been worried about the right things all along. I have a major saw that I like to harp on, which is that we often fundamentally misunderstand people so that we can continue to see the world as we like. There’s a way that we like to see things, and so when something or someone doesn’t fit our original view, we just misunderstand it so that our viewpoint continues to work, to our personal detriment. Juli sees Bryce as a good person who’s just really shy, mainly because he’s so good looking. Bryce sees Juli as annoying but is too scared to tell her that’s she’s coming on too strong. As well, he is completely focused on appearances, thinking that her house is a mess, and he worries too much about what other people think. Of course, the way they feel is going to flip, and maybe Bryce can change.

                In the Q & A in the back, Van Draanen  talks about being a teacher and noticing how her students always had crushes on such unworthy people. However, those people were cute or pretty, and as a teacher she couldn’t really say anything. I think Flipped really does try to show that appearances aren’t everything. As well, it honestly portrays the ridiculous moments of boy craziness that can happen to anyone, even smart, sensible girls. I remember middle school, and those stupid stomach flips and moments of going crazy over someone who wasn’t that special at all. My only thing to criticize is that I felt like Juli’s crush started too early for it to last for so long. Five years is a long time, especially if you aren’t really talking to him.

CB #5 Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins    (YA)

                Possible spoilers to every book in the trilogy (I’m sorry)

I thought that this was the perfect conclusion to the trilogy. In fact, I feel like it’s the only right way for things to end.   The Hunger Games can be seen as about the way that suffering can be unreal entertainment when it’s not happening to you. The Capitol’s citizens don’t seem to realize that real children are dying as they watch it on the big screen. Innocents are forcibly destroying each other for their own survival, and the Capitol places bets. In Mockingjay, the fight comes to the Capitol and its children, but it doesn’t make everything better for those in the Districts. Instead Mockingjay is about the way that violence and power struggles can only be damaging. At least, that was how I saw it.

I’m not really going to comment on the narrative itself, but instead on the possible issues that people may have with it. I never saw this trilogy as being about a great love story. I felt that Katniss has too much to think about and do to have any time for romance. Sure there are two men for her to fall for, but I don’t think that Katniss understood either of them enough to really fall in love, until perhaps the very end. Especially in the first book, you saw how she went through the motions to keep both herself and Peeta alive.  For me, this trilogy is about the other kinds of love that exist: love for family members that is so strong that you’ll give up your life and your chances of happiness for them,  a love for truth that means you’ll sacrifice your life so that the “better” leader will survive the Games, and a love for friends. I can’t even see a Team Gale or a Team Peeta in this story, though apparently others have seen it this way. Katniss needs to survive long enough for her to have a life, before she can even think about love.

As well, in this novel we finally see the consequences of all of the fighting. None of the victors of the Games are fully themselves anymore. All the fighting means that they’ve lost any sense of stability they may have had before. I found this, though dark and troubling, very realistic. I honestly wouldn’t expect any of them to have stayed the same. I read another review just after finishing the books that said that Mockingjay was too dark in comparison to The Hunger Games. I have to disagree. Mockingjay is about consequences catching up to people. It’s about the complications of reality and politics. As well, The Hunger Games was about children killing each other, and that's never a cheerful subject.

Anyway, I really loved the trilogy and I would recommend it to anyone who loves dystopias or novels about political power struggles. If you liked the political aspects I would suggest that Megan Whalen Turner’s novels about Attolia, starting with The Thief. They’re set in a fictional kingdom in the past, but they’re as gritty and political as The Hunger Games.

CB #4 Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins  (YA)

                Catching Fire is definitely the second book in a trilogy. It has the non-beginning and non-ending that sometimes happens with trilogies (think Pirates of the Caribbean). It’s not necessarily the fault of the trilogy format, especially since The Subtle Knife is my favourite of the His Dark Materials trilogy and Back to the Future II is just plain awesome. However, it makes me wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have the stories of Catching Fire and Mockingjay put in one book. NB: If you haven’t read Hunger Games yet, you might want to stop reading.

You're still with me? Katniss and Peeta survived the game, but now the Capitol is basically out to destroy Katniss and her family’s life. They can’t do this overtly, because their entire audience loved the star-crossed lovers who could not live without each other story that Katniss used to save both their lives. However, Captiol saw her actions as rebellion and as the spark that may convince the Districts to rebel against the Capitol. Now Katniss must use all her skill to  convince the Capitol that she really does love Peeta.

Now I did have a few issues with this book so if you haven’t read it, you won’t want to read further.

                I HATED the idea of the Quarter Quell using previous victors. I know it was just a way to get back at the Katniss. This time there would be no way to save Peeta and herself, so she’s going to want to sacrifice herself to save the better person. I was mainly bothered by the way it brought the Hunger Games back into the novel. I know it adds excitement and tension to the story, but it felt cheap. It felt like a repeat of the first novel. What did surprise me was how many of the previous victors weren’t completely mentally destroyed by their experiences in the ring. Haymitch, Katniss' mentor, is an alcoholic, and there are a few drug addicts, but otherwise the victors are surprisingly stable. One roommate noted that this was probably because those who survived the ring were mentally strong and had an incredible will to live, and would never do anything that would harm their ability to survive. Once again, I would be a complete mess if I survived anything like that. All I'd do is cry.

               There were still a few things that I liked about this book though. I liked that Peeta pretended that Katniss was pregnant with their child. It’s one way to make the audience in the Capitol remember that those who fight are people too. I also liked that Katniss and Peeta basically ignored each other for a while after the Games. Of course they were forced to go around the Districts on tour together, but for a while they could pretend to be differnent people.