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Jane Eyre
Well, that's done with. I am now a person who has read Jane Eyre. Mission accomplished in that regard. This is going to make me sound like a whiny little classics-weakling, but good Lord there are a lot of words in that book. Sad to say, I'm sure I wouldn't have stuck out Jane Eyre if I'd been reading the print edition instead of the audio. Seriously, I spent a good chunk of time just marveling at how complex and, in my opinion, cumbersome, the language is. I am frankly astounded by the fact that so many young readers gobble this book up an claim it as a favorite. Good story, sure, but you've really got to wade through the verbiage to find it. Also, too many coincidences at the end for my taste. But hey, I've read it, so now I don't have to feel like such an ignoramus when people talk about classics. Next in my self-imposed classics education: Jane Austen.
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My Most Excellent Year:
After writing such a lukewarm, three-star review of Jane Eyre, I feel a little funny giving the same star rank to My Most Excellent Year. People probably aren't going to be reading Steve Kluger's prose 150 years from now, but the fun-factor is much, much higher in this case. Such is the subjectivity of reader reactions and ratings. To fully enjoy this story, I had to set aside my weariness with the English-assignment-turned-novel framework. (I don't often see the relevance of explaining why characters have written their stories -- I just accept that they have and take up my position as fly on the wall.) The scrapbooky feel of the narration, encompassing the assigned essay project, IM sessions, notes, lists, posters, playbills, and whatnot struck me as sometimes incongruous with the frame (IM sessions in an English assignment?) though I suspect teens will take to it without batting an eye. The format certainly makes for a zippy read, and the three narrators all have distinct voices, which always earns bonus points from me. Being a classic movie buff, I especially loved Augie, the gay diva-boy. I fear, though, that a large chunk of Augie's charm and humor will be lost on kids who aren't well-versed in Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. I guffawed at the idea of Augie flipping out at someone who doesn't know the difference between Ethel Merman and Esther Williams, but nowadays, what kid has even heard of Merman or Williams? I, on the other hand, actually got excited at the characters' mention of a new Thelma Ritter biography -- sadly, it turns out there is no such book in the real world. Then again, most of T.C.'s baseball references were lost on me, so I guess it all evens out in the end. I'm a little skeptical of the portrayal of Hucky, the deaf six-year-old's proficient lipreading skills. Also, it seemed odd to me that Kluger chose to scatter correspondence between the kids' parents in among the narration -- again, how does that get into an English assignment? The parents' asides did amuse me, yet at the same time I could argue they weren't necessary to the story. But for goodness sake, the Mary Poppins business at the end trumps just about all my piddling complaints. If that magical moment doesn't make you snurpy, well crikey, try getting your kicks from Jane Eyre instead.
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Finally, an informative book about sex that you're supposed to giggle at. When you consider how many eons human beings have been having sex, it's pretty amazing how little we actually know about its physiology. Bonk will teach you a thing or two, and I promise you won't get bored, or even too squirmy. Mary Roach is funny, and smart enough not to make you snigger at the sex itself. Instead it's the absurdities of the research situations that really got me going, and the taboos that have so long kept scientists from learning about human sexuality. Ok, that and the disparity between the scientific jargon and Roach's colorful commentary. The lady knows how to (pardon the innuendo) straddle the line between frank, average Joe vocabulary and plain old gutter talk. This may not be a book to share with your grandma, but it's far from dirty. Bonus amusement: the photos between chapters. Not a one of them is remotely suggestive all by itself, but paired with the topics they represent, they're a scream.
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Not so long ago, I claimed that I didn't take ideology gracefully in fiction. And yet I'm totally digging Hero-Type. So either Barry Lyga is slightly more subtle than E. Lockhart, or I just prefer the left-wing soapbox to the feminist pulpit. I'm sure this story is going to rile some folks up, what with the plot circling around issues like flag burning and supporting the troops, but so be it. The surface question, of course, is What makes a hero? Plenty enough to ponder there, yet under that simmer timely musings about the meaning of patriotism and the nature of freedom -- questions I wish more people were talking about these days. When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, this is all about perspective, point of view, and using your own head instead of sponging off someone else's ideas. Which is fine and lofty, so now consider this goofball notion of mine: I can't help thinking that if George Carlin were a teenager, he'd have a blast with Hero-Type. The politics and irreverence are right up his alley. Council of Fools, indeed. My only complaint: just a few too many references to Kevin's Big Secret. (Available in September)
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The Trouble Begins at 8:
Sid Fleischman tackles Mark Twain -- what's not to like? Personally, I love, love, love a non-fiction book with appealing (read: non-textbooky) voice, and The Trouble Begins at 8 has that in spades. Just about every last sentence flows and sparkles like the Mississippi itself, and there's hardly a wimpy verb to be found. Trouble is, now and then the information gets lost in the cleverness of the writing. I'd be reading blithely along and then think, "Wait...when did that happen?" Paging back showed me the pertinent fact was right there all along, peeking out from behind a perky turn of phrase. I'll be curious to see if other readers have this experience, or if it was just a random case of me being a dink, because the writing is darn good -- an obvious homage to Twain's own style. I was a trifle surprised to discover this biography covers only Twain's early years -- up to the publication of his first book in 1869 -- but that's no one's fault but my own for not reading the flap copy before diving in. Twain's last 40 years as a celebrity author paddle by in a ten page afterword. Fleischman also takes pains to point out what a slippery task it is to pin down the facts of Twain's own life. As Huckleberry Finn himself says, Twain was fond of "stretchers," even in his autobiography and non-fiction. (A stunt that'd get him run out of Oprah's book club on a rail nowadays!)
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Waiting for Normal
Time for a minor round of I-don't-get-it. Waiting for Normal is a Very Good Book, no question about that. Well developed characters, vivid emotions, and writing that doesn't call attention to itself. I thought the stepfather-daughter relationship was terrific, and appreciated the the way dyslexia and bi-polar disorder figure into the story without hogging the spotlight -- these disorders are things the characters cope with, not things they analyze and dwell on. Addie, though some see her as Pollyannaish, struck me more as a realist than a sunshiny optimist. She hopes for change because it's what she does to survive, not because she thinks maybe the bi-polar fairy will magically fix Mommers if she believes hard enough. The kid's stuck and she knows it. I also found her loyalty to Mommers in spite of her mother's neglect pretty convincing; Addie knows things should be better, but like most kids who've never lived differently, she doesn't fully realize she's being neglected. Her guilt and anger with herself for wanting better struck me as spot-on. After all that praise, what's my problem? Well, it's the gushing and the Newbery predictions from other readers that I don't quite understand. Maybe because my expectations were skewed: I was braced for a direct wallop, and this story is affecting in a more gradual, understated way. Maybe because my Newbery-beam is so fixed on The Underneath that I can't even process an apples-and-oranges comparison like this. I don't know. I liked Waiting for Normal just fine, but it's blowing some people away.
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I know it's the Great American Novel. I know Mark Twain proclaimed persons attempting to find a plot in it would be shot. But darn it, I need a plot. I just do, ok? Plotless books, even great ones, make me feel antsy and aimless. Now that's out of the way, let me assure you that I appreciated and enjoyed Huck Finn far more than Jane Eyre. Despite the lack of plotlines, things picked up noticably for me when Tom Sawyer stumbled back into the story, even if the coincidence was a tad too contrived. Most affecting to me isn't Huck's famous moral dilemma over slavery. It's the way Jim, a grown man, has to submit to the invented whims of a self-absorbed white boy for weeks on end in hopes of gaining his freedom. I may prefer the story of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer over Huck's meandering escapades, but by the time The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was over, I was downright ashamed of Tom.
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Bambi
Bambi is not a cute book. Surprised? Me too. Turns out the film version of Bambi is a classic example of Disneyfication. Read my blow-by-blow Disney Literature Challenge comparison on my blog or just settle for this quick assessment: All in all, if you liked the movie, I'll bet you a pound of venison sausage that you probably won't like the book, and vice versa. Uncle Walt may have gone overboard with heaping on the sweetness, but at least he managed to get his audience emotionally engaged.
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The Wind in the Willows
Walt Disney sure did a number on this story when he made The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Seems to me the movie skims all the excitement off the top and leaves the majority of the charm behind. Whoever knew rodents and amphibians could be so dear? Poor old Mr. Grahame must be quietly sniffling in his grave. The movie is all full of swagger and bluster, which is fine and dandy for Toad, but misses the boat entirely when it comes to Mole and Rat. Disney cast them as supporting characters when in fact it was their story to begin with, a lovely little hammock story full of kindness and good cheer, only occasionally interrupted by Toad's silly escapades. On the other hand, isn't it interesting that in the Disney version, the plot of Toad's motorcar trials is altered so that Toad becomes more or less innocent? For all the story's sweetness, Grahame had no qualms about painting Toad as a thoughtless, boastful lawbreaker, but Disney only had the stomach to frame him. Sissy. Another minor fascination: published in 1906, The Wind in the Willows is roughly 20 years older than Bambi, yet the language comes across as infinitely more readable and less dated. Perhaps because Bambi was originally written in German and likely suffers from Dusty Translation Syndrome. Or perhaps Grahame was just the better writer. Until I become fluent in German, that's the way I'm voting.
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The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street
Barbara O'Connor made me read this book, and while I don't quite LOVE it the way she does, I have to say there's something to admire when an author can write a story in the first person from the point of view of an obnoxious character yet still make you like the kid. So Barbara's right: the voice is totally believable. Oh, and the other thing? I was about 2/3 through the book before I realized it was for second- and third-grade readers. I haven't the slightest idea how Sharon Flake pulled THAT off without my catching on sooner.
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Hole in My Life
Maybe it's just because I've met Jack Gantos -- I've shaken his hand, seen his acne scars, and dropped my jaw when he sized me up and pegged my favorite old-time movie star in just two guesses. (I dunno how that came up, but there you go.) When he's standing there, a mild and slightly built fellow in a suit, you can hardly see Joey Pigza in him, let alone conjure his mug shot, even when you know he's done hard time. I don't want to go off on cliches about inspiration, bootstraps, and lessons learned, but cripes, when you see a guy grab hold of a second chance with both hands and make good on it, well, it just makes you sort of swell up inside, even if you've only known him for 12 minutes. Besides, there's something especially brave about someone who makes his living writing books for children also having the moxy to talk about booze, drugs, and prison rape without any candy coating. After reading Hole in My Life, I'd like to shake his hand all over again.
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Meat: A Love Story
Don't ask me where I got the idea that Meat was going to be a book all about steak. No sir. Susan Bourette does explore everything from the slaughterhouse to the butcher shop and steakhouse, but there's wilder stuff like a whaling voyage and a moose hunt jammed in here too. No cannibalism, though. (Oh come on, I bet you wondered just a little.) Bourette may not be as chuckle-inducing as Mary Roach, but her style is sufficiently zippy, and she's got an oddly endearing combination of earnestness and ineptitude going for her when she tries her hand at managing livestock or wielding a cleaver. Meat is, however, craving-inducing. When all is said and done, if you're a carnivore like me, this book has the potential to be as dangerous as reading The Emperors of Chocolate -- except that a dry-aged filet mignon costs a whole lot more than a bag of M&M's.
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Cheated
Patrick Jones's books might not be my usual fare, but after hearing him speak twice now (the man can mesmerize a library full of teens) I couldn't resist reading his latest. Plus, it's set in my general vicinity and based on a real incident: a couple teenagers beat a homeless man to death after he shorted them $2 on a beer run. That's about as unbeatable a premise as you're ever likely to run across. And let me tell you, the end makes it all worthwhile...
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At last! After all the gender-baloney I witnessed over the years at the bookstore (for example: a customer once refused to buy Sandra Boynton's Piggy Book for a newborn boy because it's -- horror of horrors -- pink!) I swore up and down that someday I'd learn more about the differences between male and female brains. For all our bristling at stereotypes, I had an inkling there was more than just society at play. We like to believe we live in a gender-neutral society, and even at the shop we turned up our noses at the notion of "girl-books" and "boy books" but Sax has arguments galore for why ignoring the hard-wired physiological differences between boys and girls actually does virtually no favors for either sex. The fact is, males and females are different, and not just in terms of what resides in their undies. Fascinating stuff in here including: - how the structure of the brain itself differentiates between the ways males and females approach stereotypical topics like emotions, language, risk-taking, and spatial relations - how coeducation appears to reinforce gender stereotypes instead of breaking them down - similarities and differences between the brains of gay and straight men and women - how the physiological differences between the male and female brain impact kids' taste in reading - using gender differences to teach literature and sciences more effectively to both sexes Sax also goes off on how the modern fad of permissive parenting has gummed up society, which I liked very much after watching so many three-year-old tyrants bully their parents around the bookshop. Bottom line: we all deserve equal opportunity, but that's actually something way different from treating everyone the same.
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River Secrets
That Shannon Hale knows how to end a book, by George. I wish I knew how she does it. Somehow, while I'm bobbing along on the surface of the action, adventure, and mystery she's creeping behind me, stringing very long fuses for all sorts of emotional firecrackers all through the story. And then ka-pow! they sparkle and fizz all at once until I suddenly realize how much I love the characters and how much they love each other, and it's all I can do to read the last 20 blessed pages over my own snorking and snurping. Dang! I think Shannon Hale and Gary D. Schmidt are in cahoots, by the way. If I ever find the source for their pyrotechnics, I'm buying the place out.
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Predictably Irrational:
Intriguing information here, conveyed through clever experiments, but the writing eventually had me skimming. Much as I love zippy non-fiction, I wish Ariely had just stuck to his competent reporting of the experiments and their results; his attempts to sprinkle in amusing asides came off as awkward and contrived instead, while the commentary about the larger implications of each experiment quickly struck me as redundant. (Though Ariely comes off as exuberant rather than condescending, he somehow doesn't quite realize when he's made his point sufficiently and ends up spelling out much more than he needs to.) If you liked Freakonomics, this is worth a look. The information may not be startling, but I enjoyed watching Ariely and his team tease out the behavioral peculiarities we all suspect of ourselves on some level yet never examine in broad daylight.
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Savvy
Oh, Savvy... This might be one of those cases when hype backfires. I've already heard Newbery murmurs for Savvy, but it didn't reach those heights for me. I suspect I was primed for something as tremendous as The Underneath all over again, and that's one heckuva tall order. Even so, Ingrid Law's writing is slick as all get-out: its folksy voice flows strong and easy as the Mississippi River Mibs is named after, so much so that I'll bet you Savvy will make one killer audio book. (In fact, an audio edition is slated for release next week, and I'll very likely revisit the story when the library acquires a copy.) As for the plot, in retrospect it should feel far-fetched; instead it comes off as charming and fanciful. Nevertheless, the story itself didn't leave me smitten the way so many other readers are. Ah, well -- that's the way the cookie bounces, as my grandmas's been known to say. At least in this case I can understand what other folks see in it. (Unlike Twilight, which baffles me...)
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Here's a first for me: pinning a star on a three-point review. Why the break in a months-long tradition of snobbery? Bewitching Season is just plain fun, that's why, and you don't even have to turn your brain off to enjoy it. I'll admit, when I pulled this book from a package of Holt review copies, I arched an eyebrow. It looked...frou-frou. I don't do so well with fluffy books. But Holt's been especially nice about indulging my ARC whims lately, and I've run across Marissa Doyle on the Blue Boards, so I hushed my inner snob and vowed to give Bewitching Season a fair shot. Goodie for me, because while there's a fair bit of talk about silk and evening gloves, it's not a superficial story. The setting is vivid, the magic doesn't overwhelm the story, and there was an amusing royalty connection to tease me along. Best of all: virtually no simpering. This is actually rather like how I'd hoped The Luxe would be. So there.
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Building a Comapny: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire
Unless you're a die-hard Disney dork (and maybe even if you are) it's safe to let this one pass you by. Frankly, I don't think the book does Roy O. Disney justice. Now, I can surely appreciate how writing about Roy Disney without dwelling on Walt is a bit like writing about Annie Sullivan without mentioning Helen Keller. It just doesn't work. However, I generally felt more like I was getting the business side of Walt's doings, as opposed to Roy's actual point of view. Bummer. Maybe I've been prejudiced by the enormity of Neal Gabler's book, but to me this bio came across as a choppy skim through Disney history, presuming a noticeable amount of prior knowledge. New people and projects regularly appeared without introduction, only to be explained pages later. On the plus side, Thomas drew extensively from interviews with Walt, Roy, their families and colleagues, as well as personal correspondence. Thus there are some personal insights and tidbits to gobble up, but it takes some sifting. In the end, I'm not sorry I spent the time -- Roy deserves it -- but I'm awfully glad I went through the library instead of spending the money.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Seriously, what could I possibly say about Tom Sawyer except, "Yep, I liked it!" Incidentally, it appears that the honorable Mr. Twain wrote this novel before declaring war on adjectives. It's not like they run wild, but there are significantly more embellishments in this story than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is virtually bereft of them.
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Bonk:
The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
