Go-to Books

In the to re-read or not to re-read debate, I fall firmly into the re-read camp. It is impossible to pick up on all the details and nuances in a book the first time you read it, especially if it is a dense read. Because of my habit of re-reading, I have a few go-to authors and books that I find myself gravitating toward at least once a year.
Let the Great World Spin

Though this book won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago, I don’t see this much on book blogs, booktube, or in pop culture and that is a damn shame. I absolutely love this book. Each chapter or section is a different character. Both social connections and a man on a tightrope strung in the sky between the World Trade Center ties the stories together. The language is gorgeous without being pretentious or flowery. The characters are spellbinding and heartbreaking. The book combines my love for short stories and novels, with each chapter being able to stand as a short story in its own right. Each time I come back to this story I am once again blown away.

Best American Nonrequired Reading

These anthologies are part of the annual Best American series. High school students from 826Valencia and 826Michigan curate the book. The pieces they choose are so quirky and fun. They are the kinds of books that you can open to any page and find something to read. The sections are also different every year, other than short stories, which are always included. When I’m between books or just looking for something a little different, I always find myself coming back to the editions I have.

Harry Potter

An obvious one, but a goodie. By the time I started reading these, the first three were already out. I read the rest as they were released. I have read the first three books at least ten times each, if not more. Four and five I have read quite a bit, but six and seven I have only read a handful of times. I find myself coming back to this series again and again for the same reasons so many others do: nostalgia, love for the series, and the lush, detailed world the JK Rowling built. As I get older, I find myself re-reading the later books more and more. Six and seven deal with so many issues that are touched on in the first five, but are really in the forefront in these books. It deals with morality and ambiguity, with fear and racism and classism. Each time I read them I discover something new, making them a series I will continue to return to for years to come.

Jane Austen

I acquired a love for Jane Austen in middle school and, like many things, find her books get better with age. While the basic plot structure doesn’t change, I find each time I re-read her books or pick one up for the first time (I have Emma and Sense and Sensibility left), I notice new elements of her satire or different details about her characters. As I get older, my knowledge of the historical and cultural contexts give me a better understanding of the books. I also find that each time I read the books, I come to them with a different perspective.

Eat Pray Love

This one is a little controversial. Even though this book was wildly popular when it first came out, it has faced some serious backlash. I understand people’s frustration with her privilege. Not everyone can travel the world on a book advance. I also sometimes find myself squirming in her depictions of travel to poverty-stricken areas. I still find myself coming back to her story, though. Her description having “it all” and her subsequent depression resonates deeply with me. I also love hearing about her travels: the amazing food and sightseeing, her ability to create family structures from perfect strangers in foreign cultures, finding mindfulness and different ways to meditate. Her book reminds me that you can always make changes to improve your life, though you cannot control others reactions. Her story is about taking responsibility for your own life and happiness.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

I’m a little late to the party, but it’s official. I am a total Neil Gaiman fangirl. I liked, but didn’t love, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but then I read American Gods and fell in love. Recently, I read Neverwhere. This book was a lot shorter than Gods and takes place in London.

Richard Mayhew is kind of your privileged white male – great job, London apartment, fancy girlfriend, etc. Then one day he notices this young woman on the street who no one else seems to notice, and everything goes to hell from there.

This book had a lot of the same qualities that I loved about American Gods. I loved the way the characters talked, how some of them seemed like they were from a different time. The characters seem far-flung at the outset, but all come together by the end. I loved the idea that there is an entire city below London, coexisting with it, that no one knows about.

I think one of the things Gaiman does best is his vivid characters. I especially love the creepy characters, like Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. They are simultaneously funny and creepy. I loved their indignation at their boss asking them to bring their mark in alive. The famous Messrs Croup and Vandemar not killing their prey! Quel horreur! Their disgust was just so funny.

Neverwhere was a little more disjointed than American Gods. While the wide-flung characters in that book all come together in a logical way, there are certain characters like Hunter who don’t quite fit.

I also found out while double-checking character’s names that this novel is an adaptation of a mini-series. I had no idea that was the case, so I’m going to make sure to watch the mini-series soon. There’s also a recent radio adaptation that I will also have to check out.

An Abundance of Katherines – John Green

An Abundance of Katherine’s was the last John Green I had to read. Like Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska, I found it to be pleasant, standard YA fare.

Colin can be best described as desperate and clingy. He has a habit of dating girls named Katherine, was a child prodigy, and has a best friend named Hasan. He and Hasan go on a road trip in Colin’s old car after his most recent girlfriend, where they end up in Tennessee and living with a girl named Lindsay and her mom Hollis.

At times, this book was a little too cute for me. He is a former child prodigy, he only dates girls named Katherine, and he has a charming old car with a name. It’s one too many cutesy things for me. I thought especially the Katherine’s thing. It did serve to emphasize how he wasn’t interested in the girls as people but as vessels for him to obsess over and cling to. However, the sheer number of them and the fact that none of them were spelled differently was just a little much.

Stylistically, I think Green played around in some interesting ways. I really liked the footnotes. They let him give more background information and resulted in more than one chuckle. I actually wish that he had continued playing around and evolving in his following two books. Those are both well-written, but stylistically very similar. It’s always interesting to see authors experiment.

I really liked Hassan, Colin’s best friend. He has an interesting arc and character development. I also love his obsession with Judge Judy. One thing I realized while reading this was that I know a fair number of Arab people, but I don’t think I have actually read a book with a character of Arab descent.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was a bit of departure from Alaska and Paper Towns, but in a good way. I still don’t understand the whole Teen Whisperer/YA Savior thing. His books are solid but nothing fantastically amazing, but that’s the subject of another post.

In Which the Media Completely Misunderstands YA

I have been, along with everyone else between 10-40, following the media storm around The Fault in Our Stars movie. I enjoy John Green’s books, I love his and Hank Green’s YouTube projects, and I thought the TFiOS was a wonderful book.

However.

I grew up with modern YA. While I have a lot of love for Judy Blume, I devoured Sarah Dessen. I loved Scott Westerfeld and Maureen Johnson (and still do). Young adult literature has such a wide variety of female and male protagonists. There are kids who have mental health issues, who have crappy home situations, just have growing pains, or are trying to fight off a dystopian regime. YA is home to so many successful female authors, including one JK Rowling for whom the NYTimes created a whole new best seller list.

Because of my background with YA, I can’t help but cringe at every article that has been written by some 40-something white guy who hasn’t read a YA book besides Twilight and TFiOS. These articles denigrate YA fiction by holding up TFiOS as the exception, not the rule. Look at this book about REAL teenagers, not sparkly vampires! And more importantly, look at this novel written by a man, we all knew there were too many ladies in YA for it to be Serious Literature, amirite?

The people writing these articles are so horribly out of touch with the scope of YA lit and the teens (and adults) who read it. They overlook thousands of books that tackle serious issues with humor and grace, and help teenagers feel like they’re a little less alone, during a time that can be so overwhelming and confusing. They span genres, with YA being all-encompassing of dystopia, vampires, fantasy, or romance.

What’s horrible about the coverage of TFiOS is that an opportunity to introduce all YA has to offer to a wider audience, is instead being made it about Twilight vs. TFiOS and poking fun at teenage girls. In doing so, the writers demonstrate that they completely misunderstand YA and, more dangerously, introduce their twisted notion of YA to a larger audience.

News media needs more people who actually understand YA to write about it. People who grew up with modern YA or discovered it as adults, who understand the dynamics of the genres and its fan base. What is doesn’t need is a single more article denigrating the readers and writers of YA.

May TBR Results

This month, I am vindicated in my typical non-TBR existence. I completely forgot about my library holds when making my list, which really threw a wrench in my plans.

What I planned to read:

• Finish King Lear
• Finish Unnatural Creatures
• Finish The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• The Casual Vacancy
• Throne of Jade
• The Mysterious Benedict Society

What I ended up reading:

• Finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (which I already reviewed here!)
• An Abundance of Katherine’s
• Neverwhere
• Started The Mysterious Benedict Society

An Abundance of Katherine’s and Neverwhere were library holds that I completely forgot about. My holds coming in worked out well, because I was feeling in a rut with my list and they pulled me out.

I started King Lear, and for some reason just wasn’t able to get into it. I was disappointed after I ended up enjoying Julius Caesar so much but I’m thinking I’ll give it another try in couple weeks.

The Casual Vacancy and Throne of Jade didn’t even get opened this month. With my new job, I wasn’t in the mood for the commitment these two longer reads would have required.

I’m currently about halfway through The Mysterious Benedict Society. So far, it has the kind of resourceful, mischievous kids I love now and would have loved had this book been out when I was younger.